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.