Fall in the Kalagari

It's fall in Botswana. You wouldn't necessarily know just by looking; there are no colorful leaves on maple trees, or pumpkins carved outside of huts. Fall here doesn't mean that Christmas is just around the corner.
Fall in Botswana is the rains gradually letting up and nights becoming cooler. It's realizing that walking across the village in the middle of the day wasn't as hot as usual; maybe summer is waning. Visually everything looks the same; the rains were so heavy this year that my village is still completely green, and I hope that means that there are good crops and healthy animals this year. People's livelihoods depend on it.

Fall means change. Changes in the weather, and changes for me. I'm realizing that whether or not I admit it, I'm in the final stretch of my service. There are two and a half weeks left of school this term, and the students spend most of that testing. I'll be busy coordinating the logistics for a big camp in the middle of May during the school break. Hopefully going on vacation afterwards, and June brings the second term of school. I have two friends visiting at the end of June, and a week after they leave my group has our close of service conference in July. One more school break in August, and two to three* more months of teaching and living here, and I am finished. Hopefully travelling for a month or two before I return stateside in time for Christmas.

I write this, but it hasn't sunk in yet. Six to seven months still seems like a fairly long time, although not nearly as long as I've been here, which is nineteen months and counting. I'm still in a good place, which is happy where I am, and also happy that time hasn't stopped; it's still nice to know that each week and month I live here is also one week or month closer to being home again. But I've also been trying very hard to mentally be here, and not continually wishing myself home. That's not to say I've never homesick, and the changing of seasons brings that on the most, because I think of fall on the east coast, and the holidays, and it's the time of year that it feels the least like Africa here. I've been trying to keep busy, and I feel like the next few months are going to be even busier. While I'm not a huge fan of the PC policy of lock down** for the last few months at site, I think I will appreciate the down time to mentally prepare for returning home.

So change is in the air. I'm taking a few days to get rid of a cold that won't leave, and catching up on some reading. Since the students are testing there's nothing for me to do at school for 2 weeks. I'm enjoying the slightly drier, cooler weather, knowing that soon it will be freaking cold at night and that at least 1/3 of my waking hours will be in my sleeping bag on my computer, trying to be productive and warm at the same time. My fingers are crossed that the grant money that myself and a bunch of PCVs applied for comes in on time for the camp we've planned in a few weeks.

Fall has always been one of my favorite seasons. It's different here in Bots; Easter, for instance, instead of Halloween, but its not necessary bad different. I would still love some hot apple cider though.

*My official COS, close of service, which means end of my service, is November 14th. But there is a chance I might end a month early if another volunteer is replacing me and need my house. I'll find that out in a couple of months.

**The official PC policy is the first 3 months and the last 3 months of service are supposed to be in my village, aka not travelling or on vacation. Some people follow this policy more than others ;)

Happy Easter!

Today was Ella's last full day in Botswana. We spent yesterday hanging out at the biggest mall in Gabs, me at the coffee shop with free wireless, and Ella window shopping to her heart's content. 

 Today we went to church for Easter.

Took a few cousin in Africa pics.

Ate yummy Indian food for lunch with 

Barbara, a good PCV friend here. 

Tomorrow Ella flies home and I return to my village. It's nearing the end of the school term, so there's not much for me to do at school. I'm planning a big camp for May during the school term break though, so there is LOTS to do for that.

It's been an awesome 2 weeks though, and I'm really happy I got to share my Africa life with my cousin!

Ella's visit, part 2

We headed into Kasane to see Victoria Falls and hang out in Zambia.

When we got to the backpackers, we realized it was a full moon.

At high water, a full moon at Victoria Falls means you might be able to see something really special. So we went at night.

And hung around for a while waiting for the moon to come out from behind some clouds.

 And we were rewarded with one of the coolest things I've ever seen: a lunar rainbow.

So amazing.

While we were in Livingstone, we saw a big youth rally for Holy Week, with youth from several different African countries.

We stayed at Jollyboys backpackers in a fun dorm.

Jollyboys is such a cool place.

Complete with cute guys from foreign countries showing off for the ladies.

We went to a 60 stall craft market.

Ella talking with a seller.

Ella haggling with a seller.

