So much to say in such little time! I have one week down! I got to my sight last Sunday after dark which meant that I had to immediately figure out the whole paraffin and lamp situation…which luckily with help wasn’t too bad. My place in the dark is dim at best! HAHA It’s a bit intense and I basically curl into a corner in my room at night and sit right next to my lamp that I also think is slowly killing me from all the paraffin fumes. I spent my night reading in my dim light and then went to bed at like a raging late night of 9pm. That’s right….you know you’re jealous of my fabulous night life! My School Head told me that it wasn’t safe to go outside at night cause of the snakes and whatnot….yet that’s where my pit latrine is…so that’s always fun. Go figure that one. Anyways, my pit latrine is really what will make everyone of you so happy to be wherever you are right now, you’re not me! Its like a port-a-potty, but not. There are some not bad pit latrines that I have seen and some that I would even consider just a toilet outside…which I’m cool with….I’m a pretty cheap date these days! Its take very little to impress me or make me happy…very little! Anyways, my pit latrine however, is a big cement block with a tiny cement square cut out. Literally! I have never been officially camping in my entire life cause I never thought it seemed fun to live outside for fun, but I feel as if I were to go camping now I would just think it was a trip for pansy’s. HAHA I am going to brag for a minute and say that I am damn proud of myself when it comes to what this week has been and that I’m still here and somehow laughing and smiling! Its utterly insane! I still can’t even comprehend what is going on!
I have spent my week at the school feeling pretty useless cause I don’t have anything to do right now and don’t really know many people or for that matter have anywhere to go. I just sit there right now and read Life Skills books while charging my phone cause the school survives on solar power so that’s how I charge anything. I have been setting my little house up, that I was learning to love up until a few hours ago when I found 3 lizards in my kitchen….I’m sure I’m be learning to love it soon again, but I’m still a little freaked and so I’m taking a few hours off from all the “love” right now. I put up pictures of friend and family that I brought from home and surrounded my house with them so that makes it a bit homier. Already so much has changed with relationships/friendships from home. Its so hard though loosing some friends...I mean, I have to deal now cause I'm in it, but part of me just wishes it weren't true and some how it can all just go back to the way it was. I don't know. Denial I guess. I can't even believe how drastically different my life is. Some people I don't even know if we are friends anymore and even with friends that I thought I'd always have...and some are making more effort then I ever thought they would. I have cried basically once a day since I have been here, not because I don’t like it, but just because everything is so overwhelming that it then becomes so exhausting to then I cry. HAHA Its crazy! Everything I do is brand new! Washing the dishes isn’t just going to the sink and washing to the dishes! It’s not taking several buckets, going outside to fill the buckets full of water, then going back inside to wash them in one bucket, rinse them in another, then dry them, and collect all the water and dump all the water outside. Bathing is basically the same kind of process. Everything I do now is a process! I can’t just “do” anything anymore. I have to think it through and plan it out and then I can do it. Its utterly exhausting!!!! It gets dark here like 6pm now cause its Winter so I have to do anything I need to do before then so that I don’t have to be lion food or bitten by a snake or even have one of my neighbors say hello to me in the pitch black which basically gives me a heart attack. HAHA
I am however becoming the Botswana Martha Stewart…or so I have declared myself the title. I cook everything from scratch now, I have to! I don’t have a store to get food from and after finding out that the combies never come to my village much then I really don’t have a way to get anywhere in less my School Head is going somewhere and I can catch a ride. She’s nice like that! Thankfully. BUT it still leaves me with very little options. Once again, more planning! Constant planning. Anyways, So I cook all the time cause I get bored really easily so I’m learning to make random things! BUT I make diphaphata now
which is a traditional Botswana bread. My school head, Susan and the Deputy school head ate some of the diphaphata I made and were shocked that I did it. They both have lived in Bots their whole lives and they don’t know how to make it. I love it. Boredom will force you to learn anything. I have never made bread by hand on my life…but I do now. I made pizza from scratch last weekend for my host family and I was amazed at how completely pizza like it actually tasted. I figured it all of out and made every part of it and it was good! It was actually good! I was shocked! HAHA So, I cook all the time and am learning to cook anything I can just cause it gives me something to do.
