3 June 13: Sarah Goes to Maun!!!

Good day everybody!!! I am finally sitting down to write about all of the exciting stuff that has happened in the last two weeks. Get comfy, make yourself a delicious cup of instant coffee...this is gonna be a long one!

Last I wrote, I was fixin to head up north to Maun, Botswana for a little solo vacation. I packed up my sleeping bag, borrowed a tent, locked all the inside doors in my house and set off! I spent the night before my vacation in Lehututu at Ashley's house so that I could easily catch the 6am bus. So that you can understand what it's like to travel in Africa I'm gonna give you all the exciting details of my adventure to get to Maun. I caught the bus at 6am but I was only able to go as far as Kang (an hour's journey) because the bus was going on to the capital city. After getting off the bus, I dragged all my stuff to the road that leads up north. I was really really lucky in that I only waited about 15 minutes before I got a hitch. I rode the next 3 hours with a Namibian trucker on his way to deliver a load from Mozambique. It was a not unpleasant ride, comfortable seat, decent conversation, the usual marriage proposals. He dropped me off before the Namibian border where I immediately hopped into the back of a truck. Do you know what it feels like to ride in the back of a truck that's going 80mph?!? Cheeks flappin in the wind! Hair a rat's nest! Good time.

After an exhilarating half hour, I got out of the bed of the truck in Ganzi. I took a taxi to the north-bound hitching spot. Not having had any success getting a ride after an hour, I walked to a gas station down the road. I felt confident that I could get a ride from there but again, I was unsuccessful. A very kind and generous employee convinced me to take the bus and drove me to the bus rank. I got on the bus to Maun at around 2:30 and arrived in Maun at 6 o'clock. I walked to a grocery store, bought some food for the week, and took a taxi to the backpackers. After it was all said and done it took me 13 hours to get to my destination! I was wore out, irritated, and hungry when I checked in at the Old Bridge Backpackers but that passed...

My first camp site

Relaxing area at Old Bridge Backpackers. See the hammock
on the right?

When I arrived, I was greeted by a fella named Steve. He showed me to my camping spot, told me to set up shop, and then to find him. I set up my tent, laid out my sleeping bag, opened a can of baked beans for dinner, bought a beer at the backpacker's bar, and found Steve. As I ate my beans out of the can, I perused a book of possible adventures! There were so many options! 4x4 safari! Mokoro (traditional dug out canoe) trip! Helicopter ride over the delta! Ultimately I chose my adventures based on my limited funds and with Steve's help I signed up for a Mokoro day trip, a basket weaving lesson, and horse back riding!
I stayed at the backpackers from Tuesday night until Sunday morning. My basket weaving lesson was awesome! The ladies that make the baskets gather palm fronds from the river, dye them, and then weave baskets, which take weeks to complete. I spent 3 hours weaving and I made a basket the size of my palm! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the backpackers is right on a river. There was a crocodile chilling on the other side for an evening.

Basket ingredients: water and dyed palm fronds

Making a basket is harder than it looks!

Can you believe it took me 3 hours to make a basket the size of my palm? Multipurpose!

Baskets for Sale!

The horseback riding fell through due to TIA. TIA = THIS IS AFRICA. The highlight of my adventure was the mokoro day trip! Me and two French guys were taken by motor boat up the delta about an hour, during which time we saw a juvenile crocodile and lots of amazing birds. Then we got into mokoros, canoes dug out of tree trunks. Unlike American canoes, mokoros are "driven" by pushing a long pole off the bottom of the river. I could not believe that the tiny little lady standing at the back of my mokoro was going to push me upstream all day but she did! We spent the morning gliding through shallow wetlands, lotus blossoms everywhere! Around lunch time, we "parked" the mokoros and went for a game walk. We saw lots and lots of foot prints, even elephant prints. We saw a herd of zebras, wildebeest, and bunch of baboons. The backpackers provided us with a box lunch and we picnicked under a shady tree. Let me sum this up. I ATE LUNCH WITH ELEPHANT TRACKS AND ZEBRA HERDS IN THE OKAVANGO DELTA. Sometimes it doesn't seem real and I have to remind myself how extraordinary my adventure is.

Crocodile!

