Open Minds in a Small Place

   Overall, Botswana is a politically conservative country when it comes to many subjects, including sexuality and sexual orientation. It isn't illegal to be gay here per say,but it is illegal to engage in any sexual activity that can not lead to procreation. There is a LGBT organization based in the capital city and there certainly are members of the LGBT community living in Botswana, but most who are out  about their sexual orientation live in the capital or in larger villages, not in the small, rural areas. I can't comment on whether or not it is physically unsafe for someone to be out in a village here or not because that would totally depend on the individual's situation. I've heard of teenagers who have come out here being beaten by parents or other family members as a form of discipline/punishment for being gay or using substances or harming themselves because they are afraid to be out or are being rejected for being out. Overall, Botswana is a peaceful country, but family dynamics and religious views have an influence, just as they have an influence in other parts of the world, including the U.S. Even if there isn't a physical threat, I can see how it could be intimidating for someone to be out in a small village here because it could feel very isolating and have some potential social implications for them. There isn't very much support or education regarding sexuality/sexual orientation in the smaller villages so many people just do not understand and lack of understanding often leads to discrimination and prejudice.

   Now keeping all of this in mind, I want to tell you about how I've had the privilege of getting to know a pretty incredible person in my small village who is openly gay and even dresses in drag frequently. This person is a respected member of the community, and from what I have been told and witnessed feels safe in the village and doesn't experience harassment within the village. I do not know what this person's experience has been growing up here entirely, but I know I am certainly admire the bravery it can take be fully oneself in a place where so many would not feel comfortable or safe enough to do so. I also am impressed by and was taken a little bit by surprise by the general open-mindedness of my small village community. It makes me feel lucky to live here in this village and to get the chance to meet such wonderful people who are able to say things like "We may not agree with it, but someone's life is his or her own life". I wish more people in this world were able to adopt that attitude, even in the United States. 

When it Rains it Pours

   The past week has been hard. Really hard.There have been moments during this week that I've wished I were at home and that I've wanted to leave. I won't leave, and things are now better, but it was definitely one of those weeks that all PCVs could understand; one of the ones where nothing felt like it was working out. Then a few days ago there was a HUGE rain storm in my village. I've been through a rainy season in Botswana already, but let me tell you, none of the storms I had seen before were anything compared to the one that hit my village a few days ago. The sky poured buckets of rain, and it even hailed! The rain was leaking in through the seams of my house, near the roof and even coming up through the floor in some places. It even made a hole in the ceiling of my bedroom and poured through, soaking my bed. I ran around my house with a mop and bucket at the low point of a low week feeling like "OMG WHAT AM I STILL DOING HERE?!!!". Then a funny thing happened. That night when the storm had finally stopped, I had cleaned up all of the water in my house and strategically placed buckets around and chased a few bugs out of my house,  I saw the humor in all of it. I laughed my head off. I also felt proud of myself for facing another tough week, and I know I handled some of the things that happened, including this crazy storm, better than I would have a year ago. So thank you Peace Corps for making me stronger.

Holiday Greetings and Island Adventures

   Happy Holidays everyone! I can't believe I'm about to celebrate a second Christmas in Botswana! In some ways it feels like it hasn't been that long since last Christmas! This year I've decided to stay in my village to celebrate. I've decided this partly because it is my last chance to celebrate Christmas here in my village, and I traveled during the holidays last year, and also because I'm trying to save money. I recently traveled up to northern Botswana to the Okavango Delta, and I am planning a trip to see Victoria Falls sometime toward the end of January, around the time of my birthday. Some of my nurse friends will be around Werda because they have to work over Christmas, as well as some of my neighbors. There are also some football tournaments that supposedly are going to be happening somewhere around my village that I may attend. At the very least, I will be making some cake to bring to the clinic and share with my nurse friends, who must stay close by in case of an emergency. I even got frosting mix to make this time! A big splurge for me! So fear not, I will not be all alone on Christmas, and I'm actually looking forward to a quieter Christmas this year.
   I said that I recently traveled up to northern Botswana to the Okavango Delta, so let me elaborate some more on that. There is a place called The Swamp Stop in Sepopa, a village on the Delta. A PCV friend is friends with the owners of this place. I traveled for several hours (about 16 total) to meet friends in that area, and then we were taken on a boat by the people who run The Swam Stop to an island right in the middle of the Okavango Delta to camp. We saw crocodiles, hippos, and eagles when we were out on the boat ( We literally spent hours a day out on the boat riding around with these awesome tour guys looking for animals..It was great!). It rained some when we were there, but it didn't even matter. We just had a sing along in the rain on the boat! On the island itself, we saw elephant dung and tracks, but they were not fresh. Elephants change their paths, and we were told they travel between the islands so unfortunately we did not see any. We did ,however, see a warthog, and we could hear the hippos in the evenings and early mornings! They sort of make a barking type sound. Since I've spent the last 21 months living in the desert part of Botswana, it was fun and interesting to see such a different part of this country that is so green and has so much water!
  
