Traveling is an adventure

I wrote this last week and thought I posted it but just realized that somehow it was only saved as a draft. And I can't believe how long it is. Another couple of updates: I just gave my ISP presentation and am currently working on the last couple of changes to my paper (39 pages total, eek!) and I'm going to print it today so then I'll be all done which feels fantastic. i'm back in gabs now and it's great to be back with the whole group. After finishing my paper, I'm going to visit my gabs family tonight and on friday I'm going to visit my otse fam who I miss so much so I'm really excited to see them. But anyway, here's what you should have seen a week ago:

So, I've gone on two trips over ISP. I just realized I never wrote about the first one and just yesterday I got back from the second. it's going to be long, so only read it if you really want to. Anyway, here's to the Botswana public transportation system and (somewhat) helpful people:

About a week and 1/2 ago I went to Ghanzi and D'Kar, which are 2 San villages a ways west of here. We went to go to the craft shops and museum. It was fun, definitely worth the trip. Everything is completely unclear though when your travelling in this country. We got off the bus in D'Kar and went to the museum/shop area, which is a small building where maybe 30 people were sitting outside, staring at us try to get into the museum and fail because it was locked at about 1 in the afternoon. Most of them don't speak setswana or english, so it was just an awkward situation, but eventually we figured out it would open at 2 so we waited until then. After looking at the museum and going to the shop, we hitched a ride to Ghanzi and checked into our hotel, which couldn't find our reservation because Alyssa had difficulty communicating over the phone and it turns out her first initial became a T and she's from Boisidaho (as opposed to Boise, Idaho) among other mistakes that got lost in her accent. The rest of the day was good, in the mornign we went to the San craft shop in Ghanzi and were at the bus stop by 2 for the bus that was supposed to leave at 2;30 to return to Maun. however, everyone kept saying they didn't think it was coming because they haven't seen it all day. (This is after we had some other friends get stranded in Ghanzi after their bus hit a cow, and they ended up staying a week by choice becaue they made a friend who let them stay at their house.) So we waited until 2:30 and headed to the place that is apparently the hitching post to go to Maun. we spent 2 hours trying to get a ride, and finally the bus drove into town at 4:30 and we amazingly made it back that day.




