A fun weekend

I had a whirlwind of a weekend/week, and spent an awful lot of time on combis.

Last Thursday Danielle, a PCV in Moleps, came to my village to help clean out Roses house and pack her stuff to be sent back to the USA.  (Rose was the other volunteer in my village.  She got really sick in January and got sent home by PC in February.  She will be fine, she just had to cut her service short, which was a huge bummer.)  So we spent all of Thursday doing that, and I had horrible allergies due to the dust and cat dander.  Then we spent the night at my house and went to Moleps the next day.  [combi 1] Danielle went to work and I continued on to Gabs [combi 2], where I had lunch, and then got on another combi [3] to Jwaneng.  Jwaneng is known in Botswana as where all of the diamonds are.  It might be the largest set of diamond mines in the world.  I stayed with another PCV, Christina,  there for Friday and Saturday nights.  Saturday I took a bus [combi-ish 4] to Keng, to go to a wedding.

Now, how I got to this wedding is sort of a funny story.  A teacher in my village invited me because she was going to be a bridesmaid.  She got me an invitation and everything.  When I get to Jwaneng, Christina tells me that the wedding is of a former PCV to a Motswana, and several other PCVs are going!  Which was true, as well as some Canadian volunteers that knew the bride.  So I stayed at the wedding for several hours, got to eat delicious wedding food (Batswana go all out for weddings.  I’m pretty sure they slaughtered 2 cows and several goats for this one.),  meet some new people, and see a new village.  I hitched back to Jwaneng before dark and showed Christina the wedding pics.  And took a lot of pictures of her dog, who is adorable.

Sunday I went back to Moleps, stopping in Kanye [5] to see my host family from pre-service training.  The 1 year old is now almost 18 months and is still super cute.  I got to hang out a bit with my host mom, sister, and brother.  Then I caught another combi [6] to Gabs, and then another to Moleps [7].  At this point I was kinda tired of combis.  I stayed with Danielle and we made burritos which were AMAZING.  I miss Mexican food a lot.  

Monday I helped my counterpart facilitate a workshop on lifeskills to teachers at a school in Moleps, which was fun and I think it went really well! Considering we were trying to condense a 5 day workshop into 2 hours.   I watched Argo at Danielle’s house that night and really liked the movie.

Tuesday I attempted to get home early, by going to the store at 8:30am and heading to Letlhakeng soon after.  [combi 8] And then I could not get a hitch to my village for the life of me.  I got to L at 10:45/11.  I didn’t get back to Salajwe until almost 4.  I spent half of that time in Khudemalpye with Aileen, as she kept me company at the hitching post.   And then I took a bath, enjoyed being home in my village, and slept almost 12 hours :P