Go Ledzwa (Happy New Year!)

After two weeks of the most movement I have ever seen from our power company, coming randomly multiple days within those two weeks (there are no appointments, I leave the house with the intention of sprinting back at some point after the phone call "We are at your house, where are you?"), but it worked out, a couple times they actually picked me up across the village, and riding in a car is always a treat. I like to just ride around for hours with the ambulance driver because she always lets me sit in the front (and what lacking-in-independence-Peace Corps Volunteer doesn't LOVE the front seat? You show me a PCV who doesn't get even the slightest inner joy and I'll show you a LIAR). We are not allowed to own or drive cars during our service, unless you are on official leave.

Due to a tiny issue, I haven't gotten to really use it yet. I got the power hooked up, it all works, but I only have 2.38 units. The power here, same as phone airtime (minutes, data), is prepaid. SO you go to your local general dealer, buy some electricity, type some numbers into your box fixed to your wall that shows how many units you have left and boom, a magical Bots fairy comes and throw electricity glitter into your house. Long story short I can't upload units onto my box until it's registered and everyone was on holiday forever and ever. But it should be good to go in a week and you will never have to listen to me again because I'll be in "Posh Corps" and will be too busy flicking on and off my lights to appreciate the wonders of Afrika.

The one night I had my lights on in my house was scary. I had always thought that my house had fewer bugs than others, so I took in silent smugness that I was just naturally a superiorly clean person. Well, that may not be entirely true (shocking Mom, I know), turns out lights and bugs are like fucking magnets. I understand light attracts bugs, I have seen a stoplight and know it is supposed to resembles the moon or whatever. But it was like an army invasion in my house, with species I had never seen before. Then they all panic themselves with the sudden dose of extreme light and drop dead on my floor. I've been using candles since (plus I can't afford the units until I put more on).

For the holidays I was lucky enough to be able to spend a week on the beautiful Indian Ocean in Mozambique. I love traveling and noticing exactly how different each African country is, and now, even though I am still an outsider in Botswana (and forever will be) I feel like it is not a foreign place. I know exactly where I stand in Botswana and generally what to expect from Batswana, but I love the feeling of complete oblivion that accompanies a foreign country. There have been times where I have been fully relient on the help of strangers to navigate some aspect of a new country. And it is amazing because when a stranger pulls through for me, actually goes out of their way to help, it gives me a little more faith in humanity. 

After being gone for the holidays readjusting from being surrounded by 3-7 people every single minute of my day, to being surrounded to no one every single minute of my day is an emotional rollercoaster. Let me set the scene. The first day is nice, you're exhausted from traveling and cranky because you've smelt like a foot for the past three days, so the alone time to take a proper bath, walk around naked, or sleep for 14 hours is appreciated. The second day rolls around and you are convincing yourself being alone is wonderful and you are 'discovering yourself' but now you are starting to go through pizza withdrawal because you made the noble decision to eat pizza every.single.day. on vacation. The neighborhood kids come over and expect a friendly welcome, but you have not uttered a word to a child in two weeks and the thought of mustering up fake enthusiasm for toy cars is exhausting, so no, no thank you. 8pm comes and you are stare longingly at the phone, willing it to buzz, but it's OK if it doesn't, you like being alone. It rings. You rejoice. Third day, you are mentally writing down things to say to your friends once the internet works, most likely very humorous and nothing pertaining to anything of importance. You realize you have thoroughly 'discovered yourself' so move on to making lists of all the hobbies you can pick up to keep you busy through the year and/or new year's resolutions (because why have just one when you have 22 hours of free time a day?). Fourth day, you are planning return trip to hang out with friends asap.

BUT ALAS, I am home, the schools started up today and I will start working probably next week, when everyone REALLY goes back to work. My projects this year will probably be very similar to last year but I am going to focus mostly on a nutrition initiative at my clinic. I received some awesome materials to make a vegetable garden  and we are going to try to get food donations from around the community so we can create a direct feeding program for the severely underweight and malnourished kids under five in the community. The plan is the parents bring them in 2-3 times a week, preferably even more, for a substantial meal and nutritional education. There are a number of things that need to happen in order for this to be a success, so we shall see. I am also really looking forward to starting the fitness classes up again at our Brigade (technical college) as it was pretty popular last year and I love it. Nothing brings friends together like ten people sweating up a tiny classroom in Africa heat. As of today I have a little over 9 months of service left.

