View: PhotosWednesday, 26th August 2009
The Rotaract and Interact clubs of Mbabane Mbuluzi, Manzini, UNISWA and Malkerns were set to depart at 12:30 pm but who were we kidding? We ended up leaving at 14:00 pm as some of us decided to take part in the find the missing passport trivia quiz show, where did I leave it?, what is the last thing you remember doing?, which is your favourite handbag ?, hmmm…oh! The suspense…will they get it right? Well an hour later they did, so with that bit of exciting drama behind us our adventurous journey began.
Today we told ourselves that nothing would spoil our little adventure and the excitement was etched across our faces just think about it three days of unwinding and not doing anything productive, so we thought… no sooner had we stopped grinning just about 100 meters across the border our first roadblock and to make things worse lunch time was over so this meant that the traffic police had replenished their lost energy and it was business as usual strictly by the book, so having graciously accepted our fine the wheels were once again set in motion.
Stop 1-Carolina
Our first stop was in Carolina and before the driver could even stop at the one of many four way stops the cries of springbok echoed inside the quantum, so by the time we arrived at the café thoughts of the memorable springbok were filling the atmosphere , we dashed inside the towards the deli section only to discover that turkey was being served on the menu on a Wednesday and springbok on the Thursday, so had we stuck to our original plan of leaving on Thursday we would have received our scrumptious grilled pork ribs.
The sun was slowly descending and with the darkness creeping in the deep anxiety started to take effect, are we there yet? How many more minutes? Little did we know that it would take us nine more hours to arrive at our destination.
The arrival
We arrived at about 23:00 pm and were kindly escorted to our wooden cabins only to discover that there were four beds and six of us per room, this only meant one thing we had to play the rank game a very simple and effective game, we had Interacters on the floor and Rotaracters in descending order president, vice etc, on the beds don’t you just love democracy. The good thing about arriving late in the evening is that nobody had a clue about how our surroundings looked like this only made us even more eager to welcome the following day with enthusiasm.
Day 1
We awoke to the site of a beautiful lush green forest, the birds were chirping, the sun was out with full force the day could only get better…so we thought. The day was supposed to begin with us receiving leadership training but to our surprise we were the only clubs that were present. The other clubs arrived late in the evening and to our surprise there was quite a large turnout.
We were told to take our eating utensils and head for the dinning area, little did we know that it would be a ten minute hike and we were going to do this for four days, all was not lost though after dinner we were split into groups and were told to come up with a group name, war cry, build a wheelbarrow and create a flag, now the flag together with the wheelbarrow were to be taken everywhere we went and it proved to be a daunting task. 23:00 pm the day was almost over we were told to return to our cabins but they had one more surprise for us we had to hand in all cell phones we were going to receive them on Sunday OMG!.
Friday 28th August 2009
Day 2
Friday by no doubt was the best day apart from the bad overcast conditions which tried to dampen our day only to find that our spirits were up for the challenges of the day. The first session of the day began with being taught about the seven habits of highly effective people this was presented by Rudi our RYLA facilitator. The seven habits are:
We were told to apply these habits throughout the entire camp and I must admit it was a bit tricky but not impossible. Our eight activities for the day were divided in half four on Friday and four on Saturday and each team got the opportunity to participate in all the tasks. The activities included: The biggest most exciting activity had to be the Potjie challenge whereby each team had to prepare a dish for the judges using their environment as a theme, teams were required to sleep outside for the entire night and avoid being kidnapped by the opposing teams. Saturday, 29th August 2009 The last day of carrying flags and broken wheelbarrows, by this time our bodies were aching no thanks to the sleep depravation we endured throughout the night. The schedule for Saturday was more or less similar to Fridays schedule with the only difference being that it was our last day and we were expected to perform our very own RYLA theatre production. There are two things in life, SERIOUS, K.I.S.S (Knowing the task, Involving everyone, Setting an example, Supporting each other) these were some of the performances that stood out, all in all it was an enjoyable experience which was topped off with a late night disco ( lahlum’lendze). Sunday, 30th August 2009 The sad goodbye, well it depends on how you look at it for some it was the start of a good friendship whilst others had, had enough of the RYLA experience. The journey home was long and frustrating at times but very memorable. I would like to thank all the Rotary clubs who sponsored Rotaractors and Interactors, we hope next year the numbers will be tripled. Mr. Qiniso Sibiya |
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