My last week in Mochudi passed excellently. I tried some more to teach the kids at BBM some things, such as singing "heads, shoulders, knees, and toes" (they mostly just stared at me funny). Unfortunately Mama came down with a throat infection during my last few days there, but my sister Rafilwe came to take her to the hospital and got her antibiotics. My last night at the Mantswe house was wonderful; my oldest sister Sheila came to visit with her husband and 2 kids, and then Rafilwe came with her son and brought my sister Lemo, who works in Lobatse and wasn't expecting to come home til Friday (when I left). It was like a big family reunion. My mom got out of bed and made herself up for the occasion, and we spent like an hour taking family pictures. Only McPherson, who was busy studying at UB, couldn't come home, but he and I have been talking about him coming to visit in Seattle when I go home in June! So exciting, I'd get to return the hosting favor.
On Friday I said goodbye to Mama and my favorite 1-year old Palesa (who I love regardless of whether she scribbled all over my essays) and caught the bus to Gabs. We had one lovely night in a hotel, and then the next day were rushed out to our new families in Tlokweng (a village right down the road from Riverwalk mall, kind of like a suburb). My new host parents are Mma and Rra Modumedise, and they're my youngest yet (around 40). I have an 18-year old sister Yolanda, a 14-year old brother Papi (who's a huge MJ fan and was dancing to This Is It the night I arrived), and our live-in helper girl nicknamed "Zee". It's a nice enough house but really tiny; my siblings and Zee sleep in one room, though when I cam Yolanda and Zee volunteered to sleep in the living room. I've enjoyed my time so far with the new fam, but unfortunately I only get 2 weeks with them; while the others in the group are staying in Gabs for their independent study, I'm heading on the 10th to Maun (I think). My actual internship hasn't been arranged yet, which goes to show the level of organization in the program and Bots in general, but I do know I'll be heading north, leaving my Americans behind.
In the meantime, we have an awesome schedule for these two weeks. Each morning we go on field trips to have lectures around Gabs; today we visited Parliament, and tomorrow is the meat-packing plant (a big part of Bots' economy). We have all the afternoons free, so we've been spending a lot of time eating well at the malls in Gabs, Riverwalk and Game City. Monday we went to see Alice and Wonderland, which was pretty entertaining. (Johnny Depp has an excellent moment near the end, which you'll know if you've seen it. Let's just say his head spins around.) I'm really enjoying all this delicious food that hasn't been a part of my life for 2+ months; I'm also excited to start work in Maun, as sad as it'll be to leave everyone. Until then, though, I've got the good life!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Lunch at the Chief's
Last Saturday, I was ushered out of the house by Mama nearly as soon as I'd woken up. My older sister Rafilwe had come in from Gabs, and together with my brother McPherson we were going to a kgotla meeting (a bit like town hall, I guess, but more cultural to the village). I was pretty confused to see my brother put on an animal skin cape as we were piling in the car to leave, and even more surprised when we got to the kgotla and saw all the men wearing antelope-type skins. It turns out the skins are a symbol of tribal initiation, an old practice that was banned with independence but has now been resurrected by the Bakgatla tribe here in Mochudi. There are traditional "schools" for the men and women (though attendance is now voluntary): in the men's, they march out 80km into the bush, bringing nothing but a blanket and maybe some T-shirts, and camp with a group of about 2,000 for 8 weeks, hunting and learning about tribal culture. McPherson told me he'd done it last winter. Pretty intense!
The kgotla meeting began when the kgosi (chief) pulled up in his H3 Hummer, and took his official seat draped with a leopard skin. It lasted 3 hours and was all in Setswana, and so all unintelligible to me, but there was a traumatizing moment when the MC asked me to stand in front of all the hundreds of people there and formally welcomed me to Mochudi, and invited me to a luncheon afterwards at the chief's house. News photographers rushed over to take my picture, and this morning my friend's mom said she'd seen me in one of the papers. (Guess I'm a minor celebrity here now...?) As it turns out, the meeting had been called to introduce a new squad of crime-fighting civilians on horseback, and to present the chief with a gift of cattle.
