A true Girl Scout all the way
Our reader reminisces about a very special friendship that has spanned 50 years, all thanks to the Girl Scouts movement.
SOMEONE once sent, to my mobile phone, Neil Sedaka’s 1959 popular song Oh! Carol.
Real nostalgic. However, it was neither the song nor the singer who had been in my heart and soul as much as a person I know by that very same name. In fact, this Carol has always been on my list of favourite people.
Carol Zachary, who hails from Seattle, in the United States, was one of the participants of the Juliette Low Senior Girl Scouts Conference 1965. It was at this conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, that I first came into contact with her, as well as 21 other senior girl scouts from 10 countries: the United States, Greece, Jamaica, Tobago, Malaysia, Peru, Mexico, Pakistan, Venezuela and France.
We stayed at one of the Girl Guide/Scout houses – named Our Cabana – for the occasion from July 6-28, 1965. It was full of meaningful activities for the 22 girls who came from totally different cultures. We all had so much fun sharing experiences, under the guidance of two dedicated leaders – Lynn London and Muriel Thatcher. Together, our sisterhood in Guiding was sealed.
During the grand finale of the conference, each participant from every country presened an item that depicted their countries’ tradition or culture. While the country folk dance performed by the two Mexican Girl Scouts, Necha and Tere, was simply breathtaking, the item offered by the US participants, in their traditional country folk attire, was no less awesome. I can still remember Carol in her presentation, wearing her Davy Crocket costume and mimicking Paul Revere.
On the last day of the conference, we stood on the flight of steps outside Our Cabana and posed for a photograph. And as we bade goodbye, we pledged to keep in touch and meet again someday. (Honestly, at the time, I didn’t see how ...)
Carol once sent me her photo, taken in 1968, behind which she had written: “This is my senior picture. Someday we’ll meet again. We must believe this or faith would mean nothing. God works in strange ways for peace, doesn’t he?”
We did correspond with each other, though the letters grew less frequent as the years went by. Carol remained true to her words, though – year in and year out, she never failed to mail me greetings at X’mas and shared her experiences and updates.
Fast-forward to 1979-80. Carol’s involvement in Amway brought her to Australia. And of course, being adventurous, she did not let the chance to visit me (in my hometown of Kota Baru, Kelantan) slip. The few days she spent at my house in Jalan Pengkalan Chepa gave Carol novel surprises – totally foreign and unexpected, I guess!
The first morning in my house, Carol woke up hastily and dashed frantically into my room. “Norma! Has there been an accident?” “Accident?” I asked.
“YES! It’s so loud!! ... It’s slowing down now, though...”
“Oh, oh ... Zack ... it’s not an accident. It’s the call to our first morning prayers ...” I told her.
Carol, whom we fondly called Zack, gave a sigh of relief. She soon learnt that the small mosque in front of my house would be sounding the call to prayer five times daily.
I took her to the outskirts of Kota Baru, to some villages, to see the padi fields and rubber estates. She saw the source of raw materials for making rubber products, such as erasers, gloves and mattresses.
On the way home, we stopped by a friend’s house in a village. Though they spoke no English, they greeted us politely and served us coffee and bread. Carol simply followed the way we sat – on the straw mat on the floor – and the way we ate bread with coffee.
Back in the car, homeward-bound, Carol asked, “Do all the people here dunk their bread in coffee before eating it?” It must’ve been curiously amazing to her, then.
It was also during one of those visits around the small capital town of Kelantan that we made our way into a Chinese coffee shop for a drink.
As we sat at one of the round marble tables, a voice hollered (in Hokkien), “Kopi
nor au!” It came from a guy in a white Pagoda T-shirt, holding a small white towel in his hand. Apparently he was a waiter. We quenched our thirst (in the midst of other patrons, who were mostly males).
As we were leaving, Carol whispered to me, “That was the noisiest restaurant I have been to!”
I smiled and nodded. Obviously, Carol had just had another cultural shock.
Carol – or Zack, as we called her – showed no signs of slowing down in her adventurous feats. What she wrote in her letter to me (in December 2016) said it all. “Phew! What a year. On the spur of the moment, I grabbed my passport, a small bag of clothes and a map (nothing high tech) and flew to Colombia in February to test whether I could still travel ‘rough’ ... Spent several weeks climbing top bunk in hostels ... admiring street art via bicycle in Bogota ...”
Even on her way back, during her brief stay with me in Kota Baru, she shared how she had worked on a turkey farm, became a pillion rider on a motorbike in Java, and took part as an extra in a movie!
“What was your part?” I asked.
“Not much,” Carol chuckled, “I just had to don a swimsuit and smoke a cigarette by the swimming pool ...”
Carol got married in 1983 to Jon Axelrod. By that time she was already living in Washington. DC. I had visited her there during an X’mas vacation, when her first-born named Zachary was about a year old, in 1985.
Today, Carol is blessed with a loving husband, two sons and two grandchildren. And being dedicated to her commitments, what she did in reuniting the Juliette Low 1965 participants did not come as a surprise to
me. She went all out to make arrangements for everyone to meet again at Our Cabana in June 2015. Though not everyone managed to be present, the reunion did materialise.
As I could not make it to the reunion, I had mailed to Carol 15 copies of What They
Taught Me ... Outside The Classroom (published in 2014), a book containing all my articles that had been published in The Star.
Carol helped to distribute them to all present then, as a token of remembrance from me.
At that reunion in mid-2015, those present posed again for a photo in the same arrangement, on the same steps of Our Cabana, the way they had done 50 years ago.
With the Girl Guide/Scout Thinking Day (Feb 22), the relevance of WAGGS (World Association of Girl Guides/Scouts) is no doubt here to stay. Thinking Day is the day when girl guides/scouts all over the world think of one another and of their community, and foster global friendship and understanding. It is in this light that I see Carol Zachary significantly standing out – as a bonding icon, offering the olive branch, reaching out to others, no matter what race, creed or class they may be, advocating the building of bridges rather than erecting walls on the international front.
This time, should there be another Neil Sedaka song, he’d be singing “Viva Carol!” instead of just Oh! Carol.