CAMP TIC 22.1

Overall Experience Report

This year's camp was large and full of joy as well as pain, but it was all in good fun. From the minute we stepped into the taxi, situations occurred in which people either did not arrive on time for their scheduled departure or miscommunicated pick-up times, etc... However, to everyone's amazement, the themes included all of the misconduct and mental health issues that everyone was dealing with following the Pandemic.

The team was presented with a new system that I believe is ideal for assisting the main board in working with Thata ithuba to track challenges faced by both mentees and mentors.

The Following is a Report from Aviwe Msindisi Regarding his Camp experience. 

Thatha Ithuba Mentor camp: 1 – 3 April 2022 

First Day: Friday 1 April 2022 

The first day of arrival was on the morning of this day at 10am this camp was held in Gordans Bay  fitness gym villa. 

The first thing done upon arrival the first session for the day was a meet and greet and introductions  of everyone to each other and what they were studying and where they were studying, after the  introductions there was an outline of the house rules and then the event began with time management  each and every one had to share how they spend their time and write about the way that they spend  their time, what they do with their free time, social media was mentioned and there was a chat about the amount of time that is spent on social media. 

Then after this there was a teaching about awareness of our bodies which included meditation. 

This was new to me because I have never went into depth about time management, I have done on my  own time management but never went to an event that will teach me more about time management  and to be aware of the time that I spend on social media this was enlightening and also reinforced  things that I wanted to change about my life to manage my time correctly so that all things can receive the right amount of attention. 

The meditation helped when it came to relaxing and also learning about the nervous system and how  it correlates to sleep this I enjoyed and I learnt that to relax you can focus on your breath and allow  everything to happen. 

The end of the session everyone was asked to write a letter to themselves that they will receive in the  next five years and what they want to say to themselves, this task was frightening for me and yet very  interesting and also exciting at the same time because I could see myself becoming all of the things  that I want to be and being somewhere in my life and the fear is the fear of the unknown and what can  happen in the next five years and how things will be different, things that I do not have control over  and what will those things be. 

2 April 2022, Saturday 

Second Day the morning of this day at 9 breakfast with everyone and then after that, there was a  meeting with mental Hub which is a NGO that focuses on Mental Health this event began with every  mentor introducing themselves, we were taught about the different conditions of mental problems to  name a few depression, anxiety and these two can be fatal because these two lead to death in most  cases. This session was very enlightening and so much was learnt about things that may cause these  conditions to upbringing and also hereditary, life challenges. This condition has led so many in our  community to death because of hopelessness and also the isolation these conditions cause in  individuals lives, in this session I was able to look at the thing that was causing these conditions and I also wanted to understand more on them, I thoroughly enjoyed everything that was talked about.

The second session of the day was a mentorship program with the Alumni’s with Gina and Candice,  speaking about the vision of Thatha Ithuba and the mission of the Organization, the role of the mentor  and why we wanted to become mentors to the mentees, for this session I had to think and question  myself why I wanted to be a mentor and the motivation to do o where it canme from. The discussion also about the different scenarios of that as mentor we will face and how we think we will handle  them. 

I came out of the session understanding my role in the mentees life and also and how I can deal with  different situation that might arise during mentoring. Then after this session there was a time to enjoy  a meal together and bond to play games in which I enjoyed to play games together and to connect  with the mentors. 

3 April 2022, Sunday  

Early morning of Sunday the program came to an end left the villa at 8:30am  

This opportunity was enlightening and looking forward to more and also I have learnt so much and I  thank the team that was able to make this possible for us.

by Aviwe Msindisi