Thankful Saturday, Ooooof Week Edition

 Oof, this week has been a doozy. A proposal, worrying about Luna, and then mom wound up in the hospital yesterday because she was really dehydrated. While this is not going to go in my top ten list of weeks in my life that I have enjoyed, there are still things to be grateful for.

1. I have amazing friends that checked on me all week and all day yesterday while we figured out mom in the ER. I cannot say enough good things about my people.

2. Health care and good nurses and doctors. They kept mom comfortable, even fed her in the ER, and were very thorough in figuring out what was going on (mostly dehydration).

3. Mom's care team at Sunrise. They communicated great all week and made the right call to take mom to the hospital yesterday. I know she's in good hands today back at Sunrise.

4. Fun coworkers. Its not fun to be working on a proposal (or anything work related) all weekend, but we had a fun group chat as we reviewed everything, complete with many gifs and emojis.

5. Luna seems to be doing better. She's still not 100% herself, but she's mostly eating and sometimes walking.

6. Beautiful spring colors! Even in a rough week, it helps that everything is bright green and in bloom outside.

Thankful Thursday, Hard week edition

 This has been a rough week to be honest. Something is up with Luna and she doesn't want to walk or really go outside, so we are headed to the vet tomorrow. I have a proposal due at work next week, so this week has been full of meetings. I haven't been able to see mom in over a week because of busy-ness like work and taxes. Someone I know just entered hospice and another friend might be saying goodbye to a beloved pet. And its April 16th, and the memories of the Virginia Tech tragedy linger, with the addition of the terrible news of the former lieutenant governor of Virginia killing his wife and then himself late last night. Its a lot. 

In the midst of all this, there are still things to be grateful for, and I do try to look for them even when I'm sad and overwhelmed.

• My azaleas are blooming spectacularly, a blaze of color in my yard.
• It's been really warm the last few days and I had a lovely evening reading in my hammock tonight
• I think I really like Terry Pratchett. Mort is the first book I've read in Disc World, and I'm excited that there are so many others to read. 
• I got to volunteer at an indy bookstore in Annapolis last Saturday, helping them sort and shelve books for several hours. 
• I had a really fun evening with Garth and Karen and Kate and Garth's friends on Friday night celebrating his birthday. I think we stayed at that whiskey bar for 5 hours lol
• I got some short hikes in with Luna on Friday and Sunday. I hope I didn't injure her in the process, but at the time we both enjoyed the warm but not hot weather that was perfect for hiking.

Current work mood lol

House guests and potential roommates

Living in the bush, I get a fair amount of creatures in my house. By far the most common are ants, spiders resembling daddy long legs, and house flies. The latter is the most annoying by far. I've also killed 2 scorpions and a few bigger spiders, without stopping to photograph them ;)

But some of the larger things that have tried to move in with me include: 

Curious baby goats

Setotojanes, or corn crickets

various lizards, possibly living in my suitcase

a preying mantis

a bat

a non poisonous whip snake, which involved calling my neighbors to help me find it and get rid of it

a mouse

and a bird that got lost in bathroom, with lots of resultant flapping.

All creatures made it out alive except the snake and the mouse. People here kill all snakes, and the mouse had already died because I sprayed too much doom trying to get rid of some ants. Most things I was happy to live and let live, just you know, not in my house. 

The hardest thing

I came back from 2 weeks of Peace Corps training yesterday, to a house that was a little sandy and full of dead bugs.  Apparently my mosquito net functions even when I’m not using it. I was exhausted when I got back, from traveling for close to 7 hours with way too much stuff; I had to bring clothes for 2 weeks (really 1 and laundry soap), laptop, chargers, shoes… and then Peace Corps gave me a ton of training materials.  Which is good, except I had to carry it all home.  I was also exhausted from training itself; we covered a LOT of stuff, it was emotionally and mentally exhausting, and now I’m back by myself at my site.  So I went to bed super early and slept almost 12 hours.

And now I’m taking a chill day, marathoning Harry Potter movies and listening to the rain.  Then while I was in another room, a woman walked into my kitchen and almost took stuff except that I discovered her, having heard doors opening and closing.  She didn’t speak English, but I made it very clear that this was NOT okay, and that she needed to leave.  And I got my keys, locked all the doors as she kept speaking in Setswana or Sekalagadi, the latter I think, and then shut myself inside and locked the door. Ugh.

And I as I sat listening to the rain, I asked myself for the hundredth time what the hell I’m doing here, and is it really worth it.  Maybe I’ve been lying to myself that I like my village, because I’m sure not having warm fuzzy feelings about it right now.

And then I realized that it’s that I don’t have any friends here.  I don’t really feel welcome.  I don’t really feel unwelcome either, except when people are asking for stuff, or like today, physically trying to take my stuff.  I feel slightly welcomed at Lempu by the teachers, but the village on a whole kind of feels like a collective shrug.  I came home yesterday wondering if anyone knew that I was gone. 

Some people are nice to me, some are rude, and most don’t care.   I don’t really have friends yet.  And I think that’s the hardest thing right now.  It’s not the village itself, its remoteness, or weather, or the goats.  It’s just feeling like an outsider, still.  I got a lot of training the past few days and a bit of a better idea of what I can do here work-wise.  But what I want and miss the most is friends.  I think they will come, but it will take lots of time.  So I guess I get to work on patience and being out-going, even if I feel like hibernating when people demand I give them things.