Ella has bartered her shawl for a bracelet...

As well as her socks! :D

We had lots of good cousin hangout time.

After attempting to watch the sunset from the loft at Jollyboys.

We then headed back to Kasane, hung out with my friend Kristin who lives there, and had lunch one more time at The Old House. When I took a picture of this warthog, 2 older men who used to be guides started talking to me and we wound up chatting for over 2 hours about guiding, wildlife, and how they want to open their own business doing game tours on their land. Made some new friends and picked up a potential project for the volunteer that lives near them.

Thanks Mr. Warthog!

Ella's Visit, part 1

My cousin Ella came to visit for 2 weeks!  So we went all over the place.

We stayed in Gabs, and visited Manyana, Luis's village. This is us in front of the giant baobab.

 Zoomed in, so you can actually see us!

We saw some rock paintings. 

Ella got really excited about some of those.

 Finally we climbed Dr. Livingstone's tree with Luis.

Then we went to my village for most of a week. Ella went to class with me as I taught.

I taught her to do laundry by hand, and she taught me to fry eggs.

We also played with kids in my yard, led a PACT club, and went to a workshop in Letlhakeng.

Then we headed up to Serowe to hang out with Karla and some other volunteers. We went to the Rhino reserve and saw my favorite animal, giraffes. 

 We saw rhinos!! I have now seen all of the big five.

We also saw Ella's favorite animal, zebras.

Game drive, whee!

Then we headed to Kasane, where we did another game drive in the early morning. We saw giraffes, elephants, a buffalo, so many impala, a puku, 2 monitor lizards, baboons, a jackal, vultures, and a pack of monkeys that stole my muffin. Freaking attack monkeys!

Later we went on a cruise of the Chobe river, and saw lots of other animals including hippos and crocodiles.

 Then we headed to Zambia, which I'll put in another post so this isn't super long. :)

Pictures of guys camp

Preparing for the camp...

Pitching tents for the day students to sleep in.

Playing games...

Group rock paper scissors

Making collages

The food has arrived.

Bonfire

Most of my group!

Learning about hygiene and leadership.

Red team!

Mustard United!

Getting certificates at the end of camp.

Leadership in action.

Collapsing after the fact.

Guys GLOW Camp

After running my first camp in Botswana last August, I knew I wanted to do as many as I could during my service. I loved camp as a kid and an adult, and it’s a unique experience for both kids and adults in this country, because it’s still kind of a new idea.

GLOW stands for girls and guys leading our world. Typically camps focus heavily on girls, because female empowerment is lacking here, to put it concisely. But honestly… you can empower girls and women all you want, but if you don’t include boys and men, not much is going to change.  You have to empower women to work towards gender equality, but you also have to work with men to support and respect women. I have lots of thoughts on this, and that’ll probably be a separate post.

Last Wednesday I made my way out of my village, fought with a grant website in Letlhakeng for several hours, and crashed a fellow volunteer’s place in Moleps for the night. I caught the 6am bus to Maun, arriving a little after 4. Another volunteer got on my bus about 2 hours into the trip, so I had company and conversation to make the trip go faster. We got a taxi to Trevor and Lindsey’s house on Lindsey’s NGO compound and hung out for a little while as other volunteers showed up. We met the rest at a sports bar for dinner. I’m not sure when I’ve been that hungry in recent memory, but I definitely ate 2 dinners.  And I wasn’t the only one that did. Guess munching on the bus wasn’t enough for us? Anyway. We all stayed at Trevor and Lindsey’s, colonizing their floor and creating some funny conversations about sleeping arrangements. Things overheard:

“Apologies if I wind up spooning you in the middle of the night.”
“Can we really fit 2 people on that?”
“Can I move the coffee table into the pantry? I know that’s random, but it’ll give us more floor space.”
“Sure. People can sleep in the pantry too if they want. People have slept there before. Actually, people have had sex in our pantry.”
You know you’re a PCV when…

Friday morning we migrated to Trevor’s NGO where the camp was to be held. Some volunteers cleaned a bathroom that hadn’t been used in YEARS (I don’t know what happened there, but you should never have to use a spade to clean a bathroom, let’s leave it at that), others pitched about fifteen tents, we put together 60 hygiene kits for the guys, and various other setting up stuff. One neat thing we did was plan games the whole group could do, including eleven hearing impaired students. All of the students attending went to the boarding senior secondary school and were between the ages of 16 and 21, and these hearing impaired students came from there and the rehabilitation center  (Lindsey’s NGO) which works with all sorts of disabilities.

