Recently in Brian Category

I wasn’t expecting Friday to be so exhausting. I planned to pop into Tebelopele in the morning, mostly to do a few personal things on the internet, but also to say a few last goodbyes. Thandi and Good, however, surprised me with a going away party featuring Zebra-themed gifts, Tebelopele S.W.A.G., and some very touching thank you’s.

Amongst all the gift presentations, speeches, food, and hugs I had completely forgotten my arranges with Peace Corps to collect my bicycle. So I dashed home to find two very patient Peace Corps staff members (you know who you are) waiting for me. After loading the up the bike I dashed off to the bus rank to catch an afternoon bus Molepolole.

Being sick for the past month had prevented me from saying proper goodbyes to colleagues and friends in the village. But this particular trip was quite literally a last minute thing. Yet, to my surprise Beauty had my former officemates, loads of sweets, and cultural gifts waiting at arrival. Apparently, I’m very easy to surprise.

After more speeches, hugs, pictures, and thank you’s I dashed to the Molepolole Sports Complex to get in one last game of basketball, despite being physically and emotionally drained. Fortunately, things seemed just as they were a year ago at the court—same people, same worn out ball. For old time’s sake I made sure to sink a few difficult, fading jump shots and blow some very easy lay-ups.

As darkness crept in I ran outside the stadium to catch a taxi back to the main road. By the time I made it to bus stop it was already well past dark. Over the next hour or so I watched two or three packed buses zip past without stopping. Too make matters worse it seemed that 50 other people were trying to hitch rides into Gaborone at the same spot. I don’t know what was going on, but everyone seemed so tense. I realized I didn’t want to be standing there for another hour or two, so I made a mad dash to the next stopping vehicle, used a box out technique, and crammed into the back of a cover pick-up. Though it was late and I was quite exhausted I eventually made it home safely Friday night.

…

I think Friday marked a big shift for me mentally. For the first time I have a sense of completeness and closure with my Peace Corps service. I really want to thank my colleagues and friends for making me feel so welcomed and appreciated over the past three years. Today really meant a lot to me. Though I am ready to move on with my life, I think I will always feel like Molepolole and Botswana are my home. To everyone this side, I promise to come back sometime in the next few years, if only as a visitor. In the mean time, sala sentle.

On Tuesday I attended U.S. Ambassador Katherine Canavan's farewell luncheon at the residency. It was nice to get one last chance to thank her in person for supporting Peace Corps volunteers in Botswana. Ambassador Canavan, an RPCV-Zaire, backed many volunteer-led initiatives. One such example, the Zebras4Life project, would never have started without her highly engaged efforts and financial backing.

I think I can speak for all Peace Corps volunteers in Botswana by thanking Ambassador Canavan. and wishing her well in her next assignment.

I had a goodbye lunch at the Gaborone Sun with colleagues from my Monday-Tuesday-Whenever job (working half-time with the NASTAD team at the Ministry of Local Government). To all: Thank you for your support and friendship, in addition to the parting gift—a framed, artistic map of the country from Botswana Craft. I love maps! Seeing it on my wall will be a great reminder of my time here.

I really enjoyed working with MLG/NASTAD because it built of my experience with HIV/AIDS coordination in Molepolole. It was also great to help mentor and advise Peace Corps volunteers working in a similar capacity at the district level. I hope my contributions to NASTAD/MLG’s efforts measured up to at least a tiny fraction of the knowledge, insights, connections, and experience I gained over the past year.

Pic: Me, France, Donald, Mma Macha, Mma Nfila, Bruce and Janet.

Less than two weeks to go. I feel totally unprepared to leave Botswana. I think I’m still in total denial.

Lots of paperwork to fill out, medical exams to complete, materials to transfer over, and personal items to sell. Not to mention all of the people to say goodbye to. All of this on top of a mysterious illness that just won’t go away. Instead of being able enjoy my last few weeks in Botswana I’m left lying in my bed reflecting on the past three years.

I did manage to pull myself out of bed to attend Bots7’s swearing-in ceremony in Molepolole on Wednesday. I was so envious of them—to be heading off to villages far and near and beginning their own Peace Corps adventure. If Peace Corps volunteer service paid better, I would do it all over again.

A few new PCVs asked me to share tips and advice for Peace Corps service. I had two. First, what I’ve learned most is that it is a choice whether Peace Corps, or any other thing in life, will be a positive or negative experience. This isn’t to say that it will be easy and fun all the time because you can’t control what challenges and obstacles stand in your way. But you can control how to approach them and grow and change as a result. It’s up to you, not Peace Corps, not your counterpart, not anyone, whether your time in Botswana will be productive, beneficial, and enjoyable.

Second, negativity and venting are infectious, counterproductive toxins—it’s best to limit your exposure to them. Discussing and noting challenges can be a useful exercise if you are willing to seek and consider strategies and solutions. But only dwelling on what’s wrong and doesn’t work is disempowering and leads to more unproductive attitudes and behaviours.

