An Eastern Cape high school is to add fishing to its formal syllabus this year, the Dispatch reported on its website on Wednesday.
John Amoah, principal of Inkwenkwezi High School in NU6 in Mdanstane, told the paper the idea did not come out of the blue.
Amoah, a trained teacher who was a pastor before joining the school, said he was praying and meditating about the new curriculum one day in December when his phone rang.
”It was Blueline Fishing, offering me a donation of 100 fishing rods,” he said.
At first he had no idea what to do with the rods. But just before he went away for Christmas, he took the rods and the school’s computers to the local police station to be kept safely there.
One of the police officers there told him that his colleague, Inspector Peter Fisher, was a fishing instructor.
”That’s when I heard God talking,” Amoah said.
He said he would meet Fisher on Wednesday to discuss how the fishing classes, to be taken at the picturesque Greenacre Dam, should happen.
The Greenacre Dam, which is less than 5km away from the school, is stocked with fat cob, the Dispatch said.
Amoah’s congregation asked him to apply for the principal’s post when it came up in the middle of last year. In six months, he introduced several changes.
Pupils are now making their own school uniforms during sewing classes, and tend to a thriving vegetable garden. They also repainted the school themselves.
Dancing, computer literacy, rabbit farming and a business venture with cut flowers are also on the cards for the school’s new curriculum, the principal said. — Sapa