Delta pictures!

I finally got some decent internet and uploaded a bunch of pictures from the delta to my Shakawe post. Scroll down or click here to see them :)
http://travelinghokie.blogspot.com/2013/04/shakawe-marathon.html

Scenes from my porch

Usually when kids come over to my house, they either play with my soccer ball or color on my porch.  

So my porch often looks like this.  I like it when I have between two and four kids coloring.  Sometimes I'll try to talk with them or sketch as they color and jabber.  More than 5 is a little overwhelming.  Sometimes I've had my porch colonized by like 11 kids attempting to "share" 1 coloring book.  I don't know how to say in Setswana that sometimes the kids in my village have a mob mentality :P

But the other day about 6 girls showed up with long wool strings and played a fantastic jumping game. 

You can't hardly see the string/wool they are jumping over, but they jump and clip it with their feet and bring it down to a place they can get over it. So little kids can get over a 4 foot rope.

They almost always land on their feet, and they have amazing style and form while jumping.

The girls friends look like its no big deal that she's got a 2-foot aerial right there.

And sometimes I swear they can defy gravity. My village kids might actually be ninjas.

And this is KT, my neighbor's dog. He comes by when I'm cooking to get leftovers and scraps.  And I might have bought him dog food. I promise I'm not actually trying to kidnap my neighbors dog.  Just fatten him up a little bit. He's a sweetheart. 

So this also happens sometimes, even though I try to have a, 'no kids in the house and no dogs on the porch' rule =)

The Kings Foundation

Last Tuesday I had a guy from the Kings Foundation come to my village.  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Victor to post here, but he was great.  The Kings Foundation is a Christian UK charity that uses sports to reach and teach kids in the UK and multiple countries in Africa.  Although they are a christian organization, their main idea-  that kids are valuable and important-  is a universal idea, so they will partner with lots of non-religious organizations, including Peace Corps.  KF runs lots of camps in the UK and South Africa for kids using sports.  They then in turn use a lot of the money made at those camps to buy sports equipment to distribute to rural areas in Africa, and train people how to use it. http://www.kingsvolunteer.org/

Enter my village.  Victor came Tuesday and trained 6 teachers- 4 from my school and 2 from the primary school, 9 community police volunteers, and 6 other community members in how to engage kids, run games with and without sports equipment, and then gave us a whole bag of sports equipment for our village.

This is a ninja game, and the community police volunteers really got into it.

Passing the hula hoops down the line.

All ages love parachute games. 

I should have taken a picture of the base pack- that's what they call the packs they donate.  It's got a soccer ball, 4 tennis balls, jump ropes, cones, arm bands (so you know who is on your team), frisbees, 3 hula hoops (that can also be destructed into pieces for relays), bean bags, a parachute, and a first aid kit. It. is. AWESOME.  And even more awesome is that there are now 20 people in my village that have played with the equipment and know that it's at my house.  Here's hoping we can have some game days in the future!

Month of Youth Against AIDS

 This is some back-blogging, because describing this without pictures would have been a bit boring. March is designated Youth Against AIDS month, and my school picked March 25th to celebrate with sort of an all-day assembly.  It was after their term final exams, so there wasn't much to do in class anyway.

This is all of the students gathered in the big hall.

Between each 'act' there was an impromptu dance party on and near the stage.

 About 17 different students and student groups sang, danced, rapped, spoke, or demonstrated sports moves, all with the theme of Vision 2016: Zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS related deaths, and zero discrimination.  This was a singing and dancing group.

More dancing than singing with this group.

Traditional dancers getting ready.

Traditional dance! They were really good.

One of my PACT club kids giving a speech.

Another of my PACT club kids as MC.

Guys dance group. Dancing is huge here- all types. 

3-man dance group.

Karate club demonstration.

Boxing club demonstration.

The coolest part of this day was that I didn't do hardly anything to get it together.  My counterpart and I got together with the PACT club to go over logistics, but the kids found all of the student groups to perform.  A great end to my first term here. 

Things that happened today

Text message at 7:16am. Grump grump.  It was important, but today's a holiday. And... I'm up.

Waited to leave my house until the dipapata lady set up shop in the field next to me.  Instant breakast.
Missed hanging out with a teacher at school in the library due to said laziness.  Bummer.

Lent out my soccer ball and coloring book to 2 kids.

Wrote for a bit.
Water colored for a bit.
Finger painted for a bit.
Hid from children during this time.

Had the following conversation via text message with Aileen:
M: I just did an abstract watercolor of peace corps and or ministry of education. Clearly I have too much free time.
A: I am assuming there's a lot of red and vague hints of teeth in this painting. And yeah, we have too much time.
M: No actually it looks more like a tragic circus.
A: Also accurate.