** I'd like to throw a shout-out to my papparoo who went to multiple stores in order to obtain Starbucks' pumpkin spice latte mix for his daughter to put in the Christmas care package. He sure must be bored in retirement.**

352 days to go.

As of mid-October I have been an official PCV for one year. Half the battle is over! Peace Corps is really just a bunch of smaller battles. Like battles to get the amenities you are entitled to (gas for cooking, beds for sleeping, chairs for sitting, etc) which every PCV has different luck with. Some volunteers are driven to the furniture store where they select brand new pieces that they want in their house, and some people are dropped off thirty year old wooden-framed broken-springed love seat and chair. But I know volunteers who never even got the furniture they were supposed to, or they ended up buying their own (I was lucky enough to get a lil sumpin sumpin). Good thing I got the lower end of the deal because declawing a cat would be a laughable request here, so Boi has been sharpening her claws on most of my furniture, and I only stop her when it's my bed at 3am.
Battles with yourself. I fight myself often to do things because, well for one I'm really not doing anything else, and two I know I will feel better after doing it. It is so incredibly easy to shut yourself off from you community by staying in your house all the time. Just leaving the house, even for something simple, is work here. No matter where you go, or how used to seeing you they are, people are watching you more often than not, and chances are they are talking about it. Most days I would LOVE to sit in my house and binge watch some horrible TV show, and I'm not going to lie to you, I most likely would, if I could. But not having electricity has, in the grand scheme of it all, been more of a blessing than a curse. It forces me to go out and if I do want to watch a movie that night, I have to sit and socialize with my neighbors, or walk to a friends house, in order to charge my computer. I always feel happier after a day of interacting, even if 86% of the interactions were awkward or confusing. Plus, every dinner is a sexy candle-lit dinner at Gaone's, how will people know when I am TRYING to seduce them? There is still talk of getting me electricity. I'm actually texting with the person who is waiting at the power company to pay, right now, as we speak. Will it work? Will a dragon swoop in and brutally terrorize Francistown which will divert them from paying? Will Gaone ever get power/will it even be a good thing for her socialization skills? Stay tuned.
A Common PCV Battles with...
...neighbors over not sweeping our lawn. They are dirt lawns.
...neighborhood children over the correct time to use the word 'lekgoa' (that time is never).
...neighborhood children. Trying to like them every day is hard.
...supervisors who either 1) don't give a shit that we are there and have no suggestions on projects, or 2) give way too much of a shit that we are there and think we should be there forty hours a week.
...technology-everywhere. Everywhere you go there is failing technology.
...our bowels. Sometimes for no reason, sometimes for reasons you know all too well.
...the bus 'schedule'.
...Africa time.
All of these make up a good Peace Corps service. Many are cultural differences that I will just never understand because I wasn't raised thinking that way, but that is why we are here, to figure out these differences and try to understand them. If we cannot understand them, accept them and move on (unless it is to justify beating a person or an animal, then NOPE). We aren't here to change anyone's culture, nor would we want to. We're here to squeeze ourselves into their lives for two years, cross our fingers, and hope something good happens.
Here's to the weirdest year of my life so far, and probably an even stranger next year.

Sunday Funday

Let me just break down this past day for y'all at home.

