10 Sep 2017

Seventh Day Adventist Church master guides-in-training have been urged to internalise the gist of the First Aid course (FAC) they were offered and use the skills they acquired to save lives.

Speaking in an interview on the sidelines of the training in Kanye recently, Pastor Gaamangwe Serole explained that an accredited FAC was a pre-requisite for the master guides.

Pastor Serole noted that the master guide training was a special leadership course aimed at empowering the trainees to deal with young people.

Pastor Serole revealed that the church had youth clubs from four to 30 years of age with the view to empower young people to become versatile in life.

He said from four to nine years they were classified as adventurers, 10 to 15, pathfinders, 16 to 21 ambassadors while 22 to 30 were called senior youth.

Pastor Serole explained that the FAC was intended to enable the guides to save lives in the event of an accident in church, while out camping or anywhere in the community.

Upon completion of training, he said the master guides would be decorated with jackets from the church to note that any child in their hands would be safe.

He said the master guides were trained to train other young people on camping, using stars or birds’ nests as campus to establish which side the sun rises or set and observe animal tracks when they were lost in the wilderness.

Guest speaker, Mr Phemelo Ranthoakgale urged the master guides to show themselves unto God and allow him to use them to save lives.

Mr Ranthoakgale also advised the guides not to get weary of doing good, but to apply the skills they had acquired to save lives.

He said those who do good would be paid in due season. Most of all, he advised the guides to have self-control, to try to understand issues from others’ point of view, to make others’ interests their own, admit when they were wrong, be good listeners, praise followers in public and criticise in private lest they destroyed instead of building them.

Instructor, Mr Donald Habana said it was critical for the master guides to arm themselves with FAC skills because they travelled a lot on church activities.

He said many lives were often lost in accidents in the absence of first aiders. He said he was happy that the guides came from different areas which would help spread the message across the country.

He said there were incidents where people had died from heat strokes, exhaustion or collapsing in church where first aid could have saved their lives.

Mr Habana further encouraged first aiders to wear gloves every time they handled patients and make the latter understand that the gloves were intended to protect rather than despise them.

He also stressed that first aiders should be calm every time there was an accident, and that they should start with the victim suspected to be dead, then move to the bleeding and stop the bleeding as well as to get particulars of the victims so that in the event they could not speak anymore, there was information that could help.

He said part of the training involved snake bites and poison and that they would visit the Botswana Defence Force snake unit.

In bushy areas, he advised campers to be vigilant to avoid snake bites.

Master guide, Mr Aobakwe Matsagopane said he would use the skills he had acquired to impact on his community.

Another master guide, Ms Thomo Maboa was particularly excited to have learnt how to handle, transport a patient with a fracture without exacerbating the injury.

She said she has also learnt that patients should be treated for shock every time because there was shock every time there was an accident.

With the moto: “Salvation and service,” she said she would apply the skills on anyone in her community. Ends