4th of July

So it’s the 4^th of July, a holiday that I was more nervous about how I would feel missing back home than Christmas. But I have to say, so far so good. No major bout of homesickness, although I think it helps that I haven’t been able to spend much time on the internet finding out what everyone is doing and that it rained on the fireworks last weekend at the lake. As much as it bums me to hear about a rainy 4^th, it does make me feel happier about being in Botswana during one of my favorite holidays. It also helps that today was full of ‘Peace Corps Moments’.

The day started out at the clinic with the chance that I would catch a ride with one of the medical trucks to Gumare (a town nearby) to talk to the woman in charge of us and our housing as I am still missing most of my furniture (ga gona mathata, I’ve got the important stuff but I would like to fill up my empty living room) and needed to take care of some other business. So I spent the morning in the clinic, helping with patient intake, vitals, cute babies, practicing Setswana and attempting to meet and communicate with community members. All of the before mentioned: Peace Corps Moments. Aimee is in the same boat furniture-wise, so we managed to get her a ride to E13 so we could take the free ride together. It was the usual confusion regarding language and communication methods, will she be here or not? but then rapid Setswana is spoken and an ambulance ends up bringing her to my clinic. Something looking like it won’t work out and then somehow magically does: Peace Corps Moments.

So, we hopped in the back of the canopied truck bed ambulance and went on our way, taking the sandy part of the road instead of the paved part because it’s so beat up. Foreign country transport: PCM. We arrive in Gumare, and it’s lunch time and no one is in. So, we go do some other errands and find some of the best clementines ever out of the back of someone’s pickup bed. Finding random delicious food just when you think you’re surrounded by only white bread flour and refined oil: PCM. We head back to the hospital, and then spend the next four hours there being passed off from person to person, no one who really knows why we don’t have our furniture, or who should be paying for it, providing it, fixing up our houses, reimbursing us, etc., etc., but eventually we are reassured that someone is working on it now (and yes, that means they weren’t before). But we were able to meet a whole bunch of people who deal with things like supplies and funding, so it was totally worth it. Something being awesome and annoying at the same time: PCM. Then we caught an ambulance back right near sundown, with a whole bunch of other people stuffed in the back of this truck. Watching the sun set from the back of a converted truck to ambulance over a mud and thatch village: PCM. In spite of the lack of family, friends and fireworks on the lake, I’m pretty happy with my Fourth of July J