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

Cape Town, My New Happy Place

Man oh man, I do not know where to even start! I want to use every positive adjective in my vocabulary.

I suppose I should put in a brief word in on the twists and turns it took to get there. Originally, we had purchased plane tickets, but discovered a few weeks before that the company went under and no, the new company's flights would not be up and running by the holiday season like the website had proclaimed to hope. Thus we spent countless hours utilizing every bit of our resourceful PCV man power to sort out this vacation. We joked that we would have given up, but we felt our desire for sushi, nightlife, and the ocean might kill us if we didn't get after so much anticipation. 

Oh boy were we unaware of how many more amazing, awesome, astonishing (and those are just the a's) aspects of Cape Town that were to come. Now that's not to say the Mother City didn't present us with some challenges; from police corruption to a frightening mugging, she gave us her fair share of unfortunate incidents. It didn't matter; this was still one of the best trips I have ever taken and quite possibly my favorite city I've ever visited.

I mean, what kind of place has two oceans, vineyards, and a mountain within half an hour? Oh, and craft beer, tons of fun neighborhoods, excellent customer service, super friendly and helpful residents, food from all over the world, artisan markets, nightlife that rages until dawn but you can wear flipflops out and fit in, and people are just so laid back and cool? What is this magical place?! Feeling like my heart was about 10 feet above my chest I'm so happy should have come as no surprise. 

I realize that I am coming from a bit of an unusual place; after living in the bush for 9 months, any city might look spectacular to me after a real shower has rinsed the dust off my face. But no matter the place I'm coming from, this was still an incredible trip that will stand as a highlight of my two years on this continent (and I do think that Cape Town really is this awesome).

Enjoying a little theater

                                  

Sampling some tasty craft beer and food at the Old Biscuit Mill Market

Mexican Food, nom

Indian Ocean!

Kind of a big deal. 

Thoroughly enjoying ourselves while wine tasting

Having a perfect last day atop Table Mountain

Sunset towards Cape Point, from Table Mountain

Merry Christmas!

Due to an unfortunate incident involving me forgetting my passport in Etsha 13 whilst heading south, my Christmas took a different though still wonderful turn. Thanks to the Mahalpye crew for taking me in at the last minute!This Christmas meant fireworks with children, a delicious dinner thanks to the Shavers, and some festive movie and ornament decorating time.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

This year I am thankful for:

My family, both immediate and otherwise, my mom and her friends for flying halfway across the world to see me, my incredibly supportive friends from high school and my McAlister&Friends family who constantly remind me what amazing people I have been blessed with in my life, the amazing PCV community and people that inspire and support me and are just so.much.fun., my Batswana co-workers/counterparts (both the easy to work with and the not-so-easy-to-work-with… always learning), my Batswana counterparts who took me up on my offer to share the idea of thanksgiving with them, Peace Corps Volunteers willing to host 30 volunteers for holidays, both the bratty and the adorable children in my village, water, vegetables, and refrigeration; postcards, internet and it’s opportunities to communicate;  my country for giving me the opportunity to be in Botswana, and all of the opportunities, decisions, and luck, that led me to this spot right now. It’s been a crazy ride and I can’t wait to see what comes next. 

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

Four Day Weekends= Epic Camping in the Salt Pans

Botswana Independence Day meant a four day weekend and an amazing time with some fabulous people. I think the following pictures sum it up.

Vast nothingness surrounds you everywhere you look

Some of my favorite ladies and me sitting in the pan, having some fun with my fisheye

                                                                     Meerkats doing their thing

Under a baobab over 1000 years old

Botswana Independence Day means a four day weekend, which meant spending time with a whole bunch of PCVs at the lodge/campsite Planet Baobab and the Makgadikgadi salt pans. We spent a bunch of time by the pool avoiding the 100+ degree heat, hanging out under thousand year old baobabs, sleeping under the stars (and getting the bug bites on my face to prove it), and taking a trip into the middle of the largest series of salt pans in the world.

In other news, I finally have a refrigerator in my life again which means so many good things, such as: cheese, yogurt, no more powdered milk, cold water, being able to eat meat besides just on slaughter days, vegetables that last longer than 2 days, leftovers that aren’t suspect, finally being able to buy fish in my village, popsicles, butter that isn’t liquid…. If I were a poet I would write an ode to refrigeration when it’s always over 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside. 

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