Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!
I'm off to the delta and Namibia for a couple weeks, and wanted to wish you happy and fun-filled holidays before I leave. Will have more to write when I return. Much love! xoxo
Sunday, October 18, 2009
6 Months In
In the middle of Botswana's hot season. The landscape is very dry - buttery yellow with bursts of straggling orange and green foliage. I am partial to lush, tropical and forest environments, but the dry season here emanates a surprising beauty, soft and subtle, under the intense direct sun rays. The position of the setting sun has shifted so much that I can no longer easily watch it from my front porch. But I can still take in the sunsets during my regular (aspiring to daily) runs. In the absence of a coastline and the therapy of waves, the descending sun over the Chobe bush, no one in sight, centers and rejuvenates me. I also have gained a running (and yoga) buddy because a Berkeley PHD student has come to live and do research in Kachikau for the next year. She also has a car, and Sex and the City on her computer. My life has suddenly changed!
Work is slowly progressing. Sometimes I find myself exhausted from constantly inventing things to do with my day so that I feel some sense of productivity. I am learning to be happy with accomplishing one small goal a day (or even week) rather than expecting to complete an entire list of desired activities. Sometimes I feel that I have been here a long time and that I am "integrated" into the community, but then something will happen to remind me there is still a lot to learn and many of the projects I want to work with will take much more time to develop well.
Here are some projects I'm focusing on:
Kachikau Youth Center - working on obtaining funding to buy sports equipment, art supplies, and resources to hold Life Skills sessions there
BOCADOL - this is an organization which offers various educational courses, including JC and BGCSE courses. JC and BGCSE are certificates earned when students pass certain levels of high school. In the Kachikau, the pass rate for the JC certificate is 50%, and many people in the village do not have not successfully passed one or both of these levels of education. The idea is to bring BOCADOL services to Kachikau, so more people would have the opportunity to continue their education without having to commute to Kasane (whose BOCADOL center is already very busy and cannot accept all applicants)
Circles of Support - program based in the high school that is starting up. It will recruit and train two adult volunteers from every village (there are 5) in the Chobe Enclave to provide psycho-social support to families of orphaned children and children who are not doing well in school (who have dropped out or are close to dropping out). This type of work overlaps with part of the job description of social workers in Botswana, but the social work offices in Chobe are understaffed and underresourced, so this program is meant to give attention to cases that are currently being neglected, though not by choice
Library Club - weekly, the local librarian and I meet with primary school students to read, write, and draw. We do activities and play games that are meant to help improve the students' English skills, encourage them to read (for learning and recreation), and increase their abilities to think critically and for themselves
High School Girls Football - training with the girls football (soccer) team at the high school. The team is relatively new but the girls have great energy. We are working on building their football skills, and getting them needed equipment like cleats, shinguards, and uniforms
Even though it's been hot and dry for the past month, we have had a couple nights of rain which has felt amazing. The last storm was a full-blown lightning and thunder storm. It was awesome! I've never been in a storm with so much lighting so close.
The other weekend my friend, another volunteer, came to visit and we went camping outside of Kasane. The campsite looked like a parking lot but there was a nice outdoor bar and restaurant by the river. I ate the biggest and best eggroll of my life there! Later, we went for a dip in one of the hotel pools in Kasane and spent a ridiculous amount of money on a buffet dinner at the hotel. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in myself because I definitely did not eat my money's worth. I did get to try kudu though, and the coffee ice cream was heaven.
Done playing tourist until December when I'm spending Christmas in the delta (Okavango) and heading to Swakopmund, Namibia for New Year's. Planning to sandboard on the dunes and party on the beach, then safari through Etosha National Park in northern Namibia. I will also become skilled in driving stick on the wrong side of the car and road. Thanksgiving week, I'm taking a long trip to Hukuntsi, Botswana for an intensive Setswana language week and a Thanksgiving feast with fellow volunteers. The hosting volunteer couple apparently live in a "mansion." Just the two of them in a place with many bedrooms and bathrooms, which has made it difficult for them to convince people in the village that they are volunteers who don't have a lot of money.