Lunch at the chief's was pretty interesting - the food was good, salads and tea sandwiches - and though I didn't actually meet the chief, I talked to the MC guy and found out he'd been to Seattle before through Boeing. Small world. Other than that I just stuck close to Mama and ate my food as inconspicuously as possible (pretty difficult for the only white person at a giant event).
This work week has been hot and pretty busy; the organization has been hosting a workshop for 50+ people, so we've had a lot of cooking and cleaning and chores to do. It's gotten pretty frustrating at times, because the staff all speak to us in rapid Setswana and somehow expect us to understand (we obviously don't 90 percent of the time). We have a Setswana lesson tomorrow, though, so no work; afterwards we're thinking of checking out the local museum.
Got one more week in Mochudi, and then it's off to Gabs, so I'll keep you all posted! Also Happy St. Patty's yesterday. As one could guess, it's not actually a holiday here.
The kgotla meeting began when the kgosi (chief) pulled up in his H3 Hummer, and took his official seat draped with a leopard skin. It lasted 3 hours and was all in Setswana, and so all unintelligible to me, but there was a traumatizing moment when the MC asked me to stand in front of all the hundreds of people there and formally welcomed me to Mochudi, and invited me to a luncheon afterwards at the chief's house. News photographers rushed over to take my picture, and this morning my friend's mom said she'd seen me in one of the papers. (Guess I'm a minor celebrity here now...?) As it turns out, the meeting had been called to introduce a new squad of crime-fighting civilians on horseback, and to present the chief with a gift of cattle.
Lunch at the chief's was pretty interesting - the food was good, salads and tea sandwiches - and though I didn't actually meet the chief, I talked to the MC guy and found out he'd been to Seattle before through Boeing. Small world. Other than that I just stuck close to Mama and ate my food as inconspicuously as possible (pretty difficult for the only white person at a giant event).
This work week has been hot and pretty busy; the organization has been hosting a workshop for 50+ people, so we've had a lot of cooking and cleaning and chores to do. It's gotten pretty frustrating at times, because the staff all speak to us in rapid Setswana and somehow expect us to understand (we obviously don't 90 percent of the time). We have a Setswana lesson tomorrow, though, so no work; afterwards we're thinking of checking out the local museum.
Got one more week in Mochudi, and then it's off to Gabs, so I'll keep you all posted! Also Happy St. Patty's yesterday. As one could guess, it's not actually a holiday here.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Day Camp in the Big Motse
It's been one week now since we moved to Mochudi, and I'm getting used to life in a big village (40,000 people big, to be exact). Living here is so much different than in Manyana - there is more than one paved roads, sometimes even with traffic; I have to take a khombi (Botswana public transportation, vans that drive on bus routes) to get places instead of walking everywhere; but the best part is that there are actual grocery stores here. The range of my diet has improved dramatically since getting here; I even bought Rice Krispies!
Before coming to Mochudi I was pretty nervous about getting a new host family. I was still really attached to the Mangopes - my brother Labo even visited us at our lodge in Gabs before we left for Mochudi. But my new family here is excellent, and super easy to live with. My host mom is Colleen Mantswe, a typical matriarch type in her 60s who likes to mother me and shows off my Setswana skills to everyone we meet. I have two grown and married sisters, both of whom live in Gabs. We visited them over the weekend; both have really nice houses, and one took me to her work, at the library where journalists do research for the national newspaper. I also have a 23-year old sister, Lemo (once again, my Setswana name is oh so perfect for my family), who works in Lobatse but comes home on weekends. She has an almost-2 year old daughter who lives with my mom at home, Palesa. Palesa is super cute, and I really enjoy having a baby around, even though her favorite activity is to steal pens and draw on any and everything. She can even say "Lebo" now, and runs to see me when I come home! Finally, I have a 19-year old brother, McPherson, who goes to university but comes home every night. He's an awesome guy, and we cook together most nights. I also showed him my iPod, and he proceeded to watch all the videos I have on it that I'd made in high school and college, and then raved to me how they should be on TV! Basically I love my family here.
