Mid-Service Training

This past week my group, Bots 13, had our mid-service training in Gabs.

We had actual training Wed-Fri, but there was also a lot of hanging out.

Interactive planning and evaluation sessions.

You know you are a PCV when...

It was great to see a lot of my friends that I don't see very often because our villages are far apart.

We got to eat a lot of good food, and had a little party at the end.

Some awesome peoples

They drew microphones on their fingers :)

There was dancing

Steph might kill me for posting this.

All in all, a fun week in the capital with friends.

Our group doesn't even pretend to be normal anymore :)  

And some of us are giving the hunger games salute, not saluting Hitler. Just fyi :)

Thanksgiving

 I didn't exactly have a traditional Thanksgiving.

My school had a staff wellness day on Wednesday, but the food didn't come on time, so we had the food on Thanksgiving.

So I got a Thanksgiving feast of Setswana food.

My teachers thought it was funny that I wanted my picture taken with my plate of food.

Seswa (pounded beef), coleslaw, beet, potato salad, and rice.

I also got to talk to my dad's entire side of the family on Thursday night, because they had dinner at my mom's house. That made my day/week/month.

After the AIDS walk on Saturday, I went to my friend Luis' village for a more traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of other PCVs. We had a ton of food, including turkey, Jambalaya, veggies, mac'n'cheese, and 2 pies. It was amazing. 

There was also a baby cow on Luis' compound. 

Apparently it's mom died so the family is trying to bottle feed it until it's big enough to stay with the herd. Currently it's about the size of a dog. We named it Mooster. Mooster liked to follow us everywhere, including in the house, which is a problem since he's not house-broken. (I mean, he is a cow.) So we keep hearing/yelling "Cow!! Cow out of the house!!"  Mooster also has a habit of sneaking up behind you and sticking his face between your legs trying to nurse. This makes sense, as that is where vows keep their milk. But for humans it's a little disconcerning and hilarious to watch. 

Mooster

Sunday morning we took a tour of Luis' village, starting with the 1000 year old Baobab tree. 

We also saw some one-two thousand year old rock paintings.

Giraffes!

His village is really pretty.  After the rock paintings most of us headed to Gabs for medical stuff before our training later in the week.

World AIDS Day March

I visited a couple of PCVs in Thamaga (Ta-ma-ha) on November 30th and went to their World AIDS day march. World AIDS day is officially December 1st, but there are usually events all over the country for a few days before and after,  especially since it fell on a Sunday this year,

Botswana has a vision for 2016, when the country will be 50 years old. No new HIV infections, no AIDS related deaths (get everyone ARVs who needs them), and no HIV related stigma.

Sandy, Jorge and I made the cardboard signs the night before and different people carried them. 

We walked for a little under an hour, so maybe a few kilometers through Thamaga.

It was a small but committed group, and I think we made enough noise and slowed down traffic enough that people took notice. 

Jorge was the official photographer.

When you are tackling a problem as big as HIV, in a country where almost 25% of the population is infected, and everyone is affected, you do lots of things, big and small, and hope they add up to make a difference.

The Baby Goat Files

Baby goat!

Mom and baby.

Hewwo.

Got anything good in there?

Surprise! I'm small enough to squeeze through your gate!

You have shade. We are going to hang out in your shade.

Oh hai.

Cutie.

Mama goat

Curiosity 

My guard goat.

Surprise! Ima sheep. And I'm working on the whole standing thing.

Pretty sure I'm one day old in this picture.

Butting heads behind my house.

Formal goat gatherings in my backyard.

Hi.

Mom and baby.

Rocking the beard.

A pile of sheep.

Gender Camp!

So I had the idea to do a two-day day camp at my school way back in August, when we were planning out the school term. The form 3 students take their end of school exams in October and are done and gone by the first week of November.  The form 1 and 2 students take their end of the year exams in November and then have about a week where they have to be at school but they really do nothing, because the teachers are busy grading. So, I thought I could use some of that time to sort of blitz them with information through a camp, and not have to worry about food/sleeping arrangements/transport/bathing this time around.

Me and one of my volleyball girls.

The camp wound up being for Form 2s (all 240ish of them), and we did sessions on gender, gender based violence, gender and power, reproductive health, healthy relationships, and contraception.  It was also during the 16 days of activism against gender based violence, so we gave the kids an opportunity to sign a pledge against GBV and gave out white ribbons. I had 6 other volunteers helping me, so we each had a session. I only did my gender and power game with about half of the kids, but that's okay. All of the other sessions were done for all of the classes, and I consider that a huge success.

The frustrating part was that my school and guidance and counseling committee was supportive of me as I planned the camp, but then gave me no support DURING the camp. I didn't mind planning it and having other volunteers come and facilitate sessions, but I wanted teachers in the classrooms for translation, cultural sensitivity, and crowd control. And that didn't happen at all- we did the entire thing ourselves as PCVs. Which, was super super frustrating  and I really wanted to just walk out the first day because things were so badly planned/not planned at all on the school's part. But, then I saw my friends playing games with like 80 kids and the kids were having a ball, so we decided to just do it ourselves. 

Visuals of AIDS, HIV, female condoms, and assertiveness.

We split the kids into single gender groups, and about half of the boys wandered off halfway through each day because we only had 2 teachers helping us keep order. So we had full classes of girls and half classes of boys. But, it was better than nothing, a lot of kids learned stuff and had fun, and it was the best we could do under the circumstances. They learned about different types of gender based violence, they each got to practice putting a condom on a model, and they learned the difference between gender and sex.

Condom demonstration!

We also had a lot of fun with 6 of us squished in my house, cooking all of the things, including Mexican food and a giant banana scone.

Do-do-do-do-do-do-do, banana scone!

Super delicious and fun

Hanging out in my house

The biggest thing was I feel like this helped break the ice between me and a lot of these kids. So I hope that I can teach more effectively next year. 

The banner says "Gender and Wellness Day Camp"

All in all, a successful camp. Frustrating at times, but the kids got a lot out of it, and that's really all that matters. Also, my fellow PCVs are amazing people who slept on my floor, interacted with my kids, and put up with the crazy from my school. I love my government issued family :D

  

We try to look normal...

but this is far more accurate ;)