29 Sept 12

29 Sept 12

Dummale Borra le Bomma! (Hello Ladies and Gentleman!)

A quick recap for those just starting to follow along: I am living with a family in Kanye Botswana for the next 1.5 months. Me and my fellow Peace Corps (PC) trainees go to training from 8:30-5ish M-F and Sat 8:30-noonish. I have electricity, no running water (we have plumbing but no water), no tv, no refrigerator. I have a new mom, my host mom, whose name is Lizzy. I have 2 brothers, a dad, a cousin, and a sister who live throughout Botswana. The permanent members that I live with are Lizzy and my 15 year old brother Tshepang, but I call him Jensen.

My 15 year old brother, Jensen

Lots of exciting things happened this week. We had our first rain of the rainy "season" that lasts just a few weeks in early October. Botswana is the lightning capital of the world so you can imagine what kind of storm it was. The lightning was amazing and I wanted to look at it and look at it but I quickly remembered that Bots is also the lightning strike capital of the world. We lost power, of course, around 4:30 so that was an early night for me. It gets dark here every night at 6:30 so I went to bed around 7. If you tried to call me that night you wouldn't have been able to get through because the cell phone towers were also knocked out. That was the first rain since winter and it was very exciting! The next morning I could see little shoots of grass coming up out of the dust.

The Kabotho House (my homestay)

One of the goals of being a PC volunteer is exposing Americans to the culture of other countries, so I think it is important that I mention what life in Bots is really like. The first day I spent with my homestay family we had running water. I could go in the bathroom, which has a sink, and turn it on and wash my hands. We have not had reliable running water since that day. Our water will come back on for 15 minutes at midnight once or twice per week. I have stopped checking the taps because we have not had water for a week. So at night, Jensen, Lizzy and myself haul huge plastic containers to the communal water tank, which the government fills up occasionally, and fill them up and drag them home. Most of the time the tank is empty. THIS IS WHY WE LIVE WITH A HOST FAMILY FOR 2 MONTHS. How would I survive if I didn't know that you always save every single plastic bottle or container and you fill it up with water and store it away? We have plastic bins and buckets and trash cans full of water everywhere for such occasions. Lizzy, who works as a cook at the place where I go to school, brings home dirty dish water everynight so that we can "flush" our toilet. I'm getting used to it. As an American who is used to first-world conveniences. ask yourself: what would I do if I turned on the faucet and there was no water, day in and day out? No water. It's a little jarring.

This is where we make a fire to heat large volumes of water for bathing

Anywho. Tomorrow is Independence Day in Botswana. There is no school for all of next week and everyone has come home for the weekend. Lizzy's husband, technically my "dad," came home from Gaborone yesterday. This is the second time I have met him. He picked up my sister, Casey as she prefers to be called, and my cousin, Neal as he prefers to be called, from boarding school near Gaborone. They are both 16ish and I was so happy to meet them. For the new readers, I have been adopted by a family here in Kanye. I have a new name, Maduo Kabotho, which I will identify as while I am here in Botswana. When I tell people my name they will know that I belong to the Kabotho clan. I will always have a family here in Botswana and I can always come back to them. Family ties are incredibly strong and you never turn a relative away no matter how distant they may be. Anyway, Casey and I cooked dinner together last night as is customary- women cook for men. She is a delightful young lady who loves to listen to music and read. I was also able to drill her on school and clubs she would be interested in participating in. When we finished cooking, she dished out the portions and served me. I am usually the one to serve but as she was now the youngest female, she served me. She extended my plate on one hand, with her other hand one her elbow, with bended knee. It was the formal, respectful way of serving someone and I was truly honored.

My whole family will be at my house for most of the week for the holiday. I was formally invited to an Independence Day church service tomorrow and I agreed to go out of respect for my family. The invitation was addressed to "Maduo and Family." How special is that? School starts back on Monday for trainees. No holidays for us!

I learned a whole lot this week including several days of HIV/AIDS sessions, permagardening this morning (growing your own vegetables is crucial for volunteers who live in rural areas, which is where I will be), Malaria, Setswana language, and sessions about the PC's approach to development. We are slowly learning more and more about what our jobs will be like. We are responsible for teaching the government's Life Skills curriculum, teaching about sex, doing condom demonstrations, and facilitating clubs of all sorts. After talking to Casey, I will definitely be starting a girls only club. It is not culturally appropriate in Botswana to ask your mother/father about sex so all that these kids know is what they have learned from talking to each other. Their teachers are supposed to teach them about sex but many of them refuse because it is a taboo topic. The average age of sexual debut here is around 13, which is actually better than in America but they don't have the sex ed that American kids have. Most Life Skills volunteers become the person that young people feel they can ask anything to and I definitely want to be that person for them.

