A few life updates

I haven’t been keeping up with this blog enough! My apologies to anyone who might be reading this. A lot of has happened in the last couple of months and sometimes it has been too much to put into words. I’m currently on vacation with my parents and have a bit of down time to process and write a few blog posts.

The projects that I have managed to get started are going well, as for the others, they’re still works in progress. I am still working on my organizational system for my clinic’s pharmacy and dispensary. Since it’s the end of the fiscal year, we ran out of printer ink about a month ago and won’t be getting any more for another few weeks. Nonetheless, the parts of the system I have implemented so far seem to work. I have mostly been working on making the dispensary match the pharmacy. I want to eventually gather enough data on how much we dispense every week so that we can just refill the dispensary once a week, instead of daily, and that would make the process of keeping stock counts much simpler. It doesn’t sound like the most exciting work, but when I think about the issues we have with stock outs or wasted drugs due to expiry, I think it’s some of the most important work I do.

Furthermore, I finally managed to install Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on one of the clinic computers!! I started going through the lessons with our Health Education Assistant (Mma Lenyatso) and it has been so much fun. Mma Lenyatso started out not knowing how to use a mouse or type her name. Now she has progressed to using half the letter keys on the keyboard and has managed to double her typing speed! I’m hoping that her success and progress will inspire others to want to take lessons as well. In fact, I think this program is so useful that I hope to install it on the computers at the primary school so that the students can have a chance to learn as well. I figure, the younger you start with typing, the easier it is.

The other day I had my first morning health talk at the clinic. The subject was malaria since world malaria day is coming up. I managed to get some pamphlets to hand out and clinic staff helped me put together a poster in Setswana about the symptoms and prevention methods for malaria. I think the talk went really well! Fortunately, Mma Lenyatso and one of our ambulance drivers were there to lead the discussion, since it was all in Setswana. Our clinic actually received several hundred mosquito nets from UNICEF and in the month leading up to world malaria day, we handed them out to pregnant women, women with children under 5, and the elderly. I am considering doing a project to monitor the usage of the nets and possibly map out my village to pinpoint areas that malaria cases occur. (Big dreams, we’ll see how that goes).

Mosquito nets

At the primary school, I have started a World Map Project! I really love geography, and I thought that the best way to start getting involved at the school would be this project. We are drawing a 1.68 meters by 3.36 meters world map on the side of one of the buildings at the school. Once the project is done, we’ll be able to play geography games with the kids and I have already started quizzing them on the different countries of the world. I also just like the idea of adding something colorful and beautiful to the school. We plan to write ‘Welcome to Gobojango Primary School’ over the map and it will be the first thing people see when they enter school grounds. But I won’t lie, it’s also a lot of fun and deeply satisfying to be able to look at a physical accomplishment at the end of the day. As an added bonus, some of the teachers have gotten very involved with the project and it has been great getting to know them.

A work in progress!

Sadly, I am still working on getting a GrassRoot Soccer team going, but that was in part due to the school break and my traveling around for trainings and holidays. I plan to step up my efforts when I get home.

I also feel that I should mention a sad occurrence. A few weeks ago, a woman I worked with at the clinic passed away. Her name was Lentho and she was a lovely person. She became too sick to work by November, so I didn’t get a chance to get to know her well, but I know that she was funny and she was kind. She was the first person to invite me to a party when I arrived in Gobojango. She was also the first person to try to find me a pet cat when she found out how much I wanted one. She loved to garden and dance. She was very close to many of my friends and neighbors, so I would accompany them sometimes and visit Lentho at home. Her passing was very difficult and impacted almost everyone I know in Gobojango. She is really missed.

That’s all for now, I promise to post again soon.

Buses, ghosts, and combi sprints

A few weeks ago I went to the lovely town of Kanye (yes, I was incredibly excited about the name) with my neighbor Lorato as my counterpart so that the two of us could attend a GrassRoot Soccer training. What is GrassRoot Soccer? It’s an NGO that uses the popularity of soccer to teach young people about HIV. That sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but the program actually works really well. There are 12 different lessons and you use different games to teach anything from the risks of having multiple concurrent partners, to the fact that you cannot tell whether or not a person has HIV just by looking at them. I loved this training because our Batswana counterparts were just as invested and enthusiastic as the volunteers. Anyway, I had been struggling to find a way to broach these uncomfortable and very serious topics with young people in my village and I feel like this method is a good place to start.

