The days feel LONG but the years just fly by...

The impossible happened…I finally finished the grant!!! I never thought it would end and I’m actually pretty proud of it. I have no idea if I will get the money or if it will work but that’s really only half the reason I did it in the first place. I have never written a grant before, ever! I mean, nothing like this…I’ve written papers for college…that’s the extent of my writing skills and my experience with business is nada!!! I wrote this grant because if figured that if I want my career in life to be along the lines of the work I’m doing now then I’m sure grant writing will show up eventually. I really hope not anytime soon but you never know. I figured the best way to learn how to is to force myself to just do it even if I literally had no idea what I was doing. I spent the last month living, breathing, and dreaming…actual dreams. You know the dreams that people have about walking into their high school naked or falling or flying or something like that…those pretty common dreams that are related to stress and whatnot…well, I was literally at least a few times a week for the last month having dreams about this grant. Dreaming about not getting the grant done in time or just reliving whatever work I did on it earlier that day. My friend Kristen told me not long ago that I had a problem and it was called being a workaholic…I think she was on to something with that!
The grant was a grant for the Staying Alive Foundation that’s founded and sponsored by MTV, yes, MTV…like Real World MTV…yeah…but they do good things. The grant is based on youth led organizations trying to fight against stigma and discrimination and teach HIV/AIDS prevention to other youth. So I wrote a big activity filled plan for how my PACT Club can establish other PACT Clubs and then over the years continue to expand the PACT Clubs in the basis that behavior change is really what will stop HIV from being spread. It’s the idea that children are taught in school all the time what HIV/AIDS is and how not to get it, my little 8 year olds can repeat the definition of HIV…the kids know it well. The youth know all the definitions but HIV is still occurring and new infections are still happening. The grant and basically what life skills is about is teaching the youth and all people really, that you need to know, respect, and love yourself and the people around you…then HIV hopefully won’t have any new infections. If a young girl respects herself then she won’t go out and have unprotected sex with someone and if an uncle respects himself or the people around him then he wouldn’t rape his niece and so on. If people really felt love and understood it, I can’t even begin to explain how different things would be! Having life skills, knowing yourself, respect, empowerment, leadership, etc…those are all the things that people really need to learn and live in order for things to really get better or for big change to really happen, I think anyways from what I’ve seen. At the end of the day, you can know all the definitions you want, which is good to know don’t get me wrong, but if you don’t respect or love yourself or feel motivated about your future then the definitions are just words and words alone won’t stop a person from becoming HIV infected.
This grant is the first I have found that actually gave a chance to people like myself and my village that doesn’t have an NGO to take it over. So few grants come like this. Everyone, all the “experts in the business” that trained us on grants during Peace Corps training told me I would never get money for my village cause I don’t have an NGO… so I should just do other things and forget about it. Maybe I won’t get money, but I at least found a way and am so far doing more than those people thought I would…so they can bite me. Haha (I mean that in a respectful way, of course) Anyways, it’s a really long shot but I worked really hard on it and had my entire family and a bunch of friends here edit it and give me advice which really helped and made me feel a little more like I wasn’t about to send this big organization a horrible paper that they would just laugh at. We’ll see what happens. I won’t hear about it until May 31st. The grant spans through a year. From June 2010-June 2011…right up until I leave to finish PC and go home or somewhere.
So my life has been this grant for the last month but now its over which is nice! It been a year now since I started the PC and left the USA. So, my group, Bots 8 decided to go up to the Salt Pans for the Easter weekend and camp! That was my first camping, like real camping, ever. I mean, my life is basically two years of camping, but this was real. Like, sleeping on rocks in a tent, in the middle of nowhere, no showers, restrooms, anything…roughing it…cause well, I don’t do that enough apparently and we thought it would be fun. A lot of people in my group were making comments about not having electricity and running water and how much planning it took and how hard it was, the they’d look at me and be like, “oh right…sorry.” Yeah, sadly, I didn’t even notice the difference. The only thing about this that was different from my everyday life was the scenery and that about 40 other people were with me. That’s all. It was though! The Sua Pan is near Sowa which is a village that one of the Bots 8 lives in and is near Francistown which is in the middle of Botswana in the East. The majority of my group was there and we all spent Friday night camping in Sowa in the other volunteers back yard and hanging out which was awesome. Then Saturday we all jumped in a huge truck and painfully crammed in together cutting off each other’s circulation by sitting on one another and crushing each other…we thought of it as Bots 8 bonding for the entire 30 minute ride. 30 mins really doesn’t sound like much but when one person would move an inch and then 6 others would yell, “OW!”…then 30 minutes is a lot!!! We got out to the Pans on Saturday afternoon and it was beautiful. It looked like it went on forever! There was little tiny pink spots on the horizon all along the pans and it was flamingos, they stay there on the pans, hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of them…so beautiful. Wild wildebeests ran all over in huge herds and we saw a few jackals too. Also, a HUGE tarantella…not ok with me! It was running through our tents and came back later in the night when there was no lights….I’m so not a fan! Not even a little!!!
