VISIT TO HAENERTSBURG ROTARY BY GERMAN GLOBAL GRANT SPONSOR TEAM  2nd & 3rd October 2019

Prof.Dr. Bernhard Maisch & Inge, Ulrich-Karl & Irmgard Koenig, Rolf Justi
Rotary Clubs :  Marburg and Marburg-Schloss

The visit of this team was mainly to ascertain progress of the Global Grant for Thusanang by these clubs. The fruition of this Global grant was due to the hard work by Prof.Dr. Bernhard Maisch and the efficient and very time consuming hard work of preparing the Grant proposal to R.I. by Peter Stuart-Thompson, ably and skilfully assisted by the Director of Thusanang, Mrs Terry Morgan.

The visit of the team was preceeded by many friendly e-mails, which also helped to get them to accept “home hosting”. Host families were Laurie and Erie Railton and Heinz and Lorna Haas.

The team arrived ahead of time and were met and greeted near the intersection of Paledi Mall.

After welcoming the group we took them to Paledi shopping mall for cooldrinks - a new experience for them!

Terry Morgan and Ann Luther met us and to everyone’s amusement, took us to a Funeral Parlour (you can imagine the comments) where 21 Thusanang Practitioners were receiving training and guidance in the art of making teaching materials for the pre-schools.. It was amazing to see the transformation of toilet rolls into butterflies, bees etc., and nice to see an environmental theme which the children will be taught about. Many pictures were taken displaying  both Rotary clubs' logo’s and a Haenertsburg club tear drop. Our German guests were clearly impressed with what they saw at this training session.

We then moved to Thusanang Centre where a lovely cold lunch was provided. This was followed by a very impressive power point presentation. Questions were asked and ably answered by Terry and Ann. We then observed a group of Practitioners at a session in the Thusanang Hall. They gave a very enjoyable display of dancing and singing nursery songs and some of our visitors even joined in the happy throng. A short tour of the Centre followed including the nursery school, where once again our visitors were clearly impressed by this well run centre.

Later, after settling into their host's home, our guests were taken to our Rotary meeting where Prof.Dr. Bernhard Maisch gave a very interesting talk about Marburg where he was Dean of the medical faculty in one of Europe’s oldest Universities. He also congratulated Peter on the excellent work he had done in finalizing all the paperwork with R.I, in such a short time.

After breakfast the following morning our guests left for a scenic tour of the Blyde Canyon and Panorama route back to Johannesburg.