 
  

Meat Pies, Simba Chips, Cool Time, and Fake Ice Cream…Yes, Please

   I'm trying to write more about my   experiences outside of work because most of the time when people ask me about my life here they ask about work so I don't get to talk about the other things. This time I'm going to write about food (aka dijo in Setswana)

   Meat Pies are a big deal here. I'm guessing because of the British influence? Anyway, they are almost everywhere. You can get a meat pie in one of the tiny shops in my village, at grocery stores in larger villages, and at some bus stops. There are even stores like Mr. Pie Man and Pie Time that sell only meat pies. Basically, they are little breaded pockets of meaty deliciousness. They come in the form of plain chicken, chicken  perri-perri(spicy chicken), Russian (sausage), or steak and kidney. I'd recommend the chicken perri-perri. My PCV friends here laugh at me because when we were in training in Kanye I was meat pie obsessed. I didn't eat a lot at my host family sometimes and was hungry so I'd look forward to some meat pie. I probably gained a few meat pie pounds during training. Luckily, I only eat them now and then when I travel these days and have lost my meat pie weight haha.

   Simba chips are a brand of potato chips that are popular here in Botswana. You can find them in almost any little shop, and they are pretty cheap. Many of them are meat flavored. I like the salt and vinegar ones. Whenever I plan an event in my village for the students I usually end up with sandwiches and Simba chips to give them for lunch.

  Cool Time is a delicious and refreshing ice pop/slushy type of snack that is sold at every bus stop area in Botswana during the summer. People will walk around the bus and come onto the bus trying to sell Cool Time. Sometimes there is nothing better than slurping on some Cool Time when it is 110 degrees and you're traveling on a crowded bus.

   Most of the ice cream (or maybe all) in Botswana is not "real" ice cream made with dairy. Instead, it is made with oil substitutes and sugar. When I first got to Botswana I thought it tasted weird, but now if I am somewhere that actually has ice cream during the summer I'm all over that. I've actually kind of come to appreciate some fake ice cream in my life.

   I wrote back when I first got here about some of the Setswana foods. I've really come to love a couple of Setswana foods like seswaa and morogo. Seswaa is pounded meat. I've helped make it twice before. You cook the meat and then you pound it until all of the meat is broken off of the bones and is shredded until small pieces. It takes a while to make, but it is yummy. You can make it with beef or chicken. Morogo is a bit like spinach, and is delicious. I like to put some vinegar on mine.

     If you are reading this you're probably thinking "Damn, most of that (minus the meat and morogo) doesn't sound very healthy", and you would be right. Luckily, these are not things that I eat all of the time. My every day diet usually consists of things like rice, pasta, a lot of spinach, tomatoes, beans, apples, carrots, and sometimes potatoes. I also eat a lot of eggs for protein as well as granola and peanut butter. I've become a better cook here, and I've learned how to make some creative meals with few ingredients.

"What is Fainting?"

I haven't been writing as much as I once wrote because for me life here is normal and it has been more difficult for me to think of things to blog about. My life here just sort of is what it is at this point.  However, something I realized I have not written about is my fainting stories. I will preface this by saying that PCMO ( Peace Corps medical) knows about this and has helped me out so no worries there.

