SITE ANNOUNCEMENT

The big day finally finally FINALLY arrived! I spent most of Thursday being an excited/nervous wreck. After six weeks of PST all I wanted was to know where I was going to be placed for the next two years. I wanted to be able to plan and dream and think about projects in a more concrete way. Anyway, we spent most of the day distracted and wishing our sessions would go by more quickly. When the time finally arrived, we shuffled into a big room decorated with balloons and sat in our semi-circle of plastic chairs. Once we all settled down, we were told to look under our chairs and pull out the numbers taped under our seats. I got number 20 out of 72 and only had to fidget for a little while before it was my turn to step up to the table and find out where my site is. 

After a few seconds of fumbling, I ripped open my envelope and found that I'll be living in GOBOJANGO for the next two years! I obviously had no idea where that was at first, but when they put my name on the map I saw that Gobojango is in the east, very close to the Tuli Block and Zimbababwe's border, and very close to the village I shadowed! I was so happy. I don't know too much about my village yet, but I know that my clinic is a tiny health post that a doctor visits twice a month to check on ARV patients. The volunteer I'm replacing is actually in El Salvador right now working with Peace Corps response. She seemed to really love Gobojango and I can't wait to make it my home in a few weeks!

Pre-placement jitters

My placement packet and a treat! 

This was definitely one of the best days I've had so far.

p.s. Quick mail shout-out: thank to my parents and Sarah for the wonderful packages, they really made my day!

LPI 1 Results

Today we got our results from the language test and I got intermediate low!!! I was so pleasantly surprised.  As I mentioned earlier, every volunteer needs to reach intermediate low by the end of Pre-Service Training to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana. We have another test in 3 and a half weeks and if people don’t receive intermediate low, they need to stay in Botswana a little longer for some intensive remedial language training. Anyway, since I got it, I don’t have to worry for the rest of PST!! I can just keep learning at my own pace and do my best. We find out on Monday who our new teachers will be and what our new language groups will be.

p.s. I’m officially half way through PST! Five more weeks and I’ll be in my new home.

Shadowing week

Well I’m back in Serowe after a few days in Mathathane shadowing a current Peace Corps volunteer named Hollis. Shadowing was fantastic and exactly what I needed right now. It was so nice to get away for a little while and explore a new part of Botswana. Getting to see how an actual volunteer lives and works was also really beneficial, it took away a lot of my stress and worry about where I’m going to be placed for the next two years.

My friend Megan and I took a three-hour bus ride to the town of Bobonong. From there we met Hollis and hitched a ride to Mathathane, which was another hour away. Hollis is lucky enough to have both hot running water and electricity, so I felt very pampered. Not only that, but she went to great lengths to cook us all kinds of great food we’ve been missing and craving. She made cheesy quinoa, banana bread muffins, homemade hummus, cucumber salad, and excellent pasta. I was pretty much in food heaven. Also, I immediately became obsessed with her pet cat and carried him around from room to room. No surprise there. 

Anyway, Mathathane is a pretty small village and Hollis has been a health clinic volunteer there for two years. She extended her service for six months so that she can finish her current project: building a reading room for Mathathane. The project is a huge undertaking and we got to learn about the complications of getting funding and budgets and getting enough materials for construction. I was really impressed by how much she managed to put together considering the limitations with transport and funding. There are several NGOs in the US that managed to fundraise and get around 2,000 books sent to her. I was so inspired by all the possibilities in her village once the library is set up. There could be book clubs and resume building workshops or even creative writing workshops. The next volunteer who works there could work to get some computers set up and teach computer literacy. Seeing a project in the makes got me thinking about all the possibilities that I may or may not have once I get to site.

While we were there we managed to create a mobile of the solar system and hung it to ceiling in the reading room. We also spent some time in the clinic and got to know the pharmacist working there. He had a very frank discussion with us about HIV in Botswana and his experiences working in country. He also asked us to help him re-organize the pharmacy. We moved all the regular medication into the room where the ARV medication is kept. He hopes that this way it will be easier to keep track of medication and it will help reduce the stigma on HIV patients. Everyone will now have to go to the same room to get medicine. All in all, a great week.

