23 Sep 13: Repost: Sarah Celebrates One Year In Botswana!

Note: This is a repost. If you commented on the first post, I apologize that I had to delete it. As often happens, I got in trouble with Peace Corps for what I said about my shadowing experience. So here's the original post, minus any details about that.

In my last email, I told you that you aren't a real Peace Corps Volunteer until you've pooped yourself. I've broadened my definition to include the following:

You aren't a real Peace Corps Volunteer until you've...

-hitchhiked 6 hours with a Namibian trucker to get to the only swimming hole in the country that won't give you Shistosomiasis (Google it-it's nasty)

-spent two months arranging to teach a workshop at a bushman settlement--then on the day of the workshop you get all dolled up and don your finest dress only to spend two hours riding in the bed of a truck in deep sand to get to said workshop, thus showing up COVERED from head to toe in dirt

Transport in Botswana is...sketchy.

-taught your pubescent girl students about menstruation and accidentally horrified them by describing the mechanics of a tampon (apparently tampons aren't prevalent here)

-had to spend the morning sitting at the village health post because you drank too much wine and gave yourself a full-thickness burn trying to make apple fritters

-used your own pee as a fertilizer for your garden

Trailblazers Backpackers!

I've been here for a year folks! Whoa! To celebrate, some volunteers and I decided to get together for some bonding over booze and braii. The weekend after shadowing, me and about 8 other PCV's met up in Ganzi for a few days of fun in the sun (with water.) We stayed at Trailblazers Backpackers for the low price of 65 pula per night (about $7.) The first night we met some tourists from England. The one guy in particular I talked to/played cards with all night was awesome. His name is John Moss, he's a PhD math student, and he is from a tiny village of 60 people that is owned by a Lord and Lady Beckett. How freakin' cool is that? I've gotta visit him someday. He promised me that we'd go fox huntin on Lord and Lady Beckett's horses and then he left for Namibia. 

Happy One Year Bots 13!

The Gat

On Saturday morning, me and my peeps packed up our swimmin stuff and went to The Gat (pronounce haht.) The Gat used to be a granite quarry, a very small but deep one. The diggers didn't realize that they were digging so close to the water table and when they hit it the quarry filled up with water! They abandoned their digging and sold the quarry to the lady who owns Trailblazers. She built restrooms, camping areas, and bbq stands. She drove us there and let us spend the whole day swimming for free! Because it was a quarry, it has a steep drop down into the water and it's very deep. Animals can't use it as a water source so it is unpolluted. It is the only place to swim in the whole country that won't give you Shistosomiasis. We spent the day layin on the dock, swimming in the deep crystal-clear water, and bbqing!

No parasites = happy swimming!

It was by far one the nicest days I've had here. Most of our group refused to come complaining that it was too far from their sites (EVERYWHERE is far for me and Ashley-we had no sympathy) but the group that did come was just good, quality folks. On Sunday, Ashley and I bought groceries and headed home.




Last week was CRAZY. Me and Ashley scrambled to prepare for the workshop that we were scheduled to do on Friday. It wasn't even certain if it was still on until Thursday morning when we found out that the Ministry of Ed had done their part in providing food and transportation, a pre-Christmas miracle.

On Monday, I noticed that my 6th graders didn't have a teacher. She was on leave for the whole week. They were just sitting in their classroom, unsupervised, acting a fool. So Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I taught them for the first half of the day. We watched several educational films, played a card game called Safari of Life that teaches sexual health, and then played sexual health Jeopardy for prizes. On top of adopting 34 12-year olds I also did my regular activities: PACT Club, Yoga at Prison, and a staff meeting.

Final Destination Go!

On Wednesday, the wind was ridiculous. I thought the roof was going to blow off my house. I didn't get any sleep that night and to make matters worse, the wind blew down the electrical poles 100km north of my village. The power was out for over a day, which isn't that big a deal unless you're trying to prepare for a workshop and make lots of photocopies. In the middle of the night Thursday, the power finally came back on. Ashley and I ran around like chickens with our heads cut off on Friday morning, trying to print and copy the materials. When we were finally ready, we found out that our ride to Monong (a bushman settlement an hour down a deep sand road) was going to be in the back of a truck. We chucked it up to TIA (This.Is.Africa.) and made the best of it by taking funny pictures. We also entertained ourselves with our most successful round of "Final Destination Go" ever. Final Destination Go is a game I developed based off of the Final Destination movies. When someone says "Final Destination Go!" you have to list all of the ridiculous ways that you could be killed right then. In the back of the truck some of ours included: the driver (who was driving like a bat outta hell) hits a rut and a plate from the workshop dishware flies at you separating your head from your body; the welding on the jinky truck comes apart and the back end detaches from the cab ejecting us, and then our bodies are eaten by hungry lions. Final Destination Go = hours of fun for the whole family.

A workshop well done!