   The first time I fainted was last summer. I was coming back to my village after getting groceries on a mini-bus. This mini bus was very crowded so I was standing in the aisle for about 45 minutes when I started to feel sick. I had been standing near a woman who worked at the junior secondary school in my village and her friend and had been chatting with them when I first got on the bus. When I started to feel light headed I asked this woman from my village if she could shout to the bus driver and ask him to pull over so I could get off the bus and sit on the ground because there was literally no space for sitting anywhere on the bus. There was not even floor space because it was so crowded, and I was surrounded by several children standing in the aisle alongside me. Before the bus driver could stop I fainted right across the laps of this woman from my village and her friend. When I became conscious again both women were yelling at everyone on the bus to open every window and at a couple of people across the aisle who had been laughing at me. They wouldn't let me stand or move at all. I sat on their laps for a good thirty minutes until someone else offered me his seat and helped me move over to it. 

   The second time I fainted was a few weeks later on a different bus on the way to my friend's village to celebrate the holidays. I was luckily traveling with another PCV friend. Unfortunately, this bus was also very crowded, and we both had been standing for a while when I started to feel sick. My friend saw that I didn't look so great and tried to ask if someone we were standing near would give up their seat for me, but nobody wanted to. I don't think they really understand what was about to happen or maybe they thought I was just being lazy. Sure enough, I ended up fainting on one of them because they wouldn't move. Then someone gave me a seat. It was awkward. 

   After a series of medical tests nothing was found so it was determined it was most likely environmental-the heat, the closed in space, the lack of people opening windows etc. I did have some problems with dizziness a handful of other times afterward, but I had not actually passed out again until recently. This time I had walked to one of the primary schools in my village and was watching some students practice dancing for an upcoming prize giving event. I started to feel a little sick and went into the school to get some more water from the sink. I sat down with my water in case I fainted, and I did end up fainting for a  few minutes on the floor right in front of the sink. When I became conscious again it had only been a few  two tiny 6 year old, standard one students were standing next to me giggling. "Ke a lwala" …I am sick, I told them and then rested for a while before letting the teachers I had been working with know what happened ( and the PCMO again of course). 

  Bots summer is a beast!  I'm totally fine otherwise and have had updated tests that show so. I'm going to up my water intake even more, eat small things throughout the day to keep my blood sugar up, and pay attention to how I'm feeling. 

Go siame! 

Time is FLYING...Here is my life at the moment : )

 Right now I am sitting in my little house in the desert comfortably for the first time in a couple of weeks because there is an intense thunder storm taking place that has cooled the air in my house. (This storm is seriously one of the most intense storms I've experienced here. I can feel the wind blowing through my closed windows and the lightening is awesome!) Anyway, I figure this is a good time to write a blog post, since I've been slacking a bit with my blogging recently. 

   So what have I been upto lately? Well, shortly after my Teddy Bear event in my village I brought five junior secondary school students to a "Girls Leading Our World" camp in Moshupa. I know I wrote a  bit about this camp previously, but it was a project that another PCV friend had worked very hard to put on through her DAC office, and the rest of us other PCVs involved had spent months meeting, planning, and working with our schools to make this happen. Also, a HUGE thanks to my friends and family at home who made either monetary or craft item donations to the camp. Your kindness is very much appreciated by me, by the other PCVs, and by the 50 girls who attended this camp. I know I've also said this before, but the GLOW camp I worked on last February, and this GLOW camp in Moshupa are two of the projects that I've felt most passionate about during my now almost year and a half in Botswana. The girls seemed to get a lot out of the camp in terms of building self confidence and learning strong communication skills, how to protect themselves from HIV/STIs/teen pregnancy, avoiding abusing substances, and how to have healthy dating and peer relationships. They also got the opportunity to meet some very inspiring Batswana women, learn how to make paper beads and be self-sufficient business women, and participate in many fun camp craft activities and games. The first night of camp, us PCVs even taught the campers how to make 'smores for the first time, and we played games and spent time together around a camp fire. It was all such a fun, worthwhile experience!

