The Things I Know Now

I've been in Botswana for over two years, how crazy is that? Of course living in a small, rural village in a developing country across the world from my home has taught me plenty about myself, Botswana, development, public health, etc etc etc, and so many things that will never be summed in a blog post. But I do love lists, so...

I know:

• how to make a party cup using an empty pop can and a can opener
• how to slaughter a chicken (and yes, they do move around quite a bit when their heads are cut off)
• you don't want to get between a hippo and the water
• how to get reasonably clean in 1/3 bucket of water
• zebra is delicious
• I'd rather love and hate something than be bored and apathetic
• behavior change is hard

• how to cook! chowders, hummus, yumm sauce, tortillas, curries, steak, lentils, beans...
• I will never be able to basket weave
• what it feels like when an elephant charges you
• how utterly freeing it is to be the village weirdo
• that sometimes, you just need to jump off the bridge. 
• all sorts of ways to use the internet using less data. o.facebook.com anyone?
• flies buzzing around your face are slightly more obnoxious than bug bites on your feet. slightly.
• all those pretty butterflies love feces and garbage
• crocs bite
• it's much easier to have never had something than to have it taken away
• kids pretty much the same everywhere
• the art of hitch hiking
• part of my heart is always going to be in the Okavango

Stomp Out Malaria

One of my projects was highlighted on the Peace Corps 'Stomp Out Malaria' site!

http://stompoutmalaria.org/building-the-capacity-of-volunteers-as-malaria-peer-educators-in-botswana/

This & That

I haven’t been the best blogger of late, but here are a few updates on my life and work from the past few months:

Malaria Week:

As rainy season was just beginning in mid November (the time when malaria outbreaks become a risk), the Clinic and I put together a malaria campaign. We held health talks in the morning, hung the net display, and the health volunteer team and I went house to house with a flipchart presentation. I'm always surprised by how few people in my village know that malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, in spite of the ability to identify malaria quickly, meaning we had plenty to teach! The event was a great success, reaching around 25 households and engaging patients at the clinic with our display and talks.


Evidence Based Planning
EBP is the week that the stakeholders gather together in a fancy lodge and plan out how to spend our funding for the next two years. It was also one of the most frustrating weeks I have experienced in Botswana. In spite of being put up in a nice hotel room all to myself, complete with aircon, a hot shower, and free meals, I felt as though my teeth were being pulled out, one by one, for most of the week. One of the most challenging aspects of working in Botswana is the bureaucracy; there is protocol for everything, though somehow the proper protocol varies widely depending on who you ask. In addition, EBP is full of people who want to get their ideas funded, badly (myself included). So arguments ensue, the occasional bigot shows her face (in which I actually had to walk out of the room I was so angry about her attempt to deny services to certain groups), and the "evidence" we used is meager at best; but, eventually we created a plan that prioritizes key areas and names potential activities to reach our goals. It was an frustrating and exhausting, but I managed to place numerous Peace Corps driven activities on the agenda for the next two years, so I'm counting it a success. 

World AIDS Day
Always a big commemoration in a country with the second highest rates of HIV in the world, my village and I recognized WAD with an event at the Kgotla (village center). From skits, songs, a fact contest, and some of kids’ HIV-inspired art display, Etsha 13 came together.

Teen Club Christmas Party!

Teen Club is a group I co-facilitate for youth living with HIV, and we had a fun holiday party for the youth complete with parachute games, a plastic Christmas tree, and lots of dance performances. Not your average holiday party, but certainly a memorable one!

How I met the President of Botswana
While at a craft market during December, we were perusing the baskets and baked goods when I heard a “Dumela, Mma,” from behind me. I half-turn around, put my left hand to my elbow, and casually said “Dumela, rra.” With a double take, I realize that the person I just shook hands with was the President of Botswana, apparently out and about Shakawe.

The Holidays
I spent the holidays visiting friends across the country, starting with multiple Thanksgiving celebrations, one in Maun with a real turkey (NOM) and another in Shakawe with the NW Okavango crew, both with incredible food of course. Christmas was magical, full of delicious food, fireworks, and good people, complete with a PCV Santa clad in a leopard print santa hat and a pillow stuffed in her shirt. In spite of ninety degree heat, this year actually felt like Christmas with my Peace Corps family coming from near and far. New Years was spent out at the lodge near my village, with a legitimate fireworks show over the lagoon and somehow managing to make it to watch the sun rise over the water (while at 8:00pm I was worried I wasn’t going to make it until midnight).