I make paper beads now too. Its something that I think a lot of countries in Africa do, but I know at least Bots and South Africa do where you make paper beads out of magazine paper. It takes time and therefore I do it. I laugh at myself a lot cause I’ll think about how like 3 months ago I was sitting at home watching TV and ordering pizza….now I sit in my dim, non-electric house, with no running water, wash my cloths in buckets in my kitchen while making paper beads and watching my diphaphata rise…it’s beyond surreal! HAHA I’m a little Botswana home maker now. HAHA Oh wow…
This has been the hardest week ever! I can't even understand what is happening and I'm defiantly having moments of wondering if I can do this. I miss people so much and am going through so much, I can't even really explain it to people...which is the hardest part for me to deal with. BUT I do have to say to the family and friends that have been emailing me, just checking in even to listening to my rants and really have been there for me during all of this...you all are irreplaceable to me and I would not have gotten this far without that support. You learn quickly here how incredible having support really is and how needed it is for me right now. Thank you so much! I can't even begin to explain.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
A Blessing in Disguise...
OK, so I’m back from my site visit (I spent 4 days in my new village meeting everyone and being introduced to my new life). It was amazing and terrifying at the same time. This is most defiantly going to be my biggest challenge in life yet!!!!
OK, so to start with I met the School Head of Metsibotlhoko Primary School which is where I’ll be working as a Life Skills Technical Trainer for 2 years. The School Head (Principal) is very nice and was extremely welcoming to me. She told me about the school and then she drove me from my host families in Moleps to my new village in Metsibotlhoko which is like a 1 ½ drive. After my adorable host mother gave my school head a lecture all about how she needs to take care of me and feed me all the time, we left to see my new village. HAHA It’s the tiniest village I have ever seen. It has the primary school, a clinic, and a bunch of houses…and that’s it! I feel like I live in the middle of a safari. Its just land! Its beautiful and for living in the middle of a dessert I guess I couldn’t expect much more then that anyways, but still there is nothing there but a small group of people. I have to either go to Moleps or Gaborone just to go grocery shopping. Which means that I have to somehow get a ride 30km’s (hitch hike) just to then take a bus 2 hours to get to the store…or internet…or anything that I may need or want ever! That’s going to be one of the bigger adjustments for me I think…having to plan everything out and not just being able to go to the store when I want or need something. Very different from my American spoiled life. Haha Hitching isn’t recommended by the Peace Corps at all but the khombie situation is very scarce and most of the time it has to be done. It’s not “scary” here like it is in the USA. We make it out to be a very sketchy and unsafe thing to do, but here in Bots is considered a very normal and common way of transport. I’m going to try of the khombies, but either way I have been told that I will most likely be standing out there for a few hours just go get either one and then I can take my 2 hour bus ride…it’s a days event just to go the grocery store.
Anyways, so I saw my new house and it is TINY! I mean it is 2 tiny cement rooms with a wall and door in between them to signify that is actually two separate rooms. My house basically looks like a small cement rectangle…oh, and its green! There was nothing in it when I was there and it didn’t even have a door yet, which is why I stayed with my school head in her really nice government home that has solar power and a TV. I’m so jealous! Ministry of Education provides me with certain things like a little stove, refrigerator, table, bed, somewhere to put my cloths, and I think like one or 2 more things. Its minimum! I don’t have a closet or sink or tube or anything. So I will literally be bathing in a big bucket (by candle light cause I don’t have electricity) in the middle of my tiny kitchen/living room/entry with the water that I will have gotten from the tap outside and boiled on my stove to make it warm! That’s my life now! HAHAHA DEAD SERIOUS! I made so many jokes about living like this for 2 years, but I think I never really thought it would come true. HAHAHA People in the PC’s with me are still finding out that I have nothing in my place and are all shocked. I think that’s the weirdest part is that everyone else has at least something. Everyone has at least running water or electricity….I’m one of the few that has nothing! HAHA I so didn’t think I would be that ONE. Holy Mother! HAHAHA I’m keeping my humor about it though cause I feel that’s the only way that I’ll survive is just to try to laugh at it all and believe it will all work itself out.