During the day I'm not going to school anymore, except for Setswana on Wednesday afternoons. Instead we're all doing internships: I'm working at Bakgatla Bolokang Matshelo, an organization that cares for people with HIV/AIDS, along with Naledi (Breanna, from Scripps) and Amogelang (Andrea, from Colby). Every day young kids (3-5) and old people come to the center and basically just hang out or play all day. Our job is basically just to be with the kids; we've kind of started a mini-day camp for a couple hours a day where we try to teach them a little English (numbers, animals, etc) with the help of a Motswana girl who also started volunteering. It's pretty challenging, since they only speak Setswana; I actually managed to explain duck-duck-goose with marginal success the other day, but on tag I quickly gave up. Since we're only doing that stuff for a couple hours a day we generally just sit around and talk to each other the rest of the time, which is questionable internship behavior, but as far as I can tell there's really nothing else to do. Oh well... it is a Botswana internship, and I've come to find they play by different rules here.
I'm excited for this weekend, since I should get to hang out with McPherson and see more of Mochudi. We have two more weeks here in our internships, and then we're off to Gabs for another short homestay. In a word, things here are monate (Setswana for good/great/nice/excellent/etc) despite the heat, which today is up to 35 degrees C. Several people in our group think that "sauna" was actually derived from "Botswana," and they do have a point... all I'm saying is at least we have fans at home now.
Before coming to Mochudi I was pretty nervous about getting a new host family. I was still really attached to the Mangopes - my brother Labo even visited us at our lodge in Gabs before we left for Mochudi. But my new family here is excellent, and super easy to live with. My host mom is Colleen Mantswe, a typical matriarch type in her 60s who likes to mother me and shows off my Setswana skills to everyone we meet. I have two grown and married sisters, both of whom live in Gabs. We visited them over the weekend; both have really nice houses, and one took me to her work, at the library where journalists do research for the national newspaper. I also have a 23-year old sister, Lemo (once again, my Setswana name is oh so perfect for my family), who works in Lobatse but comes home on weekends. She has an almost-2 year old daughter who lives with my mom at home, Palesa. Palesa is super cute, and I really enjoy having a baby around, even though her favorite activity is to steal pens and draw on any and everything. She can even say "Lebo" now, and runs to see me when I come home! Finally, I have a 19-year old brother, McPherson, who goes to university but comes home every night. He's an awesome guy, and we cook together most nights. I also showed him my iPod, and he proceeded to watch all the videos I have on it that I'd made in high school and college, and then raved to me how they should be on TV! Basically I love my family here.
During the day I'm not going to school anymore, except for Setswana on Wednesday afternoons. Instead we're all doing internships: I'm working at Bakgatla Bolokang Matshelo, an organization that cares for people with HIV/AIDS, along with Naledi (Breanna, from Scripps) and Amogelang (Andrea, from Colby). Every day young kids (3-5) and old people come to the center and basically just hang out or play all day. Our job is basically just to be with the kids; we've kind of started a mini-day camp for a couple hours a day where we try to teach them a little English (numbers, animals, etc) with the help of a Motswana girl who also started volunteering. It's pretty challenging, since they only speak Setswana; I actually managed to explain duck-duck-goose with marginal success the other day, but on tag I quickly gave up. Since we're only doing that stuff for a couple hours a day we generally just sit around and talk to each other the rest of the time, which is questionable internship behavior, but as far as I can tell there's really nothing else to do. Oh well... it is a Botswana internship, and I've come to find they play by different rules here.
I'm excited for this weekend, since I should get to hang out with McPherson and see more of Mochudi. We have two more weeks here in our internships, and then we're off to Gabs for another short homestay. In a word, things here are monate (Setswana for good/great/nice/excellent/etc) despite the heat, which today is up to 35 degrees C. Several people in our group think that "sauna" was actually derived from "Botswana," and they do have a point... all I'm saying is at least we have fans at home now.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
The best day of my life...
...was last Thursday, the day we drove into Chobe National Park. We'd made the 12-hour drive from Gabs to Kasane (right on the Zimbabwe border) the day before, and now we were going into the park on a safari truck to camp for 2 nights. Even before we got to the park entrance we saw several elephants browsing off the side of the road. It felt like we had entered Jurassic Park; the elephants may as well have been dinosaurs for how amazed we were to see them. As we drove through the park along the Chobe River, though, elephants became commonplace: there are some 60,000 in the park, the highest concentration in the world, and we saw multiple herds bathing and drinking at the river. Giraffes, hippos, antelope, and baboons were also all around us. I had my head stuck out the side of the covered pickup the entire time, taking more pictures than I know what to do with and marveling that I was now doing exactly what I'd wanted to do for 21 years.