Although we arrived an hour and a half late, the workshop went really well. We were able to teach the teachers of Monong Primary School how to teach life skills using Botswana's Living Curriculum, which is our real job here. We got back Friday afternoon earlier than we expected, dirty and tired. I started unpacking my bag and realized that I had left my wallet in the back of the truck. I frantically called every contact I had at the Ministry office asking them to please get ahold of the truck driver. My wallet had my American credit cards, my ID, my visa, and my credit card linked to the bank account where I get my allowance. I was so tired and frustrated that I just started bawling. Fortunately, they were able to get ahold of the driver and he returned my wallet that evening. I felt bad for making him come all the way back out to my village so I compensated him the best way I could: with a tin of instant coffee and a bar of lavender scented soap.

This weekend I was feeling lazy. On Saturday, I read/napped for most of the day, drank wine, and then accidentally burnt the crap out of the inside of my arm frying apple fritters. On Sunday, I was mad at myself for being so careless so I read for the whole morning to get my mind off things. Then I got a burst of motivation and spent the rest of the day in my gardens. I have my big main garden and also Millie's former chicken house, which is now the Millie M. Stewart Memorial Herb Garden. I reshaped the beds, tilled in the manure, and planted all my seeds: peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, sage, cilantro, spearmint, dill, fennel, and basil. We had a drizzle of rain one night last week but it didn't do anything to replenish my JoJo. I'm still watering with dishwater which is a pain but it's ok. It feels good to recycle water!

Summer is here in full force. The sky is dark in the late afternoon tempting us with rain that doesn't come. It has been at least 6 months since we had rain. They are forecasting that there might be rain next week. The cows and donkeys are dying because there is no water for them and even less food. When you drive down the road to my village you can see dead cows rotting beside the road in the sun. Really sad.

Ruby sittin on her eggs.

The good news on the animal front is that Ruby the chicken has been sitting on her 12 eggs in my yard for a week now. She just sits there and sits there and occasionally gets up to look for bugs. Me and the girls next door have decided that she must be bored, which has led us to the the timeless questions: What is the best way to entertain a chicken? Millie loved to watch movies but I can't very well set my computer out in the sand for Ruby. I'm about to start the third Game of Thrones book and I'm thinkin that maybe I should try reading to her. I bet Ruby would love an adventure story chock full of murder, deceit, and incest. Who doesn't? I'll have to fill her in on what happened in the first two books so she doesn't get confused. We also tried to shade her from the hot sun with an umbrella but the wind blew it away. She is a tough chicken. I also have a new best friend named Jethrow. She is a black and white goat and she comes to my yard every afternoon for scraps. She has a tiny black baby goat named Elmer.

Jethrow and Elmer

Look at that precious face!

This week looks to be only a little less busy than last week. I've prepared my reports about the workshop in Monong which I'm going to deliver in Hukuntsi tomorrow. I've got PACT Club, yoga at prison, and a health talk at prison. I didn't get much accomplished today as I spent the entire morning waiting to get my burn dressed at the clinic. Normally I would just tend it myself but I'm not trying to get gangrene in Africa. Florence, my favorite nurse, is on leave in Zambia so I was seen by a young male nurse named Pakati. He's funny and seems to know what he's doing! He gave me antibiotics because everything gets infected here and I'm going to go back every other day to have the dressing changed. Maybe I'll see if Pakati wants to hang out sometime.

Ashley is leaving tomorrow for America. She will be gone for two weeks. As she is my constant companion and closest neighbor, I think I'm gonna miss her a bunch. Let's hope she brings me some candy. In October, there will be two new PCV's coming to live in Hukuntsi. They are an older married couple, rumored to be very down to Earth and fun. I'm looking forward to getting some new blood around here!

My next closest PCV, Pam in Hukuntsi, has planned a trip to Namibia for me, her, and several other volunteers late next month. We are going to tour the country and then go to the famous Oktoberfest in Windhoek. I'm hesitant to spend the little bit of money I have saved but then again I'm not coming back here. Might as well do all the traveling I can before I go!

A year and two weeks in country have made me into a person that I wouldn't have recognized. Having so much time on my hands and the drive to self-improve, I find myself more accepting of people and their situations, more accepting of myself and my situation, and best of all- confident that I can do anything! I am hoping to funnel this confidence into a Women's Empowerment Workshop at the end of this year. Pam, Ashley, myself, and another volunteer named Tate have busted our butts for three months to get our grant proposal published on the Peace Corps website. You all probably received an email from "Ashley Rice" with a link to donate to our cause. Unfortunately, Peace Corps didn't put anybody else's name on the dang email.

Toilet paper roll art. I have a lot of free time.

This workshop is going to be all about empowering 40 women, chosen by us from our villages. These women will be taught about gender-based violence (some women still don't know that rape is illegal!), yoga, meditation, how to talk to their kids about sex, financial planning, and a handful of other essential life skills. We are trying to raise a little over $2,000 to cover the cost of transporting the ladies to the workshop and feeding them. At the end, the ladies will be responsible for planning and implementing an empowerment camp for young girls. The Peace Corps staff is so impressed with our effort that they have gotten the US Embassy and USAID involved. We might just put on this women's camp and become famous! If you feel like contributing to our effort, you can donate directly to us (when the money is raised it is directly deposited into our bank account) at the link:

[Thanks to everyone who has donated! Since I wrote this, our grant has been fully funded!]

Thank you guys for your continuing support. I wouldn't be here without the help of all of my family and friends and the constant stream of loving cards, emails, and texts.

From Africa with Love!