The village seems very nice and they are unbelievably welcoming! They have wanted a volunteer for a long time and so they are so happy that I am there. Its very nice to be so wanted and needed by the
people I now get to spend all my time with, but it was a bit intense too. The village had a Kgotla meeting, which is like our city council meetings, where the Chief (Kgosi), the elders, and other important people of the village came together to welcome me and thank me for coming. They all stood up and said very nice things, all in Setswana so I got it all translated to me, and made it very clear that my new role was to basically “fix” the village and all the children struggling in school. I was referred to on many occasions as “Jesus.” No joke! That was a bit intense for me. I was taken back a bit by those comments and really didn’t know how to react to them. I don’t believe that they actually think I am Jesus obviously but they do believe that by my being there that everything is going to be better, get fixed, and I will bring them everything they don’t have. Apparently they heard a story once about a volunteer that came to a village very similar to mine and by the end of that other volunteers 2 years the village was perfect….it had electricity and everyone/everything was fixed and better. Apparently they all believe that that is what is going to happen to my village with me being there. It was hard for me take because me being me I always want to help everyone and do everything possible to meet the standards put upon myself, but being “Jesus” just isn’t possible for me to pull off. What got me the most was the children! You see, my school is failing and it is pretty well known right now for failing. 22% of the children passed last year and 17% before that. So for everyone to be saying that I am going to be the one that is responsible to make sure that all the children pass, was very overwhelming for me. I’m the type of person that shouldn’t take those things personally but I do. I’m going to have work on that and figure out how to separate myself a bit, but I know myself well enough to know that as amazing as this experience is going to be its gonna be a bit of a heartbreaker for me too! I already get the feeling that these next 2 years are going to be just one “good life lesson” that I will love to have learned when its over but that is will really suck to go through the process. I mean that in a not quite as discouraging and mean way that it might come off, but I think you all get it. I feel like I’m already able to make a list in my head of the life lessons that are going to be thrown at me that I have to learn and “fix” myself even just to get through them.
Anyways, my school has 9 staff members including me and 101 children at the school which goes from Standard 1 to standard 7 (approx. 5 years old to 14 years old). There is the school head (principal), deputy school head (vice Principal), guidance counselor (who is my counterpart), and then 5 teachers. There are 7 classrooms, a dining hall, kitchen, little library in the dining hall, and a soccer field (well, a dirt field with posts)…in the middle of the dessert! My school is very cute though and it really is actually pretty cool that is so surrounded by nature. I really do feel like I’m in Africa when I’m sitting in the sun reading curriculum books with school children singing Setswana songs and sitting in the sand. Its pretty amazing! The kids are still a bit intimidated by me but with time and seeing that I’m not leaving I know it will change and they won’t be. It’s so intimidating for me to be there just because there is so much work to be done and things to learn and teach about. It’s a bit daunting. Teachers in Botswana get placed by the government and moved around a lot without a choice or real say in the matter. So all the staff with the exception of 2 are new and only got there in February. So, the kids are still getting used to everyone and things areneeding to change so much to help the children pass. There are 3 huge storage rooms at the school filled with curriculum books, workbooks, stories, and even fully made science kits to do experiments and my school head told me they have been sitting in those rooms for 8 years completely untouched. No one is using the resources at all. Its great though because my school head really wants
the school to change a bit and for the kids to start succeeding so she wants me to help the teachers take full advantage of all the resources we have. Which is great and I’m going to try as hard as I can, but me just showing up and adding more work for the teachers doesn’t sound like the best way to integrate and make friends….so I’ll have to find a good/nice way to pull that off. I think its really hard on the teachers because they are moved around so much and put in places that they don’t want to be so I think it would be really hard to have motivation for teaching when you don’t want to be where you are. I think that will be one of my biggest challenges, trying to get all the teachers to want to be really involved and take on more passion for teaching. For a lot of teachers here, teaching is just a job and its not really what they want to be doing or caring about. Which is so impossible for everyone because if there is anything I have learned about teaching, it’s that you have to love what you’re doing and want to be where you are to really be any good at it.