Gender Committee 

In mid January, I attended my last official Gender Committee meeting. It was a particularly productive meeting, in which I have an exciting new project for the tail end of my service, involving a country wide activity utilizing some of the copious funding available for gender-based violence projects at the moment. I've really enjoyed my time serving on the PC Botswana committee!

PC Botswana's Gender Committee

October.

October in the States means crunchy leaves, scarves and boots for crisp air, rain, Duck football, pumpkins,
and halloween. Oddly enough, in the southern hemisphere some of my typical October identifiers remain; I still follow football and we have plenty of crisp and orange leaves, but that is where the similarities end.

October in Botswana means unrelenting 100+ degree days. Constant sweat dripping, a near inability to walk anywhere far from 10am-3pm, lots of sunscreen, walking around with an umbrella to protect myself from the intense rays (I swear I am getting wrinkles here), sleeping on top of the sheets to the whir of my fan, and cold bucket baths... sometimes twice a day for a little oh-so-sweet relief from the incessant heat. It also means nearly everything is dried up, and much of what remains green is poisonous to livestock, so they walk into houses in search of food if you're not paying attention. It means the bugs return in full force, from the mosquitoes to the drone of the cicadas. Oh, and the snakes come back out.

Not everything October brings means an increase in my general discomfort. Many of the trees seem to be bursting with purple flowers among all of the dried and crunchy bush surrounding them.

At least everyone says the rain is coming early this year. Plus, I have plenty of fun planned to escape (or take advantage of) the heat this summer!

You Know You're Back in the Village When....

I recently returned from a week in Gaborone for my Mid-Service Training with the rest of my Bots 12 intake group. To summarize I'll quote my friend Tate; at one point she leaned over and asked, "Do you also feel like you've been a part of a 48 hour therapy session?" Along with a whole lot of talking through our feelings (okay, it was actually kind of nice to assess my own and hear from other PCVs), we exchanged best practices and spent quality time catching up. But now I'm back in my village, and after a week in the city, a few things stand out. You can tell you're back in the village when:

5. Your hair is dirty because after a week of hot showers, bucket bathing and washing your hair in the cold is no fun.

4. The people and children around you are screaming 'Lorato' instead of 'Lekgoa.'.

3. You hear gun shots, meaning there will be meat hanging under a tree in the afternoon.

2. You forget your groceries in a hitch and your driver was incredibly kind, went out of his way to track you down on his return trip to Maun two days later to give them back to you.

1. That driver was also easily able to find you and your house in which to drop the food, with only the name of your village.

It's good to be back in Etsha 13.

Life is Sweet, Man

About a year ago, Aimee and I were hitch-hiking down to our In-Service Training.  After a very long wait, we were finally picked up by a Rastafarian trucker. Now I've since learned that hitching in big rigs can add hours and hours to your trip- this lesson learned during this ride to Gabs. And yet, what started out as as a slow hitch south eventually turned into a hilariously insightful trip and one of the most memorable rides I've had in Botswana. We were left with the advice "Life is sweet, man, life is sweet." And a year later, life is feeling very sweet, indeed.

My projects are going really well! Activities I have been pushing for months are not just 'happening,' but the participants have been actively engaged in discussions and visible progress is being made!

JSS PACT Club Girls and me with our identity collages 

JSS PACT Club: My Junior School PACT Club has really come together- the past few meetings the group has connected and all of the girls are active participants in conversations and activities. Further, we've been tackling increasingly challenging issues lately, and the girls have been responding thoughtfully. The previous term I was lucky if the meetings even happened at all, so this change has been so exciting to see! Plus, we've been having a lot of fun hanging out before and after meetings!

Voices of the Community: The women's group that my fellow PCVs and I have been working with for months has not only been very active, they've been drawing in new members, old members are now the ones doing the training sessions we originally taught them, and PCVs aren't the ones driving the meetings forward. The members have also become a fantastic resource the community; the group has been approached by individuals in need of advocacy while maneuvering through a convoluted legal system! I can't wait to see what this group can do next. 

