District News

Literacy Month

On 22^nd July 09, the Manzini Rotaract Club, Inkhanyeti & St Theresa’s Interact clubs turned up in full force at 9am to sort books into categories, stamp and re-box them. These books were donated to Manzini Rotary Club. There were over 40 youth present!
All mixed up and loose books were sorted, stamped & packed. The remainder of the books were already sorted into categories in their boxes and were left in the container. We only managed to stamp about a fifth of the books and also managed to create an isle down the centre of the container (but only half way). So there is now access to the middle of the container books.

The sheer number of books and size of the container is so large that there was no way we could have been able to create an isle the entire length of the container and our stamp ran out of ink about a 5th of the way through stamping! Our estimation of how many books there are, based
on an average number per square metre is between 10 – 20 thousand books.

The two schools arrived at the distribution at 4pm. The head master & head mistress of Evening Bearing & Songweni Primary schools, respectively, were present from Nhlangano. We had sorted out 3 boxes of primary school books for each of them (text books, novels etc) and asked them to take a walk through the container to choose some boxes for themselves. As you can see from the pictures attached they went away with 2 bakkies full (approx. 300 – 400 books each) and were extremely happy & grateful. They are in the process of setting up libraries in their schools (with the help of Cleo Bonnie, the Reading ambassador of Malawi / “Africa”) and these books are to go in the libraries for maximum use by all students.

Cleo Bonnie will be sending the pictures & an article to the papers to print, not sure which day, so look out for it.
As per Rtn Alma, there will be another distribution for another 4 - 5 schools and the National Library soon.

PP Cassandra Bastock
Treasurer
Rotary Club of Manzini

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Sibebe Survivor

On 26^th July 2009, Rotaractors from the Manzini club joined thousands in the 6th Annual Sibebe Survivor Challenge organized by the Rotary Club of Mbabane-Mbuluzi. The event seeks to raise funds to finance the club's service projects. Last year over 1500 survived Sibebe and about E120,000.00 was raised.

Once again the challenge was to walk a distance of about 6km to the top of Sibebe and down again. Sibebe is amongst the world's largest single granite outcrop.

The club took part in the event and supported in 3 levels:
1. Corporate Sponsor: 1-Team of 6 members @ R1000.00
2. Individual @ R100.00 each.
3. Service: helping carry out a few errands
In total about 12 members took part in the event and it turned out to be an exhaustive, life threathening and exciting day...where we lead, connected and served our Rotary Community.

Also represented was Uniswa Rotaract club who were represented by their president and of course the host clubs' new generation Mbabane-Mbuluzi Rotaract who helped with the event's protocol procedures as of the previous day.

Whilst there was a lot of moaning & groaning as many struggled to get to the top of Sibebe, our Team pressed on for the ultimate prize. It was a defining day in many a lives who took part in the event as it turned out to be a test of character. A few almost turned back(if none did) as they grew tired of the journey that seemed to lead nowhere.

Thumbs up to the Rotaractors who woke up early Sunday morning to take part in the event, help with protocol and most imporatantly surviving the challenge. It was good to see, members of the sponsor club (Manzini Rotary Club) in the event as well. We did represent.....

We were definitely up for the challenge

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Pretoria East Update

It is common knowledge that community service is not a walk in the park, and the past month was no exception for Rotaract Pretoria East. For a start, our Vice President Shalini Sivlal (a charter member) resigned unexpectedly due to career obligations, and a week later Treasurer Deepti Bhura followed suit. Fortunately, we have managed to fill both positions, with Lynnette Jones now assuming the office of Vice President and Phillip Kaliati, a new member, that of Treasurer. It is also with great pride that we welcome another new member to our club, Marcel de Vries, and a considerable number of guests have attended our meetings recently.
A second challenge to our club’s optimism came on Saturday the 4th of July, where Rotaract was to assist in a project by SOAPkidz to help clear alien vegetation in the Tonquani gorge of the Magaliesberg mountain range. After travelling a good 120 km to Barnardsvlei, and getting quite lost on the dirt roads following directions that were perhaps as old as the rocks themselves, the club President and Secretary eventually reached the destination only to find a deserted parking area. Unfortunately, communication with the SOAPkidz organizer was not possible, and the two members sat waiting. It emerged after the incident that our members landed up on the wrong farm (although strikingly similar to the description!), and that cellphone reception was severely limited on the hike that SOAPkidz had already embarked on. Nonetheless, Steven and Marius took this “bad luck” in their stride and decided to enjoy their own hike at Mountain Sanctuary Park close by, and still wish to join SOAPkidz on future endeavours.

One of our club’s goals is to create a balance between “service above self” and self-actualization of our members. To this end our club was fortunate enough to be addressed by Basil Muller, CEO of the successful Hutech International group. We found this down-to-earth man to have a versatile and knowledgeable approach to career orientation for all fields, and provided useful guidance in the interesting and candid group discussions that proceeded during the session. We are most thankful to Basil for his kind mentorship, and hope to get involved in his outreach work in the near future.

Rotaract Pretoria East continues to be as involved in various activities and community projects as possible. We are assisting as best we can in the selling of tickets for the Navi Redd/Rotary Pretoria East fundraiser, which is proving to be more challenging than anticipated. Our club has also started a small club newsletter, The Concero, which is compiled by Michelle Joubert monthly. We continue to strive towards fulfilling our “Rotary in Action” obligations and hope we’ll continue to make our sponsoring club proud.

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Maputo Special Meet

Submitted by: Gildo

The Rotaract Club of Maputo recently held a special meeting, where club members brought guests (prospective members). The purpose of the meeting was to present on What is Rotaract? thus inviting those willing to join. The club also presented on its goals for the year and service projects. Also represented was the Sponsoring Rotary club which also had an opportunity to present to the audience What Is Rotary? and the goals for the New Generations for the year. 6 people were recruited on the day.

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RYLA 2009

Submitted by: Qiniso

Wednesday, 26^th 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.

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 28^th 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:

Saturday, 29^th August 2009
Day 3

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, 30^th August 2009
Day 4

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
Mbabane Mbuluzi Rotaract
Vice President   

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Blood Drive

On 5^th September 09, 5 members of the Rotaract Club of Maputo went to the blood bank in the Central Hospital of Maputo to make their donation in celebration of the International Day of the Blood Donor which was on 29^th August. Ever with the small number of participants, the project was a success and was very well appreciated b the hospital staff.

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