I leave my host families for my new site on June 19th…I start my 2 years on the 19th! We have a swearing in ceremony on the 18th to officially make us all Peace Corps Botswana Volunteers…we’re all just trainees right now…but soon! I’m still just taking things day by day. Anything more than that it becomes just a little too overwhelming for me. Not in a bad way, but its just easiest for me to think day by day…I think that once I get to site I might actually be able to take it week by week. It’s progress. Haha I’m excited to start work and get more comfortable with my new place and having to wait 4 days just to grab a khombie to get some food, but I’m still a bit nervous too. I mean, I have been so busy and distracted by all the other people and friends and soon it’s just me. It’s me dealing with everything by myself, which I know I’ll be fine, but it’s been nice to have all my friends around to be able to freak out about things with them. It’s really good to have people around me that know exactly what I’m going through and that simple things like being proposed to 800 times a day get extremely frustrating at times. Haha I haven’t had to much time by myself yet, I’, always so surrounded by other people…and it’s the time alone that is what makes me nervous…so much time to think about EVERYTHING. That’s usually not a good thing with me. However, once again….there is another life lesson thing that I can now work out…YAY! Haha I still think it will be good and I’m excited to really see how it will all work out and just how I plan to tackle all of the issues, cause honestly right now I have no idea what I’m going to come up with. It’s really weird in a way because I keep thinking of it as that somehow I will think of something and that somehow I will make it work. It never occurs to me that it won’t work or that I can’t do it (even though I can’t think of anything now) I just find myself thinking that somehow, someway I’ll randomly come up with something. Its cool though that I guess I have just already subconsciously made the decision that everything is going to be good (hard, but good) and that somehow I’ll help. It’s bit intense now that I actually just wrote that and read it back to myself, but its true. I don’t know there is something about this whole process that just makes me think that things can be changed and that good things and change is always possible. I feel that way usually at home, but it’s different. I’m not quite as freakishly optimistic. Haha It’s good though. I’m just gonna try o go with it as long as possible! Well, I think I have rambled enough for now. I really can talk forever…good lord! Anyways, I was looking through all the pictures I brought of my friends and family the other day and I really do miss everybody. It’s so odd at times to look at the pictures and think of where in life I was when the photos were taken and while most of them weren’t even that long ago….it feels like forever since I have been home and have seen people. Love you all and I’m thinking of you all the time….I really am!!!! We all share stories
from home with one another all the time…you know in between the proposal stories and the “I ate all starch again last night, how about you?” We have very weird conversations around here. The latest discovery is eating the watermelon throat lozenges that my mom sent because they at times are the closest thing that we all can get to candy. Totally serious. We snack on them during training. Its pathetic, but true! OK, I really am going to shut up now….miss you!
my new address is:
Metsibotlhoko Primary School
P.O. Box 493
Letlhakeng, Botswana
OK, so to start with I met the School Head of Metsibotlhoko Primary School which is where I’ll be working as a Life Skills Technical Trainer for 2 years. The School Head (Principal) is very nice and was extremely welcoming to me. She told me about the school and then she drove me from my host families in Moleps to my new village in Metsibotlhoko which is like a 1 ½ drive. After my adorable host mother gave my school head a lecture all about how she needs to take care of me and feed me all the time, we left to see my new village. HAHA It’s the tiniest village I have ever seen. It has the primary school, a clinic, and a bunch of houses…and that’s it! I feel like I live in the middle of a safari. Its just land! Its beautiful and for living in the middle of a dessert I guess I couldn’t expect much more then that anyways, but still there is nothing there but a small group of people. I have to either go to Moleps or Gaborone just to go grocery shopping. Which means that I have to somehow get a ride 30km’s (hitch hike) just to then take a bus 2 hours to get to the store…or internet…or anything that I may need or want ever! That’s going to be one of the bigger adjustments for me I think…having to plan everything out and not just being able to go to the store when I want or need something. Very different from my American spoiled life. Haha Hitching isn’t recommended by the Peace Corps at all but the khombie situation is very scarce and most of the time it has to be done. It’s not “scary” here like it is in the USA. We make it out to be a very sketchy and unsafe thing to do, but here in Bots is considered a very normal and common way of transport. I’m going to try of the khombies, but either way I have been told that I will most likely be standing out there for a few hours just go get either one and then I can take my 2 hour bus ride…it’s a days event just to go the grocery store.