After 3 hours we arrived at our campsite, right on the Chobe River. This was camping as I'd never experienced it before: our tents had been already set up and filled with mattresses and blankets; there was a dining table with tablecloth all set for teatime; and the campsite staff were busy cooking us dinner. Luxury in the middle of the wilderness - now that's the life. While we ate at camp a hippo came out of the river just beyond our campsite; the next day I saw a herd of elephants come to bathe at the same spot. Really, the best camping ever.
For our full day in Chobe, we had two game drives, morning and afternoon. Unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy off and on so there weren't as many animals as there might have been, but now we were on a mission. Or should I say, a lion hunt. We followed tracks in the sand unsuccessfully during our first drive, but then in the afternoon found a lioness just as she ran under a bush to lie down. The real kicker, though, came on our morning drive out of the park the next day, when we found a male lion laying in the grass! He lifted his head to look at us for a minute, and I got some nice pics. One of the trip highlights for sure.
That afternoon we took a river cruise down the Chobe, riding up next to hippo pods and crocs. The next day we crossed into Zimbabwe to visit Victoria Falls, which is actually a bunch of connected giant waterfalls that you walk around a paved pathway to see. It was sooo beautiful. Some of the falls even created their own rainstorms, so we got thoroughly drenched. Pretty nice when you're in what feels like a tropical jungle.
On Monday we came back to Gabs for another orientation before we go to stay in Mochudi tomorrow. Mochudi is a village of about 40,000, and we'll each be working full-time with a social organization for the three weeks we're there. I'll be working with an HIV/AIDS care group, which seems very interesting but also makes me nervous - I have no experience that could prepare me for working with terminally ill patients every day. We start on Monday.
I also just got the name of my next host family. I have a mom (no dad), grown siblings (the youngest is 20, and studies at the U of Botswana), and a one-year old granddaughter. Should be interesting.... it's so weird though to think about living with another family when I still miss my Manyana fam! But my adventure continues. Once I get settled into Mochudi I'll hopefully be able to update on life in the Big Motse! Sala sentle for now.
After 3 hours we arrived at our campsite, right on the Chobe River. This was camping as I'd never experienced it before: our tents had been already set up and filled with mattresses and blankets; there was a dining table with tablecloth all set for teatime; and the campsite staff were busy cooking us dinner. Luxury in the middle of the wilderness - now that's the life. While we ate at camp a hippo came out of the river just beyond our campsite; the next day I saw a herd of elephants come to bathe at the same spot. Really, the best camping ever.
For our full day in Chobe, we had two game drives, morning and afternoon. Unfortunately it was cloudy and rainy off and on so there weren't as many animals as there might have been, but now we were on a mission. Or should I say, a lion hunt. We followed tracks in the sand unsuccessfully during our first drive, but then in the afternoon found a lioness just as she ran under a bush to lie down. The real kicker, though, came on our morning drive out of the park the next day, when we found a male lion laying in the grass! He lifted his head to look at us for a minute, and I got some nice pics. One of the trip highlights for sure.
That afternoon we took a river cruise down the Chobe, riding up next to hippo pods and crocs. The next day we crossed into Zimbabwe to visit Victoria Falls, which is actually a bunch of connected giant waterfalls that you walk around a paved pathway to see. It was sooo beautiful. Some of the falls even created their own rainstorms, so we got thoroughly drenched. Pretty nice when you're in what feels like a tropical jungle.
On Monday we came back to Gabs for another orientation before we go to stay in Mochudi tomorrow. Mochudi is a village of about 40,000, and we'll each be working full-time with a social organization for the three weeks we're there. I'll be working with an HIV/AIDS care group, which seems very interesting but also makes me nervous - I have no experience that could prepare me for working with terminally ill patients every day. We start on Monday.
I also just got the name of my next host family. I have a mom (no dad), grown siblings (the youngest is 20, and studies at the U of Botswana), and a one-year old granddaughter. Should be interesting.... it's so weird though to think about living with another family when I still miss my Manyana fam! But my adventure continues. Once I get settled into Mochudi I'll hopefully be able to update on life in the Big Motse! Sala sentle for now.
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