As usual, we have started the year 2023 with a workshop with those who teach in our After School Programs. We went to HaPhororo, a youth retreat centre which we have visited in the past. It’s in the mountains and there is a beautiful view to a large dam. In the morning and in the evening, the members of the community of HAPhororo gather for a prayer in a chapel which we joined them every day.
For the first time, we had a number of seven new members who joined Tsibogang recently. It was a good challenge for all of us to integrate the new members and for the new members to open up for new things to learn. Kadimo Maleke was one of them and she describes how she experienced the workshop:
“We arrived at Haphororo on Tuesday 3 rd of January: we settled in, we had lunch and were introduced to ground rules. We started with the program of the day sharing into groups. Our first activity was “how was 2022 for me?” This is an activity to look back and see what we have achieved in loss in 2022 and it helped in opening up and get a chance to know each other because some of us are new members.
As a new member of Tsibogang this workshop was very important to me, to get knowledge of how to work with children and how to teach a child to read and to know how important is reading is for children. We also studied new lessons about Gender Based Violence and practised how to teach these lessons so that the children can understand.
For me, it was not easy in the beginning to stand in front of others and teach. We listened to the positive feed back of others as well criticism. This helped me a lot to prepare myself for the teaching at school.
It was a great experience to share a room with many people because I never stayed in one place with lot of people. I learned that everything about Tlamelang is team work and they are very supportive.
Personally the hike was difficult for me because I am afraid of height. Just the idea of looking down from a mountain scares me. But I wanted to overcome it and the others helped to climb up and look down. I felt so proud to have overcome my fear.”
So far Kadimo’s personal experience. We have started with our After School Programs and also all other activities. Since the beginning of year we have a heatwave which is not easy to stand: every day temperatures of up to 37 C, during the night no cooling off and the worst no rain. Nevertheless we have started the After school programs and are looking forward to the assessments to find out who of children need help in literacy. This is still our main focus.
Thank you for all your prayers and your financial help which make it possible to teach the children.
Christel Hermann