I love this photo! Voices celebrating a successful project with a braii (bbq)

Teenage Pregnancy Prevention: Over a weekend, the team at the junior secondary school and I managed to talk to nearly every student out of the 800+ enrolled about teenage pregnancy prevention. The schools start their six week break at the end of June; year after year, 9 months after these breaks the school sees several students dropping out due to pregnancy. We split the youth into small groups and just cycled through presentations regarding the implications of teenage pregnancy, delaying sexual debut, condom use, and contraception. Most of the students were active participants in the discussions and willing to demonstrate condom use or explain another form of contraception to their peers, so hopefully the Etsha JSS will see fewer dropouts due to pregnancy next term!

World Tobacco Free Day: My clinic and I put together a community event for the global commemoration. This was a project that seemed to fall into pieces, up until the last minute when everything came together- and managed to draw a large crowd! Even without snacks, a solid group met to march through the village singing and holding posters depicting the dangers of tobacco use, drawing hundreds to the kgotla where we delivered a health talk and skit encouraging the community to be tobacco free.

And I can't say my life has been all work and no play! My weekends have been full with some pretty incredible experiences lately.

Hippos on the way to Jao

Jao: My village is largely made up of two ethnic groups: Bayeii and Hambukushu. The 13 Etsha villages were built as settlements for Angolan refugees in the 1970s, many of them Hambukushu (though Hambukushu also lived in this area previously). The Bayeii people are people of the delta, and have gradually moved in towards the Etshas to have access to medical care, schools, and shops. My friend Jamie's research is centered around access to natural resources and I could (and probably will at some point) write an entire post about what she has learned about the Etshas. To keep it brief, I was accompanied her to Jao Island, where many Bayeii people living in Etsha consider their home village. It's a beautiful hour boat ride through the heart of the delta, past countless tiny islands and through both lagoons and narrow channels. 

Backing up in preparation of our 'flight'

This photo may not look like anything too interesting, but the papyrus had moved to block the channel (papyrus, the plant in the photo, actually floats along the water rather than growing out of islands). Ishmael, our driver, said to us "Alright girls, so the island has moved to block the channel, we're going be flying over the papyrus!" We assumed he was joking, as last time we had managed to push the plant blockage out of the way, but he wasn't. We actually backed the boat up and 'flew' the boat over top the island and continued on our way. 

Once out at Jao, we spoke with village elders, including a 100 year old man, fishermen, and saw the beautiful village nestled among the delta reeds. We also went out to a few fishing posts, including one built around a termite mound island! It was incredible to see more of the culture I’m living among.

Tent atop a carved termite mound. Most creative set up I've seen!

Enjoying sunset on the lagoon (photo credit to Jamie)

Guma Lagoon Camp: While my dad was visiting, he wasn't too keen on roughing it in Etsha, so I decided to send them to the lodge just outside my village. We ended up making friends, so Aimee, Jamie and I decided to head out there again! We soaked up a little bit of sunshine by their pool, enjoyed the view of the lagoon, took ample advantage of their hot showers, and took a boat ride out for sundowners. Oh, and Aimee was nearly run over by a hippo chomping his way to the fancy grass to the pool (only the deadliest animal in Africa, no big deal). 

So metal.

Ghanzi Metal Fest: One of the most interesting sub-cultures I’ve come across, Botswana is home to the aptly named ‘metal cowboys.' They don leather chaps, studded cowboy hats and chains, and listen to the likes of Slipknot, Iron Maiden, and some Batswana versions of metal music. As one of the most unexpected forms of Botswana culture, of course some PCVs and I had to check it out. 

Next week I'm headed to Gaborone for my In-Service Training. This is the last of the mid-milestones to cross; I'm past the one year mark, past the halfway mark, past the one year as a PCV (as opposed to a trainee) mark. Over the past month or so, I've noticed a significant shift in my attitude about living in Botswana. This feels like 'real life,' rather than something I'm just passing through, and it's a really fabulous real life to be living. Water outages, electricity 'brown outs,' bugs, cold, heat... have become manageable, easily handled in fact. I remember there was a point where my mood coincided with whether or not the water was on. I had a realization during a run last week that I was actually look forward to kids screaming 'Loraaaaaatoooo' and running with me and the mosadi magolos saying, 'ah! next time I will come with you!' These things originally prevented me from wanting to run in the village and used to drive me crazy during my 'me time.' I have less than a year left, and suddenly it feels like my time here is moving too quickly.