Here we are in the newly organised pharmacy! 

Hollis with the solar system mobile

When you live by the Tuli Block, you tend to collect some more unusual souvenirs

A happy kitty with some fairy lights 

Setswana on my mind

My first LPI is over! It’s such a relief not to have to worry about it anymore, but after spending so much time thinking about Setswana I thought I should actually describe the language a bit on my blog. Well first things first, my LPI went better than I thought it would! After weeks of words not sticking and feeling a little lost, I feel like I’m finally getting the basics and vocabulary doesn’t slip away from me as much.

So here are a few Setswana fun facts:
Setswana is a phonetic language, so you pronounce every syllable in a word. I can essentially read a paragraph out loud with reasonable pronunciation and still have no idea what I’m saying. Another important fact: in Setswana all the ‘G’s are pronounced like ‘H’s. For example, Gaborone (the capital) is actually pronounced ‘Haborone’.

Then, there’s a whole class of words that were imported either from South Africa or from the West. English words are ‘Setswanized’ to fit into the language or used as slang. For example, weathera = weather, foroko = fork, tshokolete = chocolate, Sateretaga = Saturday.

Finally, last week we started learning all the different noun classes. In Setswana, you don’t add an ‘S’ to the end of the word to make it plural, you add something to the front of it. There are 18 different noun classes (that I know of) that different words fall into that you need to memorize to know how to use them in a sentence. To make it more complicated, each noun class has its own possessive markers. Now, right when you think your brain is about to explode, you find out that there are strong and weak adjectives and those are used differently too. Welcome to the wonderful and confusing world of Setswana.

Hey Adrian, I took this photo for you! I love watching the birds here but it's hard to get a picture, so here's a ton of nests in the tree next to my house. 

One month in!

This week marks one month since I joined the Peace Corps! It still surprises me sometimes that I'm in Botswana. This week was great and things are finally speeding up a bit around here. We had Monday off (thank you labour day) so we got to go to the rhino sanctuary! I was beyond excited for my first game drive and it did not disappoint. We saw rhinos, giraffes (in the distance), impalas, warthogs, springboks, all kinds of birds, and zebras. The zebras were by far my favourite, their stripes are mesmerising and I managed to get some pretty good pictures.
This week was also the week we found out who we're shadowing, we also had the opportunity to visit a local clinic, AND we have our first LPI (language proficiency interview), so we had all kinds of excitement. On Monday I'm going to the bus rink bright and early to catch a bus to Bobonong where I'll meet the volunteer I'm shadowing and find a ride to Mathathane. Mathathane is in the very east of Botswana, close to the South African border. I can't wait to see a new part of the country and most of all I want to see what the day to day life is like of a current clinic and health team volunteer.
Tomorrow morning I have my LPI which will essentially be a 10 minute interview in Setswana followed by a scenario I'm supposed to act out. I'm finally starting to feel a bit more confident in my Setswana and I hope that I'll be able to show what I know tomorrow. These interviews are important because they're going to use the results to re-cluster our language classes according to ability. This will be our first real evaluation so we know where we are and how much we have to learn to be able to swear in. By the end of PST I need to have achieved an intermediate low level of proficiency. Wish me luck!

