Saturday we went to a village about 45 minutes from Kanye that I guess is sort of a tourist attraction?  They danced for us, had us dance with them, and told us a lot about traditional cultures and practices.  At the end we had lunch there, so I know that PC must have paid them for our visit.
The dancing and singing was really fun to watch, and I hope I can get some people to teach me when I get to my site.  I don't have high hopes for my dancing abilities, but I'd really love to learn some of the songs I've heard in church and when people are working.  Some remind me of the spirituals that are sang in the American south from the time of slavery.  (I know that sounds like a duh since I'm in Africa, but most slaves that were taken from Africa that wound up in America were taken from central and west africa, not southern africa.)
Anyway, the dancers made different people in our group dance with them at different times, including the 'grandfathers', 'grandmothers', and Luis, the only guy in our group under 30.  Then the guys in the dancing group picked girls to dance with, and then we mock married Katy, one of our group, to the chiefs son.  This was complete with her getting to dance with the women a few songs (including one called 'I have a headache'), getting an additional skirt and shawl to wear over her clothes, and having a 'honeymoon' in a traditional hut.  The last thing was hilarious because after they were led into the hut, the older women in our group were invited to peak in the window to 'make sure everything was going ok'.  Apparently this really used to happen, the grandmas spied on the honeymoon to make sure things were happening. :P  The whole thing was funny and slightly awkward and Katy was a really good sport.
We also got a chance to grind some sorghum to make a porridge that's a breakfast food, and buy some jewelry made in the village.  I got a neat necklace with beads that are the colors of the Botswana flag.
After we got back from the cultural visit we had free time, so about half of our group hung out in a cafe in Kanye that we've found called Kohai.

Tomorrow I leave for Ghanzi for a few days, so hopefully I can update in a week about those adventures :)

I’ve found internet that’s easier to access, so hopefully I can post more often.  At least for the duration of training.  I realize that I should probably back up a bit and explain a little bit of how Peace Corps works, since I know most people aren’t familiar with the process.

When you apply to Peace Corps, you tell them all of your skills and background and they roughly try to place you somewhere where you can use those skills and experience (very roughly.  More on that in another post).  The application process is a completely separate beast that I’m not going to go into here :P  Once they tell you where you are going, you have the opportunity to accept your invitation or decide not to go.  I got my invite in May after I graduated.  Then there’s a whole bunch more paperwork that goes back and forth between you and PC, until the day arrives that you leave.

When you leave home you go to some city in the US for staging, to meet the rest of the people going to your country at the same time.  A lot of people might not know this, but PC sends people to countries in batches.  So my staging was in Philadelphia with 34 other people going to Botswana to be Life Skills volunteers (more on the life skills stuff later).   We meet each other and more paperwork ensues.  After getting talked at a bunch we basically didn’t sleep and began the process of getting here, via a bus to New York, flying to South Africa, then Gaborone (affectionately known as Gabs for short), then taking a bus to Kanye.

Kanye is our training site.  Each of the 34 of us (one person has gone home already) live with a host family to learn Setswana and local culture and customs (unless you are married then you are placed together).  M-F and some parts of Saturday, the 34 of us have training at a local education center.  This is what I mentioned last time, where we get sessions on health, safety, language, local culture, HIV/AIDS, and eventually what we are doing in schools.  At this point, we are actually not Peace Corps volunteers yet.  We are Peace Corps trainees, in the Bots13 class (you’ll hear me mention that a LOT).  Once we finish training we swear in as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) on November 15^th, at which point we then go to our sites.

So I’m currently a Bots13 PC trainee in the middle of pre-service training (PST).  Have you picked up that PC really likes acronyms? J   There are currently 3 other bots groups here as current volunteers.  Bots 12 came in April, Bots 11 came a year ago in September, and Bots 10 came April 2011, so they only have about 6 months left.  Bots 9 left this past June.  Keep in mind that people think of Peace Corps as a 2 year commitment, but it’s actually 26-27 months, because your training (that I’m currently in) doesn’t count towards your 2 years of service.  I’m sure I’ll go into lots of other PC stuff in future posts.

Next week we have a break from M-F training and we get to shadow current volunteers for a few days.  I leave at 4:30am for Ghanzi (pronounced hanzi, most Gs are silent in Setswana) for 4 days, and I’m super excited.  I’m excited to actually be with a volunteer, and to see more of the country; Ghanzi is pretty far west- look near the Namibia border if you are trying to find it on a map.  I also know that our training class Bots13 will have sites within several hours of Gabs and not be as far as where I’m going next week, so yay for getting to go farther for a few days!  The 8-hour bus ride is not on my list of favorite things, but at least its just one bus I think.  I’ll give a full report in a week or 2.

Once again, leave a comment if you have questions!