Other things I've been occupying my time with: trying out new recipes from the Peace Corps Volunteer Cookbook (the best written resource the Peace Corps has given us :)), my latest creation being vanilla yogurt; listening to the BBC on my trusty short wave radio (big thanks again to my dad for finding BBC's frequency for me!); reading (I've found some pretty good books at the local library, but I think I am the only person in the village who ever has and ever will read some of them); drawing (badly but aiming to improve in the next year and a half); spraying big beetles/roaches and spiders with Doom while listening to gigantic moths try to get inside my house by flying themselves violently into my screens; taking cold baths.
Upcoming entertainment and activities besides the travels described above include: a bunch of baby showers (here they consist of asking the pregnant woman questions, giving maternal advice, baby gifts, drinking sangria, and having to eat baby food whenever you laugh -- at least this is what we did at the last baby shower I went to), and the national World AIDS Day (Dec. 1st) commemoration in Kasane this year.
Check out some new photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2418435&id=3611995&l=4ecbcce0e8
Work is slowly progressing. Sometimes I find myself exhausted from constantly inventing things to do with my day so that I feel some sense of productivity. I am learning to be happy with accomplishing one small goal a day (or even week) rather than expecting to complete an entire list of desired activities. Sometimes I feel that I have been here a long time and that I am "integrated" into the community, but then something will happen to remind me there is still a lot to learn and many of the projects I want to work with will take much more time to develop well.
Here are some projects I'm focusing on:
Kachikau Youth Center - working on obtaining funding to buy sports equipment, art supplies, and resources to hold Life Skills sessions there
BOCADOL - this is an organization which offers various educational courses, including JC and BGCSE courses. JC and BGCSE are certificates earned when students pass certain levels of high school. In the Kachikau, the pass rate for the JC certificate is 50%, and many people in the village do not have not successfully passed one or both of these levels of education. The idea is to bring BOCADOL services to Kachikau, so more people would have the opportunity to continue their education without having to commute to Kasane (whose BOCADOL center is already very busy and cannot accept all applicants)
Circles of Support - program based in the high school that is starting up. It will recruit and train two adult volunteers from every village (there are 5) in the Chobe Enclave to provide psycho-social support to families of orphaned children and children who are not doing well in school (who have dropped out or are close to dropping out). This type of work overlaps with part of the job description of social workers in Botswana, but the social work offices in Chobe are understaffed and underresourced, so this program is meant to give attention to cases that are currently being neglected, though not by choice
Library Club - weekly, the local librarian and I meet with primary school students to read, write, and draw. We do activities and play games that are meant to help improve the students' English skills, encourage them to read (for learning and recreation), and increase their abilities to think critically and for themselves
High School Girls Football - training with the girls football (soccer) team at the high school. The team is relatively new but the girls have great energy. We are working on building their football skills, and getting them needed equipment like cleats, shinguards, and uniforms
Even though it's been hot and dry for the past month, we have had a couple nights of rain which has felt amazing. The last storm was a full-blown lightning and thunder storm. It was awesome! I've never been in a storm with so much lighting so close.
The other weekend my friend, another volunteer, came to visit and we went camping outside of Kasane. The campsite looked like a parking lot but there was a nice outdoor bar and restaurant by the river. I ate the biggest and best eggroll of my life there! Later, we went for a dip in one of the hotel pools in Kasane and spent a ridiculous amount of money on a buffet dinner at the hotel. I have to say, I was a little disappointed in myself because I definitely did not eat my money's worth. I did get to try kudu though, and the coffee ice cream was heaven.
