Thabelo grew up in Mashau in rural Limpopo. After finishing school, she became a Community Caregiver in her home area, working on identifying people with cataracts and supporting people with visual impairment.
It was a week of awareness activities at the College of Orientation and Mobility at SA Guide Dogs that changed everything. When they put her under blindfold, she was shocked. And then something shifted. “If I was able to learn to walk a route under blindfold,” she realised, “then someone who is blind can learn to do this, and learn to live independently in the same world that I live in.”
From that week came interviews, and then two full years as a student at the College, graduating in 2010. She volunteered at Riakona Rehabilitation Centre. Disability Centre before joining SAMBT in 2012.
Thabelo is the Practitioner who has been with SAMBT for the longest time. She speaks five languages and has taken her training to blind people in townships, rural villages and schools for the blind across South Africa. Her message to anyone considering O&M as a career path: She is clear that O&M is a vocation, not just a career. “You need to do this from the heart, not just from hunger.”
