it's bubb.: Shadowing in Kang!

Last week was probably the best week I’ve had since I’ve been here, minus the fact that I got lost on my first bus ride. All of us had to shadow current Peace Corps Volunteers that live all over the country and that are here for different sectors like Life Skills, Education, NGOs, Community Capacity Building, and Health. All of the trainees were anticipating this since we got here so you can imagine how excited we were to finally find out who we were shadowing, what their jobs were, and where in the country we were going to! I ended up shadowing Tate in Kang and it was so much fun! Tate is a really sweet girl from Colorado and she is in Bots 12, the group that came before mine. Although she is not a Life Skills volunteer, I was still very excited to stay with her and see her village. Plus, she had taught one of our HIV/AIDS sections a while back and I knew she was really nice and I was excited to get to know her. When I found out I was going to Kang I was super excited because it is south of the Kalahari Desert where the game reserve is, in the Kgalagadi District. Although I did not get to see any crazy animals or anything like that (unless you count still cows and donkeys as crazy), I still loved the small village of Kang.

The bus ride there was actually a lot better than I thought it would be except I could have done without the bumpy roads since I had to get up at 4 a.m. and didn’t get much sleep. It took about 5 hours from Kanye and Tate was waiting for me at the bus stop. Let me tell you: The bus rank is crazy! If I was not told exactly where to go and what bus to take and what time to board, I would have probably ended up in Mozambique. Please pray for me when I get to my permanent site because my sense of direction is completely nonexistent and we are pretty much completely independent when we get to our sites. Yikes. Anyway, we walked around her whole village an she took me to see where all the important places like the Sefalana (a market type of place), the post (post office), and Pep (a mix between Wal-Mart and Old Navy, which I love because it’s cheap!). That took all of 10 minutes, literally. The village is really quaint and cute and I liked it a lot. My first meal here included chips (soft fries), cream cheese & tomato sandwiches, and a salad!!! You might be thinking, “Really? That’s it?” but you don’t understand how much I craved food that was not beef, sorghum, or maize mil. I couldn’t even believe they sold cheese here let alone cream cheese and feta and cheddar! I had some of the best meals during shadowing and that’s because it included cheese, zucchini, and everything else Americans eat all the time. YUM! The only thing that was a bummer was that Tate wasn’t able to find a big variety of produce because Botswana gets most of it from South Africa and right now there is a strike going on so the villagers don’t get to see any fruits. How sad is that?! Hopefully that ends soon. When I walked into her house I was seriously in awe! She had the nicest little house I have ever seen in Botswana since I’ve been here. It looked like a normal small house in the states, better than my house in Whittier! Haha So jealous! I know we are not getting anything at all close to this type of living and I’m okay with that but it was really nice to get to shower (a real stand-up shower with a huge shower head!) and shave my legs! She even had two bathrooms with a tub and a western toilet! I’m still dreaming of it but back to my bucket baths and pit latrine…

Real American food!!!

They have CHEESE here!!! (Trenton, you'll be fine when you come!)

Tate's SUPER nice house!!!

A shower, a sink, and a western toilet! I'm in love.

You start adapting to the heat and coming up with new ways to stay cool. These are frozen water bottles and cloths to put on your body while you sleep. IT IS HOT!

It rained a total of 3 times while I was in Kang and they kept saying how I brought the rain to them. I felt lucky. Haha They said that Kang hasn’t seen rain like that in over a year and it was soooooo nice. The weather was PERFECT and cool. Pula means different things in Setswana. It is a form of agreeing with something someone has said or just being grateful for something(kind of like, “Yes!” or “Amen!”), it is the currency of Botswana and it also means rain. So when it rains everyone says, “Pula!” because it is said that the rains bring the harvest and the harvest brings wealth, which totally makes sense. So when it rains everyone is happy and I was extremely happy to feel the breeze and the cool of the wind on my skin. That was nice even if it was short lived and I still have 5 more months of extreme, dry summer heat here.

I got to meet all of Tate’s coworkers at the clinic and they all seemed to love her. (Who couldn’t?) It made me feel a lot better because she’s been here 5-6 months and it seems like she really integrated with her community well and everyone loves her. The clinic was really nice and it was very interesting to see what goes on and who does what. I also love that the clinics here are 24/7. That made me happy for the people here. When you’re a Peace Corps volunteer you have to have a primary project and other secondary projects. Tate is doing health and community capacity building so her primary work is at the clinic and around her neighborhood doing outreach. She has a whole bunch of secondary projects (I don’t know how she does it) and I was able to be a part of the SkillZ project, teaching young girls and boys about HIV/AIDS while playing soccer. That was really fun and successful. Everyone had a great time J Jan is another Peace Corps volunteer that lives in Kang and she is a Life Skills volunteer so I was glad to meet her. I went to Matsha College which is a senior secondary school (equivalent to high school) and was able to teach a Life Skills class with her. I was really nervous as to how the teens would take me since I look their age and am shorter than they are but it was great. They love saying my name randomly in class and even if the only thing I know how to do is say hello and introduce myself in Setswana, they think that’s a trip and they think I am a Motswana. I had a great experience shadowing in Kang and I am glad I was able to meet such a nice host. She is such a sweetheart. I learned a lot about the school system and Ministry of Education as well as the clinics and roles of everyone involved. I would definitely say shadowing was a success. Pula!