50 Years of Peace Corps...and Botswana is HOT!

   Last weekend was the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps party. Volunteers from all over Botswana, Peace Corps staff and their families, Returned Volunteers (RPCVs) and their families, and special guests such as an ambassador attended the party. There was food, some dancing, and there were also crafts that volunteers brought from their villages. It was great to see Bots10s, Bots9s, and the new Bots11s, who I met for the first time at the party. A couple of the RPCVs also spoke, and it made me think about how short my time here really is and how quickly it is already going. I left the party feeling very uplifted and grateful to be here.
   It has gotten very hot very quickly during the past week. Temperatures have been around 102F pretty consistently. People are calling this a heat wave because it is still only spring! Pretty soon it will be summer though. I'm trying to be better at storing water since summer in Botswana means the water is out more frequently. I thought I was doing a good job of storing a couple of buckets of water that I can boil and drink when the water is out. However, when it is 102 degrees out, the last thing I really want to be doing when I get home and out of the hot sun is to boil water before I can drink it. I don't know what I was thinking or why I didn't think of this sooner, but when I visited another Bots10 last weekend I noticed that she had multiple bottles of water stored in her fridge. She had gotten the idea from some volunteers who have already been through a Botswana summer. It was a simple idea, but not something I ever had to think about before coming here. I am now collecting any bottle or container I can to store water in. Most of the time I have been pretty lucky because I have had water. There have been a couple of times when the water has gone out for just a couple of days though. Also, during the afternoons the water comes out of the tap hot now that is has been so hot outside so it is nice to have cold water in my fridge.There is something kind of cool about learning to appreciate things like cold water or having water in general though.