Done playing tourist until December when I'm spending Christmas in the delta (Okavango) and heading to Swakopmund, Namibia for New Year's. Planning to sandboard on the dunes and party on the beach, then safari through Etosha National Park in northern Namibia. I will also become skilled in driving stick on the wrong side of the car and road. Thanksgiving week, I'm taking a long trip to Hukuntsi, Botswana for an intensive Setswana language week and a Thanksgiving feast with fellow volunteers. The hosting volunteer couple apparently live in a "mansion." Just the two of them in a place with many bedrooms and bathrooms, which has made it difficult for them to convince people in the village that they are volunteers who don't have a lot of money.
Other things I've been occupying my time with: trying out new recipes from the Peace Corps Volunteer Cookbook (the best written resource the Peace Corps has given us :)), my latest creation being vanilla yogurt; listening to the BBC on my trusty short wave radio (big thanks again to my dad for finding BBC's frequency for me!); reading (I've found some pretty good books at the local library, but I think I am the only person in the village who ever has and ever will read some of them); drawing (badly but aiming to improve in the next year and a half); spraying big beetles/roaches and spiders with Doom while listening to gigantic moths try to get inside my house by flying themselves violently into my screens; taking cold baths.
Upcoming entertainment and activities besides the travels described above include: a bunch of baby showers (here they consist of asking the pregnant woman questions, giving maternal advice, baby gifts, drinking sangria, and having to eat baby food whenever you laugh -- at least this is what we did at the last baby shower I went to), and the national World AIDS Day (Dec. 1st) commemoration in Kasane this year.
Check out some new photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2418435&id=3611995&l=4ecbcce0e8
Friday, August 21, 2009
Still Here
Hi! Just wanted to post a quick one to let you know I'm still living in Kachikau and liking it. I've been busy the past couple weeks writing up a report on my first couple months at site that I will turn in when I go down to the capital, Gaborone next week for a second round of Peace Corps training. I'm excited to see my volunteer friends again, to reconnect and hear about their sites. I managed to create an album on facebook, and there are more photos of Kachikau village and the people here that I will upload when I get back from training. For those who don't have facebook I think you can access the album through this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2399302&id=3611995&saved#/album.php?aid=2399302&id=3611995
All for now, xoxo
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Kachikau!
Hello all! It’s now been a month since I came to my site, Kachikau, located on Botswana’s northern border with Namibia. Kachikau is in the western part of Chobe District, which has the highest HIV prevalence in the country, but one of the lowest incidence rates. These last weeks have definitely been a time of adjustment to my new home but it really feels great to finally be living on my own in the place where I will be working for the next two years. Though my days cannot be considered “busy” in an American sense, my mind and a lot of my time is occupied with ways to establish friendships and collaborative relationships with people here, and trying to gain knowledge about the this community so I can understand specific challenges I might be able to help address in some way. There are many ideas of potential “projects” circling around in my head, but I know that for them to become of any substance they need to be mirrored in the minds of people in Kachikau. So my work for now lies in identifying individuals who have concerns about the community and who want to work with me to actively tackle certain problems in new or improved ways. I am most interested in working with out-of-school youth (16 years and above) in providing them with recreational activities, additional education, and job opportunities, but more details to come later.
Besides the requisite slowness of adapting to something new – new job, new town, new people, or new house (in my case, all of these at once) – and the patience, resilience and flexibility needed to lay groundwork for a job description that is ultimately up to me to create as well as to build relationships with others mostly without the comfort of the English language, I am really enjoying my life here so far! Even the challenges are satisfying to me because they are putting by pro-active, creative, and social skills to the test, and hopefully stretching and expanding them.
