Malawi Malawi Malawi

As expected, my diligent blog posting collapsed upon arrival in Malawi. I’ve been incredibly busy since I landed in Lilongwe on Dec. 30. Bikoko and I arrived the same day, and we immediately hit the ground running because all 4 interns arrived the very next day. We set up the house, updated documents, confirmed schools, and caught up on the past four months before heading to the airport. Two of the January interns are from Colby, so it’s fun to swap stories and recommend restaurants (Foss Fam: we’re going to the Lebanese restaurant asap). The third intern is from Maine but goes to school in North Carolina and the last intern is from Canada. It’s a great group.

So once the whole group was in Malawi, we had our four-day orientation filled with curriculum, city tours, consultations with Lali, our tailor, yummy food prepared by John, early mornings, and errands. Tuesday the 3rd we headed straight into the village for a 4-day 3-night homestay and camp. So far, I love this schedule and the extended homestays. We teach from 9:30am-1:30pm, take a half hour break for lunch, and then do optional creative writing workshops with the kids. It’s great to not have to pack up the car in the morning then drive to the school and drive all the way home and unpack supplies.

So pretty much every morning, I got up early (5:30) to run. I wanted a quiet village but everyone was already up, pumping water and walking to church. Then I’d take my bucket bath, have some breakfast and read on the porch before class started. One morning I went to church, which was just in front of our house. It was a short service, only 40minutes, and completely in Chichewa, but I’m glad I went and got a quick overview from a translator after.

During school, I mostly chatted with the teachers. We sat on my host family’s porch and compared Malawi and the US. Other mornings I’d read or help sweep the house. At 1:30, we’d wrap up classes and walk about 15 minutes to the trading center where the headmaster hosted us for lunch. Two days we had nsima, two days we had rice. She mad a delicious relish with rice. If time allowed, we’d chat for awhile then head back to school where we held the optional creative writing sections for the kids. All the girls and about half the guys showed up everyday.

After school we hung out at the futball field for a few hours, kicking a ball, chatting in either Chichewa or English, walking to watch the sunset, tossing a Frisbee, singing, or any other number of activities. Then it was back to the boys’ host family for dinner altogether. We had nsima, rice, and pasta on various nights with yummy yummy relishes.

One afternoon, I talked with our host dad for close to an hour. He brought out pictures of his wife and two kids because they’re visiting family up north and we couldn’t meet them. We talked about his schooling and teaching and Malawi. His English was great and it was wonderful to be able to just sit and chat.

This weekend, we took a tour of the city where we saw the first president’s burial site, a war memorial featured in the Amazing Race, and Coffin Street. We also went to a soccer game where we rooted for the Civil Servants to beat the army’s Red Lions but were defeated. Dinner out completed a great weekend.

This week, we’re living at the house and working at a city school that’s just a few minutes drive away. After camp today, we went to Baylor AIDS Pediatrics Clinic and the office of Grassroots Soccer, which is an NGO that uses soccer to raise awareness of and promote testing for HIV. Tomorrow we’re going to the Crisis Nursery and Thursday we’ll visit a permiculture site to learn about sustainable gardening and more efficient ways to farm in Malawi.

Also, the interns are keeping their own blog at worldcampforkids.blogspot.com. check it out.

A Very Bali Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Days 3 and 4 were a blast.

I’ll start with today. Since it’s Christmas, we decided to do something special: we were up at 1:15am to get ready for our 2am departure for a sunrise trek (the hike was the special activity, not the hour of departure). At approximate 2:12 we were met outside our hotel by a very nice driver and two Australian girls who were the other half of our trekking group. They just graduated from high school, had been in Bali for 3 weeks, and were really nice. We drove for about an hour to a coffee plantation where we were served coffee and banana pancakes with chocolate. yum. Then off to the starting point where we met our guide, MyYoung. There were probably thirty other tourists with their guides as well..

It was also my first time using a hole-in-the-ground-toilet.

It took us about two hours to get up the active volcano. The hike reminded me a lot of Mt. Nkhoma in Malawi because it started off on a gradually inclining path that wasn’t hard at all. Then we hit a point and it got steep. When we started it was pitch black outside so we each carried a flashlight. The stars were great but not the best I’ve seen. Elena and I each saw a shooting star.

