This pandemic caused fear and anxiety as it brought the world to uncharted waters. In South Africa Covid-19 regulations resulted in a temporary closure of schools responding to social distancing. Schools had to resort to blended learning which combines face-to-face teaching and online teaching. To avoid loss of learning time that meant total cancellation of an academic year, schools had to turn to the technology-based system that could be effective in a digitally developed environment. This paper sought to explore the challenges rural teachers are facing within this new arrangement for teaching and learning as some lack basic computer skills and facilities to handle the Covid-19 aftermath. The main objective of the study was to find out how rural teachers were able to handle the online teaching and learning situation. A mixed-method approach was employed to be able to conduct telephonic interviews (to avoid face to face) as they are typically more probing and open-ended and a short standard telephonic questionnaire, with responses, recorded. Purposive sampling was employed to select fifteen teachers from fifteen different rural high schools of the district to respond to a telephonic interview and five teachers to respond to a short telephonic questionnaire. Content analysis was employed to analyse audio recordings and field notes. The findings indicated that due to the lack of computer skills, most teachers worked under a stressful environment in the Covid-19 period. Therefore, the study recommends the training of in-service teachers on how to use blended learning methods of teaching and learning. Another recommendation is that curriculum planners should include a compulsory module for pre-service teachers on all forms of technology-based pedagogies.

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