Last night, at about 8pm for all those night owls, I was closing up shop (getting ready for beddy), when I walked into my back room, the one without the curtains, and noticed my neighbors tree was on fire. Under normal circumstances....actually, it's pretty weird to find someone's neighbors tree on fire so I don't have an acceptable response for this, so I tried to call their phone because I didn't want to walk the twenty steps to their house because, ya know, night time and all. I like to use the 'it's not safe card' with lots of stuff here, because to people who don't know where I live, I could say that perfectly justifiably. But when I say I 'don't like to walk to the general dealer-it's near a bar and eish, you know men' I really mean 'I was WAYYYYY too lazy to even consider walking 800 meters to get tomato for dinner. Rice is fine.' I can handle walking by a bar and the twenty steps to the neighbors are quite safe. So anywhoooo. I bucked up and walked to my neighbors house (her phone was off) to tell them their tree was on fire. He looked at the tree and said 'well, that tree does cause shade sometime, I'll put it out'. It didn't matter that it was ten feet from my house or anything, it causes shade.
This morning I slept until SEVEN AM. Extraordinary. I proceeded to have breakfast with Americans. I think it was probably quite normal for people to dine with other Americans so I won't go into detail. After, I immediately had two children at my house, eager to use my colors and subtly ask for food. At this point I realized I'd been awake for nearly four hours, so quickly shuffled them out and rested for three hours. I don't like to wear myself out.
After playing 'wordsearch' on my ipad for thirty minutes I decided to go buy airtime, because fuckit, I like Internet and lack self-control. The tuck shop (tiny little shop that sells random goods) next to my house was CLOSED. Tragedy. I decided to go sit at my neighbors house until it opened. While there I was told by a five year old (bffl for last post) that my nails were too long and dirty, I needed to clean my feet, and that I had dots all over my body (acne/freckles/moles/white people marks, I can only assume). Then he found his mothers bra, wrapped in around his head, and did karate in the living room. I also adamantly fought, to the point of fist pumping and chanting 'Scooby Scooby', that the nine year old change the channel from Nickelodeon, where they play strange shows about weird child ghosts, to boomerang where they were playing Scooby, obviously. I hid the remote on top of the TV.
Their littlest boy, Tumo, aged 1.2 has apparently been talking. I knew he has been saying my name for a while-Gaone. When I first met him a year ago, I didn't see him smile for the first three month, and no laughing until 6 months. Now, the kid can not look at me without bursting into his two-front-teeth-only fits of giggles. I very vainly thought that the only word he could say was, in fact, Gaone. Apparently, all that other baby babble he's been spewing for months is actually words, just baby version. I call it Setswanyana. For those of you who don't know, you can add 'yana' to the end of any word and make it baby form! Pudi (goat)/pudsana (baby goat), ntsa (dog)/ntsanyana(baby dog), Setswana (setswana)/Setswanyana (child Setswana). See, it works.
My village is what I like to call a ghost town, because compared to the closest nearest villages near me, it's insanely quiet. I can walk from my house, across the entire village and not meet anyone along the way. I love it. Generally there are a lot of cars around, because it's a mining village so it is wealthier (people are buying more cars), and because the mining buses pass my house a lot as it's on their route. But I like know there will be people around, they just always aren't. It is a copper mine, called Mowana Mine, if you are wondering, not diamonds. This may be a reason that the HIV rate is so high here, but honestly it is high all over Botswana, so I'm not sure how much worse it is. There are a lot of orphans, but to be considered an orphan here you only have to have lost one parents, which I assume is because of the immense amount of single-parent households here. Most orphans are orphaned because of HIV, but of course not all. Orphans very rarely go into foster families, although they do exist here, because there is such a STRONG sense of family here. I could go to my great uncle's twice removed, brothers, step- sister, ask her for twenty pula, and BOOM, I'd have myself twenty pula. So taking a family member's child here is a no brainer.
After braving the walk to the further away general dealer (but don't worry, I could still see it from my neighbor's house) with my two pals, I acquired my $2.50 worth of internet money and will continue to relentlessly check facebook zero, which is the super boring/free version, without pictures, for the remained of the day.
For my Auntie JoJo: I am honestly not sure how the teachers will work for the preschool if it happens. Right now the school is not looking promising, not enough time and not enough help from the community members. I should have started the project earlier but I honestly just did not think it would be able to happen, I didn't think we would have the funds to start one. I recently found out that we would possibly be able to use a classroom that already exists in the primary school, meaning we wouldn't have to try to build a whole new building, so when I found that out I thought it could be done, but I found that out a little too late I think. I do know that the preschool teachers don't have to be licensed, they only have to be qualified, which is awesome and I feel like there wouldn't be trouble finding some. It will still be a bit of a challenge getting money to build junior-sized outhouses and sink, and pay the teachers. I think their school fees would cover food and some class materials (although a school fee will still be hard to pay for some families). My struggle now is trying to get the kgosi (chief), school head, social worker, and head VDC member to meet and discuss solutions to this problem before Tuesday.
The water treatment business hasn't opened yet. They have gotten the money in their account and are waiting on the water purification machine, there seems to be some trouble getting in contact with the company. But I expect it to be in production as soon as the machine is here, and the people are trained! Clean water! PULA!
So that's the Sunday Funday. Now all I need is a mimosa, Stephanie, get on it.

