Keep Left, Shot Left!
As the sun rises from the east on Saturday 13 August 2022 in the picturesque village of Phokeng – the place of the dew – almost fifty members of the Bojanala Ladies Cycling Club will set off from the local Royal Marang Hotel to ride across their village to Lebone II College and then ride back Royal Marang Hotel. The club will ride to celebrate International Left-Handers Day.
It was back in 1976 that Dean R. Campbell, the founder of Left Handers International Inc., first initiated the celebration of International Left-Handers Day to help raise awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of being left-handed. Since then, every year on 13 August, many left-handers take on social media to share the common experiences they face as left-handers in a predominately right-handed world. About ten (10) percent of the world population is left-handed.
Handedness is the dominance of one hand over the other or the unequal distribution of fine motor skills between the left and right hands. Types of handedness include right-handedness, left-handedness, ambidextrousness, mix-handedness, and ambilevousness (having the equally poor ability with both hands).
To the uninitiated, the Royal Marang Hotel was first opened in 2010 as the home of the England National Football Team. They used the Kgosi Leruo Sports Palace facility as their training ground for the 2010 World Cup. The R450m worth Lebone II College is a private international school, named after the father of Kgosi Leruo Molotlegi, the current monarch of the Bafokeng Nation in Phokeng.
For those cyclists who reside in Phokeng as their place of abode, they would have been awoken by the early sound of the village cocks, disrupting the innocent stillness of the early dawn colloquially referred to as mahube a naka tsa kgomo (the dawn of the bull`s horns) by the locals.
With the tires of their bikes appropriately pumped up to a perfect pound per square inch (psi), the trail of each tire will break the melting morning dew – phoka – as they ride in a single file with their feet firmly stripped on the bike pedals to propel the wheels of the bicycle to attain their desired velocity of motion.
The selected 20km route is steep from Royal Marang Hotel to Lebone II College, often compelling the riders to lift off the saddle on a vertical standing position to add more horsepower to the paddle. Riding is not for the faint-hearted. As Nelson Mandela would have noted, the riders would soon realise that “after climbing a great hill, one finds that there are many more hills to climb”.
Fortunately, the modern bike seat design has improved with the advance of modern technology. The new generation is padded with memory foam that provides enhanced comfort, especially for women riders. The seats are designed to be soft, breathable, and healthy long-distance riding experience.
Equally so, the modern classroom environment should be left-handers friendly. Educators must be trained to be sensitive toward creating an inclusive, open, and supportive environment for left-handed communities in learning spaces. Schools must strive to design learning spaces that are conducive to optimal learning for all types of handedness.
The Bojanala Ladies Cycling Club will not only be riding to create the need to support left-handedness but also to break centuries-old bias, stigma, and prejudices against left-handed communities, most especially in rural settings like Phokeng, where tales and folklore promoted negative perceptions against being left-handed. With some of the cyclists being educators, riding for lefties will improve their empathy for left-handed learners.
Today, many languages still contain references to left-handedness to convey awkwardness, dishonesty, stupidity, or other undesirable qualities. These perceptions can adversely impact the self-esteem of left-handed learners and undermine their true potential for optimal learning.
In many societies, left-handed people were historically (and in some cases still are) forced as children to use their right hands for tasks that they would naturally perform with the left, such as eating or writing. In the late 20th century, left-handedness became less stigmatized, and in many countries, particularly in the Western world, left-handed children were no longer forced to switch to their right hand.
On 5 November 2022, the Bojanala Ladies Cycle Club has been invited by the Hammanskraal Cycling Club for the Riding for Reading Literacy Cycling Challenge in Temba, Hammanskraal
For more information contact the event organizers: Dimakatso Sefora @082 492 4019 Maphuki Tsatsane @073 201 8982
Watch why some people are left-handed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGLYcYCm2FM