We also learned that in some parts of the country, more than 50% of pregnant women are HIV+. That is startling. Everyone who is HIV+ in Botswana can receive free antiretroviral drugs and support. There is still a lot of social stigma and even fear of testing, so we are going to be walking billboards for condom use and frequent testing.

If you talked to me on Sunday, you might have sensed that I was really frustrated last weekend, which appears to be a common theme for volunteers. It is incredibly frustrating living with a family that you don't really know when you have lived alone for many years. It is also frustrating to be considered insignificant because you are a young woman. We had an amazing session yesterday about maintaining mental and emotional health during PC service and resiliency. They don't call it "the toughest job you'll ever love" for nothing. It really is and the hard part begins as soon as you walk off the plane. Everyone was on edge around mid-week and it ended in a big fight with my best friend here, Lui.

On Wednesday, we went to the capital to set up bank accounts. We also got to do a couple of hours of shopping because there are many things that can only be purchased in the capital. It was a disorganized, poorly planned session on the part of the PC. Everyone was mad because things weren't going smoothly and on the way we really felt it. Lui, a Puerto-Rican American from NY, and I got in an argument that ended with the two of us not speaking for the remainder of the day. We made up that evening of course but it really goes to show that us trainees have bad days as well as good days.

Me, Diane, and Lui

On a high note, I have made some good friends here. I don't really get the chance to be lonely YET because we are together all day and we text in the evenings. My two closest friends, Lui and Diane, have really become my rocks here. We spend the day at school together and then after school we walk to the "tuck shop" which is like a little convenience store in a shack. We buy a suckers there like little kids. Then they walk me home before walking home themselves. We are like the three musketeers and I pray that we get placed somewhat near each other. Diane is the only Asian American in our training group. We are quite a diverse trio!

In a week and a few days, we will be dispersing for 5 days of shadowing. We will each go live with a current volunteer to see what service is really like. Some of us will be going up north and will have to take the anti-malaria prophylaxis. From what we've learned in our malaria session, the drug can cause some psychosis as well as crazy crazy dreams. I'm hoping that I'm not going north, but wouldn't that be exciting?!? As of last year, the line of demarcation for the malaria endemic zone was changed so that people in southern Botswana no longer have to take the antimalarial drug. Luckily, all of us life skills volunteers will be placed at permanent sites in the southern part of the country so we will only have to take them when traveling and possibly during shadowing. It's interesting actually. Malaria is such a health concern here that we are actually given the treatment drugs in our medical kits to take to site so that if we have symptoms of malaria, we can be treated immediately and with no delay.

On being an American: we had several sessions this week about what it is to be American in Africa. Let me say that I was expecting to be welcomed as a savior when I got to Botswana. That was not the case. Most people are excited to know me and want to talk to me and ask questions but there are some that give me dirty looks. I had a woman on the street curse me out this week. I greeted her and asked her how she rose in respectful, typical fashion and she started hurtling insults at me and continued until she was well down the road. Growing up in America I never felt "American." A real, real sense of what it is to be American did not hit me until I got here. Now I know what it is like to be the minority, an outsider, and be judged because I am AMERICAN. People assume that I am rich, promiscuous, and morally superior. As a former British colony, people here are conditioned to believe that white is beautiful. They think that their own dark skin is ugly. So I do get many people that tell me that I am beautiful, which is hard. I know that while they are telling me how pretty I am, they are thinking about how ugly they are.

Oh yeah, I wanted to talk about my chickens. You guys have heard about the rooster that likes to stand under my window and cockadoodledoo all night. We also have 3 lady chickens. I think two of them have been stolen because I only see the one and the rooster nowadays. The lady chicken has a messed up foot and she looks like she is walking on a peg leg. I made the mistake of giving those two chickens some corn one day. Every morning, when I leave the house they come running on their tiny little legs thinking that I have corn for them. So they are my pet chickens now. Hopefully, Lizzy doesn't decide to prepare a chicken feast for my going away and I end up eating one of my little friends.

My chickens! The lady chicken has a peg leg! 

FOOD. AMERICAN FOOD. I miss it so much. Two nights this week I just decided that I wasn't eating dinner. All we eat is gristly red meat, some kind of starch, and maybe a vegetable. I have purchased some high fiber cereal at the grocery store and I'm having that for dinner sometimes. Enjoy your American food!