PCV life scattered on my table

As I’m preparing for my last few classes and activities with my students and teachers, I’m chuckling at the contents strewn across the desk (okay, large table) in my house.

• Colorful lists of emotionally healthy and emotionally unhealthy behaviors
• Boggle and Bananagrams (for the English club that never really materialized)
• Toilet paper
• Hand drawn diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems
• Corresponding labels for above diagrams
• Several books of lifeskills lesson plans
• Hand sanitizer
• A hand made dice that has potential consequences of alcohol abuse (car accident, injury, late for work, etc.)
• Name-tags for a mini camp
• A fly swatter (bc holy moly the bugs lately!)
• A stack of index card sized papers with sticky tack on the back that say things like doctor, nurse, weak, strong, etc, for a lesson on gender
• Various pencils and markers
• A hella lotta sunscreen
• Condoms (male AND female) and a wooden penis
• A loose ball of various colors of embroidery floss for bracelet making
• Scissors, a pocket knife, and string (for making those name-tags)
• Duct tape
• In Her Shoes, an activity to talk about Gender Based Violence
• Chalk
• My external hard drive
• Tennis balls that I need to label for a game  
• Peanut butter and a spoon (cuz ya know, dinner)
• A clean sock, bc I’m debating making a puppet
• A water bottle
• A screwdriver (my light switch plate decided to jump off the wall earlier for no reason)
• Gin

You know you’re a PCV when… 

Salt Pans and Meerkats

We visited the largest salt pan in Botswana, the Makgadikgadi pan near Gweta. It's about half the size of Switzerland. And the whole thing looks like this. During the rainy season you can't go out on the pans because they are under a foot or two of water and you'd get stuck, whether on foot or in a truck.

It's a perfect place to take fun pictures.

Kate carry both Karen and me.

Me on the salt pan!

Then we went and saw a meerkat colony! This guy was digging for food.

This guy was trying to figure out what my camera was. We could get pretty close to them and they didn't mind.

A dog was spotted far off, so they all took up the look out post to keep an eye on it.

One of these guys is the patriarch of the family, maybe the one on the far left?

And finally, a lilac breasted roller, the national bird of Botswana. So beautiful!

Kate and Karen's visit part 1

My friends Kate and Karen came to visit me back in June and July! Sorry it's taken me so long to post about it.

 We visited the national museum and saw rock paintings in my friend's village.

We hung out with a bunch of my PCV friends in Gabs for my burfday.

They also collected tons of letters for me from my friends and family back home, so I had something like 40 birthday cards to open on the actual day!

We got a nice hitch in the Chubuku truck out of my village. Like you do.

Then we started exploring Maun, Gweta, Kasane, Vic Falls, and Serowe.

Termite mounds give good views.

We saw lots of animals. I don't even know how many giraffes are in this picture.

And we saw the big five: elephants

Buffalo

Lions

There's a leopard in that tree!

And rhinos!

I feel like I've already posted a ton of animal pictures from previous trips, so I'll leave it at that :)

We also went to Vic Falls.

Ponchos were a must; the spray was so heavy on the Zim side they couldn't see anything!

Awesome friends on one last boat cruise.

Me and Aileen, my PCV sanity :)

Part 2 coming soon with salt pan and meercat pictures :)

Fizzing Whizbee

Levitating sherbet balls? Almost. Unfortunately, I have no ice cream that reduces gravity. I do have Frisbees, and they have no fangs.

Often when kids come to play in my yard, I give them some toys and let them be. These are normally roving bands of toddlers, so they are pretty good at entertaining themselves (sometimes tormenting animals or climbing my clothesline, but I digress). Given an impossible to bust soccer ball, a few jump ropes, and most importantly, hula hoops, and these kids are occupied for hours. I'm often impressed by the creativity I see here with kids; balls made out of any material you can think of, old ropes liberated from who knows where for skipping purposes, little cars make out of scrap metal, and tons of games involving small stones (think jacks with no bouncy ball). Hula hoops are a little harder to make from scrap material, which I think is why mine are so popular. That and these four year olds can move their hips like I'll never be able to :)

Once or twice a week I try and play with them for a little while, and usually this involves playing frisbee. I'm really bad at hula hooping and soccer, and the way these kids skip rope I'd either break an ankle or get a rope to the face (I'm a bit taller than they are). So I brought out two frisbees a few months ago. My donated backpack of sports equipment actually has four frisbees, but since the kids only throw them to me and not to each other, we stick with two, as I can only protect my face from two things flying at it at a time. The older ones, maybe eight have caught on how to throw pretty well. The smaller ones are working on it, and often still leap out of the way screaming with laughter when I throw to them, even if it's coming at their feet. 

Today I went outside to play and realized that the weather might make things interesting.  Gale force winds sort of make a frisbee into a boomarang. Several times I threw it to the kids and then caught it myself. Twice we almost got one stuck on my roof. The wind catching the frisbee seemed to delight the kids even more than usual, so we kept going. With me not being able to throw accurately, it turned into a sandy game of 500, with me throwing as far as I could, the kids running screaming after it, and then the wind catching it so the kids wind up diving all over each other in the sand. I don't think they are used to seeing the wind catch things like that; because I don't think soccer balls have the same problem.

I think I might tell the next volunteer to get a kite :)

The Thin Places

Waiting for the bus to the next village out of the capital, I was beginning to realize it was going to be a long day. It was the end of the month, which in Botswana means when everybody is paid, and therefore when everybody goes out and buys a months’ worth of food and supplies, and often booze. Another guy going in my direction informed me that a bus had gone by 10 minute before and that it was full. 