Sometimes I wonder how this past month would have been different if I had been assigned somewhere other than Kachikau, a small village (pop. approx. 1500-2000) surrounded by the beauty of Chobe National Park. I live in one of the top safari destinations in the world. During the 1.5 hour drive between Kachikau and Kasane – larger, tourist town where I do errands like grocery shopping, checking mail, using the Internet – we often pass elephant herds, giraffe, zebra, and buffalo along with lots of cattle. Warthogs wander along the main road of Kasane, and I’m continually in awe of the colorful diversity of insects and birds I see on a daily basis. The sun sets orange-magenta-vermillion over the front porch of my two-bedroom government-owned house which sits on the same compound as the local primary school. There are many clusters of government housing throughout Kachikau (and Botswana in general); these houses typically have running water (often also hot water), electricity, gas stoves, and even trash service. Because many Botswana volunteers have government housing, or the above amenities (though some definitely do not) and because we have access to stores, products, and services here that many other African countries do not, Peace Corps Botswana is dubbed “posh-corps” in some circles.
I have met some awesome people here so far, and knowing and getting to know them has been key in making Kachikau feel like a home. Although my site is one of the more remote Peace Corps sites in the country (it takes 2 days travel – about 15 hours drive, half on bad roads – on public transport to get to the capital), there are four other volunteers in my district though not in Kachikau. I did meet a PHD student from California who will be staying in Kachikau for a year starting in September, which is totally unexpected but I think will be great! I’ve been spending my free time playing darts with new friends, having neighborhood kids and students over to draw and play Uno, running, writing letters, reading, making a landscape plan for my big yard, trying to improve my Setswana, and cooking things I’ve never cooked from scratch before (so far this has included pizza and tortillas). There are times when I feel very alone or overwhelmed, or just tired of feeling like I’m on display as an outsider, “lekgoa”, or “china.” When I speak even the most basic Setswana, it’s treated as the miracle of all miracles. It’s constantly humbling to be in this minority position, but it is also very apparent that we are all human and I take pleasure and comfort in seeing our similarities across culture and language.
Being based in Kachikau’s clinic, I have had the opportunity to help with dispensing the free anti-retroviral drugs available to HIV-positive Batswana. The ARVs are given out on Mondays and Wednesdays usually as a month’s supply (if the client is defaulting/not taking their medication correctly or regularly, only a week’s supply is dispensed at a time). On each of these days, we’ve seen an average of 40 patients. For me now in my village, the impact of HIV/AIDS is not readily apparent. It is impossible to identify who has HIV, and this is largely due to the availability of ARVs which is keeping people who are positive healthy for much longer. There is still much for me to learn about how the epidemic is affecting those who live in Kachikau. In the coming months, I will be involved in trying to strengthen Kachikau’s support group for people with and affected by HIV.
Some other things I am looking forward to in the near future are my co-worker’s wedding, a Chobe River boat cruise with some other volunteers, and tagging along on the monthly mobile clinic that goes out to the safari camps and more remote bush areas of the region to provide medical services.
I miss and love everyone back home very much. It’s hard to compare my life at home to my life here as far as quality – each place has its own irreplicable value. Xoxo
My address: Tori Mason, Peace Corps Volunteer
P.O. Box 1073
Kasane, Botswana
Besides the requisite slowness of adapting to something new – new job, new town, new people, or new house (in my case, all of these at once) – and the patience, resilience and flexibility needed to lay groundwork for a job description that is ultimately up to me to create as well as to build relationships with others mostly without the comfort of the English language, I am really enjoying my life here so far! Even the challenges are satisfying to me because they are putting by pro-active, creative, and social skills to the test, and hopefully stretching and expanding them.
Sometimes I wonder how this past month would have been different if I had been assigned somewhere other than Kachikau, a small village (pop. approx. 1500-2000) surrounded by the beauty of Chobe National Park. I live in one of the top safari destinations in the world. During the 1.5 hour drive between Kachikau and Kasane – larger, tourist town where I do errands like grocery shopping, checking mail, using the Internet – we often pass elephant herds, giraffe, zebra, and buffalo along with lots of cattle. Warthogs wander along the main road of Kasane, and I’m continually in awe of the colorful diversity of insects and birds I see on a daily basis. The sun sets orange-magenta-vermillion over the front porch of my two-bedroom government-owned house which sits on the same compound as the local primary school. There are many clusters of government housing throughout Kachikau (and Botswana in general); these houses typically have running water (often also hot water), electricity, gas stoves, and even trash service. Because many Botswana volunteers have government housing, or the above amenities (though some definitely do not) and because we have access to stores, products, and services here that many other African countries do not, Peace Corps Botswana is dubbed “posh-corps” in some circles.