Day to day life

Hello again internet world! It is such a struggle finding working internet that it always feels like a huge treat when I can see something on facebook, let alone post. Anyway, since we are treating ourselves with a pizza brunch at a hotel, we’re all greedily taking advantage of the free wifi. I was struggling to figure what topic to dedicate this blog post to and I figured I should actually describe what my average day is like:

I wake up every day at 6AM and take my bucket to the kitchen where my water is heating on the stove for my morning bucket bath (also known as ‘bathing’). Then I grab my flashlight and toilet paper and head to the bathroom. My house doesn’t have running water, so it’s always a bit of a gamble to see if the toilet will flush. (Since this is a Peace Corps blog, be prepared for lots of bathroom talk). I still haven’t figured out when it’s ok to get a bucket and fill the tank myself, so sometimes I just wait until I can go at the college where they have running water. Then, I get my bucket and head to the tub where I either use my cup and washcloth to bathe or dunk my entire head in the bucket to try to wash my hair. I hate washing my hair, especially on chilly mornings. I still can’t figure out how to really wash the back of my head sometimes so it feels a little funny. After that I get dressed and brush my teeth before sitting down for breakfast. All of our meals take place in the living room in front of the TV. (I’ll do a whole other post about TV here because I find it so interesting).

Anyway, I’m lucky enough to be the one who hosts our language lessons every morning, so I just sit around until the rest of my language group shows up. I have Setswana lessons every morning from 7:30 to 9:30 on week days and from 8 to 12 on Saturdays. I won’t deny it, I find Setswana challenging. I have a hard time remembering phrases and already feel a little nervous about my first language test next week. After that we all climb into a van and head to the college. We have three or four sessions every day on anything from culture or security to gender norms or global health. We usually finish at around 4 or 5 and have a bit of free time. I have to be home by 6 so that I’m not out after dark.

When I come home I play with the kids or try to help around the house. I have dinner, then sometimes a second bucket bath and go to bed by 8 or 8:30 to have a little time to read or watch a show before I fall asleep.

To be perfectly honest, PST is exhausting sometimes. I’m a pretty introverted person, so I find being around people constantly from 7AM to 8PM every day to be pretty draining. But it isn’t just about being around people, it’s being ‘on’ all the time. Peace Corps really emphasizes that we represent the US 24/7 and always need to be ready to interact with locals, practice our Setswana, and actively participate during PST. Sometimes at the end of the day I feel like I just don’t have it in me to talk to another person. All of us get pretty worn out some days. We have something called ‘healthy outlets’ once a week and I am so grateful for it. We can use that time to go to the gym, read, play games, or journal. 

So that’s what my life is like these days. It’s hard to believe we’re three weeks in! It feels like it’s been forever and no time at all at the same time. On Monday we’re going to a rhino sanctuary (yay US holidays!), which I’m really excited for, and the week after this we get to leave Serowe to shadow a current Peace Corps volunteer. I can’t wait.

Mail shoutout: thank you to my parents for the wonderful letters, to Klyzza for the two lovely postcards, et merci Tante Anne pour la doudoune!

I love walking past this sign every day on my way home

A lovely contrast of traditional and modern in my neighbourhood

Botswana Birthday

On August 21^st I turned 22! I wasn’t expecting anything, but it turned out to be a really nice day. I started my mornings the way I always do, with a bucket bath and breakfast. My host family wished me a happy birthday and then I had my language class. I love my language class, there are five of us and our instructor (Zeeman) and everyone is just very supportive and wants to learn as much as possible. Anyway, after some birthday hugs (yay!), my friend Keeshma pulled out a card she had made and had others sign the day before. I was really touched by the gesture. Keeshma if you happen to read this, thank you!

The 21^st was also the day my group had to go to the bank so we went to the mall, which means I got ice cream and chocolate on my birthday. Then we had some interesting talks about gender roles and culture in Botswana and got an hour and a half of healthy outlets time. All in all, a good day.

Before I left for Botswana, I received 4 cards to take with me and open on my actual birthday. It was really nice to have a piece of ‘home’ with me. Some of my friends also set up a dropbox folder before I left that was full of music and postcards and videos of them saying happy birthday and wishing me luck. I can’t even express how much that meant to me. I love being able to look at their faces whenever I want. If anyone reading this has a friend or family member joining the Peace Corps, I definitely recommend making them a folder like that before they leave.

p.s. Thank you to everyone that sent facebook and email birthday wishes, I can’t respond individually just yet, but it means a lot and I’m so grateful!

Birthday cards :)