I feel like I gave a lot of myself to Peace Corps and Botswana. But I feel that the benefits I’ve received from Peace Corps and Botswana far outweigh my contributions. At this point, however, I think I recognize that I’m exhausted and worn down from the last three years. I’m ready for a break. I’m ready for something new.

My goal is for the coming years in my life to be as stimulating, challenging, and rewarding as the last three.

After the conference, Doug, James and I hit the rapids at the Source of the Nile near the town of Jinja with guides from Adrift Adventures. I’ve wanted to do some white water rafting in Africa, but the horror stories from the Zambezi (Zambia/Zimbabwe) were off-putting. Adrift and the Nile, however, have an established reputation for safety. Then again, these types of activities are often marketed as “wild, but safe” regardless of their actual injury/fatality statistics. However, feedback from colleagues who rafted a few weeks back was reassurance enough.

I think signing the non-indemnity form before doing these types of things is the most gut-wrenching part. You think, “Oh shit! What am I doing?” There’s no assurances of “wild, but safe” on the non-indemnity from—just a reminder that you can’t sue if you shatter your pelvis or dislocate your shoulder.

Once we loaded the boat, however, I forgot about clauses of non-liability and just enjoyed the ride. Our guide was a Kiwi with significant commercial experience, but had been on the Nile for only two weeks. His local inexperience showed when we missed the four meter high waterfall that we were supposed to go over and instead parked on rocks on an adjacent, narrow through way. With an assist from the camera man, we managed to free the boat and shoot the narrow spill without any problems.

Other than that, things seemed to be under control. A few flips here and a thrown paddler there—all in a days work. I ate it pretty hard though on the last rapid (see the pic of everyone’s feet). I think I was flipped off in the opposite direction of everyone else and got sucked through the rapid a couple of times before being flushed out in the middle of the fast part of river. Everyone else went under once or twice, came up, and doggy paddled to shore in calm waters. I had to wait for one of the kayakers to come pull me back from way down the river.

Pics: I’m the guy in the red t-shirt, yellow helmet, and blue shorts.

I recently presented an abstract, Kicking up Male Interest in VCT via Community-led HIV/AIDS Activities in Rural Botswana, at the HIV Implementers Meeting in Kampala, Uganda. The purpose of the conference was to exchange best practices and research from PEPFAR-supported countries in Africa and other heavily impacted regions. I attended last year’s conference in Kigali, Rwanda, but this was my first opportunity to present at such a forum.

Although the theme of the conference was Scaling-Up Through Partnerships, the main message might as well been “nothing is working in the area of HIV prevention.” Many commentators and researchers noted that HIV testing and abstinence campaigns have not yielded a decrease in HIV incidence in Africa. While these approaches are important and needed in certain respects, however, there is consensus that much more resources and attention needs to be focused on adult male circumcision, breaking up concurrent sexual relationships (e.g., “secret lovers” or “small houses), and to a lesser extent, supporting consistent condom use.

Though I don’t close my service until the end of June, presenting on Zebras4Life—Test4Life was a great way to conclude my unique, non-traditional work as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana. While my presentation was well received, there were some expected points of contention, mostly with the need to promote voluntary counseling and testing at all.

I still believe that VCT is important and that our approach helping. For starters, men in Botswana have a higher incidence of TB, commonly an HIV co-infection. Fewer men, proportionally to those infected, are not on treatment. Not to mention that having men test for HIV on their own terms has implications for reducing gender-based violence. Moreover, I think that having on-going, supportive counseling by trained counselors and trained peers, the future the Zebras project, can effectively support behavior change. Perhaps most significantly, however, VCT may become a gateway to male circumcision services. So it’s important for VCT to be male-friendly, which is the purpose of Zebras4Life—Test4Life.

Pic: Me presenting at the conference. I just had to wear the national team colors.

What statement is nerdier?

Because I’m the Architect I’m going to spend 8 gold pieces to build both a Dragon Gate and School of Magic!

I’m a Level-5 Dungeon Master!

If you go with the former, then you’re describing a possible move in Citadels, a self-described “game of medieval cities, nobles and intrigue.” If you go with the latter, let’s hope for the sake of your social life that you don’t know why the statement is unfeasible.*

Citidels is by far the nerdiest game in our collection. It’s so nerdy that we had to whisper our moves back and forth when playing it at backpackers in South Africa and Swaziland on our big trip a few months back. The card game, which can have 2-7 players, involves acquiring gold pieces to build improvements in your city. The dynamics change each round as players select one of eight characters with special powers (Assasin, Theif, Magician, King, Bishop, Merchant, Architect and Warlord). It’s a bit like a mix of Magic—The Gathering, Settlers of Catan Card Game and Murderer in the Dark (that game you played at sleepovers and camp outs).