The journey home was quite the saga. I ended up taking 4 buses and traveling for 10 hours total to get back. I love that I can hop on a bus in Botswana and go anywhere for a reasonable price, but those long rides can get old fast. Whenever I get too grumpy and feel like complaining, I try to remind myself how much harder it would be if I was six foot four like my brother Steve. On one of these buses, a woman across the isle from me was sharing a two-seater with her young daughter. The bus was pretty packed at this point. Then, a mosadi mogolo (a respectful term that literally means old woman) clambered into the bus with a toddler and a baby. Suddenly, that two-seater was now struggling to accommodate for five people. I felt so bad for them that I offered to let the toddler sit on my lap and the old woman gratefully handed the child over to me. The second she was in my hands, I knew I had made a stupid mistake. The little girl suddenly started bawling, screaming, and scrambling with all her might to get away from me. I keep forgetting that with children under five there is pretty good chance they will be terrified of me. We hastily traded children and I was now holding a slightly squirmy, but calm baby girl. She spent a few minutes staring at my hands before tentatively petting them and playing with my fingers. I get pet surprisingly frequently by children (and sometimes adults), I guess the novelty of the color of my skin never quite wears off. I always find it interesting to watch little kids prod my arms and pet my hands as if to make sure I’m real and not some kind of ghost. And my hair, of course, is just too much fun to pass up. If I sit for too long in front of little girls in my village I’ll end up with a dozen braids in a few minutes.

Anyway, when I finally, finally, FINALLY got to my shopping village to wait for my fourth and last bus of the day, I got to participate in one of my least favorite rituals. If by some misfortune I happen to be in my shopping village on a busy Friday or a holiday weekend or the end of the month when everyone gets paid, I get to take part in what I like to internally call ‘combi sprints’. A combi is like a van that is used as a small bus when traveling short distances. Since there’s a fair amount of travel to and from my village, our combis tend to be a bit bigger than the norm, but are still rarely large enough to accommodate all the passengers. Since I arrived in my village almost six months ago, I have tried to figure out when the buses come and go, but I get a different answer from every person I ask. So, when I finish my shopping or traveling and am ready to go home, I sit and I wait.  While I’m waiting, I do my best to position myself and my bags so I have a good shot at getting a seat on the combi. It never seems like it will be much of a problem, since there are only a few people standing around, but it must be some kind of optical illusion I haven’t gotten the hang of yet. I’ll be standing there wondering if I should put my backpack down because my shoulders are aching, when someone at the other end of the parking lot will whistle. Suddenly, everyone jumps into action and dozens of people run over to get in line as fast as possible. There’s a lot of jostling and angling for a better spot, but eventually people settle and we wait for the combi to arrive. However, once the combi does arrive and opens its doors, any pretense of order falls apart. There’s a mad rush towards the door as everyone tries to squeeze in as fast as possible. Some of the people at the back of the line will give up and rush to the open windows to drop a plastic bag of groceries on one of the seats. (In Botswana, all you have to do to mark a seat as yours is to leave something on it.) If by some stroke of good luck I manage to get onto the bus in time, I try to find a seat and begin awkwardly trying to decide where to put my gigantic backpacking bag. Eventually we all cram in and, when no one else can fit, the combi starts easing out of lot with the door gradually sliding shut. I sit there and greet the people around me and then reassure myself that this last ride of the day will only be 30 minutes long. When I get to my stop, I launch my bag out of the combi and clamber out after it. I’m sweaty, exhausted, and relieved to be back in my quiet home. I greet my neighbors as I walk to my house and am overjoyed to find my kitten waiting for me inside. I put my things down and congratulate myself for successfully making it through the combi sprints again.

So, what next?

I’ve been in Botswana for six months now (woot!), yet it somehow feels like both a few seconds and an eternity. After two and a half months of pre-service training and three months of community integration, it’s finally time for me to start my projects. Yikes.

I’ve decided that I want to be as open as possible about this experience and share it with you all. I have experienced huge moments of self-doubt and yet at other times I feel like I’m on top of the world. The highs and lows of Peace Corps service are definitely real.

Anyway, the advice I’ve gotten from older volunteers and staff is to start by trying a lot of things and seeing what sticks. That way, you aren’t completely invested in one project and then devastated when it doesn’t work out. It also prevents you from pushing too hard on something that your community doesn’t actually want.

So here’s what I did this week:

At the clinic, I am currently working on putting together a computer literacy lesson plan. Several people I work with have expressed an interest in learning how to use computers, how to type faster, or how to use excel. We have four computers at the clinic (sadly, no internet) so I am putting together one on one lessons for staff members. Since the clinic tends to get really quiet in the afternoon, finding time for these lessons shouldn’t be a problem. I’m also trying to find a way to install Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on the computers because that’s what I learned to type with and it’s fun. Furthermore, I sat down with two of the nurses and we agreed that the pharmacy and dispensary could use a new organizational system to make finding pills and taking inventory simpler. I’ve been making new labels and brainstorming ideas that I hope to start implementing next week.