My next story is a lot more stressful, at least it was for me at the time. However, the first part of the trip was great. I went with 4 friends to Tsodilo Hills this week. We got the number of the guy who runs the museum there from our director, and called him to see if we could get a ride there because there is a bus that goes from Maun to a village 35 km outside of the hills, but frm there you need a 4X4 and apparently you only go there if you have a private vehicle, but many SIT students have gone in the past and it's a really neat place to go. So anyway, we called this man Fane and he happened to be in Maun, going back to Tsodilo on Tuesday. Fantastic, we got a free ride all the way there--in the bed of a covered pickup so we kind of felt like prisoners, but that's just how we do in this country:) We didn't know what time he was coming so we contacted him and finally heard he would be coming around 4:30. Sure enough, he did and after running errands for an hour and 1/2 in Maun, we got out of town by 6 and arrived at Tsodilo at 11 pm. Since it was so late, Fane told us to just put our sleeping bags on his living room floor instead of setting up tents for the night. Okay, whatever-nice guy, just a little awkward. So that was fine and we got up in the morning to set up at the campsite (free, by the way!). We spent the day enjoying the hills, which were fantastic. We hiked 2 trails, which had a ton of rock paintings. That's what Tsodilo is--it's an area where a lot of 3000 year old rock paintings have been preserved and are open to the public to hike. It was really beautiful out there. Also, important for the story-we talked to Fane in the morning about getting back the next day, and he said he would be going into town after a meeting ended after lunchtime and there's a bus that leaves at 3:30 so we should be able to catch that. Good deal, no worries (well, not many at least). Thursday morning we hiked another trail, again fantastic. We were ready by about 1:30 and waited for Fane, who was still in his meeting. meanwhile, we saw a man with a Nxamaseri Lodge van and t-shirt and asked him when he was headed back to Nxamaseri (nearby village). He said around 4 and we would be welcome to hitch a ride with him. Later we learned that his name is Mark, he's a white South African and does maintenance at the lodge. Since 4 was too late for us to get the bus, we kept waiting but when it was 3 and Fane was still in his meeting we started to ask Mark about hitching a ride to maun (deemed impossible) or an in-between destination with accommodation (again impossible). However, Mark said he could set us up at Nxamaseri lodge for a discounted P100 (~$17) per person for being Maun "residents." So we decided, sure, then we know he will be able to drive us to catch the bus in the morning and we'll be good to go. A little late but it's okay. Oh, and we needed to get back by friday because our 90-day visas expired friday and we tried to do it monday but the immigratin office wouldn't let us becaue we were too early. So while he's driving us, he begins to inform us that we're going to have to pretend we actually know him, and our story is that we're friends with his girlfriend who lives in South Africa. To us, this was sort of just a joke, like maybe we'll have to quickly play it off to some receptionist that, yeah, Mark's our friend, no big deal. Soon enough, we find there are three legs to our transport to the hotel-first, in the van. then you get to the sandy part where you need 4-wheel drive so we rode in the back of a pickup. Finally...a boat. Oh, so now we realize he's taking us to one of the ritzy island lodges in the delta that are generally only accessed by plane. This was starting to get entertaining, and when we arrived at the lodge, we were greeted by this young, pleasant manager named Kat and soon realized we were the ONLY people at the lodge, and we're going to be eating dinner of leftovers around the table with Kat and Mark, like a family. The first lie came when Kat asked where we stay in Maun and someone said we were visiting her boyfriend who works in Maun, and little did we know Kat "knows everyone in Maun. What's his name?" With lots of questions, he ended up being Jimmy Grey, 26 years old, tall, blonde and just started working in Maun at the sankuyo management trust. Funny Kat doesn't know him. After she left us, we talked about it as a group and decided we really didn't feel comforable making up this huge lie about who we are just to save a few bucks and we were going to just tell her who we really are and deal withthe consequences. First we wanted to talk to Mark though because he would probably be getting in trouble for this. So when we came to him with the request of telling her the truth, he said, "no, you can't do that. she'll charge you the normal $350 rate. What do you want to drink? Let me get you a drink." completely ignoring our discomfort with the entire situation. So we ended up not telling her and got through the night okay. The mornign was agonizing though. over breakfast, she started asking more-where we actually grew up, etc. and it was clear she wasn't buying our american accents as being south african, as we claimed to be from johannesburg and went to the university of cape town, etc. We were all feeling sufficiently horrible about lying to this woman we hardley knew who was being incredibly hospitable to us and genuinely interested in our lives, which we were making up. At any rate, we finally left and ended up making it onto the bus and returning to Maun fine, but this was probably my second-most hated experience of this semester, second to a time when I really thought one my friends might die, but that's another story and he didn't die so it's okay. Basically, I'm really not proud of this whole situation and I (and the people I was with) felt completely helpless to change our situation. However, Mark was really just trying to help some girls out by giving them a place to stay, which we appreciate, but I really don't know how to tell you how uncomfortable the entire situation is. But that's how we do in Botswana. Be flexible and be ready to encounter more awkward situations than you would ever desire. And I learned some things from this experience too, plus I still got to see some incredible rock art. Not bad. Ok, I'm done with that now.



Just to make Friday worse, our 90-day visas expired on friday and we had to renew them. we tried to do that on Monday, but they wouldn't let us. So the people who were still in Maun spent the entire day at the immigration office trying to work out our visas because they really did not want to grant us extensions. So literally from 1o am they were trying to get the officers to let us stay legally in the country for another week. When the four of us arrived from Tsodilo arrived at about 2, they were still fighting it out and we all waited around until they finally gave us visas at 5:30, an hour after their office technically closes. That was a major headache, but at least I'm legal!



Now that that's all done, I've been enjoying my last couple of days in Maun. I leave early tomorrow morning to go back to Gabs for our last week, during which time we'll present our ISPs and hang out together. ISP is nearly done-all written and just needs some proofreading! Short version of my conclusion is that people really like having CBNRM in Khwai want to keep it, but they don't really like a lot of the management decisions that are being made and many community members don't feel like they have a voice in the trust which is no good because it's supposed to be community-based, but like always, authority tends to take over decision-making and get on power trips. CBNRM has helped conservation efforts in Khwai, and people are getting a better understanding of what conservation is and why it's so important. The trust has also created a lot of employment for locals, which is great.

