I will start by sharing a couple of difficult things that have happened in the past week because I think it is important to be honest and write about the tough times here as well.
Normally once a week or every two weeks I am able to ride in the ambulance with clinic staff to go to a village about an hour and half drive away to get groceries or take care of other business I may need to take care of like getting my electricity cheque or meetings related to a project I'm working on with Tourism. When I've gone other times I've been able to get a ride back with the nurses in the ambulance without any issue. There is never a set time when the ambulance will leave to return to my village, but it is usually later in the afternoon, and if they have left earlier the nurses have called me to let me know. This past week I went to wait in the usual spot where the nurses gather and wait for the ambulance at the end of the day and was told by someone I know who happened to be sitting there that the ambulance for my village had already left. Nobody had called me. They had forgotten me there. I was a bit upset by this but was assured that I could ride with some staff from a clinic in a nearby village and that I would be brought to my village. I trusted this and went with them because I knew the person who told me to go with them.
The ambulance stopped several times on the way for people to run errands, and it was getting dark. I was a little worried because there are a lot of road accidents at night in Botswana because it is so difficult to see the animals on the road at night, but I knew it was better to stay with people who I knew were bringing me to my village rather than getting out and trying to get a ride with someone else and possibly not having a ride at all. As we got closer to my village, about 40k away or maybe even a little less, the driver pulled over and stopped on a nurses compound. I was then told that was as far as they were going bring me because my village was past that village and that they could drop me off on the side of the road to hitch the rest of the way. By this time it was dark, I didn't know this village, and there was no way that it would have been safe for me to be hitching from there. I told them that I had been told that I was getting a ride to my village and that if I had known that they were not going to be driving me all the way there I would have tried to get a ride with someone else who would. I also explained that it was not safe for me to be hitching at night. One of the nurses in the car seemed to feel badly but still wasn't going to drive me to my village herself. She asked me to get out of the car and talk with one of the other nurses and see if I could convince them to drive me to my village. Then the nurses who had been riding with and the driver left me on the nurses compound and went home. I sat there with these two other nurses who I had never met before and explained my situation. Their only responses were "Well, what are you going to do then?" and "Don't you have any friends in your village who could pick you up here?". I told them that at this point they were my only options for a ride home because of these other people leaving me when they had told me that they were going to drive me to my village. They said again "But don't you have any friends?", and I began to cry a little out of frustration and told them that I haven't been here very long, I'm getting to know people, and that I do not know anyone well enough in my village who has a car who I could ask to come and get me. I even offered to pay p10 to whoever would drive me to my village. Then they said that fine they would give me a ride, and I thanked them. I was so glad at this point just to have a ride home.
The car was safe and the driver drove slowly to watch for animals, which I was thankful for. However, both people in the car laughed at me for crying and said "Don't you like it here? Why were you crying". I told them that it is not an easy thing to live far away from home, get used to a different culture, and that I had a bad week and that feeling forgotten about and like people didn't care about me or my safety was upsetting to me and now they were laughing at me, which didn't help. I also told them that I get along well with people in my village, but that developing strong friendships with people who don't always get where I'm coming from isn't easy and takes time. They seemed a little embarrassed about laughing at me after that and changed the subject to other topics like bugs and snakes. They did bring me home safely and when I offered them the p10 they wouldn't take it.
The experience described above was the final straw of a long week of feeling angry and upset with various things. Earlier in the week at one of the schools I had met a teenage girl who had a bandage wrapped around her head and a black eye. She was sitting by the main office at the school when I was waiting for a meeting with the head guidance counselor. She looked very sad and like she wanted to say something to me but was hesitating. I said "Hello, how are you?" and smiled and she said "I am fine" and gave a slight smile back but was then quiet. I waited a while to see if she would say anything else, but she didn't. A while later when I was meeting with the guidance teachers I told them that I had met a student who looked like she had been very hurt and upset. I asked what had happened and was told in a very nonchalant way that she had been beaten by another student in the village. I was saddened and surprised by the calmness with which they said this, as if it was very common. The thing that surprised me the most was that I genuinely like these guidance counselors, and they do typically express a lot of concern and seem to care for students so the fact that their reaction to this student having been beaten just didn't seem to fit. I spent two hours meeting with the head guidance counselor that day, first listening to her talk about how she feels a lack of support from others and how difficult it is to get things accomplished and listing off all of the things that were supposed to be planned and weren't working out. We came up with a list of some things to work on together. When I left her office there were several teachers sitting around playing cards, and I felt irritated by this. In addition to these things I had received some difficult news from home. I did not like the way I was feeling by the end of the week at all and felt frustrated with myself for feeling this way.
The good thing about bad weeks here is that they do get better. I had spoken with one of my PCV friends about how I was having a rough week, had received some upsetting news from home, and feeling frustrated and angry and hated feeling that way, and she invited me to her village for the weekend to "escape" for a bit. I took her up on her offer, and it ended up being very helpful. We went to a birthday party for one of her Motswana friends from work, and everyone at the party was so kind, welcoming, and incredible that it was a wonderful reminder of the fact that there are people here who are genuinely caring. We spent a lot of time talking, not only venting about the difficult moments, but about the positive experiences as well. We talked about the things we can't control, here and at home,and the things we can, and I finally started to feel like myself again. We also spent time talking to children and playing with puppies and of course ate good food and laughed a lot too, which is always a good thing. I returned to my village feeling refreshed, focused on the positive, and motivated to spend time with good people and work on the projects that I feel good about. I feel like myself only a little bit tougher.
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