I have met some awesome people here so far, and knowing and getting to know them has been key in making Kachikau feel like a home. Although my site is one of the more remote Peace Corps sites in the country (it takes 2 days travel – about 15 hours drive, half on bad roads – on public transport to get to the capital), there are four other volunteers in my district though not in Kachikau. I did meet a PHD student from California who will be staying in Kachikau for a year starting in September, which is totally unexpected but I think will be great! I’ve been spending my free time playing darts with new friends, having neighborhood kids and students over to draw and play Uno, running, writing letters, reading, making a landscape plan for my big yard, trying to improve my Setswana, and cooking things I’ve never cooked from scratch before (so far this has included pizza and tortillas). There are times when I feel very alone or overwhelmed, or just tired of feeling like I’m on display as an outsider, “lekgoa”, or “china.” When I speak even the most basic Setswana, it’s treated as the miracle of all miracles. It’s constantly humbling to be in this minority position, but it is also very apparent that we are all human and I take pleasure and comfort in seeing our similarities across culture and language.
Being based in Kachikau’s clinic, I have had the opportunity to help with dispensing the free anti-retroviral drugs available to HIV-positive Batswana. The ARVs are given out on Mondays and Wednesdays usually as a month’s supply (if the client is defaulting/not taking their medication correctly or regularly, only a week’s supply is dispensed at a time). On each of these days, we’ve seen an average of 40 patients. For me now in my village, the impact of HIV/AIDS is not readily apparent. It is impossible to identify who has HIV, and this is largely due to the availability of ARVs which is keeping people who are positive healthy for much longer. There is still much for me to learn about how the epidemic is affecting those who live in Kachikau. In the coming months, I will be involved in trying to strengthen Kachikau’s support group for people with and affected by HIV.
Some other things I am looking forward to in the near future are my co-worker’s wedding, a Chobe River boat cruise with some other volunteers, and tagging along on the monthly mobile clinic that goes out to the safari camps and more remote bush areas of the region to provide medical services.
I miss and love everyone back home very much. It’s hard to compare my life at home to my life here as far as quality – each place has its own irreplicable value. Xoxo
My address: Tori Mason, Peace Corps Volunteer
P.O. Box 1073
Kasane, Botswana
Friday, May 22, 2009
Why Peace Corps Botswana Exists
Over a month and I feel I have adjusted well to being in Botswana and the prospect of living here for the next two years. Peace Corps told us we were "in shock" the first couple of weeks in-country, and I think that was true. Those first weeks were the hardest for me, but daily life has normalized and my positive outlook and motivation to be here has been strengthened since then. This process was helped by our shadowing experiences -- each of us trainees traveled to a current volunteer's site and shadowed them for a week. This opportunity gave us a break from our "grueling" training schedule and the chance to glimpse what volunteer life can be like. I think it was critical for us to see for ourselves the kind of work and relationships various volunteers are maintaining, and how they are living, because life at site is going to be vastly different than our current trainee life (and, that for many of us is something to look forward to!) I learned a lot about the PC experience in Botswana and about how volunteers can make their service effective in diverse ways, many of which are not documentable on paper. I also had my first standing bus ride experience: no seats were available on our route so we stood in the aisle for three hours (or rather, I sat in the aisle with people standing around me, because I was having a bad-stomach-day). It was a bit of an acrobatic act when the conductor had to make her way down the packed aisle to collect bus fares, but other than that all was well. I do have to note that I might feel differently if this same situation (which can be common during busy travel times and routes) happens to me on a 10+ hour trip to the north of the country :)
Regarding my first blog entry, I did want to say that it was definitely a hasty compilation of impressions of a larger cycle of life in Moleps and Botswana. Please do not take what I have written (and will write in the future) about my experience as a formative picture of Botswana and the Batswana people as a whole. The social, political, and economic intricacies of the country, as well as the diverse personal experiences of its citizens and those who've settled here are far more complicated and multi-faceted than I will be able to convey in this blog, or even fully know in my time here. I think the same would be true of any nation.
