Swakapmund

Swakapmund is a beach town that looks like a little like an alpine ski resort without the snow. And with mostly Africans instead of Europeans, although there were a fair amount of European tourists.

Some of the architecture made me forget what continent I was on. 

Or if I was in a fairy tale.

We frolicked on the sand dunes, including sand boarding and quad biking.

Quad biking was a lot of fun, although it took me a while to remember I wasn't actually ON a bike, and to go faster on hills.

The dunes were gorgeous.

We celebrated the New Year with some Afrikaners we met sand boarding.

We spent a lot of time on the beach. Not in the water, which was recently in Antarctica and VERY cold, but just on the beach.

Quad biking on the dunes.

Our backpackers, which reminded us of a dutch attic.

We saw seals on the rocks by the beach.

So cute!

Kind of makes me think of PCVs at the end of a vacation. Exhausted, sleeping in a pile, and you still can't get everything to dry out properly.

But the adventure wasn't over yet, as our bus broke down on the way home. Because they forgot to fill the gas tank up all the way. 

.......

Another bus came but couldn't help. Our driver hitched to the nearest village 130km away and got a few liters of fuel and hitched back with it... 5 hours later.

Then we had to figure out how to get the fuel INTO the bus, and obviously there was no funnel. So they used a Fanta bottle.

At this point, we and several Batswana nominated Liz to be the driver if the first one didn't return, but he did. So we got to Gabs at like 12:45am instead of 7pm, but we made it and it was an awesome trip, break down not withstanding. :)

The week that wasn't

I had all kinds of plans for last week. I was coming home from MST/Gabs on Sunday, going to my friend’s village on Monday for a couple of days to help her put a fence up at the preschool she’s renovating, and then going to a Motswana friend’s wedding on Saturday, staying in Gabs again for the weekend.

Almost none of that actually happened.

Sunday afternoon I went to the hitching post in Letlhakeng, usually my final stop on the way back to my village. And waited. And waited. I waited three and a half hours, and NO vehicles were going to my village. There was a crowd of like 25 people under the hitching tree waiting for a ride and it was going to get dark. So I cut my losses, not willing to hitch home in the dark on a partially flooded dirt road, and stayed with another volunteer in Letlhakeng.

Monday morning I got a ride home, luckily in an SUV since it was raining. And raining. And raining. It rained a lot the week I was in Gabs at MST, and it just kept raining. Letlhakeng looked like a swamp in places. On the way to Aileen’s village I saw cows wading. I live in the desert people. Parts of it currently look like the Okavango Delta. If this is what rainy season is supposed to look like here, no wonder people said the rains didn’t really come last year. Because I promise, this did NOT happen last year.

My current desert.

Our school football pitch (soccer field)

It rained so much I wasn’t sure if I could get out of my village again (or if I wanted to try…), and my friend didn’t think we could build a fence in the mud anyway, so that didn’t happen.

I took a photo tour of my village near my house and school, complete with flooded field and destructive goats. I missed getting a picture of my neighbor digging a trench around her mud hut to keep it from flooding as much.

Standing water on the school grounds.

Trees down from a storm.

Lock your lockers or the goats mess things up a LOT.

The goats ate my homework.

Thursday I had a perimeter of goats around my house trying to keep dry in one of the storms. More pictures on that in a separate post.

Friday I went to Gabs, and Saturday I tried to go to my friend’s wedding. After getting to the village, finding someone else also looking for the wedding, walking around for an hour, and multiple phone calls… we realized we were in the wrong village. We were in Pitsane. The wedding was in Phitsane, or Phitsane Moloko. Which was another 2 hours or so farther from Gabs. It was noon when we figured this out (weddings last all day here), and by time I were to get to the correct village (which I’m still not even positive was the correct one), I would have to turn around and come back about 45 minutes later so I wouldn’t get back to Gabs super late. And I didn’t think there was public transport so I’d be relying on hitching.  So I sighed and turned around and began my journey back to Gabs. I got back after 3, so I know that if I had tried to go all the way to the wedding I would have gotten back around 8 or 9, which was too late (we aren’t supposed to travel after dark for lots of reasons).