Sweet. Sweaty. Summertime.

Today I'm focusing on the good things going on in Botswana.
1. I can do bikram yoga for free, at anytime of the day!
2. I'm so comfortable with my lack of electricity that I opted to not watch my neighbors awesome TV alone, but sit at home and stare at my cat.
3. I didn't even feel like having a full conversation with my cat today. I'd say a success.
4. I got a hitch in about five minutes today. Wasn't even a race-special ride, they didn't even want to take me at first! Hurray!
5. I scheduled a meeting to schedule a meeting to start a preschool. Half the battle is over.
6. Not many people can say they 'got dragged to a funeral they didn't know about, for someone they didn't know, and accidentally sat with the family because there was an open seat and the planning didn't make sense'. Unique.
7. I got a shit load of free food this week.
8. I ate ten cookies in about five minutes.
9. I have decided firmly that you will never see a more beautiful sunset or sunrise than in Botswana. It can't be done.
My sad news: My neighbors/BFFLs Prince, Luda, and Tumo (aged 4, 8, 1.2, respectively) are out of town for two whole weeks. Which, for real, is about the longest I've gone without a Tom and Jerry date in quite a few months. But I'm weirdly getting a lot of yard work done....huh.
All joking aside now. I have been a little bad about keeping up with my blog. I just do not have the motivation and often times I feel like there is no point in writing a blog if it is not going to be funny (I still think that is true) and I have not felt particularly funny lately. I'm going to be more like Stella and attempt to find my groove, or maybe more like the emperor and just try to get a whole new groove. I haven't fully decided. Either way, I'm going to stop making really awful movie references about movies I've never seen.
Things about going well here. No huge projects or anything huge. Biggest thing is trying to start a preschool; refer to #5 above to see where I'm at with that. I am also starting to teach women how to make Zulu (a tribe mainly in South Africa) necklaces and sell them for profit. I live in a peace corps time where I'm the one teaching the African women how to make African necklaces...because I learned it on the Internet.
I also live in a peace corps world where the post office lady drops my packages off at my house because she wants to leave work early. This I am incredibly and exuberantly happy about. It's like someone handing me a birthday present (which I know sounds normal, but no one hands you things here; you have to walk three miles in 100 degree weather to obtain a shred of American love). Or you could catch a ride with one of the numerous donkey carts that travel my roads. I never do because I feel so damn bad for those donkeys.

I feel like I could write heaps more but I hear most of my friends/family have 'lives' to go about doing and I'm just rambling.

Big Bertha. Eating up all that flour.

In the past couple months some wonderful things have happened. I made a sourdough starter and named her Bertha, got my friend to also make a sourdough starter, Bubbles, so we could raise our yeastlings together, and Boi killed her first mouse. It was a horrible death and I thoroughly believe she intended it as payback for forcing her to wear a pink collar with a bell as well as making fun of her constantly for being a bad hunter (her feelings get hurt easily). In fairness, she used to only hunt the neighbor's puppy, or the neighbor children. But seriously, I do not even know what happened to the mouse and I am a "stronger person for having cleaned it up". For those who do not know Boi, she is my cat and yes, I need to get a life. Moving on.
However stellar those first few gems were, the best thing that has happened was my parents braving the 20 hour plane flight to visit lil ol' me. Considering before about 1.5 years ago they knew little to nothing about the country of Botswana (I am not exempt from that either), I would say that they enjoyed it. My mom was obsessed with the monkeys and elephants and my dad was too focused on trying to drive stick shift left handed to really see anything. Just kidding, he loved it, and he drove like a champ. They saw that I do in fact live in a house, not a mud hut, and they even washed their clothes by hand like true villagers-so proud. Everything worked out swimmingly and the only bad part was two weeks was just not enough. We could have spent two weeks in Cape Town alone! I even brought along my boyfriend, who they had never met, on a 20 hour road trip through South Africa and we are still together so that is saying something, amiright?
I got the news while on vacation that the grant we have been working on was approved, yaaaaa buddy! Mosetse Village will have another small business rolling out the red carpet in a couple months. And that is about it for the work I have been doing.
In 7 days we will have been in Botswana ONE WHOLE YEAR. And guess how much Setswana I know? Yup, not much.
And for those wondering, the sourdough bread turned out quite well, thanks.