Some questions and answers, courtesy of my mom and others:

Does your host family speak English?  
Yes!  I'm very lucky they speak it so well, and they are helping me with my Setswana as well.  I've  told the 8-year old that she is my tutor and she helps me pronounce words :)  Although my host mom's children are grown, the children of some cousins are often over/spending the night, so there's usually 3 kids ages 6, 7 and 8 around.  There's also some other older cousins that hang around, I've not figured out the family relations of everyone yet.

Are you the first PCV she has housed?  I think I'm the 3rd.

Is the "plumbing" indoors or out?  
Its actually both?  The house is 'wired' for plumbing.  The toilet works, but the sink in the bathroom doesn't because the pipes leak.  The laundry room sink and the kitchen sink work, but the kitchen sink leaks a bit.  The spout in the bathtub leaks a LOT so it's not usually hooked up.  Bathing is from a bucket of water, some of which I heat on the stove so its warm.  Actual bath is inside in the tub.  Laundry is in tubs outside. Dishes are in the sink but with minimal water.  There is a standpipe outside to fill buckets. Water is scarce here because its the desert, so even if the water runs, it's usually turned off.  They also have a pit latrine if the water is completely shut off, which happened last night for a few hours. Water is drinkable from the tap in most places including my house.

How do you get to your training meetings and to other places like the Mall where internet is located?  
I walk to training, about 30 minutes.  There are also some buses that the PC has to take us places- they are called combis here.  To get to the mall I usually take a cabs, its about 60 cents.

How is the food?  Do you eat most meals with your family?  
Food is good.
Have had an upset stomach one day but really pretty good all things considering.  Lots of stews and heavy starches.  Rice, pasta once for my lunch, something akin to dumplings, and a lot of white stuff with the consistency of grits with no taste.

How long are your training meetings?  What are you discussing/learning?
We have training 8:30-4:30 M-F with an hour off for lunch, and Saturday it varies.  Tomorrow its 9-11 I think.  We have a lot of language training, cross cultural training, safety training, PC values, and how to do jobs at
site.  We haven't hit that last one much yet but its coming.  This week for example we've had about 9 hours of language, food/water safety, intro to using the medical unit here, individual medical consultations and starting
vaccines, sexual assault awareness, how to prevent crime, learned games to play with kids, learned some of our roles as a volunteer (trainer, facilitator, learner, mentor, etc).  Lots of different things broken up into 2 hours sessions, except that sometimes language class can be longer.

You sound really busy!
I'm pretty busy, but I have a fair amount of downtime at night.  Usually I can read a little before bed.  The sun goes down at 6-6:30 and I haven't been out after dark.  I usually go to bed around 9, because the roosters go off at 6am and they have no snooze alarm :P

Other random things: 
My 'mom' (we are supposed to call our host family mom, sister, brother, etc.)  is a counselor in our village, which is a political position. Everyone knows her and shes very busy.  Our training group went to a local village counsel this last week and she was there :)  I also went to church with her on Sunday, which was from about 11- 3.
Then there was a meal afterwards so we got home around 4.  I think I might try church every other week, and do laundry this week instead. My sister showed me how to wash clothes last sunday after church, so I'll try with my own this week :) The weather has been really nice here.  It's cool in the morning and at night, and warm during the day.  I think its about to get really hot, but its nice for now.  I have used my sleeping bag, so I'm very glad I brought it.

If you have other questions leave them in the comment section and I'll try to answer them in the future!

We made it safely to Botswana, and I'm beginning to recover from jet
lag.  We left Philly at 3am Wed. morning and arrived in Botswana around noon on Thursday.  We spent Thursday night in a lodge in Gaborone getting lots of information from PC staff and current volunteers, and then I crashed-
not sleeping for almost 3 days made me more tired than I've been since at least college.
Yesterday we rode a bus to Kanye where we live for training.  After some more information sessions we met our host families.  My host mom has 4 grown children that are all here for the weekend.  I haven't figured out if they live here perminently.  The daughter lives in Gaborone and comes home on the weekends, and has an adorable 10-month old baby.  The house is nice with electricity and plumbing, but currently no running water. We can flush the toilet with buckets of water, and they have a separate barrel of water for drinking, as opposed to washing and flushing toilets.  Tonight I'll figure out how to take a bucket bath- I'll let you know how that goes*. I have my own room that locks- a PC requirement, which is nice and I can sleep pretty well.  I don't think I'll ever sleep through the roosters though.  I swear this morning it sounded like one was IN the kitchen.
We had some more training this morning and then a free afternoon, so my friend Sarah and I took a cab to the mall (which is pretty close) to buy a few things and use the internet cafe.  She got lost lost walking home from the training center, and I got lost walking out to the highway, but we eventually found each other and got a cab.
For now, I think I'll post here about once a week, unless I find some other internet. I have a phone, but I'm not sure how to call long distance yet without it costing more than a dollar a minute (yikes).  Facebook also loads really weird in this cafe, so I might miss something if you post it on my wall.  E-mail is your best bet if you really need to reach me.
The address I have up on the blog will reach me, and I haven't gotten a better one yet, so mail things to the Gaborone address if you are so inclined.
The weather here is gorgeous, its like early-ish spring.  Very cool at night and warm during the day.  I know it will get very hot soon, so I'm enjoying it while I can!
So far Botswana is great, both the people and the country.  I start serious language training on Tuesday, and will then hopefully know more than 3 words in Setswana.  My Botswana name is Lesayho, which means luck.
Go siame! (goodbye!)