I do want to say a little about why the Peace Corps is present in Botswana. The U.S. and Botswana have a long-standing friendly relationship, and Peace Corps was invited back into the country in 2002 to help address the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The results of the latest Botswana AIDS Impact Survey (BAIS) were just published and according to it Botswana's HIV prevalence rate is 17.6% (the percentage of people in the country currently living with HIV). The incidence rate is 2.9% (the percentage of people in the country newly diagnosed with HIV). Botswana is considered a "middle-income country" and is more developed than many African nations, but has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. The country's prevalence rate could be influenced and exacerbated by many factors, some of which include migrant work/ transitory employment (like mining, trucking, government jobs), poverty, gender inequality, multiple concurrent partners, resistance to open discussion of sex and high risk behavior, alcohol abuse, and lack of higher education. These factors are of course not unique to Botswana, but somehow they have helped to encourage the spread of HIV in the country. In response, Botswana's government has financed (with the assistance of international partnerships and funding, such as the CDC, Merck, and PEPFAR) extensive HIV-related service programs (testing and counseling, prevention, anti-retroviral treatment - ART) and public education campaigns. Peace Corps volunteers' role in this mobilization against the spread and impact of HIV is to increase the capacity, on an individual and organizational level, of Batswana to prevent contraction of HIV and to care and support people who are positive or have been affected by the epidemic, by assisting communities in finding and addressing gaps in these areas, while also facilitating elements of cultural exchange.
Botswana is the first nation to offer free ART to its HIV+ citizens. People here also have access to a considerable economic welfare program, which can be controversial but can also be seen as helping to bolster families and communities in their support of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and orphans/vulnerable children (OVCs). The amount of street children here does not seem to be large or a very apparent concern, which is a big contrast to my experience in Mwanza, Tanzania where the issue of OVCs ending up on their own on the streets was a dominant manifestation of the poverty and HIV/AIDS impact there. Differences like this in Botswana could also be attributed to the country's relatively small population, and of course to other factors that I have yet to discover. Some of the interesting and challenging aspects of being in Botswana stem from the intermingling of modernity and tradition, technology and poverty, and the evolution of culture that is occurring here. Donkeys and goats roaming freely across the entrance to a state-of-the-art hospital, TVs in households where there is no indoor plumping, large consumption of aluminum canned beverages but no recycling system, relatively high awareness and knowledge of HIV/AIDS in relationships where gender inequality impedes safe sex practices. These are just a few simple snapshots of situations that intrigue and perplex me, and that remind me of how much I have to learn and discover while I am here.
Regarding my first blog entry, I did want to say that it was definitely a hasty compilation of impressions of a larger cycle of life in Moleps and Botswana. Please do not take what I have written (and will write in the future) about my experience as a formative picture of Botswana and the Batswana people as a whole. The social, political, and economic intricacies of the country, as well as the diverse personal experiences of its citizens and those who've settled here are far more complicated and multi-faceted than I will be able to convey in this blog, or even fully know in my time here. I think the same would be true of any nation.