I've been so productive. I'm really quite proud of myself. At least half of my ISP is written:))) Now I just have the discussion and conclusion, which is the part which I actually have to think about which is why I've started procrastinating over the past couple of days. But it'll get done. I have high hopes for tomorrow.

We've been having some fun doing random things like tonight it's our friend's birthday and we're renting a combi (a common form of public transportation, sort of like a buses in the US but it's more like an 18-seater hippie van). Next week we're going to go to Tsodilo Hills for about 3 days which is a place with old "bushmen" rock paintings. it should be pretty neat. It's the one place that if we travelled, our academic director said to go there. I've been getting sort of bored with being here. There's only so much in Maun, and I'm ready to move on to another part of the country. After tsodilo, I might travel a bit before I have to be back with the whole group in Gabs but I havent' quite figured it out yet.

It's some sort of holiday here. Something like labor day? All it really seems to mean is that everything is closed, which didn't work well for me when my shoe broke today and I came to town to get new ones. With no luck finding an open store, I decided to grace you all with an update, but I'm realizing that there's not that much to tell. Hence, you get to know that I have a broken shoe for lack of more exciting information.

ISP

Let me first just inform you all that I'm a nerd. but I'm okay with that. I really love my ISP. Last week I spent a lot of time reading background info on CBNRM in general and in khwai, which was so interesting. I've just started looking at my survey results, and my goal for this week is to mostly get through analyzing them this week. I'm so excited to see what I find out when I analyze them, though. I really can't wait. It's tricky when the internet at the internet cafe I use keeps shutting down (yay developing coutries!) but hopefully it will stay on from now on.

It's weird being in the same place for so long. It's been 2 weeks now I've been staying at the same place, and I have about 3 more to go. We're getting to know the hotel staff and making friends with some of the people that live here, which is fun. We even have some favorite taxi drivers, and I have a favorite art vendor who I met in Gaborone and then found again randomly up here in Maun. It's kind of funny how small the world becomes in a country of only 1.7 million people.

It's been fun finding things to do to keep us busy. During the day we do ISP and at night cooking dinner over the campfire takes a while and then we usually hang out by the bar at the hotel (it's a hotel/campsite) or sometimes go out. There's not much to do in maun though. There are about 3 options for restaurants and there's old mall and new mall, neither of which have much. And they're not malls, really; just a place where grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. are generally located. It's nice to be with other people for my ISP, though. we have fun.

excursion/ ISP prep

Last week we were in the bush the whole time. We moved between 3 different campsites and went on a lot of game drives. We were in the Makgadikgadi Pans area for most of it, which is a national park. For a few days, we would go on a game drive in the morning and evening when it was light enough but still cool so that animals would be out. We saw quite a bit-zebra, giraffe, gemsbok (definitely the most beautiful antelope you'll ever see), springbok (the most entertaining antelope you'll ever see. It's hilarious to watch them proking. I could probably watch them for hours on end), steenbok (smallest antelope you'll ever see...are you getting the idea that there are a lot of different types of antelope here?), jackals, foxes, a cheetah (the only cat we saw, which was slightly disappointing but incredible to see even that), lots of birds, crocodiles, buffalo, etc. Then we went into the salt pans which are really cool. You go to the middle and all you can see is sand up to the horizon. It's like being at the ocean when all you can see is water. It's pretty amazing. That area used to have water from the Okavango Delta flowing in it, but it's dry now. We also went to Nxai Pans. Loads of zebra there. Literally over a thousand in sight at one time.