American Visitors

My dad and two of his friends came out to Botswana, and here are some of the highlights from their trip:

After a bit of a hold up at customs (thanks for all the beer, dad!), they finally made it through the Maun airport

I swear we were actually really excited about the herd of giraffe behind us, in Nxai Pan/Makgadikgadi National Parks

In front of a massive boabab out a Baines Baobabs, with a salt pan behind us

Dinner with Matt, Bridgette and their American visitors out a friend's game farm!

Catching tiger fish on the Okavango Delta!

We also spent time going to my projects in my village, buying meat from the 'local butcher' under a tree, hauling in water from the river as my water was off, watched a herd of 40+ elephants less than five miles outside my village stomp around the delta, ate game meat, and just generally showed off how amazing this place can be.

New Address

I have a new mailing address:

PO Box 174
Etsha 6
Botswana

Why, you may ask, did I decide to get a new mailing address halfway through my service? Because no one from the hospital overseeing the clinic in Etsha can figure out who is responsible and how to pay for the post office box. I was patient and persistent for a few weeks, but then a care package was withheld and patience went out the window. Mail sent to the old box will be forwarded, but if you're going to be nice enough to mail something to me, send it to my new address!

Community Clean Up

With the flood waters in my backyard again, I've been spending plenty of time down by the water. Usually this begins as an attempt to read but I often am sucked into people-watching: kids swimming, mokoros headed into the detla, women washing clothing, and even the occasional religious ritual. It seems the entire village takes advantage of this proximity to water. I have also found myself diverted from my reading by a much less pleasant distraction, garbage. Everywhere.

It is also worth noting my recent discovery on how much kids flip out over stickers. I've convinced them to break up an argument in the hope of earning a sticker. Kids know that if I am walking home and carrying something that looks heavy, if they help me take it home I will reward them with stickers. It's amazing. So, after a day sitting by the water, disgusted by trash, a light bulb went off: If I put garbage bags, my PACT Club kids, and stickers together, the waterfront could be cleaned up in no time. 25 garbage bags, 30+ kids, a bagful of stickers, and a couple of hours later, Etsha 13's lagoon is nearly garbage free (never underestimate how much garbage accumulates in a place without any decent disposal options).

I have been on a bit of an environmental health tear lately; it all started with an Earth Day themed PACT Club. I've been a little low on good activity ideas without a mile long list of complications, so I've taken advantage of all of the international commemorations, i.e. World Malaria Day, Water Day. I used an excellent activity suggested by  Bridgette, in which the kids guess how long it takes for various waste products to decompose and/or break down. They had no idea that plastic bottles didn't just disappear in a matter of a few years, or that styrofoam would outlast us all (and then some). I don't think I've gotten a single guess over 10 years for any waste substance! We also had the chance to talk about the various ways to dispose of garbage, burning or burying. As both options are still pretty awful, we focused on harm reduction.

They're much more excited about their stickers than trash pick up

The positive reaction from the activities with my youth led to my extra motivation to finally push for a training for the 'Green Scorpions,' a group of paid volunteers that the clinic oversees each month with the goal of environmental health education.The group doesn't get much information beyond a daily location and the instructions "Tell people to clean up their garbage." Since the time I arrived, the group has felt like a grossly underutilized resource; I'm so happy that everything came together for a training! Plus, there was great participation from the group and I think we all learned a lot. The group changes monthly and most villages in this area has Green Scorpions, so we're looking to expand into other nearby villages next month!

In other news, my cat disappeared for three weeks and then, after he was presumed eaten, showed back up one night looking well-fed. Where he has been is beyond me, village life is pretty harsh on animals- who knew my crybaby cat was so tough. Also, it is almost too cold to bathe these days, it seems that brief period of near perfect weather is over. Eight months out of the year I'm doused in sweat, and for three months it's too cold to bathe. But oh, that two week window between where I feel clean! Anyways, the most exciting news of all is that my dad will be out here next week! Can't wait to show him and his friends around Bots!

World Malaria Day

With about half of the world’s population at risk of malaria, World Malaria Day is recognized every April 25^th. To commemorate the day and increase awareness in Etsha 13, the clinic and I created a mosquito net exhibit and focused the week’s health talk on malaria. We hung the net in the middle of the clinic for a few days before and my counterpart Kandondi helped me with translating the talk. Health Talks are given every Wednesday at the clinic, as this is the day that blood samples are collected for CD4 counts, creating the most traffic through the clinic. This meant that the audience was made up of those most at risk: people living with HIV and the usual group of pregnant women and mothers bringing in babies for weighing.  The talk emphasized prevention measures, early recognition of symptoms, and gave time for Q & A at the end. I was surprised to learn that many of my community members were unaware that mosquitoes transmit malaria, including the staff member at the clinic who helped me translate the statements for the net display.

