August 2006 Archives

Heather and I were featured in the Fall 2006 edition of the SUU alumi newsletter. Here is the link:
http://www.suu.edu/alumni/magazine/fall06/pdf/focus.pdf

Back in May you may recall that I bought a little too much fabric while visiting the Zambian side of Victoria Falls. “African” looking fabric is not cheap in Botswana so paying about P13 for two meters of fabric was an absolute steal. Kathi, Fallon and I went a little crazy and I started to know what it was like to be my mom who had a “She who dies with the most fabric wins” bumper sticker in her sewing area growing up.

At the time of purchase I really had no idea what to do with all the fabric I bought. I thought it would be fun to make handbags like one I bought at Jolly Boys Backpackers but had no idea how I would do that. Then a few weeks ago I had the idea to look for patterns online and found this one posted on a blog. (In June nonetheless so imagine if I had looked earlier, I wouldn’t have found it!) For some reason the instructions struck me as something I could do on my own, so I printed everything out and put them in my craft drawer where my fabric has been sitting since coming back from Vic Falls.

This young women’s empowerment project is becoming much bigger than I ever expected. In fact right now I’m feeling a pretty overwhelmed by it. There is so much to think about and so many details to work out. It’s not difficult, I just need to focus in and work everything out.

On Wednesday and Thursday last week I conducted a training workshop for the young women who have been chosen to lead the empowerment groups in at the village level. There are four facilities participating in the project and together they’ve selected 10 young women. The purpose of the workshop was to put everyone on the same page in terms of their knowledge about HIV, AIDS and STIs. (I may have said this before, but it never ceases to amaze me the low knowledge levels people have about HIV in a country that is being ravaged by the disease. Everyone knows the catch phrases but nobody knows what it all means.)

Training people is one of the most draining things that I can think of. Mentally, physically, emotionally it the workshop was tough. Mentally I was the person that put together the entire curriculum for the workshop. I decided what we were going to learn, how much time to spend on it, etc. There is so much information I want to cover that it was difficult to cut it back. Physically, I was the one who led almost all of the activities. Because the purpose was to give the participants information the workshop required a lot of lecturing by me with a heavy dose of group work, games and participant presentations to reinforce what they were learning. No matter what we were doing, however, I was the one who had to be looking out for time and making sure that all the information was covered. Emotionally it was difficult because of a couple of girls who were problematic. They weren’t outright disrespectful, but it was clear from their behavior they didn’t really want to learn. That’s hard when you’re putting everything you have out there.

Looking back on the workshop, however, I’d have to say that it was a success. On the second day we did an activity where groups listed what they learned the day before and presented it to the larger group. I was absolutely tickled by the information they had retained. I also did pre- and post-testing, the pre-test to identify what information to cover and the post-test to see if they learned what I wanted them to. The overall scores improved from 66.3 on the pre-test to 80.6 percent on the post. I was really happy with that.

So our home page on the internet at work is Yahoo.com and there happened to be a little news item about famous left handers. Apparently Sunday was "left handers day" which reminded me that being a lefty here in Botswana is something of a novelty. I've never had so many people notice that I use my left hand as I do here. In the U.S. I think we just take it for granted that people can use both hands. I have yet to meet a left handed Motswana, probably because they force kids to use the right hand in school and it sticks. Whenever somebody notices I'm a lefty I tell them that me, my dad and my two sisters are all left handed. (My mom and two brothers are righties.)

Just for fun, here are some of the links included on the Yahoo snipet:

Left-handedness common in Ice Age
Left Handers Day
Higher paychecks: a left-handed compliment?

And a list of famous lefties:

• 50 Cent


• Eminem


• Nicole Kidman


• Oprah Winfrey


• Kate Hudson


• Jimi Hendrix


• Curt Cobain


• Angelina Jolie


• Scarlett Johansson


• Tom Cruise


• Bob Dylan


• Goldie Hawn


• Julia Roberts


• Will Ferrell


• Paul McCartney