Transcript
BELINDA BOTHA - It's an amazing story because I have hired her last year just after finishing school, so we have been grooming her for this wonderful opportunity for the last 18 months, so its been a long process.
SELA JANE HOPGOOD - As Zaza Bedford's instructor, this would have been a great achievement to be part of.
BB - Absolutely! First of all, I'm very very proud of Zaza. I believe that obviously from my side, I'm happy that I was there as her trainer. I'm happy to see her progress, not only gaining confidence, but also gaining esteem. Really in the community, people are understanding that, wow this is something special. We have our first instructor and it's a female instructor in a small community like Munda, like I mean we are changing culture. We are changing the way people think about female role models and it's just super encouraging. I mean it's just fantastic to see her grow and develop and just grow confidence as she's taking on this amazing role and now she will move forward and be a role model for other up and coming instructors especially females.
SJH - Has it been quite a struggle for Zaza to get to this point?
BB - Yeah absolutely. It was super intense. Remembering Zaza came to me, 18 years old, just fresh out of school and never dived before. It was first of all getting her comfortable in the water and luckily it was her passion as well. Growing up in a small community like Munda, she was one of the girls especially on canoes every day, so she was very very confident in the water, but making that jump from freediving to scuba diving was quite a big learning curve, but yes there were challenges. I think tradition and culture, it's a little bit difficult for her to organise in a more senior role some of the other male assistant instructors that we have on board, so there was a big conversation, a big learning curve for her there and also from me from a trainer's perspective, we had to really go back and introduce concepts like what customer service really means, to come over to a guest shaking their hand, looking them in the eye, recommending classes, but also saying no. Solomon Islands' culture is very much a pleasing culture, which is great, but in a senior role like an instructor, you need to be able to push pass the guests and say no, our maximum is going to be 20 metres and this is the conditions.
SJH - Is scuba diving in the Solomon Islands a popular thing to get into there?
BB - It certainly is, but I may just take a step back and talk a bit more about the Solomon Islands and as a diving destination and diving destination for sustainable tourism sustainable development, we're really up and coming. I think it's great to have partners like the Solomon Island visitors bureau, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and they were both instrumental in helping us to put this training programme together for obviously not just Zaza, but also there is eight other Solomon Island youth that I have trained and there is four other females that have now all of them are dive masters. It's been a big project that was spearheaded by me, but I think we've had great partners that really helped us to understand that tourism is an essential in the Solomon Islands and through projects like training and developing local people to get up to the level where they suddenly understand how important tourism is and help us to preserve and protect the environment and through education, I mean, Zaza is involved in school projects, where she goes out and talks to the kids. Just here in World Ocean Day, we had a big campaign where she was instrumental talking to the little kids about ocean conservation.