   On a recent weekend I also got the opportunity to do a bit of traveling within Botswana. I went with a few friends up to a place called "Planet Baobab" near the salt pans in the north eastern (sort of) portion of Botswana. Planet Baobab is a camp ground/lodge where you can hang out, relax, and see the amazing, 2,000 year old baobab trees. These trees are enormous! I wish my internet was working well enough for me to post pictures of these trees on my blog, but unfortunately I can't. Just imagine me with my arms wrapped around the trunk of a massive tree and looking like an ant next to it because that is pretty much what you would see! My favorite one of the trees at PB had a hammock hanging from it, and it was so much fun and so relaxing just being in that hammock for a short while. There was also a nice salt water pool there! Since we were also close to the pans, one of my friends who is NOT a PCV and is allowed to drive here, drove us out into the bush to look for the pans. Now the pans are literally the size of the state of Connecticut, so one would think that they'd be difficult to miss, but believe it or not that was not the case! We road around for quite a while before reaching them! Getting a bit lost wasn't so bad though because we saw some cool animals ( like a jackal and an ostrich running at full speed!) and met some nice people out at their cattle posts who tried to help give us some direction. When we made it to the actual pans we took some funny jumping photos etc. I'd been to another part of the pans back when I was in training and was shadowing a volunteer so that pans weren't so new to me but it was still fun. My favorite part of the trip was sitting in a tree for three hours watching animals come to a watering hole to drink. I initially was really hoping we'd see elephants, and we did not, but it was cool watching the different groups of animals just come to the watering hole at different times by instinct (first birds, then donkeys, cows, and horses). It was also just very peaceful sitting there in the tree waiting. 

   It always feels good to get back to my village after being away, even if just for a weekend, so since getting back to Werda, I've just been enjoying my village life. It has recently really sunk in that I only have about 7 more months left in this little village that I now call home. I'm very focused right now on making the most of the rest of my time here, and I feel grateful for the time that I've had here so far. Some of the experiences that I've had over the past year and a half have not been easy( Heck, some of the experiences I've had in the past month have not been easy for that matter!) I can honestly say that I wouldn't trade anything that I've experienced here for the world though. People have started to ask me "When are you coming home, again?" and saying things like "You finish your service so soon! What are you going to do when you finish there?". Interestingly enough, I am actually thinking of extending my service for a third year. My family and closest friends at home are aware of this because it is something I've discussed with them off and on at different points for the better part of the last 10 months or so. However, the difference is that the fact that I want to do this is now becoming more of a reality, which I understand isn't easy for everyone to accept. The truth is that I do not know what will happen. Extending means having a volunteer position for a third year, and that requires applying and waiting so who knows how that will work out? I'm still applying to graduate school. I could go home at the end of May or I could extend a third year and defer graduate school for a year. For the the first time in my life really, the not knowing isn't causing me very much stress or worry. THAT I can definitely credit Peace Corps with!

Teddy Bear Day

   Recently my village received 100 teddy bears from the Mother Bear Project, an organization in the U.S. If you are interested in learning more about this wonderful organization here is the link http://www.motherbearproject.org/. I heard about this organization from another PCV who received bears for her village, and I simply contacted the Mother Bear Project and asked for teddy bears for Werda. The challenging part of planning this event was not getting the bears, but it was making sure the social work office, schools, and those "higher-ups" in my village knew about the event and mobilizing my community to be involved. Just making sure these children could come to the kgotla to receive their bears took two months of planning. I worked closely with the guidance teachers at two different primary schools to come up with a list of the most vulnerable children in my village. I also worked closely with a couple of Junior school teachers to get the scout troupe at the JSS involved in playing their instruments and marching with the younger children on Teddy Bear Day.
   Teddy Bear Day itself began with my two PCV friends and one of their friends from home and I bringing all of the popcorn and juice that we had made for the children to the kgotla ( village meeting place) in the morning. A PC staff also attended the event and helped us transport some of these things as well as picked up the JSS scout troupe and transported them to the kgotla. At the kgotla the kgosi ( village cheif) gave welcoming remarks and an older woman in my village who works cleaning the social work office said a prayer. Then each child was given a teddy bear and had his or her picture taken. We then had a mini parade, led by the scout troupe, from the kgotla to my social work office.  My PCV friends and I taught the children a couple of games like "I pick the ball" and "The hokey poky", which both involve some dancing and shaking. We then served them their snack of popcorn and juice.
  I experienced a lot of frustration while planning this event, ( like a lack of support and assistance from some of the adults who were supposed to be involved in planning it). However, it was definitely worth it in the end. On our walk back to my house my PCV friends and I saw two little girls walking down the street with their teddy bears and dancing and singing to "I pick the ball", the game that we taught them. It is the little moments that make it all worth it.