“An actual bus or a combi?” I asked. The combis are always full by this stop, but I’ve never seen a bus full anywhere near here. He swore it was a bus, but said another one was coming soon. We debated a bit on when another real bus would actually come, and I wondered if I made the wrong decision by not going directly to the bus rank for transport, even though it would be back tracking. That guy caught a hitch with a passing car, and I began to wonder if that was my best option. Another guy sat next to me and showed way more interest in me than I was happy with, and so after some awkward small talk I was happy to flag down a passing bus and literally run away from that situation. The bus was not completely full, but I did make the hour trek standing up. Happy to be on my way, it didn’t bother me at all.

Once we got to the next village, 1pm by this time, I got groceries and a bite to eat, and headed to that bus rank a little over an hour later. The bus rank was crowded. My usual stop to catch a combi had a line of fifty or sixty people in it. Usually there is five to ten at most. And we waited. And waited. Finally a combi came, and it fit about 10 people and a whole seat of beer, and was off. We waited some more. A guy came up and talked to me and I thought he was going to hit on me, so I wasn’t very talkative. Then another guy came up, proclaimed he was in love with me and wanted a serious relationship. I told him no, I was leaving soon. He kept bothering me. I told him I definitely wasn’t dating him if he couldn’t take no for an answer; yes means yes, no means no. He still bugged me. I finally told him off and turned away from him, and he laughed and left me alone. A third combi came, filled, and let people that wanted to stand come forward, so I jumped at the chance, since it was after 3:30 at this point. Our crammed combi puttered to Letlhakeng, bumping along the 26km of dirt road that will be repaved someday.

Getting off the combi at the hitching tree, there were already 20 people waiting for rides, and as I soon found out, not that many people stopping to give said rides. I let others fight over a truck or 2 at first, thinking it would clear the crowd but combis kept dropping more and more people, so I soon realized I was going to have to fight my way into a truck. Around 6 a truck came and I pushed into it, not caring which village it was going to. Once I got situated I heard a lot of people saying Salajwe, so I knew I scored a ride all the way home. Bumping along the road was chilly and uncomfortable, and a former Lempu student kept trying to talk to me until I basically had to ignore her for her to get the idea that I couldn’t talk to her then, because I kept getting sand in my eyes every time I turned to face her. Hopefully she stops by school next week and I can explain I didn’t mean to be rude.

When we got to the next village, I realized I had been mistaken and the ride was stopping there. It was after dusk although not completely dark, and I was stuck. I could sleep at Aileen’s but I knew she and I didn’t have a spare sleeping bag for this cold night. And I was a little annoyed that people told me the truck was going all the way to my village when it wasn’t, and I said so to the driver, trying to shame him a bit into helping me. He offered to take me in a few hours after he picked more people in Letlhakeng, but I turned him down saying I wasn’t allowed to travel at night. I tried to flag the next truck coming along, and lo and behold, it was a teacher from my school! He said he’d call someone else to pick me up since he was full, but the old women in the back squished and made room for me. This was one of the most uncomfortable rides I’ve ever had. It was freezing, dark, I felt unsteady in the truck like I might get bumped out, and I was sliding off the wheel onto an old lady next to me holding a child wrapped in a blanket. 10 minutes in I thought we broke down, but we started up again minutes later. 

In the midst of all of this, as the dust cleared from passing another vehicle, I glanced up at a magnificently starry sky and perfect crescent moon. I pushed my head scarf back for a minute, forgot how cold and uncomfortable I was, and just gazed. And remembered that God is here, even in this moment. And I said thank you. A minute or so later I looked back into my lap as I braced myself the best I could and tried to stay in the truck, and in my spot in the truck. When we finally reached my village, it felt like we had been in the back of that truck for hours. My teacher dropped me at school, and I made the seven minute walk to my house in the dark, avoiding cows and cow poop as I waded through the deep sand. It was 8 hours after I left the capital this morning, and I had made it 160km, or 100 miles.

My day wasn’t bad, just exhausting. In the midst of all of the chaos and traveling, God showed up, just to say hi and let me know He’s still there. In the middle of the desert, on the edge of the Kalahari, in between 2 small villages on a dirt road, is a thin place. A place where for a moment, the veil separating heaven and earth was thinner than usual, and a holy moment happened. 

6 weeks

I have 6 weeks left of my Peace Corps service. That's just weird. I realized I haven't posted much lately; it's not that I don't have things whirling around my head, it's just that most of those things are complicated and best left for my private journal at this point. When I distill some of those thoughts, I'll post them here eventually. Nothing bad, just all the feels.

I've had a busy few months, and I feel like I haven't been in my village very much. In July I went on 2 weeks vacation with some friends from the States. Came back for a few days, and then went to the capital for my group's Close of Service Conference. Then I came back for a few days, and went BACK to the capital trying to finish the paperwork for the grant I applied for 6 months ago for our May GLOW camp. Then I went to a friend's Harry Potter birthday party and geeked out, which was awesome. Was back for a few days, and then went on vacation to see some friends in the west part of the country. Came back for a few days, and went to the capital AGAIN for close of service medical appointments and then jetted up to help at the Pre Service Training for the new group of volunteers in Serowe. Now I'm back and will actually spend the rest of my service in my village, aside from probably one or two more trips to my shopping village for food and errands.

When I get good internet again, I'll try and post a few pics from both vacations; baby animals and salt pans and friends :) Lately I've been letting other people take the pictures and just letting myself be in the moment. I tend to want to photograph all of the things, but I'm learning that sometimes it's better to just take mental snapshots and/or let others take the pictures.

So these days I'm just soaking up time in my village, teaching classes and trying to figure out how to say goodbye to those I spend time with, whether in conversation or sharing hula hoops. I'm in a good place; happy to be going home, but also happy to enjoy another few weeks in my little slice of the Kalahari.