Two weeks in the Delta.

For the past two weeks I was camping in the Okavango Delta, the main hub of all things safari in Africa-google it, with 35 orphans from my village. There were also about eight social workers and maybe seven other helpers, so in all roughly 50 Motswana.....and me....for two weeks. Ok fine, Mike was there too. He was nice enough to talk all the social workers into letting me come, we badgered them to the point of annoyance, they even told me so. The camp was a wilderness therapy camp aimed at counseling the orphans on dealing with their rough home lives and encouraging them to talk about their feelings with orphans like them. Mike and I went along to lead a Grassroot Soccer (GRS) camp simultaneously, we were supposed to be given an hour each day to do our lesson. GRS is an interactive program for HIV prevention and education that involves different football-esque games that can be related to HIV, it is really a pretty cool program. Unfortunately, the facilitators did not exactly seem like it was crucial so they did not have enough time for us for about three days straight in the beginning. Granted, it is only an hour, but we still felt like we were doing something, when we weren't given any time we awkwardly hung around the camp, chopping vegetables and being told how we were doing everything wrong. They have one way of doing things here, and any other way is wrong. Normally I can deal with the occasional comment like that because I can just go home and eat whatever I want and do whatever I want, but two weeks of constantly being told I was doing it wrong became slightly frustrating. There were some communication issues and cultural differences that made this experience not the most enjoyable at times. There are certain things I will never be ok with here, like not using the word 'please', or whipping children. And now I know to never agree to an outing longer than a few days in total isolation with 50 people from a completely different culture. I would have regretted not going, though, because the children were great and I had fun whooping someone's ass in chess everyday. I used to say how non-competitive I was and how much I did not care about winning, well, after getting obnoxiously angry multiple times and acting like a six year old, I have concluded that I was wrong, when it comes to chess I am very competitive. I have to have rules about when I can play or it will just ruin my whole day. Exhausting. It also gave me vivid flashbacks of eight-year-old me sitting behind the big chair in our living room, crying because I did not win at the board game Sorry. I guess I have not really changed much.
If you are wondering how you take a butt load of kids on a really cheap safari, let me tell you! First, you get a huge truck-like the ones you would carry half of a house in or a wind turbine propellor (oh Iowa, I miss you). Next, you throw 35 kids in it and drive around a game reserve for 13 hours until the kids are freezing, dehydrated, exhausted, and covered with dirt from dodging branches all day. It was like a really sketchy roller coaster with absolutely no safety guaranteed. I am honestly surprised no one got hurt or fell out of the truck. We were passing white people in safari trucks all day, I tried to take pictures of them in their cars because they were taking pictures of us in ours, it seemed fair. We came across a part of the dirt road where the trees had grown together at the top and created a sort of archway that a normal safari vehicle could maneuver under but our truck was way too big. Well at this point, our driver decided to just take down the archway; branches, dirt, and spiders pelted all the lucky people in the back, who were all crouched and covering their heads, much like we had to do during tornado drills in elementary/middle school (again, heavy sigh, the Midwest). It was hilarious only because of how absolutely ridiculous everything was. As far as the safari is concerned, we got to see a surprising amount, considering how loud our truck was; you can tell the animals are used to the constant traffic. We saw elephants, hippos, monkeys, baboons, a leopard, giraffes, lions, antelope type things that I can't remember the name of, warthogs, and wild dogs. We also saw ostriches on our way home, and two hyenas on our last night at camp. Lion King nailed it when they depicted the hyena. They are very creepy and big enough to take down a cow. It had jerky head movements and I initially thought it was a wounded leopard because it's movements were so odd. He was probably only twenty feet away and didn't run away when we shown the light on it, two of them sat there watching us, waiting for us to go to sleep so they could search the camp. Hippos were constant visitors at night, we were camping down by the riverside, so we got to listen to them talk all day, too.
The monkeys and baboons were all over our camp. They knew our feeding times and came daily to ransack the grounds for our leftover food, or steal food on the table if they were fast enough, and they were a couple times. One managed to get into our store room, I could hear the screaming of the kitchen ladies to get him out. He flung poop everywhere; it was all very sanitary. I kept referring to them as racist monkeys because every time I tried to shoo one away from our food, it would come after me! Naturally, I would scream and run away. If a Motswana shoo'd one, it would leave. Damn tourists, ruining my street cred with the monkeys. They expect white people to feed them, not chase them away. Quite a few of the baboons would come with their babies which was pretty damn cute, I could watch them all day. They looked like little aliens.
Other than the camp, I have just been hanging out in my village, dreaming up some nutrition projects to start implementing. I also helped a group of women submit a grant for a machine for their water purifying business. It was a very short, simple grant, but this is Botswana, so it took about four months to complete. I understand now how some volunteers spend two years completing a grant. It took four months to ask for one machine, I cannot fathom the pain and stress of a whole building. Just the thought makes me sick.