Luckily, malaria is not the insurmountable problem in Botswana as many other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face. Over the past decade, malaria related deaths have decreased drastically and overall incidence is down as well. Data from the previous year showed only a handful of cases, but outbreaks have occurred in my sub-district this season. Botswana is very close to eradication!

On Floods and the Importance of Layers

In Oregon, if you count the erratic weather from March to June as spring, the seasons can be divided into four pretty easily. Season are nothing like that in Botswana. 

Seasons are measured in rainy versus dry, warm nights versus cold, floods or no floods, lush and green or dry and brown. Transition periods between these seem to be days to two weeks.

What I would consider as winter is here. When I woke this morning, I could see my breath; now, at mid day, it's still in the 80s. The floods are also up, and came quickly. I left my village for the one year celebration, and  when I returned, the floods had gone from about  2 km away to just behind my backyard. Luckily, that rate has slowed down and the water has not come too much closer to my house.

While I'm not looking forward to the point when it is too cold to bathe, even with heating water, I am really excited about enjoying hot tea, soup, and not sweating while sleeping. My favorite sign of winter is definitely the full floodplain (as long as it doesn't push anyone out of their homes this year); I've been enjoying many afternoons reading by the water, plus it is fantastic to have a back up source of water, like last week when the water was off for six days. 

Kids collecting water in the floodplain, directly across from my house. 

By the Numbers

365 days ago, I flew out of PDX.

# of airplanes it took to get me from PDX to GBS: 4

# of months spent in pre-service training: 2

# of months at site:10

# of Etsha villages: 13

# of countries I’ve been to in the past year:4 

# of oceans I’ve seen: 2 

# of days gone without water (max): 16

# of significant water storage containers in my house: 8

# of months lived without refrigeration: 3
# of hours I've gone out of my way just to get a milkshake: 2

# highest (known) temperature reached, in degrees Fahrenheit: 109 

# of times I’ve really cried: 4

# of baskets currently in my possession: 8

# of kids usually at my house in the afternoons: 5

# of pula deposited into my bank account each month: 2,875 

# of dollars in interest my student loans have accrued while in deferment: 1,122.91

# of semi-poisonous spiders I can see right now: 6

# of poisonous snakes I’ve seen (alive): 1

# of times I’ve seen elephants around Etsha: 6

# of miles hitch-hiked in one trip (approx.): 1500

# of Americans in my house: 12

# of contraptions I can use to access the internet:3

# of  phone numbers I have had: 3

# of projects that I feel were/are truly successful: 4

# of books read: 47

# of shoes that have been decimated: 8

# of Bots 12s in April 2012: 47

# of Bots 12s now: 40

# of miles between my parent's home and mine in Etsha 13: 9741.81 

# of days until Close of Service: 426

More musings on reaching the one year mark to come...

Life on the Floodplain

My friend, researcher, and fellow Etshan, Jamie has been kind enough to let me follow her around on some of her interviews. She is researching environmental change and how these changes affect people; more specifically, how the changing flood patterns are affecting the  livelihoods of the Etsha community members, who often rely on natural resources from the floodplain.  In recent years people have been flooded out of their homes and fields, and the government response has been varied. These interviews have been fascinating and my understanding of the Bayeii and Hambukushu cultures I'm living among has increased tenfold. They have also given me peak into the daily lives of my community and the opportunity to catch some of it through photographs. The following pictures are from interviews that occurred just outside Etsha 13 and Etsha 6 at families 'lands.' Family units in Botswana traditionally have three homes: their home in the village, their aptly named cattle post, and the 'lands' where they farm.

This is an old Bayeii man. The Bayeii are people of the Delta, a small minority among Batswana. Speakers of their language are diminishing (most Bayeii children I know speak more Setswana than Seyeii) and government policy favors moving them out and away from their 'traditional' land near the water.

