This week blogging might be a bit slow in my life.
I am back at the books… we need to do continued training in our profession, and it is a very good thing!
This morning we started with a basic 4 day Trauma Incident Reduction (TIR) Workshop. In South Africa I really need the tools that this course provide. You might have noticed the Oscar Pistorius murder trail the past few weeks on international television like BBC or CNN. The one thing that stands out: we live in one of the world’s most violent countries. People live in fear around here.
There are just so many bad things happening to normal people every day. If you drive at night, and get a flat tyre in some (most?) regions, your chance to get attacked and killed while changing the tyre is quite high. Incidents like my daughter getting assaulted by a man to try and rob her of a mobile phone. LAst week. The second attack on her in a year’s time. Old ladies get tortured by employees for hours. South Africa is a beautiful country. But it is also a very dangerous place to live, with a population shockingly used to murder and violence in every newspaper and on every television news show.
We live here. And some people get hurt every day. We do not have regular natural disasters, It is people hating and hurting other people,.
So- when the opportunity arrived to get some tools to help heal hurting people, I jumped at it.
BUT, even if it is a basic course, it is very challenging to me. We have to do some role plays, that is quite hard for me to do. You see, I am comfortable behind my keyboard. It is much harder being in someone elses’ personal space, listening to their deepest hurts.
But I can see this course will really help me a lot! Up till Thursday it will be very intense, with long days of working through theory, a lot of practical sessions, and with a lot of homework every evening.
I want to do this, to be better equipped to make a positive impact on society, I want to be part of the solution, not part of the multitude of problems we as a nation faces.
So- I am hitting the books, hard. What makes it so much more difficult, we have “load shedding”- or some electrical maintenance- we had no electricity from 06h00- 18h00 yesterday, and from 06h00- 20h00 today. That is being enlightened in the dark!
The Rider 
Good luck with the course Rider, and the studying by candlelight. I don’t know how you guys keep a business running with the load shedding. It certainly must affect your lives. As for the violence, it does seem to become an acceptable part of living in SA, carrying a gun, locking car doors, living behind razor-wire. I couldn’t do it, much as I love the country. It is good to read the reality of life there and I wish you and your family well.
Jude xx
Much better than being narrow-minded in the dark, Vosper ! 😀
But I do pity you, studying by candlelight …
This sounds really interesting – can you explain a bit more about TIR is exactly?
I think it would be best to look at their website: http://www.tir.org I will be able to tell you a lot more by Thursday, it’s accreditation looks good for various helping professionals and caregivers. But google it, there is a lot of info on the web.
Good luck with the course, and the load shedding!
Kudos for your giving nature. Good luck with the course.
The TIR course is great. I did it last year and the group debriefing one a few weeks ago. Already saving up for the next course in May. The role play is challenging. Wednesday and Thursday’s session you’ll be doing actual TIR on each other for real. Much more challenging, but also very rewarding to walk out of the workshop knowing you’ve already done a successful TIR. Enjoy it and good luck!
Your doing a good thing mister…..