Travelin' fool

Time is flying by. The days are long, the weeks are fast, and actually sometimes even the days are fast. I peg this on my contentment of my life here, I have no desire to go home early or even for vacation. I refuse to stay in my village too long, I mean, I am only living here two years, I NEED to travel Africa. I congratulate those who are able to stay in their village for month on end, but it is not for me and I would go stir crazy. I do get very happy, though, when I know I have a weekend of nothing going on and I can just hang out, reading in my hammock or playing with the neighbor boys. From now until June 22, when my parents arrive, I have absolutely nothing planned. Perfect time to start my garden.

Beginning of April was glorious because I was on vacation and travelled to Lesotho with another volunteer, Mike (who is conveniently my boyfriend and closest neighbor). Lesotho is one of two small landlocked countries that resides inside of South Africa, along with Swaziland-which I would also love to visit. The country (with the exception of the capital, Maseru, which really is not very beautiful) is absolutely amazing and plucked straight from a National Geographic. Maybe you can blame it on seeing the same dry, arid landscape for eight months, or the fact that we have not been able to leave Botswana yet and we were getting anxious to peace out and explore, but regardless, it was wonderful. I can say that with confidence because my blisters that completely riddled my feet last week are healing quite nicely and the memories of me pathetically hobbling over mountains with my bandaged feet are starting to fade and be replaced with the beauty of waking up every morning surrounded by insanely isolated villages. Let me just throw in a little back story here. A few months ago Mike and I started to look into hiking through Lesotho, because it had always been a dream of his since realizing he would be living in Southern Africa. I was just like everyone else, meaning I finally went and googled 'Lesotho' after he talked about it enough times and it seemed likely enough we could travel there. I looked into pony treks, which is what the country is famous for, and then remembered I was not especially fond of ponies and I would much rather backpack, Mike agreed. I should have realized by the complete lack of any reviews of backpacking in Lesotho, that not many people did it, and now I know why. We did four days three night backpacking with a guide, which we absolutely needed or we would have been lost in roughly 25 minutes. We stayed in remote villages along the way, in predetermined and booked huts. It was four days of going up, and down, and up, and back down. Which makes sense, they are mountains, but we were unprepared for how hard it would be. I do not remember the mileage but it was between 8-10 hours a day. Luckily, we had amazing views to keep us going. By the fourth day I would have given my left kidney for a Sherpa or a minibus, and don't you worry, I attempted to find both. But alas, we happily (haha) limped back to our lodge, Mike with a painful knee, and me with a couple bum and blistered feet. I am ready to start planning our next trip.
The lodge, Malealea, was great and I would go back. It had a great backpackers vibe and we were lucky to meet some interesting people from all over, including seven Americans. I thought it was strange to talk face to face with another American that is not in Peace Corps, considering I had not actually done it in eight months. It was exhausting. It's easy enough my write out 'Yeah, everything is great here and I love Botswana' in an email, but actually having to talk to someone about it, and to stay positive is really hard, I was not expecting it. It's not that I don't like Botswana, because I do, but people want to hear about PC as this awesome life changing, doing amazing projects and stuff, and that's just not me right now, and I don't like to be a negative nancy. I think most volunteers agree that we have a weird on again off again relationship with our host country.
The projects I'm doing now are fitness classes still, computer classes, I've done one nutrition talk with many more to come (these I actually do quite like), trying to get the HIV support group functioning, trying to work with mothers of malnourished children under five. Trying to get a couple grants done with some community members. Lots of trying, little doing. But I'm ready to bust out these next few months and start some good stuff.