I don’t really know how to end this well, except to say that my village and I are a work in progress :P

Ministry of Magic

I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom, typing by the light of the only light bulb that currently works in my little house.  The electricity is currently on, which also means I have the gentle breeze of my fan keeping me cool.  The rain has let up in recent days and its heated back up again during the day.

I found out 2 days ago that my bed was actually a temporary loan from a neighbor, who was told the ministry of education would be providing me furniture within a week. Er, or several months it looks like.  So I bought a foam mattress to sleep on and returned my bed to its rightful owner.  We’ll see how I sleep tonight.

The rest of my furniture: stove, chairs, table- are on loan from my school, and I can keep them for the two years I’m here.  I can’t use the stove because I also have no gas tank, so I’m using a borrowed hotplate.  I don’t think that will be repossessed, but I’m not sure.

Internally, I've been very frustrated with Peace Corps and the ministry of education lately, but somehow losing my bed has forced me out of the denial/anger/sadness/mostly anger into acceptance.  Peace Corps is bureaucracy, but they have my back on important things like my safety if I push them.  The ministry of education is bureaucracy on steroids and I will never believe a word they say again.  Today they proved incompetent at using a fax machine. So if they never show up with a bed, I’m okay with that.  If they randomly repossess my refrigerator, the only thing they have given me, I’ll deal.  If they take 12+ months to pay my rent and I get evicted, I’ll call Peace Corps and have them sort it out.

This probably sounds like I’m really angry, but I’m actually not.  I’m just stating reality and getting used to it.  It’s the same reality facing my school.  There are missing teachers, not enough supplies, etc.  All things the ministry promises but never provides.  But they say they will, so if you go looking for them elsewhere it’s not okay, and it’s hard to battle an organization that says it’s on your side but constantly lies due to incompetency.

Please don’t think I don’t like Botswana, or the people (Batswana), or my village, or my school, or my landlord, or the people I interact with in Peace Corps.  None of this is their fault. (Well, a small amount of blame maybe to Peace Corps for not having more of this sorted out before we went to site.  But they were short staffed, and battling the same ridiculous bureaucracy, and they are fighting battles for me, so not sending much blame/angst their direction.)  It’s just frustrating to see all of the flaws in the system and not be able to do anything.

But.  I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I work at the grassroots level, not at the top.  So I’ll work with the teachers I have, with the supplies available, and hang out with students.  I have blackboards and chalk, old but functioning computers in the computer lab, and plenty of open space to play games.  I have teachers wanting me to do things with them and school administrators that care. 

 As frustrated as I’ve been/am, I’m trying not to miss the forest for the trees.  This country has been independent for less than 50 years.  In that time, they have built roads, schools, and hospitals.  Their government, although parts are filled with bureaucracy, isn’t corrupt.  The country is peaceful.  There are schools, and kids are in them, even if they aren’t learning as much as we’d like.  There are clinics, and people receive medicine at them, even if there are shortages of medicines occasionally doctors.  There are roads, and people get around, even if there are transport problems and lots of accidents.   I’ll expand on my thoughts on development in another post.

Botswana really does seem to be going in the right direction, and I’m glad I’m here.  Even if I have to deal with the ministry of magic, er, I mean education, from time to time.

Rinse Cycle

So I knew it would be hard to explain my two years of Peace Corps service to people that have never experienced it.  What I wasn’t prepared for was how draining pre-service training would be, and how it’s really hard to explain the insanity factor to people who haven’t experienced it.

I feel like I’m in a washing machine.  Everyone tells you it’s a good thing, you are going to get clean and ready to be used.  Woo!  Except you don’t realize how long the wash cycle takes.  It’s a lot of fun in the beginning when you are tossed in with all of these other people along for the ride, and you don’t think much about the water filling up until you are spinning around.  And even that is fun in the beginning, until you begin to get a little seasick from the spinning and the close quarters and the constant reminders that you aren’t clean yet but you will be if you hang in there.

And sometimes the spin cycle pauses and you are thankful for the lull, and then you begin to go stir crazy from the lack of movement.  And then you start spinning again and think, thank God, something is happening!  Except then it won’t stop and it’s so repetitive. Spin, pause.  Spin, pause.  And throughout the whole process you are aware that it will end soon, but not soon enough, but when it does you’ll miss being close to everyone, even if your introverted tendencies are not happy about being submerged for this long, thank you very much.

Also you begin to wonder if the whole process is actually worth anything, because you are pretty sure they forgot to add soap, so you’ll have to clean yourself when you get to site anyway.  Currently you are just soggy and slightly seasick.

Then you realize they did put in something like soap, but it’s not actually soap- so it won’t get you as clean as you want and need to be, and you’ll probably have to scrub it off at site later.  It also burns your eyes at inopportune moments.  Those frustrations on top on of the spinning and closeness makes you want to jump out of the washer not infrequently.

At this point, we are counting the days until we are done soaking and spinning and are clean enough to swear in as Peace Corps volunteers.  At which point we’ll go to our sites and find all the stuff that pre-service training didn't wash out or prepare us for and be frustrated all over again.  But we’ll be free of the washer for a while at least.

I don’t know if this made sense at all.  Sometimes I feel like I really am going crazy.  If I ever see another flipchart again, I might do something drastic.  Then again, I helped come up with a rap yesterday about taking malaria prophylaxis, so the drastic might already be happening :P