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Visit to the Waterberg Academy
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On Tuesday morning, 18th March 2008, I left at 5:00am for the Waterberg Academy in the Vaalwater/Lephalale area in Limpopo, almost 300 kilometres from Johannesburg. All the way from Modimolle (Nylstroom) up to Vaalwater, I saw a lot of game — from giraffes, warthogs, impala, sable (!), kudus, baboons, monkeys. The Academy organised accommodation for me at the River Valley Guest House (run by the parents of two children in the school).
The Academy is situated in the little town of Vaalwater, surrounded by beautiful bush and thorn trees.
The 145 children at the Academy are from the neighbouring farms — 90% of these farms are all game farms. Two of the children are from Botswana. 50% of the children all stay in the hostel at the Academy. They are happy and contented children and spend most of the time outdoors — although the minimum temperature is 35 to 40 degrees Celsius during spring and summer.
We had to split the children into two groups, starting with the little ones and then followed by the older children. I kept the first workshop very light and only spoke about water safety in general. I had the little ones listening in awe – and they told me stories — about their dogs, cats, dolls, swimming in the sea, chocolate Easter eggs (!) — they are truly happy children.
The second workshop was much more in-depth with each child practising CPR. I once again introduced the capsule bottle and talked about hypothermia (and the dangers thereof).
A few volunteers took part in this exercise — and it was interesting to watch the faces of the children as they realised the significance of ‘a person falling into freezing water’ and how quickly one can suffer from hypothermia. For some of the volunteers, the greatest ‘triumph’ was to show their arms to the teachers present so that they could feel how cold their arms were! I also spoke about and showed the teachers the importance of the rescue blanket and how cheap and handy it is to have as part of the medical kit at school, at home, in the car, etc. I covered the volunteers’ arms with the rescue blanket (after every exercise) and this they thought was just great!
I would say 20% of the children at the Academy cannot swim!
The next morning I returned and visited the Thaba Monate School in Modimole and repeated the same workshop and hypothermia exercise as presented at the Waterberg Academy. I was shocked to learn that approximately 90% of the children in this school cannot swim!
The children actively participated, especially when I held a short quiz with a competition between the grades!
It is extremely important for me, when visiting the schools and presenting the workshops, to achieve the objective of the workshops, namely to teach the kids what to do in an emergency, to teach them about water safety and how to become sensible water users. When the children actively participate and are as enthusiastic as I have experienced the past few months, it makes it all worth our while to persevere and to continue with the programme.
There are still so many schools in this entire area to be visited and I’ll schedule the workshops accordingly during the next term.
By Elane Burger
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