Anyways, so we all set up our tents and then all the guys started to braai and make all the food and all the girls walked the pans. It was very “hunter gather and were girls so we’re going to go gossip about anything” of us. Its what we do! After walking the pans a bit and talking about how if we decided to run 10 miles and get to the flamingoes, would riding one be possible???…we all ate and then started the burning man. A few of the volunteers constructed a burning man. It was pretty cool! They made a huge man out of wood and then shaped more wood to make it look like the man was riding a horse and holding a sword. It looked good. The plan as I think it is pretty self explanatory was to burn the man. So, after a few, “we made it a year and haven’t left or died,” speeches we started the burning man. It took a few tries but started to burn and it was big flames and really cool! It lasted about 15 minutes til a HUGE tornado type sand storm hit out of nowhere. Literally nowhere. No time to prepare, no idea…just happened. A absolutely enormous sand storm. So, since we all had plans to sleep under the stars on the pan…all of our tents were out in the pans….now starting to blow away. So as the thunderous rain, HUGE lightening and sand blowing us in different directions we were running to go get our tents and take it to cover. Oh I forgot, There is a huge house in the middle of the pans. Its this vacant, half of a house/cabin that is there as shelter for people that want o go out there. It was amazingly cool big half of a house! So, we all ran and got our tents, we were soaked and could barely see cause we had too much sand in our eyes at this point. I mean, it was like a mini tornado. HUGE sand storm…we couldn’t get our tents to stay grounded…everything was flying all over bottles flying and then breaking at our feet. CRAZYNESS!!!! The storm only lasted about 20 minutes but it did a good amount of damage …but it was fine. We then traded in our sleeping on rocks idea for sleeping on cement in the half house…that’s really comfortable let me tell ya! We all woke up really early cause well, you wake up with the sun when you camp…apparently…and walked the pans again at like 530 am before we crammed ourselves back in the truck! The pans in the morning was still wet from the night before and so we skated basically. It was so slimy and slippery, you could skate through it…so muddy but it was fun. We watched the flamingoes and sunset on the pans which are gorgeous and then packed everything up and went back to Sowa. Then packed everything else up and spent the next 7 hours on buses to get almost back to my village. The hitching makes it so there is no way to get back in one day for me. It was a really good one year celebration with my whole group to really recognize what’s going on and that’s its been a year. I can’t believe its been a year. The first year never feels like you’re making progress on it…I only started telling people that I’m here for one more year rather then 2 years a few weeks ago. I kept forgetting the time and how long I’ve been here. I’m almost half way done! Thought that would never happen. The Bots 7’s are leaving in about a month. The new group, Bots 9 gets just arrived on April 11th. I’m be one of the newbie’s anymore…I’ll be considered “experienced and knowledgeable” about life in Botswana…don’t know if that’s entirely accurate but others will think so and I like that!
I spent last week hanging out in my village, not doing a whole lot. School is on break for all of April. Term 2 starts up on April 27th so I basically have very little to do right now. Schools not in, I just finished the grant, most of the kids in the village leave and go work for their families at the lands for the month…so not a lot to do. I’ve been hanging out with a few of the older girls in the village that are off at boarding schools in other villages so they only come back to Metsi on breaks. Its nice to have some girls my age around to talk to and hang out!! One girl in particular comes to get me at my house a lot an then find really random stuff for us to do, but its great cause I learn more about Botswana life and the culture with her than anyone really. Last week she showed up at my house and took me to her lands where her family grows sweet reed (sugar cane) and watermelons. She showed me how to properly cut down the sweet reed and the Motswana way of eating it… We walked back to the village carrying huge piles of sweet reed with her other sisters, one my age and one that is a STD 5 and goes to my school. I learned how to carry it on my head like women traditionally do in Africa. That is way harder than it looks!!!! I’m certainly not an expert yet but I tried. One thing the girls like to do is to watch as trucks go by, usually filled with men, because they usually always wave at me cause I’m white. Every time a new car would pass they would get all excited, try to hide behind me, and then as soon as the guys waved they’d scream and yell at them and then laugh for several minutes. They don’t care that I’m white anymore, the village is used to me, so they think its really funny when other people still care and make a deal out of it.
