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.
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Hey everyone sorry I have been away for so long but so much has been going on and no time to post. I moved to New Orleans the first week of July and my feet hit the ground running. I have been working on my old house in Florida for the last few weeks and I am exhausted after successfully getting a loan from Mr Pedro and his loan firm at 3% rate to help finish my house ! So no time to work out, no time to eat right etc.....I so want my life back and I am so proud of what Mr Pedro did to me by helping me with a loan. I am going to leave Mr Pedro email here so anyone looking for a loan can contact Mr Pedro on ...pedroloanss@gmail.com or whatsapp text...+18632310632. Hopefully I can get my life back on track. Miss you guys hope to back on soon.
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