Secondary projects:

A few weeks ago, a young man named Moagi approached me about putting together a career fair for out of school youth. In Botswana, there is a big test you have to pass at the end of form 3 (I think that’s the equivalent of 9^th grade) in order to move on to senior secondary school. Unfortunately, in my village the passing rate of this test is quite low and many of the students who fail tend to just stop school altogether. Nonetheless, there actually are quite a few resources for young people in this country, out of school or not. Two years ago, Moagi took out a loan from the Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture. He used that money to start a successful vegetable farm and now sells his produce to supermarkets in neighboring villages. Then, he used the profit from his business to build himself a house and buy a truck. Basically, Moagi is awesome and inspiring and he wants to inspire other young people to take advantage of the options they have and create successful futures. I went to his farm this week with a friend and we discussed the possibility of bringing in people from the different youth ministry services and from the technical schools to have a career fair. Now, Botswana culture is very big on consulting, so my next step was to set up a meeting with the ward chiefs and see what they thought of the idea. They turned out to be very supportive and said they would share the idea with the village chief and encouraged me to come and speak about the idea at this week’s village meeting. So I did. I was nervous and jittery, but I brought a friend to help translate (my Setswana is still nowhere near speech worthy) and talked about the career fair. Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure how people feel about the idea, but I think that they liked that I wanted to consult with the community about it. Afterwards, two girls who are currently out of school even came up to me to express their interest in the idea. Friday afternoon, I took the bus to my shopping village, found the offices of youth, sports, and culture and ran my idea by someone working there. He kindly walked me through what kind of proposal I would need to submit to get their support and encouraged me to come back soon! I am not getting my hopes up about being able to pull this off, but I definitely think I took some positive steps this week.

Other than that, I also decided to branch out a bit into the primary and junior secondary schools. As I mentioned before, the clinic is quiet after lunch and I want to get more involved with the rest of the community. I submitted a proposal to the vice-headmistress at the primary school about potentially helping with English or computer classes or even starting a debate club. In Botswana, school starts out in Setswana, but by the time they get to secondary school most classes and tests are in English. If students don’t feel comfortable using English it can make school especially challenging for them. I also really enjoy playing with kids and can’t wait to start using the Kings Pack with them.

Finally, I decided to set up some personal goals for my free time because it helps me stay focused and motivated.

1.     I started jogging a week ago at a small soccer field close to my house. I either go at sunrise or sunset because those are the only times it isn’t incredibly hot these days. So far, I’m feeling good!

2.      I also started working on a personal garden. I have ten little cucumber sprouts! I’ve never gardened before and don’t exactly know what I’m doing, but it’s been a fun experiment and I love the idea of one day having my own fresh vegetables.

3.     Last but not least, I’m reading “I Write What I Like” by Steve Biko. I feel like I’ve been watching too many sitcoms and using TV as a crutch, so I want to focus more on reading.

I hope writing it all out here for the world to see will help keep me accountable and I plan to post updates, good or bad, about how it’s all going.

Oh, most importantly, I owe so many amazing people thank yous for the letters and packages! I am constantly blown away by how thoughtful and supportive you all have been. Whenever I can get to the post office, I always leave with a big smile on my face. Thank you so much to mom and dad, Steve, Adrian, Nico, Mrs. Roberts, Annelise, Daria, Mru, the Monroes, the Zellingers, and Tante Guillemette!!!

IST and Beyond

As mentioned in my last blog post, I recently spent two weeks in Gaborone for In-Service Training (IST). The two and a half months we spent in Serowe before going to site was meant to teach us about Batswana culture, language, and the Peace Corps methods of development aka capacity building and one-on-one approaches. IST however, was meant to bring us back together after our three months of integration and provide us with more concrete skills and information so that we can begin our projects.

First things first, let me write about the unbelievably exciting notion of being in a nice hotel with all the friends you haven’t seen in three months. I was a little nervous that IST would be as overwhelming and exhausting as PST, but the second I started running into friends and receiving dozens of hugs, I stopped caring. Add in the fact that this hotel had hot showers, free wifi, freen meals, and  AIR CONDITIONING, and I was pretty much in volunteer heaven. I started noticing how much we had all changed when my roommate and I began hoarding the complimentary hot chocolate and sugar packets to take back to our villages. (Hey, food is expensive, no judgment allowed.) I think the most noticeable difference in our cohort was in the appearances of the men. They’d pretty much all lost weight and about half of them were now sporting big beards.