This is a Bayeii woman standing outside of her molapo, or floodplain field.  Just beyond the fencing in the background is a main channel of the Okavnago Delta. Her plot is about 5-7km outside of Etsha 6 village as the crow flies, but this channel of water must be crossed, so the pathway we took in a vehicle was about an hour drive. Women are traditionally responsible for maintaining and harvesting the crops (while men do the plowing to first prep the soil). Most people dry land farm throughout Botswana and even within the villages along the Okavango Delta.Rumor has it the land along the panhandle and western side of the delta is being reserved for tourism development, meaning that these floodplain fields are less common. The thing that struck me the most about the molapo field was the color of the soil- dark brown, very different from the sand of the dry land plots.

This is a reed hut at a family's 'lands,' Reeds and grasses used for these structures are collected from the delta. While mud huts are still quite common in this area, reeds and grasses make up a large portion of shelter materials. In town, there is also a move towards cement houses, but the reeds and grasses are still quite commonly used as roofing and fencing materials. 

The kids have been on a school break for the past few weeks, and during these breaks, children often go back to their home villages, visit other family members, and/or come out to the cattle posts and lands to help their families.  

A young girl walking back from the 'lands' through the floodplain. We were walking through about 6 inches of flood water. The floods are in their upswing right now, and from what I saw last year, peak  around June/July. The water in the delta comes from the Angolan highlands, and rumors say that there has been a lot of rain there this year. But Botswana has had drought-like levels of rain this year, so flood level predictions are uncertain.

  

Slow.

Between the school break, funding issues, counterpart transfers, agitating community leaders, etc etc etc, I'm in a bit of slow spot. Sooo, I'm just going to focus on making friends and taking pictures. Peace Corps Goals #2 and #3: Check.

International Women's Day

March 8^th marks International Women’s Day, a day dedicated to celebrating the accomplishments of women around the globe as well as provides an opportunity to address all that still has a long way to go in reaching gender equality.

While gender issues of every magnitude plague Botswana, most shocking are the high rates of violence against women. For a country with a well deserved reputation of a peaceful nation, physical and sexual abuse are rampant and what the media has dubbed as ‘passion killings’ occur in alarming frequency. I rather hate the term ‘passion killing’ as it sounds like something out of a soap opera. The reality of it is a murdered woman, often someone who has been accused of cheating, and occasionally the 'other man' and suicide of her partner.  The crimes are ususally brutal and plastered all over the media- in fact, this week my counterparts pulled out three recent news articles detailing murders and attacks involving an ax, acid, and knives.  Botswana is no stranger to rape either, often hidden away as a private matter. Defilement (what Americans call statutory rape) is another frequent issue, especially between teachers in students.

In spite of several acts of legislation relating to GBV, many cases go unreported, often teachers are simply transferred with no other consequences, and there is still no law against marital rape. And these are not just far away problems to me; in the 11 months I have been in Botswana, I have seen or heard rumor of all of these issues.

Students categorizing healthy/unhealthy relationship habits

With an apt theme this year: Time for Action to End Violence Against Women, International Women’s Day provided the perfect opportunity to talk gender based violence with my community. Etsha 13 had a health talk focusing on GBV, both of my PACT Clubs discussed gender versus sex and healthy relationships and my fellow PCVs and I wrapped up our final GLOW camp over the weekend. The camps have been incredibly fun, but also EXHAUSTING as 30+ energetic primary students require copious amounts of attention, plus there’s the language barrier. In spite of whole new set of kinks to work out than experienced with the previous three camps, everything went smoothly once we started and we had some of the best conversations about gender issues, life skills, and HIV.  

As for March 8th, Voices of the Community, the anti-GBV group, introduced themselves in the Gumare Kgotla with the Kgosis/Chiefs. It was a big step because the group is finally registered in Botswana and it opens doors for the community leaders to learn about what we want to do. The meeting wasn’t quite what we anticipated but it provided opportunities to connect with individual wards. So, more hoops to jump through but in the end more people will be reached and we’ll get them in smaller groups, which is often more effective anyway. It was so exciting to finally be official, and on International Women’s Day!