There's no point to this post except to say that sometimes my life is really random.

a MUCH better week

This week turned out much better than last week, due to it being the 2nd week of school and things finding a rhythm, cool people, and you know, things didn't explode in the US.

Highs
- I'm now an assistant volleyball coach!  And it's a lot of fun.  I didn't realize how much I've missed volleyball until I was around it this week.  I also didn't realize how long it's been since I actually PLAYED volleyball, and I need to not injure myself =P
- I met with the PACT club at the primary school and had fun teaching them Kingdom, Wisdom, Condom, with lots of resulting giggles and enthusiasm
- Aileen (another PCV near to me) and I talked to the ENTIRE student body about HIV facts and myths.  This could also fall under challenges, but for the most part it went pretty good.  In other news, my school could use a bull horn for such events =P
- 2 of my fellow PCVs have asked me to help them with workshops in May and June- yay for being productive! (and getting to visit friends)
- getting to know a few more teachers, and I got invited to one of their houses to meet their adorable 2 year old =)
- bumped into some fellow volunteers on my shopping trip in Moleps
- my mom and friend booked their plane tickets to come see me in July!!

Lows
- No real lows- at least none in the category of things exploding in the US or animals dying on me during desert hurricanes.

Challenges
- I didn't get to meet with my Lempu PACT club this week because I couldn't figure out when to meet with them- sports have sort of taken over the world this term.  So I need to keep pushing for a time to meet and chase down some kids this next week.
- Still feeling like I don't know very many students.  A lot of this is because of the language barrier. So I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and attempt to hang out with them during some free time during the school day.  It'll be super awkward at first, but maybe some conversations will happen.

Hopes
- I have a teacher interested in starting an English club with me at Lempu- really hoping we can find a time and some interested kids!
- Potential to read with/help out in some classes at the primary school
- Methinks I've lined up 2 interesting groups to come and do stuff with my students and teachers- more on that when the events take place

Randomness
- We randomly pulled students for a blood donation workshop, trying to promote students to participate in blood drives. They all jumped and squealed when the speaker pulled out the needle and blood bag they use though...
- I've started feeding my neighbors dog.  And by that I mean I actually bought dog food. We'll see where this goes...
- One of my teachers saw me making a poster for the HIV presentation and now wants me to help him design a visual aide of the reproductive system of a chicken
- I saw a botswana squirrel for the first time.  It looks like someone stuck a squirrel tail on a small ferret.

Shakawe Marathon

I'll add pictures to this post when I go to Gabs sometime and get better interwebs!
5/11/2013 - Done!

So at the end of last month a bunch of PCVs and I went north to Shakawe.  Several PCVs there had organized a half marathon, 5km fun run, and health fair following the runs, all to raise money for a mobile clinic to reach areas without a clinic or health post.

We stayed with the PCVs there- there were 3-4 hosting PCVs, and about 30 of us came.  So, we colonized their floors, guest rooms, and make a little tent city in their yards.  Our country director Tim and his family also came, and he and his wife ran the half marathon.  I jogged/mostly walked the 5km, which wound up being a 10km because the turn-around was in the wrong place.  We also walked to and from the marathon from various houses, so I'm pretty sure I walked more like 13km that day.

 The start of the half marathon.

 The health fair was fun, several people did face painting, I did a little booth on clean water and hand-washing (conveniently located next to an NGO from the delta region that had an awesome booth on conservation and sanitation- yeah making contacts!), and a booth on gender based violence.  There were also organizations doing HIV testing and counseling, blood pressure screenings, and some other health screenings and info booths.

 Face Painting

Gender-based violence booth.

 There was lots of speeches, dancing, and some food- in true Botswana fashion.

The next day was Easter, and about 15 of us went to Tsodilo hills, a world heritage site with hundreds of rock paintings that are thousands of years old.  We were all a little sore from the day before, but I was so happy to be hiking and climbing!  The paintings were really neat and I took tons of pictures.

 Hiking!

 3000+ year old rock paintings

An incredible view after climbing.

The next 3 days I spent hanging out in the delta with a bunch of people. 

  Lots of boatrides,

 we saw crocodiles, 

we may have swam in crocodile and schisto infested waters,

we camped,

hiked, all together drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol, and generally frolicked :)  

I didn't see any hippos, but we heard them at night because they grunt.

Sunset on the delta.

All in all, it was a fantastic first vacation in Bots.  Lots of friends, some animals, hiking, boating, good food, and getting out of my village.  The only downside was lots of traveling time, but we travel cheap that way so I can't complain!

Hopefully will update with pics soon!   Edit 5/11/2013 Now with pictures!