This past week was "ISP prep" week (ISP= Independent study project). The last month of the program, we each come up with an individual project which cna be anywhere in Botswana and we spend the month doing that project. So this week we had to come up with what we're doing. We also finished up all of our assignments for our other classes and took exams in Ecology & Conservation and Setswana. It's really nice to be done with all of that now. For my ISP I'm going to stay in Maun at a campsite. My project is working with CBNRM (community based natural resource management) which is a government program that started in the mid 90's. There is a huge human-wildlife conflict here because people really like their cattle. They're seriously mroe important than having money in the bank. And obviously there is also a lot of wildlife. Unfortunately, lions and other carnivores like to kill cattle and other livestock so farmers have a problem with that and kill the wildlife. There are other environmental problems with things like simple conservation and things like that too, but the cattle is a big one. Oh, and elephants like to eat crops too. So to help end this conflict, the idea behind cbnrm is that people will have lifestyles that allow them to benefit from the environment. this, in turn, will encourae them to conserve natural resources. So an village inside of a wildlife management area (wma), which is not part of a national park but inside the veterinary fence that separates cattle from wildlife, now is part of cbnrm and they have to develop a cbo (community based organization) which has some focus. There are 2 main categories-tourism and veldt products. Tourism cbos have photographic and hunting safaris so conservation is promoted becasue you haqve to have wildlife to bring in tourism, and wildlife is conserved, money is generated-good news for all parties involved. Veldt products are traditional crafts and other things made out of natural resources like baskets made of palm leaves, wooden crafts, marula products (soap, oil, etc.) . So then all cbnrm villages are not allowed to keep cattle, but then hopefully generate an even better income off of tourism or veldt products and the ecostystem is conserved at the same time. Good deal. so now, after that mini-lecture what I'm going to be doing is figuring out, in one case, if this cbnrm deal is actually working. about 10 years ago in a village called Khwai, a number of interviews were conducted with ocmmunity members asking aobut their natural resource use, feelings toward the environment, wildlife, etc. Someone, at that time, analyzed, interpreted, and drew conclusins form those interviews. Just recently they did the same interviews again with community members in Khwai and they're at the stage of only having raw interview manuscripts. I'm going to go throgh them, anazlyze, etc. and figure out how people now feel about natual resources, then compare it to the results from pre-cbnrm. Hopefully that will give me/other people who care and are involved in cbnrm some idea about whether cbnrm is successful in its original goal. Hopefully it will be. One interesting thing is that Khwai lies right on the okavango and their focus is on tourism. They have a few safari camps, but all of the camps are owned by outside companies; they aren't run by residents of khwai. This is a technique that many cbos have gone with. It seems like it works better to get people to conserve when they are directly involved, though which makes sense. Money, then, is going more directly into their pockets. In khwai it sounds like there is some employment that the native people benefit from , but not that much. So we'll see what I come up with. Also interesting-my friend Alyssa is doing her IsP on basically the same thing but in a different location and in her villages they didn't conduct surveys before cbnrm so she has nothing to compare it to. But there, the people are much more directly involved in tourism so they may be more inclined to practice conservation. It will be interesting to see how everything turns out. I'm actually really excited for this project.

It's going to be weird over the next few days, as people start to trickle off and go to other locatins for isp. Some people still don't have their projects finalized. Yesterday it looked like there would only be me and alyssa in Maun, with maybe our friend Jenn but now it looks like 2 others might be here as well. It would be fun to have a few people, and the people staying are some of my closest friends in the group so it should be a good time. I think we're going to be working hard, but hopefully we'll get to take some fun weekend trips to places we haven't been yet.

Shorobe homestay

Wow, I feel like I have a lot to say. It may be random, so bear with me...

The past 2 weeks I've been in a homestay (my last one for the semester) in Shorobe. Actually, I'm in a village outside shorobe that 3 of us are in, but our main base is shorobe. It's actually really nice being outside the village because ti's so quiet. It's too bad I haven't gotten to do some things other people have, like go to soccer games in Shorobe, but it's so nice out where I live. My family is just my mom Oarabile (40) and sister Mauni (8). My mom also has 2 sons-one in boarding school and the other is about my age, I think. There are also about 5 other kids that are usually at our house at night. I think they come because my mom feeds them. It's really interesting how people take care of each other here. Nobody really has money, but I think my mom might be slightly better off than many families because she works full time as a cook at the school in shorobe. Our house is one room that's maybe the size of 2 dorm rooms, and we have a kitchen, even though she always cooks outside on a fire. They use the kitchen for storage, and I think they might cook there during the winter. We dont' have any electricity or running water, and the toilet is the bush. It's really an incredible experience. It really puts into perspective everything that we "need" at home in the US. Seriously, you don't need much to live. Even food. I don't know what they normally eat, but I know my family didn't have much food when I got there. My mom had to wait until I got there to go to the store because they get money for hosting us, and she didn't have money to get food for me before I came. They do a lot of subsistence farming and eat the melons and squash they grow in their own garden, and their diet has a lot of cheap carbs like rice, noodles, maize meal (a corn-based thick porridge-type dish).

