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.
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