I do want to say a little about why the Peace Corps is present in Botswana. The U.S. and Botswana have a long-standing friendly relationship, and Peace Corps was invited back into the country in 2002 to help address the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The results of the latest Botswana AIDS Impact Survey (BAIS) were just published and according to it Botswana's HIV prevalence rate is 17.6% (the percentage of people in the country currently living with HIV). The incidence rate is 2.9% (the percentage of people in the country newly diagnosed with HIV). Botswana is considered a "middle-income country" and is more developed than many African nations, but has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world. The country's prevalence rate could be influenced and exacerbated by many factors, some of which include migrant work/ transitory employment (like mining, trucking, government jobs), poverty, gender inequality, multiple concurrent partners, resistance to open discussion of sex and high risk behavior, alcohol abuse, and lack of higher education. These factors are of course not unique to Botswana, but somehow they have helped to encourage the spread of HIV in the country. In response, Botswana's government has financed (with the assistance of international partnerships and funding, such as the CDC, Merck, and PEPFAR) extensive HIV-related service programs (testing and counseling, prevention, anti-retroviral treatment - ART) and public education campaigns. Peace Corps volunteers' role in this mobilization against the spread and impact of HIV is to increase the capacity, on an individual and organizational level, of Batswana to prevent contraction of HIV and to care and support people who are positive or have been affected by the epidemic, by assisting communities in finding and addressing gaps in these areas, while also facilitating elements of cultural exchange.
Botswana is the first nation to offer free ART to its HIV+ citizens. People here also have access to a considerable economic welfare program, which can be controversial but can also be seen as helping to bolster families and communities in their support of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and orphans/vulnerable children (OVCs). The amount of street children here does not seem to be large or a very apparent concern, which is a big contrast to my experience in Mwanza, Tanzania where the issue of OVCs ending up on their own on the streets was a dominant manifestation of the poverty and HIV/AIDS impact there. Differences like this in Botswana could also be attributed to the country's relatively small population, and of course to other factors that I have yet to discover. Some of the interesting and challenging aspects of being in Botswana stem from the intermingling of modernity and tradition, technology and poverty, and the evolution of culture that is occurring here. Donkeys and goats roaming freely across the entrance to a state-of-the-art hospital, TVs in households where there is no indoor plumping, large consumption of aluminum canned beverages but no recycling system, relatively high awareness and knowledge of HIV/AIDS in relationships where gender inequality impedes safe sex practices. These are just a few simple snapshots of situations that intrigue and perplex me, and that remind me of how much I have to learn and discover while I am here.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
PST
Dumelang bo-rra le bo-mma! Hi everyone! Here goes my first blogging attempt: It's been over two weeks now since I left California and I am now immersed in PC pre-service training (PST) in Molepolole, Botswana (outside of the capital Gaberone - "Gabs"). I am staying with a Batswana family and am becoming more familiar with Moleps and Batswana lifestyle and culture throughout each day. There are 7 people - 5 adults and 2 kids - in my immediate household, and I'm still negotiating my place in the family and often being the center of their attention, but we are getting used to each other, and they are very patient with my Setswana and my questions about their life and culture. Molepolole has a population of about 70,000 so it consists of several stores and many neighborhoods called wards (kgotlas) varying in wealth. At my house I have access to running water (usually also warm water), indoor plumbing, electricity, and a gas stove. Some of my fellow trainees have access to a combination or none of these. Other variations include: access to food and what kind, gender and age roles in each home, level of English spoken. Lots of paletche (maize meal dish) and motogo (soft porridge). Less meat and vegetables. Male volunteers typically do not have to worry at all about participating in cooking or cleaning, whereas women have negotiate this with their host families. We are all adjusting to whatever environment we find ourselves in, as we will have to again once we are at our sites (in 6-7 weeks). Sites have not been assigned yet so our living situation may be similar or very different to how we are living in Moleps for training. Training is like school - 8 to 5 on the weekdays and some Saturday mornings. Sessions range from Setswana to approaches to development to cultural learning to HIV/AIDS education. I am missing interacting with you my family and friends but learning Setswana and slowly discovering more about HIV/AIDS' impact on Botswana and what roles I may play in programs and communities while I am here are very rewarding! More later, take care everyone! Go siame!
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