Dumela from Botswana!!!

I am currently at Sonia's house - the Peace Corps volunteer here I just met - who owns the only Macbook for I don't know how many miles around. I am also eating the first CHEESE in almost a month, it is heavenly, I really can't believe what is going on right now.

OK, let me back up a bit. The 8 of us on the program (4 Pitzer, 1 Scripps, 2 Colby, and me) are staying in Manyana, a village of 3500 south of Gaborone. We've been here for 3 weeks now, living in homestays and walking to Setswana lessons (in a hut at the horticulture field) every morning. When we arrived here and met our host mothers, we all got Setswana names: I am now Lebo Mangope. My host family is really great - I have an older brother who works in Gabs with diamonds, and a 19-year old brother, Labo, who is outgoing and fun and also does most all of the housework around my house. My house is here is actually unusually nice - I'm the only one of the 8 of us who has running water and a toilet indoors. Making progress in Setswana - I can do simple sentences, past, present, and future tenses, and I can usually get my point across with the help of a little English. Everyone in my family except my dad speaks a fair amount of English, though, so the majority of communication is still on that familiar turf.

I live next door to Melissa, from Pitzer, who lives with my cousins, and I do the 20-minute walk to school with her every morning. The scenery here is beautiful and green; a tiny river runs through the village, and mountains/hills border the village. Last week we visited the Manyana Rock Paintings, made by the San some 2000 years ago, and the Livingstone Tree, which has giant branches in every direction and was a lot of fun to climb. A couple days ago (the day after my 21st birthday) we got the opportunity to play with cow dung, using it to pave the patio of the house of one of our school cooks; afterwards one of our school staff delivered me a belated b-day cake! The food here is rather unvaried, and generally consists of a giant heap of starch (rice, pasta, or paleche, made from maize meal) with a couple bites of meat. Thus the cheese and ice cream cravings, and the utter bliss I'm experiencing right now. I've also been to masimo (the lands / cow post) with my family a couple times, so I've gotten to try cow herding and weeding the maize crop.

We've got one more week here in Manyana, during which time we have a crap load of written assignments to finish for school. Next week we're going to Gabs for a night, then taking the 12-hr trip to Kasane to go on SAFARI! Can't wait. Sorry I can't write more, but hopefully I'll find an internet cafe in Gabs or Mochudi, where our next homestay starts in March. I am loving Botswana, though, the people here are so friendly (and most of them know me now by my family's name), and it's definitely as far as possible as I could be, physically and mentally, from Pomona. More coming soon-ish, hopefully with news of animals other than chickens, donkeys, cows, and goats! Go siame, and sala sentle! (In Setswana, stay well.)