The language barrier has been interesting. My mom speaks a little english, and I speak a little setswana so we can communicate enough to get through the day but I really wish I was more conversational in setswana. It's hard living with someone for 2 weeks, and never really saying much more than the basics.

We have classes in Maun, which is also a village nearby, but it's more modern. Our classes are in a nice hotel. That hasn't helped the transition to living in Shorobe. It's really difficult to live in really poor conditions and then come each day to a nice hotel with white tablecloths, powerpoint presentations, mints, our choice to whatever food we want to buy for lunch with our comparatively disposable money supply, etc.

Another difficult thing-probably the hardest-has been being a guest here. They're always serving me and giving me the best of everything. I'm served considerably more food than they are. Thankfully, I don't have to feel ungrateful about not eating everything because they're happy to finish what's left on my plate and I'm happy to leave food so they can eat more and because I really cna't eat that much food. I also sleep alone in the only bed in the house, while my mom and sister share floor space even though the bed is definietly big enough for at least 2 of us. That part has been really difficult. And when I offer to help do things-cook, clean, etc. I usually am told that no, it's okay. so I just sit there and continue to be served.

Some other things I've done...we went to the Okavango delta last friday, which is one of the largest inland deltas in the world-right here in botswana:) we went in on the sweet boats you see in cool places like venice...and the delta. Then we proceeded to go on a game walk in the hottest part of the day where there was pretty much no shade and we saw absolutely nothing. Oh, except "shit of an elephant" and "shit of a giraffe", as our guide like to refer to it. Then we went back on our boats. The boats were cool. game walk, not as much.

Shoot, I'm out of internet time. We did some other cool stuff. next week I'll be in the bush.

I just had a really nice week of relaxation/seeing sweet stuff in Botswana. Last saturday we took an overnight train to Francistown and continued in the morning of about a 6-hour drive up to Kasane, where we set up camp for the week at a campground. It's not really as rustic as being in the bush, but that's still to come...we're going to be staying where we can't even use our own tents because we could be mauled by lions and such things if we stayed in such a small tent. Don't worry, though, they're taking care of us. The first night we had a really strong downpour, which was a great test of my tent's water-resisting ability, and it passed. The ground is so dry it took a while for the water to soak in so my tent was sitting in a good 1-2 in. of water but remained dry. REI pulled through for me.

On monday we went on a boat cruise on the Chobe River into Chobe Naqtional Park, which was really neat. we saw elephants (which, by the way are way over-populated and causing big problems here because they eat so much; estimates are a population of about 150,000 in an area with a carrying capacity of more like 50-80,000), crocodiles, many birds, water monitors, impala, kudu...and hippos, 2 of which tried to attack our boat. it was slightly frightening.

Tuesday was incredible. we crossed the border to Zambia and went to victoria falls. It was so beautiful. If you ever get the chance, go. seriously. It's just immense amounts of water flowing down, and the force fo the water landing causes so much vapor to rise up, which forms really low clouds, resulting in perpetualy downpour ontop of you. I've never known waterfalls could be quite that amazing to experience.

Wednesday we took a game drive into Chobe Nat'l park, and saw much of the same things which was again really cool. It's neat to be on the academic side, really learning about the wildlife and not just seeing it. tourists are missing out.

Thursday was a little bit of real classes. honestly, though, am I really getting credit for this semester? I don't see how it's possible, but it's true. even though I'm having an amazing time and getting to do everything I would love to do even if I didn't get credit for it. Not a bad deal.