Voices of the Community at our first Kgotla meeting

So, it has been a busy week full of gender related activities! Throughout the week, I’ve had to remind myself that behavior change happens snail pace. It’s easy to only see the teachers in relationships with their 15 year old students or the frequency in which women are treated like second class citizens. But what I find most hopeful are all of the girls who want to be presidents, scientists, or most creatively among a sea of teachers and nurses, meteorologists. Girls who speak up just as much as boys in sessions and boys who can point out what is part of an unhealthy versus healthy relationship. Women like Keitumetse, the leader of Voices of the Community and Gumare’s female Kgosi. Even the older folks in my village who every once in awhile you see a glimmer of change registering with them. Do I think anything I've said this week is going to change what he or she does tomorrow? Absolutely not. But maybe, and really I can only hope, the activities from this week provide reinforcement that women are not second class citizens, they shouldn't expect physical punishment for disobedience, and we shouldn't look the other way when teachers have relationships with students.

A Little Peace and Quiet

What to do when your neighborhood kids interrupt your yoga practice? 

Convince them to join you, of course.

Facing the Post Vacation Blues

To be fair, it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be. I was greatly aided by the pushing up of two workshops to the week I returned, keeping me busy. But, eishe, over the last couple of days in Cape Town I was dreading going back to site in a very strange flurry of being incredibly happy and sad at the same time.

Don’t get me wrong; I really do love my village. It’s adorable, I feel like a part of the community, and I am doing a fair amount of good work. I recognize how lucky I am to have all of these things in a Peace Corps experience. But the thing is, it was so easy to be happy in Cape Town. Here, you have to work at it. You have to find joy in small things- and even though there are lots of small things to find joy in it still requires a conscious effort. Getting onto my usual bus in Maun and the bus conductor greeting you by name and a mosadi magolo excitedly greeting you in Thimukushu can make your day (and it did for me on the return trip). It really is wonderful feeling like I am a part of this community.

I recognize that happiness coming easy, all of the time, isn’t true for anywhere. And that any vacation isn’t like day to day life, obviously it is going to be easier to be happy. But what I realized I was missing so acutely was much broader than what I realized day to day: the lifestyle. I miss being able to go to dinner with friends, and then go home. I miss any type of food whenever I want it. I miss hot showers. I miss drinking craft beer while listening to live music. And while these things are replaced with coloring with my neighborhood kids or boating on the delta, spending time in Cape Town, with all of these things easily in reach, evoked a feeling of homesickness that I hadn’t yet experienced.

Moreover, the trip was a wakeup call for parts of me that have been lost in the shuffle of this experience; parts that I really don’t want to lose. Somehow, I have become complacent here…. I’ve become okay with spending hours of a weekend at site watching too many episodes of something, or expecting and accepting mediocre work from not just others but myself. I think, well, I knew I would have to lower my expectations about how projects turn out; plus, I am happier than many other volunteers because at least I’m doing something… but really, I know my counterparts and I could have done better. And that’s just not how it’s going to be anymore.  

Cape Town also pointed out through some of my interactions with perfectly kind people that I have become far too skeptical and now assume the worst from others. I’ve always been a “people are inherently good’ type of person, but I’ve fallen prey to a common PCV shortfall of cynicism. So what if there are some less-than-stellar people out there who continue to call me lekgoa and ask for money for cigarettes every time I see them? For every one person that drives me up the wall, I have met four who have gone out of their way to help me or happily try to get past my poor Setswana and befriend me. I’ve met far too many jaded volunteers, and that is just a category I refuse to fall into.

So, since returning, I have been make an effort to makes some changes and avoid the post vacation blues. It hasn’t been perfect; I will admit to a day of watching far too much tv and as well as some planning and delivery in the workshops that I certainly didn’t give 100%.  But, I have been much more patient with the kids (and adults) in my neighborhood asking for things, have a better attitude about people in general, and spoke up to various counterparts about not just letting an event simply happen but rather preparing far enough in advance. Transitioning into 2013 seems like a perfect opportunity to make, and keep, these much needed New Year’s resolutions; well that, and exercising more J

Metsi Mathata

If there is one thing that you don't take for granted living in Botswana, it's water. There is no happier sound than the gurgle and sputter of your toilet, as this means water is trickling back through the pipes.

That said, my water has been off for 13 days. Eishe.

A couple of days without water, no problem. Etsha 13 and I can handle that. We all have our storage buckets, there are the scattered jojos (big water barrels), and for some parts of the year, the flood plane isn't all too far of a walk. But when, like over the past week or so, it hasn't been raining much, meaning empty jojos, the floods are about as low as they are going to get, and your water stores have been on low for the past 8 days... daily life gets a bit more complicated.