If you’re playing with two players, you recognize pretty quickly the shear dominance of the Assisin/Theif/King, which is why I don’t recommend it as a two player game. If you are playing with more people, however, it can be really annoying to wait around as each player analyzes the available characters and chooses one-by-one. It’s almost like the author built in a Mountain Dew and/or bathroom break into each round. It helps a bit if the players have the characters’ powers memorized. Even then, the game has way too much waiting around for other people to make their moves until it’s your turn—boring! The trading element in Settlers of Catan Board Game and Bohnanza keep you engrossed into the action even when it’s not your turn. This isn’t true of Citadels.

Overall, I think Citadels just ok, but only if you have more than two players. I would only recommend it to nerdy gamers who will play it multiple times with the same group of people.

*There’s no level of Dungeon Master!

If you're looking for a game that's cheap, compact, easy to learn, fast to play and not too nerdy—then Pepper by Out of the Box is a great card game for you. Pepper is played with 3-5 people and takes between 5-20 minutes to complete a whole game. Each player starts with hand of numbered/colored cards and bounces them to opponents around the table with each turn. The object is to run out of cards WITHOUT having a card hit back at you. There's a lot of randomness to the game, but you have to figure out the major strategies in order to have a chance to win (e.g., follow the highest number cards closely, stockpile high cards whenever you have the chance, get rid of your lowest cards first, etc.)

I like to think of Pepper as a warm-up game (i.e., you play a few hands before divulging into a more serious game). It's also a great game to play with people that don't play games. In fact, we've played it with a lot of dinner guests between the main course and desert. Future Peace Corps Volunteers take note: Pepper is a great game for cross cultural and mixed age crowds as the cards are only numbered 1-6 and one of four colors. Not to mention, the rules are very simple and easy to explain.

Note: A book review is buried in this post…somewhere.

I had never thought of myself as a language person. I took the minimum two years of Spanish required for college entrance. I liked the class and did ok, but it just never took. In college, almost doing a summer semester in Norway led me to memorize a few dozen Norsk phrases. Of course, I had forgotten most of them by the time we backpacked across Norway several years later. So living in Botswana was really my first real attempt at learning a language, with which I’ve had mixed results. I’m probably better than 90 percent of the other Peace Corps volunteers in-country, but I am not totally fluent. (After 15-20 minutes I start to run out of things to say.) The problem was that I gave up on Setswana pretty early on after having trouble with tutors and not having access to learning materials. But then I got really into it towards the end of our time in Molepolole and it carried in to Gabs. I think reached the point with Setswana that I needed to go Setswana-only with everyone no matter what and memorize lists and lists of nouns and verbs. It’s finally getting a bit too late to do that. Up until a few weeks ago I carried around my Setswana dictionary and a little note pad to jot down new words and phrases I encountered.

I get asked a lot by friends and coworkers if I eat and enjoy setswana foods. Of course I do, though setswana foods are rather plan and unimaginative for the most part. Not to mention that a lot of setswana foods aren’t unique to Botswana or even southern Africa (e.g., stewed chicken).

Still, my favorite “setswana” foods are:

• Seswa (boiled goat or beef, then pounded apart to almost like pulled meat)


• Setampa le dinagwa (dried maize kernels and beans, then boiled until soft and topped with meat broth or vegetable stew)


• Bogobe (sorgum porridge)


• Lephutshe (pumpkin)


• Makgomane (greenish squash)

And the setswana foods I hate and won’t eat include:

• Metogo (sour porridge)


• Serobe (cow or goat innards—gross!)

But perhaps my favorite local food is chakalaka. I know, I know. It’s not really setswana food—even though it is a common side dish in Botswana, especially at the street tree vendors I frequent in Gabs. I’m told that chakalaka is South African fusion—a spicy vegetable stew or relish with onions, carrots, tomatoes, maize, and cabbage. A proper mixture of Indian curries and/or Portuguese spices is essential to give it the necessary kick, as is a little cane sugar to give it that sweet/bitter combination you find in a lot of Afrikaner dishes.

The beauty of chakalaka is that it tastes differently each time it’s prepared and everyone has their own variation and preferred ingredients. Whenever Heather’s away I make a very mean chili russian chakalaka that will turn your ears red and clear out your sinuses for a week (insert Homer Simpson uuuhhhhhhhhhhggggggggg sound here). I’m also a big fan a Koo Brand Chakalaka, though it’s a bit too oily.

Our expat friends in Moleps gave as new chakalaka recipe that we can’t stop raving about. So if you have access to South African foods I strongly recommend trying it out:



Gareth’s Chakalaka

• Heat up 3 cans of your favorite type(s) of Koo Brand Chakalaka.


• Add in a half a can of coconut milk


• Mix in 4-5 heaping spoons of peanut butter.


• Add in a bit of turmeric and/or cumin.


• Heat through.

Gareth’s Chakalaka is very versatile. It can become a major part of the main dish or a relish to a side dish. Due to its almost Thai-like flavor, however, I think it’s best served on a bed of basmati or jasmine rice. We’ve poached chicken directly in the chakalaka mixture and also used it as a topper for grilled chicken breasts—both delicious.

Enjoy!