Anyways, so I saw my new house and it is TINY! I mean it is 2 tiny cement rooms with a wall and door in between them to signify that is actually two separate rooms. My house basically looks like a small cement rectangle…oh, and its green! There was nothing in it when I was there and it didn’t even have a door yet, which is why I stayed with my school head in her really nice government home that has solar power and a TV. I’m so jealous! Ministry of Education provides me with certain things like a little stove, refrigerator, table, bed, somewhere to put my cloths, and I think like one or 2 more things. Its minimum! I don’t have a closet or sink or tube or anything. So I will literally be bathing in a big bucket (by candle light cause I don’t have electricity) in the middle of my tiny kitchen/living room/entry with the water that I will have gotten from the tap outside and boiled on my stove to make it warm! That’s my life now! HAHAHA DEAD SERIOUS! I made so many jokes about living like this for 2 years, but I think I never really thought it would come true. HAHAHA People in the PC’s with me are still finding out that I have nothing in my place and are all shocked. I think that’s the weirdest part is that everyone else has at least something. Everyone has at least running water or electricity….I’m one of the few that has nothing! HAHA I so didn’t think I would be that ONE. Holy Mother! HAHAHA I’m keeping my humor about it though cause I feel that’s the only way that I’ll survive is just to try to laugh at it all and believe it will all work itself out.
The village seems very nice and they are unbelievably welcoming! They have wanted a volunteer for a long time and so they are so happy that I am there. Its very nice to be so wanted and needed by the
people I now get to spend all my time with, but it was a bit intense too. The village had a Kgotla meeting, which is like our city council meetings, where the Chief (Kgosi), the elders, and other important people of the village came together to welcome me and thank me for coming. They all stood up and said very nice things, all in Setswana so I got it all translated to me, and made it very clear that my new role was to basically “fix” the village and all the children struggling in school. I was referred to on many occasions as “Jesus.” No joke! That was a bit intense for me. I was taken back a bit by those comments and really didn’t know how to react to them. I don’t believe that they actually think I am Jesus obviously but they do believe that by my being there that everything is going to be better, get fixed, and I will bring them everything they don’t have. Apparently they heard a story once about a volunteer that came to a village very similar to mine and by the end of that other volunteers 2 years the village was perfect….it had electricity and everyone/everything was fixed and better. Apparently they all believe that that is what is going to happen to my village with me being there. It was hard for me take because me being me I always want to help everyone and do everything possible to meet the standards put upon myself, but being “Jesus” just isn’t possible for me to pull off. What got me the most was the children! You see, my school is failing and it is pretty well known right now for failing. 22% of the children passed last year and 17% before that. So for everyone to be saying that I am going to be the one that is responsible to make sure that all the children pass, was very overwhelming for me. I’m the type of person that shouldn’t take those things personally but I do. I’m going to have work on that and figure out how to separate myself a bit, but I know myself well enough to know that as amazing as this experience is going to be its gonna be a bit of a heartbreaker for me too! I already get the feeling that these next 2 years are going to be just one “good life lesson” that I will love to have learned when its over but that is will really suck to go through the process. I mean that in a not quite as discouraging and mean way that it might come off, but I think you all get it. I feel like I’m already able to make a list in my head of the life lessons that are going to be thrown at me that I have to learn and “fix” myself even just to get through them.
