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.