On the bright side, I got to hang out with a friend in Gabs this weekend as I stayed at her house and I also got to go to church this morning, which I haven’t been able to do since… July. So that was great, even though I didn’t make it to the wedding.

The interesting thing is… not much of what happened actually upset me. I just sighed and realized the weather/transportation/getting wrong info about the wedding were not things in my control, and moved on. Maybe I am culturally integrating ^_^

And I'm considering building an ark as a secondary project.

The real Africa

I’m spending my last night in my 20s reading a good mystery by candlelight. It’s not the bash most people probably plan for celebrating their last night being 29, but I’m okay with it. I’m probably going to spend tomorrow cleaning and doing laundry, because my house is still currently only half put together after the move (see below). I’m okay with that too (cleaning on my birthday, not my house in shambles), because I get to really celebrate my birthday later in the week. I’m seeing friends on Wednesday and Thursday, and on my Friday, my mom and Carol come!!! And I am super excited for that. And I want my house ready for that, so laundry is an okay thing for tomorrow.

I managed to move across the village last Friday (as in 2 days ago). For those that I hadn't told, a bar opened near my house, and so I asked Peace Corps if I could move. And they said yes, and 2 months later, viola. For the record, I didn’t have any security incidents related to the bar… but I didn’t really want to wait around to see if it would be an issue. PC policy is that volunteers aren’t allowed to live near bars/shabeens/depots, so I acted on that. And, I didn’t feel super safe in the other house simply because the doors were flimsy. And the locks sucked. Rose broke into my living room once when the lock on the door broke, and I had to get someone else to break in for me once a few weeks ago for the same reason. Annnnnnd it was pretty easy to do. So, move I did.

Of course, dealing with the ministry of education and Peace Corps took time. PC asked me to look for a house, since I’m already in the village. I gladly took them up on the offer, because it gave me more say in where I would live. A teacher at my school recommended my new place, and then I got the paperwork turtle moving.  PC and MOE looked at it, negotiated rent, told them to fix a few minor things, and signed papers.  I kept pushing to be able to move by the end of June, so I wouldn’t have multiple leases, and so I could be moved before my family came and stuff. Low and behold, it actually happened!

I was stressed out the day of the move, simply because I didn’t know how it was going to go. There’s always the risk, being the lekoa in the community, that I’d get surrounded by people wanting to touch and have my things. So I recruited Aileen and her friend Parker who is visiting, and they helped me move and guard my stuff. My old landlord said he would help me move, but then passed it off to a guy I didn’t know, who looked at my furniture and went and recruited a 2^nd random dude to help. 4 pick-up loads puttering 5 minutes across the village later, and I was moved. We only had to push the truck through the deep sand twice.  The actual moving took less than 2 hours. And that was simply some furniture maneuvering logistics. I did some cleaning on Friday, hooked up my stove and gas tank, hung some curtains, and collapsed in exhaustion. Yesterday I put my living room together; tomorrow I’ll tackle my bedroom.  But it’s so nice to have functional doors and locks, I can’t even tell you. And a gate for my porch, so kids can play in my yard and not swarm my porch/house.

Today, I attempted to buy electricity, locks, sponges, bleach and airtime in Letlhakeng. I was able to get the airtime and locks. For some reason, no stores carried bleach or sponges, which I find odd.  And whatever network is necessary to buy electricity was down, so I couldn’t do that either. Hence the current reading by candlelight. When I made it back to my village, I discovered I could buy electricity here. But the network was still down. At least I can try again tomorrow without trucking out to L again!

While I was in L, stalking the small general dealer/grocery store to see if I could buy electricity, I ran into a guy that knew Aileen’s friend Parker. Small world much? It was a little weird for a white guy to already know my name. And let’s be honest, I now stare at the white tourists just as much as the Batswana. But we talked for a few minutes and discovered we were both on our way to lunch, so he and his wife gave me a ride and we had lunch together at a little Botswana restaurant. They were thrilled to get to try real Botswana food, and I could at least explain what most of the choices were.  At the end they even paid for my meal, so all in all it was great! It was kind of funny to be with people that were like, wow, we’re in the real Africa!! This isn’t like Gabs! And I do understand where they are coming from, because if all you’ve known is the capital of a country, any country really, going into the rest of it, especially rural areas, will be quite different.  But itwas weird to hang out with them because all of my friends in Botswana are either Batswana, or pcvs, and the excitement of ‘we’re in Africa!’ has either worn off or was never there to begin with. This couple also went against advice and tried to take a small 4-door sedan on the dirt road past my village up to Khutse game reserve, and literally had to dig their car out of the sand a few times. Real Africa? Check.