Lucky for me, I can leave Etsha 13 with relative ease. I can utilize the ambulance and friends to bring clean water up or down from me or bathe and wash the necessities at friends' places. I also have an overabundance of water storage containers thanks to my American visitors and their aversion to my salty tap water. Not everyone in my village is as privileged, and even if you know that it's unsafe to drink water from the flood planes or straight from the jojos, these things fall to the wayside if you're dehydrated and running out of options for safe drinking water... this is the sort of shit that leads to babies dying of diarrhea. So absurdly avoidable; this same problem happened with the water pump a few weeks earlier.  Coupled with the horrific shootings in Clackamas, OR and Connecticut, this has been a rough week.

Americans in Africa

My mama and friends came to visit, which meant I got to spend some quality time with them exploring Bots and the surrounding areas! 

We went on an AMAZING safari- we were told that it was some of the best game viewing he'd ever seen by someone living here. We saw tons of giraffes, hippos, crocs, hoofed creatures, zebra, lions, literally hundreds and hundreds of elephants, two leopards and a wild dog (only about 2000 left in the world!

This lovely lady leopard walked right up to our vehicle!

some of the hundreds of elephants we saw

lion post meal

We also shimmied over to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe; the falls were beautiful but the bureaucracy in Zim was not so great.  

Then, we took a quick jaunt through the Caprivi strip in Namibia, stopping over to stay in some amazing tree houses and back down to my village. The ladies helped out in my clinic, with my PACT Club, learned about basket weaving, and spent a little time on the Okavango River.

It was a wonderful whirlwind of a time and so nice to show my mama and friends my life here. It's hard to explain all of the crazy details over facebook or a blog, so I'm happy that more people were able to see this wonderful, challenging, hot, beautiful place. 

A special thank you to everyone who sent stuff with my mom over here... as I told most of you already, I brought it back up to my village after sending my visitors off... it lead to a lot of laughing and crying at the same time. Most of all it made me feel so much love and support- KE A LEBOGA THATA THATA! You are all amazing. A special thank you as well to my mom, Lori, Kathy, and Karen for hauling all of that across the world and for coming all the way to see my life here. <3

Family Bonding Workshop!

My alternative title for this is “Such a Successful Workshop that People Actually Showed Up in Spite of Not Having Enough Food and Drinks” but that seemed a little wordy.

People loooooove going to workshops in Botswana. After attending few, I understand why to some extent. You usually get meals, occasionally you get per diem and lodging, and it’s an excuse to skip out of your regular job. Sometimes though, workshops can be very dry. There can be a lot of talking at you, for hours. And hours. This is especially rough when you speak little Setswana, but based off the sleepy Dikgosi, I think everyone feels this way. So really, most people go to workshops for the free lunch. Hopefully they usually take at least something away from it too, but I do feel that food is a big motivation for attendance. So the fact that the workshop was over capacity and we ran out of food and drinks… and yet people stuck around resonates.

Our theme was ‘Family Bonding,’ meaning we focused on healthy relationships between couples and parents and children, in a whole variety of aspects. I planned sessions relating to HIV and co-planned/facilitated (with the help of several wonderful translators) introductory sessions, gender based violence, healthy relationships, and pre/post tests. People were actually engaged in all of the sessions and willing to discuss, even debate, during the activities. Organizing these types of events can be very hit or miss, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into it. It helps that we had a really great group of facilitators, a few people that I’ve worked with before and a couple of people that I am so excited to work with again. I also think that there are very few opportunities for community members, especially adults, to discuss their relationships in an open manner like the workshop provided. Whatever the reason… the subjects struck a nerve and honest, open discussion poured out.

At the end of the workshop a man, who had told me several months ago that babies are made solely out of semen and women are simply carriers of the fetus, made the comment (well based off the translation) “I really hope that more workshops like this one continue in this village. I have learned so much about why I have difficulties in some of my relationships. This workshop has pointed out some bad habits and given me a lot to think about.” If that isn’t validation, I don’t know what is. Planning this workshop has been pretty stressful and fairly disorganized; I was nervous about getting up in front of a group of adults (as opposed to behind the scenes work or talking with kids), many of the village Kgosis, people I buy my airtime and onions from, and the community volunteers I work with regularly and presenting to people in Setswinglish and asking them to get up and discuss some tough and uncomfortable topics. It was really wonderful to have a project work out so well, when too often projects have come up against barriers time and time again. We are also doing the same workshop in two neighboring villages, and hopefully we will see the same response.