The students were supposed to meet at the school at 4:30 to walk over, but things got messed up and they got to the camp around 6 instead. The boarding students had to be walked to and from the boarding school each morning and evening, while the day students camped at Trevor’s NGO in all of those tents we pitched.  The food was catered by the ministry of education/alcohol levy, and while it was good, it was often late and they ran out several times. The norm, basically… you plan as much as you can, and random things will still go wrong. This wasn’t catastrophic by any means, so Becky, the other PCV in charge, and Trevor, basically shrugged and made things work. We also only had 2 bathrooms, and despite labeling them, constantly had boys in the girls bathroom, so we just sort of had to knock and shield our eyes every time we went in, just in case.*

The first night we watched a STEPS film called One Life, One Love and had a discussion about the themes of the film, a big one being multiple concurrent partners.  We made group names and posters, and played a lot of get to know you games. I was in the yellow group, and we decided to be team United. Except that got combined with mustard, which was the color of our shirts, (Becky nicknamed us Colonel Mustard previously, the other groups being Mrs. White, Miss Scarlet, and Mrs. Peacock), and we became Mustard United. By far one of the best group names I’ve ever had, I think second only to the A.D.D. Puffy Muffins, but that’s a story from college for another time.

Saturday was full of different sessions, including safe sex, gender based violence, sex and communication, alcohol abuse, and safe male circumcision. The first session had some awkwardness with the facilitator, but the rest were great, and all led by Batswana, which was fantastic. There was also some free time for sports and we all made collages. I definitely played a game of volleyball with no net, on pavement, until we literally could not see the ball because it was so dark. We’re kinda lucky we didn’t knock over the food table in the process.

Later that night we made a bonfire and the guys had what us women called “boy fire” for a while, where the male PCVs talked with the students for an hour or so. Us women were a little jealous we couldn’t hang out by the fire, but we were hearing snippets of a really good conversation, and knew this was probably the most important part of the camp, where the guys could just talk openly about things that don’t get talked about enough. For instance, one topic that the guys mentioned to us later was knowing the difference between lust and love. I think back on all of the awesome experiences I’ve had at campfires, some really defining moments in my life, especially as a teenager, and I’m so glad the guys led that fire time. I got to walk back to the boarding school with students both nights, and had some really great conversations with students as we walked. Everything from where I was from in America, to what they wanted to do after they finished school, to differences in different faith denominations. These guys are bright, and inquisitive, and so fun to talk to. I miss that in my village where the language barrier gets in way of my bonding with my students.

Sunday we let the students have a football match while we cleared out of the way for a local church to have their services in the NGO building. We also had to chase kids from the church away from our food, and I almost had a heart attack when a five year old tried to dart under a car as it was backing up to chase a ball. I grabbed the kid as the car stopped, but EEEISH. We did some extra babysitting. Our students had sessions on hygiene and leadership under a big tent outside, and ended with an official ceremony where the students got certificates. There was much picture taking and hugs as camp ended after we ate lunch.  Once the students left, we cleaned up, took down all of the tents, and celebrated a successful camp. Later that evening we had a big Braai (barbeque) at Trevor and Lindsey’s.  I was the only volunteer from my intake group this weekend; almost all of the others were Bots 14s. A really fun group, who have invented a game of catch called One hand no body (which I swear is going to evolve to people getting beaned in the face) and had everyone trying to light a match with the box on your elbow. Good times were had. I got to hang out with a lot of people I didn't know well before that I hope I get to hang out with a lot in the future!

Monday I got the 6am bus again, which dropped me in Moleps a little after 3. I didn’t make it all the way back home, but spent the night at Aileen’s since I couldn’t get a hitch all the way to my village. Today I finally made it home, exhausted, but with the high that only comes from hanging out with friends and camp. :)

*The boys in the girls bathroom were students, not PCVs. Thought I should clarify that ;)