My mokoro driver

Frank and Julienne, nicest French guys in the whole world

Awesome Baobab tree

Can you spot the puff adder?

zebras and wildebeest!

Fred the Baboon, King of the World

Trying my hand at the mokoro!

After lunch, we got into the mokoros and headed back the way we came. While we were eating lunch, several bush fires had ignited on both sides of the river. This led to my being almost killed by a puff adder. Because of the fires, the snakes had taken to the water. Without spotting it, my mokoro lady pulled the canoe RIGHT BESIDE the snake. The guide in the other mokoro pointed out the highly venomous snake and started yelling at the lady to push backwards because I, sitting in the front of the canoe, was literally inches away from its head. Thrilling! By the time me, Frank, and Julienne made it back to the mokoro starting point we were sun burnt, hot, and happy as clams. I was only a little disappointed that I didn't get to see a hippo but that faded when I tried my hand at pushing the mokoro. Epic fail. Balancing on a glorified two by four and pushing yourself along with a pole is harder than it looks. The motor boat came and swooped us up around 4 o'clock to return to the backpackers. As we sipped juice and water and talked about all we had seen, the guide said "What do you think that is up there?" I looked ahead and saw her! A big ol' fat lady hippo grazing in the river!!!! She was chomping on some reeds like it was her job until our boat got a little too close. She suddenly decided to be shy and she submerged but not before I took about a million pictures of her!

Hey lady!

Most of the time I spent at the backpackers relaxing and socializing. Although I went up there alone, there was never any shortage of company. Besides the awesome French guys, I also made friends with the staff, met some Americans, and befriended a bunch of Afrikaaners. We spent the evenings drinking beer, relaxing by the fire, and swapping stories. By coincidence, I met the father of one of the PCV's here in Botswana. As it happens, he was in Kentucky working for FEMA during the flood of 2010 that wiped me out. Small world huh?

Beeky, the barman

Jonah

Me and Steve!!!

Although I was camping, I stayed snugly in my tent. I charmed Steve into giving me a thin mattress to put under my sleeping bag. The backpackers had nice outdoor shower facilities, flush toilets, a waterfall into the river, and a kitchen for guests to use! Maun looks more like Florida than Botswana. There are palm trees! Lots and lots of them! I was not thrilled to spend 12 hours going back to my village, but I came home feeling renewed and happy. Still, I can't wait to go back!

Nice bathrooms!

My first week home from my trip was a busy one. Sunday evening a man from an NGO called The King's Foundation arrived to do trainings in mine and Ashley's village. Because Ashley has an extra bed Victor stayed with her. I spent all day Monday going around my village inviting people to attend my event. The King's Foundation provides volunteers with backpacks full of play equipment for kids. Their premise is that kids needs to be kids, not household laborers. They come and train adults to be facilitators to use the equipment with kids. When Victor and I conducted the training in my village on Tuesday, I had 16 adults show up! That may not sound like a lot but that is a good number of people to mobilize in one day! We spent three hours in the afternoon "training," which was really just grown up playtime. The backpack is full of different balls, hoops, a parachute, a bat, and a bunch of other good stuff. After the training Victor and I went back to Ashley's village for the night.

King's Foundation ninja game

Who doesn't love the parachute??

Wednesday was back to my regular schedule. I taught yoga at prison and then went to the police station to teach aerobics. During my trip to Maun I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could make the most of my service and what I needed to do to be fulfilled. I decided to shift my focus more to kids. Interest in aerobics has been waning so as of last week, I am only teaching aerobics one night a week. When I went to teach aerobics on Wednesday, only one person showed up and she was unable to participate due to injury. If no one shows up this week, I will cancel aerobics altogether, which I won't be that sad about.

Thursday afternoon most of my kids left the village for a sports competition. After school, I did GrassRootSoccer with the kids that had been left behind. Afterwards, we played with some of the things from the King's Foundation backpack. The little kids loooovve the parachute. Their favorite game is "What Time is it Mr. Wolf?" They stand around the outside of the parachute while I walk around them. They ask me "what time is it Mr. Wolf?" I say some random time, i.e. "It's two o'clock!" and they wave the parachute twice. When I yell "It's dinner time!" they have to get under the parachute and sit on it so that the wolf (me) doesn't get them. Let me tell ya, dinner time is just the funnest thing in the whole world for them. They all get under there and scream and roll around in the dust. They don't care. They love it!

