Swim Life Botswana this past weekend put a smile on 30 children from SOS Children’s Village by hosting a camp filled with drama, dance swimming lessons at the home of Beijing Olympic swimmer John Kamyuka.
Sponsors were Most Valuable Dance Academy and a local drama school Art of the Soul drama school who helped to move the children away from social ills such as drinking and smoking.
The children danced, laughed and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine but seemed awe struck by the success of Kamyuka who encouraged them to take a positive stance throughout the camp.
Along with drama and dance participants touched on issues such as alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and discrimination.
“The reaction from the kids was overwhelming; they were extremely excited and kept asking how I managed to obtain so many medals. And that only made them more interested in learning the various skills of swimming,” Kamyuka said.
Whilst acknowledging that the camp was a resounding success Kamyuka did however curse the lack of funds that were made available for his initiative. “There is a lot more room for improvement and we had very little access to funds. But overall the camp delivered in terms of our intentions which was to engage with the children and introduce them to sport and other fun activities such as drama and dance,” he argued.
It was some time last year that Kamyuka says he felt the need to give back to not only the swimming community but also the youth and that was when he formed Swim life Botswana, an organization dedicated to the development of sport in Botswana at a grass rout level, particularly swimming.
According to Kamyuka the nature of the sport in Botswana is relatively foreign to the large majority of Batswana which he attributes to the lack of facilities coupled with little water safety knowledge.
“Our core business is training of individuals and small groups of all abilities to reach the clients requirement. We believe sport can be used as moulding tool for the youth and an exciting healthy alternative to the current social norms,” he concluded.