Another morning last week a few of the girls helped me to finally make a clothing line for my house. Ive spent the last year with a rigged line that goes across my house on the inside. I’ve wanted a line outside for awhile but I knew I’d have to make it an construct it and I had no help and didn’t know how. So O’neil (that what we call her short for her long setwana name) and her sister help me! We took the axe from her families yard and then walked about 15 minutes into the bush and then started looking for trees that stood up straight. I wasn’t entirely sure what the point was but I also had no idea what to do so I followed their lead. We found a good tall tree that stood up straight and then O’neil started to chop it down…yep, I chopped down trees with an axe in the middle of the African bush! I did! It was a really cool African moment. You know, every once in awhile I have those moments when I actually feel like I’m in Africa and living like the people in Africa…this was definitely one of those moments! We shopped down the first tree and then O’neil decided it wasn’t tall enough… so then we found two more tall trees and chopped those down. An hour later and a lot of sweat and soar hands from the axe we had 3 big tree trunks and now had to drag them back through the bush back to my house. So…we did! We got all the trunks back to my house and then started to dig 2 holes for where we would stand the trees into to make pole type structures to then put a rope from one side to the other to make my clothing line….just like how everyone else in the village has done it over the years. My clothing line looks just like everyone else…which I like. The chief of my village and the chief’s headsmen all watched me do it…a few guys that live in the village saw us and came to help us dig (especially since we didn’t have shovels…we had a metal rod that helped move the soil around and then we used our hands). I was told a long time ago that technically the Ministry of Ed has to supply me with a real metal clothing line like most PCV have, which I don’t know if that’s true or not but I like my little hand made one better and I think it shows the people in my village that I really am living like them…I chopped down the trees from the bush myself to prove it. All the villagers that walked by while we were doing this just smiled and laughed a little…they still think its really funny when they see me do things that they do…but I’m learning to appreciate that laughter and know that’s its kind of a sign or respect rather than mocking which in a year a go all of us PCV’s thought it was. So now I have a beautiful clothing line that sits out in the sun and dries all my cloths…I like it!!!
Last weekend there was a netball and football tournament in the neighboring village, Sesung, that my village was in so I went with a few friends from the village. We all crammed into a truck that really holds about 15 and made about 40 fit…really not sure how that happened but we did it. We got tot Sesung and watched about 3 netball games and a football game. Netball is big here! Its basically basketball but with no dribbling! Its cool and looks really hard to do now that’s I’ve watched more of it. The Metsibotlhoko netball teams is all girls. I’m pretty sure netball is a girls sport here only! Metsi’s team is called the “United” and they played so well. We won 27 to 8! It was awesome. They did a really good job and seemed pretty happy that I went o cheer them on. I was of course the only white person there at all. So, people from the other villages that don’t have white people or PCV’s in their villages are always a big shocked and interested when I show up. My village just strolled in like I’m not a big deal at all, they were glad I was there and did spend a few minutes showing me off and telling their friends, but it wasn’t a big deal. When the people from the other villages saw me get out of the truck and walk to the field with my village….wow…it was like a celebrity showed up!!! They all stared at me and a few people tried to pet me and then they just gossiped about me and continued staring. To an extent I’ve gotten used to it but it’s a bit weird still….and its all because I’m white.
Everything was going well. My village just finished the game and did amazingly and I had been there all morning and people seemed to get a bit more used to me and not care as much right until about the time we were leaving. O’neil and I had been in the sun all morning and decided to hitch back to Metsi with a few other people…all of a sudden girls from the Sesung team started yelling at O’neil. It was all in Setswana and Sakgalahadi, so I had no idea what was going on, but heard the term, “Legkoa!” a lot and I know that means white person in Setswana so I knew I had something to do with it. They were yelling and then O’neil was yelling then a bunch of people from my village and Sesung were yelling…it was bad….and I was pretty sure I was involved, even though I had no idea how. O’neil eventually stormed off and took a few minutes alone to cool down…then we left and starting trying to catch a ride back to Metsi. O’neil and I talked about what happened later on and she told me that all the girls from Sesung were telling her that because O’neil was hanging out with me so much during the game, she must be trying to use me or be my sidekick of some sort and was acting like “my sister” which implies that she’s “too” close to me. They didn’t believe that a black girl from Metsi and a white American girl could be real friends. They made fun of O’neil for hanging out with me and gave her a hard time and my village and said that it wasn’t real and that I’m white and it can’t be a real friendship or relationship of any kind. It was unreal and ridiculous! Sesung doesn’t have a PCV or any white people in it, as most of the smaller villages here in Bots don’t…so they don’t understand it. They don’t understand me or think that a white person could care about black people or people in Bots or Metsi. White people in Bots are seen as superior to black people. So when others see me, its like a celebrity. My village, while still sees me as a bit superior and probably always will…has learned that I care about them and work for them and has gotten used to me being here and smiling at them…so its all good in Metsi. Other villages that don’t have that exposure, like these girls, get jealous and don’t get it…and they way they respond to that is hate. O’neil was great about it and so was my village. I don’t know exactly what was said but they stood up for themselves and for me and were even able to see it rationally when it was done. O’neil was the one that first said to me, “they just don’t experience it, so they can’t understand. Maybe if you come to Sesung more often then they will be nicer about you.” This big fight went on and all because I was white and they were black and that they wouldn’t/couldn’t believe that me being there with them was real and that there were no strings attached on either side! I was proud of my little village but I will say that it was really weird and a lot of really new feelings for me to be involved in a fight about race and equality. Maybe I’m naive but I thought the world was better than this by now…but I guess that is my lack of exposure. I’m usually the majority, not the minority so I guess I wouldn’t really know how far the world has gotten…but I’m certainly getting glimpses of it now!