Beteleur Camp
©copyright 2009 Frans Bezuidenhout
Struggling the road, dodging puddles, bush kept creeping from the sides. My sense of direction played between mind and heart, with each inlet a journey itself. Eventually we arrived where, waiting for me, were a few postgraduate students who had before us braved the road, with others still to find their way to the Beteleur Bootcamp. Here we would live, work and get to know each other during the next four days, under pregnant skies preparing ourselves for the new academic year.
Each day received its measure of wetness — showers drenching dry soil. By the second day, green appeared. Hidden by tall trees, banks of under-growth lined mossy footpaths, where sound staccatoed within surrounding bush — so different to the city and township noise.
Tucked and covered by trees and climbers, we stood each morning in steaming wooden ablution blocks taking showers, listening to nature’s awakening — a difference this is to looming bustle of the year that lies ahead.
Each year I am to discover the hearts of those who have chosen to journey with me — and they mine. Different walks of life will blend as one, but also theory and practice.
They will eventually learn, perhaps for the first time, that collaboration is more than working together — it’s the soul of honesty with self — also achievement is not equal to potential. Hopefully, they will understand facets of group life have already weaved its unseen threads — a collage long before deciding to walk among the trees and bush under skies heavy with rain, where there is sun but sometimes not seen — a journey preparing them for life’s purpose and also to enable this in others.
~~ The End
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Reflections on a four-day working retreat with my postgraduate students.
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