On July 16th, over 40 leaders and teachers got together for a refresher first aid session. CPR was practiced using real practice manikins and manikins made from materials found around the house. It was especially fun since my sister Heather and my niece Sarah were here to help.
We did lots of practice of CPR and treating shock and wounds. Heather was so good as a group leader that I think that will be her new post retirement career. I had a heart failure here and was successfully resuscitated by Cliff from Reginald Mengi.
We had two commercial CPR manikins but since no one here would have one and we didn’t have enough for all our groups we created our own manikins made of empty plastic oil jugs, water bottles off KLM and plastic bags taken from the KLM bus. These manikins are fully operational as they have lungs and demonstrates rising of the chest quite effectively.
The choking practice was quite dramatic and everyone got into the spirit of the show. Sarah was an excellent casualty and photographer. She was very open and friendly, talking very confidently to everyone. It was wonderful to have them both here.
The teachers had recounted stories of when first aid was required in their school and after the review we revisited them and the groups assessed the process used and whether they could have been done differently or more effectively. We hope our sister would have been proud of us all.
We had a good lunch of pilau and afterwards discussed moving to a new format of workshops for next year relying more on teachers to volunteer their time to attend rather than paying them. There seemed to be a good amount of support and understanding for the ideas. We’ll have to see how it goes.
This blog entry has been done in haste as my subscribes have been getting anxious for news. The next morning Sarah, Heather and I headed out on Safari for 4 days.
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