So I’m hanging out in my new house, looking forward to next weekend, thankful for locking doors, good friends, and glad to be in ‘the real Africa’ J

And then Africa Happened

So after my nice cheery post about things going so well yesterday... Africa happened.  You could also call it Murphy's law, but yeah.
We called our driver who was supposed to be free to take us to the store and he was having the car serviced, which just turned out to be a big miscommunication because he didn't know we wanted him to be free.  Then at the mall when we were trying to buy food, my ATM card wouldn't work.  Ack!  I had specifically called my bank* to tell them to NOT shut off my card when I went to Ghana, and I was ticked.  Although I had a phone, I didn't have enough minutes to call the US to talk to them, and it wasn't working on Diana's phone either.   Then I tried online in an internet cafe and the online form wasn't working. Ticked ticked ticked.
Then Diana tried her card and the ATM... ate it.  !!!  When she went to the ATM's bank, they told her they would have to mail the card to her bank in the US, which will then contact her and mail it to her here.  This will probably take months.  Luckily her dad can cover her this summer.  Then I tried that bank's ATM... and my card worked!  So apparently it only works with certain ATMs?  At least it wasn't shut off.
Then there has been the water.
When we woke up the first morning at the University on the 2nd, we had no water because the tank had run out.    We were told not to worry that it wouldn't happen again.  Well yesterday the gardener somehow busted a pipe and they had to shut the water off again to fix it, which they managed to do in only a few hours.  Diana and I had decided to spend the night at her parents house anyway, and when we got there- their tank had run out also.  Seriously?  If there is a water god, I think we angered it somehow.

As a completely off topic side note, I graduated from high school 10 years ago yesterday.  And while I've had ups and downs since then... I had no clue on the day that I graduated that 10 years later I'd be in Africa- how cool :D

*The point of this is not to bad mouth my bank, which with the exception of an aggravating online form, did nothing wrong, so I won't mention it by name.

Mangos and roaches and cows, oh my!

I saw my very first HUGE roach a few minutes ago.  Diana said that when they fumigate the house, it clouds everywhere and roaches will come out to die.  Hopefully most of them will do that out of my eyesight :P

I'm still trying to get my body on Ghana time, but it really wants to wake up at noon and go to bed at 4am (there's a 4 hour time difference here).  This is sort of problematic as people go to bed around 11pm-12am and get up around 7am.  And the roosters get up way earlier.  At least I have these few days of downtime to sort out what time it is :)

Diana and her family live in a large single level house that is walled in, and there are lots of fruit trees in the compound.  I had fresh mango yesterday, and there are also coconut, cinnamon, and orange trees.  The neighbors have bananas, plantains, and tangerines.  It's like living in an orchard :)

Today after Diana's parents came back from Mass, we went to the PramPram beach about an hour from here. We picnicked and played in the sand and let 4-year old Kate splash in the water.  I learned a new card game that seems to be a combination of hearts and something else, playing with Diana's father and her brother Andy.  Also Diana, Andy and I played the spelling game on the way home where you start with a letter and the next person adds a letter, except we could only spell countries.  This might be a new way to get my uncles arguing over geography at Thanksgiving :)

And my first TIA- This is Africa- moment: Driving back from the beach today with the whole family (Diana, Andy, sister Nat, her mom and Dad, neice Kate, and me).  We stopped at a toll at dusk, went under a bridge on a major highway, and Diana goes, COW!  cow cow cow!!! and we swerve to miss several large cows meandering across the road, and then look behind us hoping no one else hit them either.  And everyone in the car starts going, they should NOT be crossing the road there...