Anyways, my school has 9 staff members including me and 101 children at the school which goes from Standard 1 to standard 7 (approx. 5 years old to 14 years old). There is the school head (principal), deputy school head (vice Principal), guidance counselor (who is my counterpart), and then 5 teachers. There are 7 classrooms, a dining hall, kitchen, little library in the dining hall, and a soccer field (well, a dirt field with posts)…in the middle of the dessert! My school is very cute though and it really is actually pretty cool that is so surrounded by nature. I really do feel like I’m in Africa when I’m sitting in the sun reading curriculum books with school children singing Setswana songs and sitting in the sand. Its pretty amazing! The kids are still a bit intimidated by me but with time and seeing that I’m not leaving I know it will change and they won’t be. It’s so intimidating for me to be there just because there is so much work to be done and things to learn and teach about. It’s a bit daunting. Teachers in Botswana get placed by the government and moved around a lot without a choice or real say in the matter. So all the staff with the exception of 2 are new and only got there in February. So, the kids are still getting used to everyone and things areneeding to change so much to help the children pass. There are 3 huge storage rooms at the school filled with curriculum books, workbooks, stories, and even fully made science kits to do experiments and my school head told me they have been sitting in those rooms for 8 years completely untouched. No one is using the resources at all. Its great though because my school head really wants
the school to change a bit and for the kids to start succeeding so she wants me to help the teachers take full advantage of all the resources we have. Which is great and I’m going to try as hard as I can, but me just showing up and adding more work for the teachers doesn’t sound like the best way to integrate and make friends….so I’ll have to find a good/nice way to pull that off. I think its really hard on the teachers because they are moved around so much and put in places that they don’t want to be so I think it would be really hard to have motivation for teaching when you don’t want to be where you are. I think that will be one of my biggest challenges, trying to get all the teachers to want to be really involved and take on more passion for teaching. For a lot of teachers here, teaching is just a job and its not really what they want to be doing or caring about. Which is so impossible for everyone because if there is anything I have learned about teaching, it’s that you have to love what you’re doing and want to be where you are to really be any good at it.
I leave my host families for my new site on June 19th…I start my 2 years on the 19th! We have a swearing in ceremony on the 18th to officially make us all Peace Corps Botswana Volunteers…we’re all just trainees right now…but soon! I’m still just taking things day by day. Anything more than that it becomes just a little too overwhelming for me. Not in a bad way, but its just easiest for me to think day by day…I think that once I get to site I might actually be able to take it week by week. It’s progress. Haha I’m excited to start work and get more comfortable with my new place and having to wait 4 days just to grab a khombie to get some food, but I’m still a bit nervous too. I mean, I have been so busy and distracted by all the other people and friends and soon it’s just me. It’s me dealing with everything by myself, which I know I’ll be fine, but it’s been nice to have all my friends around to be able to freak out about things with them. It’s really good to have people around me that know exactly what I’m going through and that simple things like being proposed to 800 times a day get extremely frustrating at times. Haha I haven’t had to much time by myself yet, I’, always so surrounded by other people…and it’s the time alone that is what makes me nervous…so much time to think about EVERYTHING. That’s usually not a good thing with me. However, once again….there is another life lesson thing that I can now work out…YAY! Haha I still think it will be good and I’m excited to really see how it will all work out and just how I plan to tackle all of the issues, cause honestly right now I have no idea what I’m going to come up with. It’s really weird in a way because I keep thinking of it as that somehow I will think of something and that somehow I will make it work. It never occurs to me that it won’t work or that I can’t do it (even though I can’t think of anything now) I just find myself thinking that somehow, someway I’ll randomly come up with something. Its cool though that I guess I have just already subconsciously made the decision that everything is going to be good (hard, but good) and that somehow I’ll help. It’s bit intense now that I actually just wrote that and read it back to myself, but its true. I don’t know there is something about this whole process that just makes me think that things can be changed and that good things and change is always possible. I feel that way usually at home, but it’s different. I’m not quite as freakishly optimistic. Haha It’s good though. I’m just gonna try o go with it as long as possible! Well, I think I have rambled enough for now. I really can talk forever…good lord! Anyways, I was looking through all the pictures I brought of my friends and family the other day and I really do miss everybody. It’s so odd at times to look at the pictures and think of where in life I was when the photos were taken and while most of them weren’t even that long ago….it feels like forever since I have been home and have seen people. Love you all and I’m thinking of you all the time….I really am!!!! We all share stories
from home with one another all the time…you know in between the proposal stories and the “I ate all starch again last night, how about you?” We have very weird conversations around here. The latest discovery is eating the watermelon throat lozenges that my mom sent because they at times are the closest thing that we all can get to candy. Totally serious. We snack on them during training. Its pathetic, but true! OK, I really am going to shut up now….miss you!
my new address is:
Metsibotlhoko Primary School
P.O. Box 493
Letlhakeng, Botswana
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