Yesterday we drove down to maun, where we're camping in thru tomorrow afternoon, at which point we will head to our next homestay in the village of sherobe. Im excited for this one. It's much less modern, and they probalby won't speak english, which will definitely challeng my setswana skills but it will be good for me. they also have their own language, so setswana isn't even their first language. Hopefully we'll be able to communicate well enough. It's going to be aweek of eye-opening experiences though with a much simpler way of life. I'm really excited. I also just finished reading the Irresistible Revolution for those of you who know it, so i think this will be a good follow-up experience to really help me examine myself. I'll let you know how it goes..

Gabs

I've been in my Gaborone homestay now for about a week and a half. We're here through Saturday. My family is really nice. My mom Nonnie is 31, and I live with her older sister Christine, Nonnie's daugherPanila (14) and Christine's kids Jessica (10) and Tshepo (21) plus their mom Margaret. There's also a full time maid, something that is very common. Our maid doesn't stay at the home, although many do and many families also have more than one maid, hwich is pretty incredible to me, considering the money struggles some families have, although they seem fairly well off. It's just that the cost of living is very high. Many of the maids come from Zimbabwe, though, and I'm guessing are pretty cheap labor. There are so many immigrants here from Zim. I've been having fun getting to know my family. It's amazing how female-heavy a lot of households are. I was just reading a magazine article this weekend about how fewer and fewer women are choosing to marry. They are so independent here and marriage really isn't appealing. Men don't always have many responsibilities except cattle and working, while many women work, take care of the kids, cook, clean, and care for the crops. It's definitely different in the city though compared to the village. My homestay brother has cooked at least on meal and often washes dishes-something that you would never see in a village.

I've climbed/hiked 2 mountains/hills (not really sure what they're classified as) since I got here. We climbed Mt. Otse in Otse, and last sunday we had a "bring your siblings" hike up a hill in gabs, which was really fun. My 2 sisters came with.

These 2 weeks while wer're here, we're having classes with guest lecturers at the University of Botswana. Morning lectures are on environmental topics, mostly also relating to social issues like the livestock /wildlife conflict, water issues, policy, etc. They have been really interesting. This week we have also started an afternoon lecutre series dealing specifically with social issues in botswana. Today we learned about HIV/AIDS and ethnicity in Botswana. We ahve a mid-term coming up on friday, mostly covering our lectures and other readings about Botswana Environmental issues and culture.

At the end of this homestay we head up to Kasane, where most of the wildlife is and that's when we really start the ecology focus of our classes.

Otse homestay

I just had an amazing 2 weeks. My time here keeps getting better; i don't know when it will stop getting better, but it has to sometime. until then, I'm going to keep loving it. my host family was so great. My family was Elizabeth (my mom, who we call Mamani), Moses (Papa), Tshego (Their daughter in law; her husband Steve was away for work), Otto(17 yr old granddaughter to mamani and papa), Brian (9yr old son of Tshego and steve), Tshe Tshe (5 yr old grandson of mamani and papa), and Jimmy (2 yr old son of Tshego and Steve). I got the closest to Tshego. We cooked dinner together almost every night, and bonded really well. The whole family was a lot of fun though. They speak very good English, but they speak setswana to each other and only spoke english to me. They taught me quite a bit of Setswana though. We took setswana classes almost every day for 4-5 hours. Hopefully it will start to sink in more as we slow down the intensity of learning; sometimes I just felt overloaded with new vocab and grammer. It's overall not a really difficult language though.

My family taught me a lot about traditional Tswana culture, especially with foods, and i definitely got to see a lot of culture. Kids are definitely raised to serve their elders, much more than what I'm used to. And women work much more in the home than men. Usually the only responsibility men have is work (sometimes) and cattle, while the women do everything else. It's also really interesting how raising children works. 2 of the kids in my family don't live with their parents even though their siblings do, but that's just how it works there. Extended families live together much more than in the US. And there really isn't a cultural norm against having children out of wedlock or from multiple fathers; it's completely acceptable. There are also many households where none of the residents have an income but there are maybe one or two relatives who work in gabs and their income supports the family. it's really interesting to see the differences in how families are run.