Not only did most of my students leave for the competition but their teachers went too. Instead of letting them sit in the classroom doing nothing, I gathered up my kids on Friday morning and showed them a short film. We watched "Imiti Ikula," which is about a young orphan girl living as a boy on the streets of Lusaka, Zambia. Sounds really uplifting right? It's not meant to be. During my inservice training, I spent two days learning to show a set of videos designed to stimulate social change. Imiti Ikula is one of the maybe 40 DVD's that I have sitting in my closet. I was really excited to finally have a venue to show one of the films! I used the film to start a conversation with my kids, age 10-14, about children's rights. It really is amazing how much the kids already know. After the discussion, I rewarded their good behavior with cartoons. Don't tell anybody but we spent most of our educational time watching Looney Tunes!

Friday afternoon, I went to the prison to do a health talk about anger management. 25 guys showed up! Record turn out! I talked at them like I usually do and then we had a lighthearted, but serious discussion about short tempers. Working at the prison continues to be one of my favorite activities.

I spent the weekend harvesting, washing, and freezing herbs and lettuce from my garden for the winter. The winter is upon us and soon it will begin freezing at night. I don't think my garden is going to do too well during that time. Fortunately, I have been able to grow more lettuce and herbs than I can eat. I am eating a huge salad for lunch everyday and I still have more. Botswana has recently declared a ban on produce from South Africa (pretty much where all of our produce comes from) so I'm feeling like a squirrel hoarding acorns! I am so so so so glad that I invested in a garden. I'm also harvesting cherry tomatoes, carrots, and onions on a regular basis. Last week I panicked when I opened the spigot of my jojo (rainwater collection tank) and all that came out was a trickle. After a whole summer of watering twice a day, it has finally run out. The little bit of water that is left I am saving for emergencies. Not to worry though! I've begun saving my dish and bath water and it is more than enough to feed the garden.

On a sad note, Millie has gone missing. I last saw her on Thursday evening. The general consensus around the village (keep in mind that Millie is a famous chicken) is that Millie has laid eggs somewhere and is now sitting on them. I sure hope that she returns and even better if she returns with a little family of babies. I might be a grandma! I have been told that people don't steal grown up chickens because they will just go back home at night. We will see.

look at that stash!

Thanks to the donations of Sharon Stewart Riley (my mama) and her coworkers, I was able to buy and distribute 86 bars of soap and 36 tubes of toothpaste to the men at the prison today. It's amazing what we take for granted, isn't it? After seeing how excited a grown man can get from receiving a bar of soap, I'll never take being clean for granted again.

This week looks to be another busy one. GrassRootSoccer, yoga at prison, a staff meeting at school, two possible computer classes for teachers (if anyone signs up), aerobics, and lots of cutting and freezing lettuce. Ashley, a volunteer named Tate, and myself are in the planning stages of a leadership conference for women. I am looking forward to my next trip: Zambia and Zimbabwe in July. I'm going to run a 5k at Victoria Falls and spend 4 days relaxing in a backpackers in Livingston, Zambia. I'm training for that right meow. Do you know how fun running in deep sand isn't? :)

Another thanks to the people who have sent me care packages recently. It's like Christmas when I open a package here! I'm sure everyone will be glad to know that I have just started a really time consuming (YAY!) cross stich project of a cat looking out a window! I'm watching a lot of tv on my computer, reading A Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones Book 2), and cooking a lot of curry. I'm teaching my kids with a renewed sense of purpose. I'm putting in hours of playtime with little ones and showing my community by example that you CAN grow food in the desert. I'm going to be a mentor for a volunteer in the next group. Two weeks ago, I was a good tourist. Last week I was a good Peace Corps Volunteer. Who knows what I will be this week! So many possibilities! Whatever I am, I will do the best that I can!

Namaste from a lady who has seen a hippo in the wild!

PS-You should see the killer farmer's tan I'm rocking right now. Arms brown as a biscuit. Everywhere else...not so much.
PSS-Apparently it's baby animal season. BABY GOATS EVERYWHERE!!!
PSSS-Lots more pictures of my trip are available on my facebook page!