March 2008 Archives
My sister and her husband are coming to visit and they arrive on Friday! They will be our first visitors since coming to Bots. Can you believe that? Some PCVs have family visit in the first 6 months! Mine decided to wait until the very last chance, but whatever, they're coming and I can't wait to show them around. We're going to do what I like to call "the FULL Botswana experience." We'll visit Nata for quad biking on the pans, Kasane for Chobe National Park, the Zim side of Vic Falls (assuming it's safe to visit after Saturday's elections), Shakawe for Tsodilo Hills and mokoros, and Etsha 6 for basket shopping. Not to mention the requisite tours of Molepolole and Gabs. (I can't wait to make them take a combi around town.)
Equally exciting is that Al + Scott are bringing my NEW CAMERA with them. I ordered it online in the U.S. and had it shipped to their place. I have been absolutely DYING without a camera. Just think of all the missed photos! I can't wait to catch up.
And finally, I can't believe that March is pretty much over already. It's especially scary because I know that April is going to fly by as well. Al + Scott will be here until the 11th, Camp Hope is the 13th-17th and Bots 7 arrives on the 20th! Not to mention that in the next couple of weeks Brian and I will be making a decision on where we'll go to graduate school. What school we choose could influence when we end our service and may potentially leave me with very little time left in Bots. Seriously, it is all going too fast. That's why it's best to focus on one thing at a time and right now that's getting ready to pick up Al + Scott on Friday!
I have got to get me one of these cool statattack t-shirts. Not only is it pretty but they raise awareness of important issues and money for a good cause in Mozambique. Each t-shirt displays graphically an issue from mostly African countries, like life expectancy, percentage of people living below the poverty line, etc. This is the Bots t-shirt. Doesn't it look cool? Granted, they're using UN numbers and the UN has always overestimated antenatal HIV infection. (Numbers from surveillance done in Bots are either 32.4 percent of women 18-45 are HIV-infected or 25 percent of adults 18-45.) I'd still wear this, though, because it looks so cool.
In Botswana all Peace Corps trainees stay with host families during training. I remember feeling anxious about the host family experience. Wondering how we would get along with our family, whether they would like us or not, etc. Our experience ended up being "just okay." We stayed with an old woman who lived
Despite my ambivalence towards our own experience I still regard staying with a host family as an critical first step. While we didn’t necessarily "feel like family”, staying with somebody NOT an American was an important link in helping us make a lot of the cross-cultural adjustments necessary to being a successful Volunteer. I would definitely do it all over again.
Picture: Us with our host mom at the host family meet and greet. Oh, to be so excited and naive again. :)
I was accepted to all my graduate schools…
- London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
- Yale School of Public Health
- Emory’s (in Atlanta) Rollins School of Public Health
- UC-Berkeley School of Public Health
- Tulane School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine
- Columbia’s Mailman (not Karl) School of Public Health
- Washington (in Seattle) School of Public Health
Some of the schools are still very high on my list while others have dropped off consideration entirely. I need to make a final decision by mid-April. I am hoping financial aid/merit awards, which are hard to come by for public health programs, will make the decision easier.
But really, these are all great schools. Anyone would be good. Still, I kind of wish I had swung at...
- Harvard’s MSc program
- Johns Hopkins
Just a warning for future PCVs: immunizations (i.e. SHOTS) are a way of life during pre-service training. You get one almost every week. Personally, I am not a fan of needles. In fact until Peace Corps I had never given blood and only had shots for absolutely necessary purposes (like updating my MMR vaccine in high school.) The first time I had blood drawn was for my Peace Corps physical. (They had to use a butterfly needle on me.) Then on the last day of staging in Philly, the day we were to board the plane to Johannesburg, Peace Corps took us to the VA building where we were given a string of shots and had even more blood drawn. You'd think that would be enough, but we were given yet another string of shots just after arrival in Bots. Eventually it died down, but our Medical Officer seriously came nearly every week of training to give us immunizations. Of course we thought it was funny to take pictures of getting our immunizations, so that's where this picture came from. I have even "funnier" ones where we're pretending to flinch.
Before we came to Botswana we imagined our housing would be something like a one-room rondaval (far left picture) with a single light hanging from the roof. We’d cook outside, use a pit latrine, bathe in a tub and hang our bikes up on the wall. It was what we imagined “traditional Peace Corps living” would be like.
What we ended up with in both Moleps and Gabs are two-bedroom houses complete with living rooms, a kitchen and indoor bathrooms. Not to mention that they’re fully electrified and even have (hot) running water. In Moleps we even had a giant yard all to ourselves. Our homes here are actually more room than we’ve ever had in our married life since we’ve always lived in one-bedroom apartments. It will be hard to going back to living in non-houses in the foreseeable future.
Most people imagine grocery shopping in Africa as going to the local market and buying fresh produce and meat when you need it. (Like our friends in Ethiopia who describe buying meat as getting the "butcher's surprise.") Botswana, on the other hand, is a desert and therefore imports nearly everything from South Africa. This has led to a number of big-box grocery stores such as Spar, Score, Pick-n-Pay, Payless, Shop Rite, Choppies, etc. in medium to large villages and towns all over the country. In Molepolole (a village of 60,000+) we had our pick of four grocery stores - Score, Choppies, Shop Rite and Spar. In Gabs, of course, we have an even wider selection depending on how far we want to travel. We usually shop at Pick-n-Pay at Riverwalk Mall which is a 30 minute walk from our house. There is a Score that is closer but they don't carry nearly the selection of items and the meat and produce are usually funky. Having close grocery stores is both a blessing and a curse. We can get pretty much anything you can imagine but it comes at a price. For example, one regular size can of refried beans is P18, or about $3. When you make less than $10 a day refried beans become an extravagance. Therefore we try to be very careful to stick to a budget and eat only foods that are common here and therefore not as expensive. We make a lot of spaghetti, tacos, and variations of stir fry.
How this trend of big-box stores translates for Batswana (and PCVs) who live in the more rural areas is into travel. Most will travel once a month or so to stock up at the grocery store in the nearest village. This can make traveling on public transport at the end of the month uncomfortable because everybody is traveling with their month worth of supplies.
Last week as part of the Close of Service conference we got to go to the Office of the President and meet H.E. Festus Mogae. It was really cool and I just had to tell the story of this picture.
So, we're sitting at the big table in the Cabinet Room. Pres. Mogae comes in, sits down and then asks everyone to introduce themselves. I'm sitting in the chair exactly opposite Mogae, but clear at the other end of the room. As we go I defer to people sitting behind me and then inadvertently get skipped. So, as the last person finished introducing themselves I kind of shout out "hey, I got skipped!" and then got to introduce myself. The meeting goes on. He was incredibly gracious and thanked everyone for their service. Three PCVs who are fluent in Setswana got to give a thank you from the group, in Setswana, which was a big hit.
So at the end of the meeting all the PCVs formed small groups of four or five volunteers to take pictures with him. Brian and I were in the first group so I went back to my chair as others had their pictures taken. As things were wrapping up, though, Pres. Mogae points me out and asks specifically if I had my picture taken. I explained that I was in the first group, but he was pretty insistent that I get my picture with him so I was like "Okay, I'll take my picture with you. Is it okay if my husband comes too?" And that is how we got this really cool picture of us with Pres. Mogae. We're laughing because Brian had the great foresight to ask who he was supporting in the U.S. Presidential election. His answer? "Both."
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