i'm looking forward to eating some different food though. They don't eat a lot of variety, but they eat so much food. i never went hungry. Dinner is always a huge pile of pap ( a maize product), rice, or pasta with a small portion of some meat dish, and usually a cold salad or vegetable. They use a lot of oil ehre too. i was craving some fresh fruits and vegetables the whole week. Last weekend though i made stir fry for my family, which was really good to me because it was familiar, and they loved it too. So it will be nice to be on my own for lunches in the next 2 weeks when i'm at my next homestay in Gaborone. We also had tea usually 3 times a day at my house. They really like their tea. I can't blame them though; it's really good.

We also got to go out on excursion once back to mokolodi where we went Rhino tracking and got probably within 60 or 70 feet of them and we went to see their 2 cheetahs who are tame so you can even touch them. They didn't come close enough to me though so i didn't get to touch them but it was really neat to be so close.

FYI

Mostly I just want to let you know that i don't know if I'll have internet access for the next 2 weeks. We're doing a village homestay, and I don't think we'll have any internet, nor will we probably go back to Gabs at all.

On a few other notes of interest...
I have come to significantly appreciate the magic of a washing machine. There aren't really many washing machines in Botswana, so we have to wash everything by hand. I don't know how a washing machine does such a good job. Especially on socks. They get dirty, and it's really hard to get them clean, in case any of you were wondering. I'm glad I could clear that up for you. It's also really hard to rinse all the soap out of things. So the next time you do laudry, appreciate it:) Props to whoever came up with the magical washing machine.

Last night we went out to dinner as a group to a South African restaurant and I witnessed a really disturbing exchange between the manager and his employees. The manager is a white South African, and his employees were all black Batswana. He was pushing them around so much, literally pulling them physically by the arm to get them to do things when they weren't being disrespectful at all. It was definitely what I would consider to be abuse. I was really surprised to see this. I don't even remember seeing exchanges like this when I was in SA last may. According to KB, a student ambassador sort of person who just started working for SIT, this is not uncommon to see. And if people were to say something, it really doesn't make much of a difference. Customer service is not the same as in the US, and the manager probably would have just told us that we didn't need to come to his restaurant if we didn't like what we were seeing.

Best day

Hi! Yesterday was definitely my best day here so far. We did the village drop-off and had so much fun. I was in a group of 4 who went to a village about 45 min. outside of Gaborone. It was actually a lot larger than any of us expected. We first went to the pottery, which is sort of the tourist attraction of the village. Sure enough we ran into 3 people from texas there. They have been coming here every few weeks for the past year because they work with a diamond company in Botswana. It was sort of upsetting though because when we were speaking the little setswana we know with the employee at the pottery, they said they were so impressed, and we knew more setswana than they did. Seriously, it makes such a difference when you're a visitor and you make an effort to know the native language. People are so much more welcoming, and I even felt offended that they weren't even making an effort to know how to say hello, especially wheen they are such frequent visitors to Botswana. I can't imagine how offended Batswana (natives of Botswana) feel. But you can get away with only speaking english because most people do, so a lot of times people just think it's acceptable to not make any effort. But anyway, the pottery was really beautiful and had traditional designs on it. We even got a tour of where they make the pottery.

We met a young woman at the pottery who works for the village daycare who was so incredible. She ended up spending probably an hour and 1/2 with us. She told us the history of the village and helped us with our Setswana a lot. People really love to help us learn the language. They are so amazed that we are even trying to learn it, and even though we often have trouble pronouncing words and quickly forget how to say phrases, they are so warm-hearted and generous.

We ate lunch at the "restaurant" which was sort of just a kitchen with pre-made food. I had pap (a starchy food like grits) and beef, with beets and coleslaw. It was so much food none of us finished, and it only cost P11.00 which is less than $2.00. Crazy. We met another woman later who also loved talking to us and helping us with Setswana. She was pretty funny. She was amazed that we were all 20 and 21 years old and had no children. Yikes! Let's keep it that way. Although she's convinced that Peter, someone in our group, is going to get married in Kasane, a city in northern Botswana:) She also gave each of us setswana names, 3 of which mean thank you. I think she chose that because we kept getting confused about when we use each form of thank you. My name is Ke itsumetse. On that note, a lot of times when I introduced myself to people, they would break out in laughter or at least giggle a little bit. We couldn't figure it out and asked Matts, our setswana teacher, when we got back. he decided it must be because Katie (spelling?) is a common Setswana name, so they thought I must have a setswana name.