*I promise not to give you too much information on bathing and sanitation here :P

I leave for Botswana (by way of Philadelphia, New York, and South Africa) in less than 2 days!  Eek!  I'm currently trying to tie up loose ends and make sure my luggage isn't overweight.

As soon as I figure out a mailing address during training I will post that here.  For the time being, e-mail is the best way to reach me, although I won't have a lot of access to that during training.  Assume for a while that no news is good news :)

7 Quick Takes

1.  I'm at the beach again.  I think this is the 5th time I've been at the beach this summer, albeit 2 of those times were only for a few hours each.  No tropical storms crashing the party as of yet.

2.  I'm going to Botswana in less than a month! 

3. It's kind of hard to pack for 2+ years when I really don't know what to expect there.  I'm stocking up on a few things I'm not sure I'll have access to there like quality shoes, and hoping I can find whatever else I need there.

4.  Mom and I have worked on sorting every cluttered room in the house.  None of them are completely junk free yet, but the crypt is 3/4 organized, the furnished part of the basement is about 2/3 organized, the garage is organized except for 2 shelves, and we cleared 2 desks in the office.  There is still a lot of junk to deal with, but we've made a LOT of progress!

5. I bought myself a netbook and am attempting to adjust to a smaller keyboard.  Here's to travel-sized electronics :)

6.  I think I'm also going to break down and get a kindle too.

7.  I'm in this country until 9/11/2012, so please give me a call/e-mail if you want to hang out before then!!

It’s 6:15 and I’m not at the beach.  I’m sitting in my apartment for almost the last night, surrounded by piles of boxes and things that should be in boxes.  I’m coming off the high of a church retreat and the low of the reality that I’m leaving so many people I love, again.  When I look at my life, I don’t feel like I’ve actually moved that much.  Not counting the bagillion places I lived within Blacksburg, I’ve lived in 3 places during my almost 29 years.  It feels like I’ve said so many more goodbyes though.  At the end of every summer in high school, I had to say goodbye to the summer interns and face the reality that the summer couldn’t last forever.  I changed schools and said goodbye to friends multiple times.  I graduated, from 3 schools now, and each time left a group of friends to scatter to the wind.  I’ve been on multiple short and long trips ending with goodbyes and the reality that that I knew I’d never see all of those people again all in the same place.  It’s not that anyone died, but there was a change.  The group dynamic is greater than the sum of the people.

I knew coming to Atlanta that this was most likely only for two years.  I wasn’t sure how attached I’d get, and I was planning on doing the Peace Corps from the beginning.  I’m not doubting my Peace Corps decision (at least not yet), but I do want to take about 75 people with me, from school and church.  I’m actually not that much a fan of the city of Atlanta itself, but I’d live here permanently in a heartbeat if I knew I’d have this community of friends.

I can come back after Peace Corps.  I’d like to.  I hope to.  But not everyone will be here.  The dynamic will undoubtedly be different.  The babies will be in preschool.  More of my friends will have phDs and will probably be working somewhere else in the country.  I’ll be different, after 2 years in Africa.

And none of that is bad.  It’s just different, and it’s change.  And I kind of hate change, even though I grudgingly admit that without it I wouldn’t be here, and none of the amazing things I’d experienced in my life would have happened without it.  But right now I just want to grab hold of my life and cling to it for a minute, and I feel like time is rushing on instead.

It’s my decision to leave.  I could stay and try to find a job here.   I think in the long run I’d be upset with myself for not doing Peace Corps, because at the same time I am excited about that.   And I’m thankful I made the leap to move here from Blacksburg and go to grad school, even though I was unsure at the time that it was the right decision.

The Pollyanna in me knows that missing people is an indication of how blessed I am, that I have people to miss, good times to remember, and new opportunities to look forward to.  But every time something changes, I always go through a hard transition where I’m sad that I can’t be with everyone I love at the same time.  That sounds like a lot to ask, except that I feel like that desire is so wired in me that it’s not really my fault.  I think a part of me periodically longs for heaven, where I will not be missing anyone.

Somehow I’ve gotten through graduation and the Last Call Retreat without crying on anyone.  I think that’s because it hadn’t hit me at graduation that we were done, and the tropical storm on the retreat sort of distracted me.   But if you are reading this, Atlanta people, know that you mean the world to me, and it’s really, really hard for me to leave.  Please keep in touch!