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.