From crawling to a butterfly

KNYSNA NEWS - The ability to swim is something a lot of people tend to take for granted, and with that in mind former Port Elizabeth resident turned Knysna local, Haley Muller, is teaching underprivileged children to swim for free.

Muller began her initiative in 2016, the year she moved to Knysna, when she rescued a boy from drowning in a rip current in Brenton-on-Sea.

This incident, combined with the knowledge that a colleague of hers lost a son to drowning, opened her eyes to the importance of being able to swim, which is an ability that she feels is not as widespread as it should be. "A lot of children and adults don't know how to swim, and I have come across a number of people in Hornlee who aren't able to swim."

With the aforementioned incidents and new sense of urgency at the forefront of her mind, Muller began her project by teaching children how to swim in the municipal swimming pool in Karatara. While the lessons were a major success in their own right, she ran into complications in the form of transport costs as it can cost upwards of R1 000 for a round trip to Karatara via taxi. Muller was initially covering these costs herself, but she has since been unable to cover these costs enough to be able to give the children all of the necessary training.

Knysna Municipality then began renovations on the pool in Karatara, forcing Muller to find an alternative place to train. This came in the form of the Green Hole on Leisure Isle, where she continued to train children to swim in the open water.

Armed with a Swimming South Africa Level 1 coaching qualification, Muller was making use of plastic 2l bottles to train at Leisure Isle, which led to her being spotted by members of the community. They subsequently rallied together to give her some form of assistance.

This led Muller to Oakhill School which, through Active Education, made contact with the swimming coach in an effort to give her a better solution than Green Hole.

She was given the opportunity to train at Oakhill for the remainder of the school year.

"The common goal is to offer learning to swim opportunities to those that don't have access to pools," said Oakhill director of college sport, Brendan Keevey.

Since moving to Oakhill, Muller has experienced some better fortunes, with a couple of donations coming from British shop-owner Val Archer, who has set up collection bins in her shops in the UK to help raise funds.

"Saving a child's life could be as cheap as a cup of coffee in England," Archer said. "All it takes is a kicker board to teach a child the basics, and that costs next to nothing in Pounds."

Muller is immensely grateful for the help she has received thus far, but knows she still has a long way to go. "Once the pool in Karatara reopens we will go back there, something that is going to cost a lot."

Children from an orphan home enjoy swimming classes from Haley. Photo: Blake Linder