Anyway, IST turned out to be pretty similar to PST in a lot of ways – Setswana lessons in the morning and long sessions on Peace Corps policies in the afternoons. However, some of the changes I enjoyed were: having passionate guest speakers from different NGOs in Botswana talk about their goals and strategies, and receiving training in specific tools Peace Corps uses for behavior change such as Kings Pack and STEPS films. Kings Pack training was a ton of fun. The Kings Foundation is an NGO from the UK that provides volunteers all around Southern Africa with a big red backpack full of fun. These backpacks have disks, ropes, tennis balls, hula-hoops, Frisbees, beanbags, and just about every other game you can think of. We spent an amazing morning playing many games and learning how to use these tools to teach different life skills such as hand washing or malaria prevention, and even using games to bring up issues like gender norms. At their core, Kings Foundation is about providing kids with the right to play and the right to be kids for as long as possible. That message feels particularly important when it seems as though children are forced to grow up too quickly. Over the last three months I have loved getting to know the children in my village. Their enthusiasm is contagious and even on my hardest days they make me smile. I cannot wait to use my Base Pack at the primary school in my village.

Finally, IST was really useful because everyone I could possibly want to talk to about project ideas and strategies was walking around in the same hotel. I had the chance to learn about what other volunteers plan to do, what older volunteers are already doing, and then talk to programming staff about what I would like to start in my village and ask how to go about doing that. We also had a couple of days where each volunteer’s counterpart was at the hotel for some training too. Mine, sadly, could not make it, but I had the opportunity to learn about cultural protocols and the different methods of consulting from the counterparts of other volunteers.

Seeing my friends and enjoying all the comforts of the hotel was wonderful, but after two weeks I was ready to get back to my village. It turns out I really enjoy my quiet village life and the bustling capital that is Gaborone was starting to wear me out. After 10 very long hours of buses and waiting for buses to leave, I made it home to my angry kitten and all my lovely neighbors. It’s good to be home.

New Year, New Beginnings

Hello world! I know it's been quite a while since my last blog post and I apologise. Apparently I got a little too wrapped up in my integration period and forgot to write about it. I am now writing to you from Gaborone (the capital) where I am undergoing my In-Service Training (IST). What does that mean? It means I successfully completed/survived my three month community integration period! (Which is also referred to as 'lockdown' by Peace Corps volunteers because we aren't allowed to go anywhere).
During those three months my job was to relax, learn about my community, and build meaningful friendships and work relationships. Absolutely no new projects allowed. I spent a lot of time sitting and talking to  people, going on walks, and shadowing people. I had a lot of firsts during this time - first time living alone, first time eating a caterpillar (also known as mopane worm, it's such a popular snack here it's even on some of the currency! For the record, it tasted like kale chips).
Anyway, rather than write a long blog post again, I thought I'd write a list of some of the things I did during lockdown:

-Interviewed neighbours, the kgosi (chief), the police department, clinic staff, the Village Development -Committee (VDC), and pretty much any who would sit with me
-Had my first Christmas without my family (very hard)
-Rode in a donkey cart
-Taught my coworkers to make pancakes
-Joined the youth club at the Junior Secondary School
-Went to a tombstone unveiling ceremony
-Had every thought imaginable
-Got a kitten!
-Started planning my future garden
-Had a Christmas party for the neighbourhood kids

I made a tree out of paper, cut out some ornaments, and let the kids go nuts with colouring

-Learned to bake
-Made friends
-Failed to cook naan
-Met my district's parliamentarian

This is our kgotla! All the village meetings happen here. It's traditional to sit under a tree for kgotla meetings. 

-Held countless movie nights for kids
-Got stuck in the mud (literally) after the first big rain
-Weighed babies
-Counted pills

My clinic

-Plotted future health talks
-Made friends with half the dogs in my village (and had them follow me home)
-Asked a lot of questions
-Borrowed my neighbour's grandmother's donkey to be my lawnmowers

             There's my kitty in front of the donkeys

-Watched the Christmas choirs
-Marvelled at chicken behaviour
-Kicked centipedes, millipedes, ants, grasshoppers, and camel spiders out of my house
-Swept my house for the thousandth time and wondered how all the dirt keeps getting in
-Sweat constantly
-Took cold baths
-Started sweating the second I was dry
-Wished for rain
-Sweat some more

Finally, here's my cute little house!