We also got to talk to a lot of school kids. They were so funny. They love talking to white people and had so much fun teaching us words. They walked with us for probably about45 min. and finally we realized that they walked past their homes to stay with us.

On the white person note, it's sort of awkward sometimes. People will blatantly stare at us, especially when we're in a large group. It feels really awkward sometimes, sort of moreso in the city because in the village people are especially friendly and really want to talk with us. In the city, we're just a bunch of faces that stick out. It helps as we get to know the city better though because we can look more confident, like we belong there and know exactly what we're doing.

Ok, I think that's about all I have for now. Bye!

I'm here!

Dumela bo-rra le bo-mma! (Hello ladies and gentlemen; basically just hi)

I'm here, I've made it safely and I'm having an amazing time in Botswana. It's such a beautiful country, and I'm really excited for the semester. I met up with some people on my trip right away at the Atlanta airport just by recognition of college-age kids with overstuffed backpacks. So it was fun to meet some of them right away. Our flight was slightly delayed (~1 hr) out of atlanta so when we arrived in Johannesburg, S. Africa our bags didn't get transferred to Gaborone, Botswana:( Most people were able to get their bags the next afternoon, and 4 of us were left waiting. The other 3 came that evening, and mine was still gone, and I didn't know where it was. Finally it came yesterday, thankfully. However, it sort of put things into perspective of how necessary everything really is. The only really irreplaceable things were malaria meds, but everthing else became less important when I lost it, and people in my group were great about letting me borrow things so I could at least shower. And I did happen to have underwear in my carryon :D Good call on my part.

I love my group. There are 15 of us, and we seem so cohesive so far. Everyone is really friendly and we get along wonderfully. Right now we're staying at Mokolodi Game Reserve, which is a ranch-turned game park that is home to a lot of different wildlife. We stay in separate men's and women's dormitories-just a big room with lots of bunk beds. It sort of feels like summer camp. The staff at Mokolodi feed us breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which have all been very good. There's always meat, usually sausage or beef. Breakfast is usually eggs, bacon, sausage, often some beans, toast, cereal. Yesterday we were all surprised when we tasted our cereal to find that the milk was warm. It was sort of hard to get that down, but usually it's cold milk. Lunch and dinner are often meat, noodles, a vegetable (cabbage, squash, mixed veggies, etc). We drink a lot of juice, water, tea and coffee; never milk. They call juice concentrate "squash" so we were all very surprised when Simba (our academic director) told us that the juice was made from squash:)

We've been having class every day, but since it's orientation a lot of what Simba teaches us so far is just what we'll be expecting for classes and cultural tips, etc. Matts is our Setswana teacher. It's pretty intensive, but hopefully we'll start to pick it up. So far I can have a conversation about how I/you are, what your name is, ask where something is, along with a few others. The funniest thing is that none of us can remember how to say "I don't understand" It's a tricky pronunciation so I guess we'll really have to not understand if we're going to go through the effort of saying so.

Mon. we went on a game drive-super great. We saw so many things. The first thing we saw was a rhino, followed by impala, kudu, wildebeast, zebra, giraffe, warthogs, and so many others. Tues. we went on a hike through the park, hwere we learned about the plants, and some other things like termite mounds (actually really interesting), dung beetles, etc. It was a lot of fun.

Right now I'm actually on my "drop off" where we get dropped off in Gabs with 2 other students and have to complete certain tasks, such as what I'm doing now-writing home, making a call, eating lunch, buying something, taking public transportation, etc. We were dropped in the main mall, and we went to the museum, which was fun to learn some natural and cultural Botswana history. Our next task is lunch. Tommorow we have the village drop-off, and the next 2 weeks are our homestay in the Otse village. I wish I could write more, but my internet time is running out. I hope you are all well at home or school!