Then we started to climb up rocks. Eventually they turned to gravel which was tougher. I came my closest to falling, of course, when I was standing still and the rocks shifted under my feet. As it slowly got lighter, the sky turned red behind two huge mountains. Between the mountains and us was Bali’s biggest lake, with small fish farms scattered around its perimeter. Once the train turned to hairpin turns, the views got better with each curve.

Only once did we stop, and it was so our guide could put incense and a floral offering to a statue of the god of the mountain. There were at least ten sticks of incense burning and it smelled delicious.

We finally made it to “sunrise point” where we were offered soda and water from vendors. We took a ton of pictures and then went fifteen minutes further where MyYoung promised the view would be better. And it was. From above, you could still see the two mountains with the rising sun but the lake was much more visible. In addition, to the left there were green fields of rice.

We also had our breakfast cooked there: banana sandwiches and hardboiled eggs, all cooked in steam vents from the volcano. delicious.

Instead of heading back down the volcano, we hiked the rim. At its widest, the path was 2.5 feet; at its narrowest, less than 6 inches. And both sides went pretty much straight down. Last month there was a super poisonous snake at a certain point, so our guide made sure he went first so he could hit the grass with his walking stick. Luckily we didn’t run into it. He also only checked within ten feet of where it had been seen, so I’m not sure what we would have done had the snake moved.

We made it around the rim and then went down “the back way” by young crater. This trail had lots of volcanic sand which was both fun to try to slide down and also painful once it got into tennis shoes. So with many stops to dump piles of rocks out of our shoes, we made it down the volcano in about as long as it took us to get up. On the way, we saw three more craters that had each erupted within the last 100 years. One of the craters had spewed red lava, one had spewed black lava, and one had just released steam. The most recent eruption killed two Germans when they got too close the day after the major eruption and the heat killed them.

We walked through a village on our way back that we’d apparently walked through at 4am but hadn’t seen since we our lights had been so focused on the ground in front of us in the pitch black.

It took about 1.5 hours to drive back, which we all used to catch up on sleep.

We got back to the hotel at 11am exhausted but with the whole day ahead of us. So we packed a quick day bag and walked 20 minutes to our hotel’s sister but much, much nicer counterpart to relax by the pool. I enjoyed the pool and sun while Elena slept in the shade, and once it started to rain, we ran into the restaurant for lunch. Now, an hour later, it’s still raining too hard for us to walk back to our room. Tonight, we’re planning on a dinner at the Jazz Club and then heading to a traditional Balinese puppet show just down the road… never thought I’d say that on Christmas!!

So, that’s today. Yesterday was great too. We woke up early enough to get to our 9:30am Balinese cooking class only to realize at 9:10 that it had actually started at 9 and was a 20 minute walk away. oops. So we arrived a little late but met the rest of our group in the market where we saw every vegetable, fruit, and meat imaginable laid out for sale. We didn’t get to buy our own ingredients though, because they’d been prepared at the restaurant already.

Our group was both sweet and interesting. A nice woman from Germany who was travlieng on her own and seemed to be spending no more than 2 days anywhere she stopped – Thailand, the northern part of Bali, Ubud (where we were), and Australia for two days was her next stop. And there was a family of three from San Diego: a mother who lived in Korean and loved cooking and loved talking about it even more, and her two sons. The class itself was set up different than I’d expected as well. We were seated in the dining area of an open-air restaurant with one teacher. We prepared six dishes, so each one of us got to make a single dish that everyone ate. I decided to eat meat for the day and loved the pork dish. It had amazing spices and was balled up onto a stick and then pulled down to make a sort of meat-lollipop.

The chicken wasn’t so great though. But the rest of the food was delicious and the spices were incredible. One of the sons made Basa Gede, the staple spice dish that was used in everything else. Elena made seared tuna that was also incredible. And it’s the first fish she’s eaten and not gagged on! My dish was a peanut sauce with Basa Gede and cooked but still crunchy vegetables: sprouts, carrots, and spinach. The sprouts and peanuts were my favorite parts.

The meal was finished off with dessert: fresh fruit drizzled in Balinese honey. yum. We were sent home with a book of recipes and a black and white checkered apron.

Once the cooking class was over at 3pm (that’s right, 6 hours of straight cooking) we visited an old palace that’s been opened to the public. Parts were still marked as private and entry was forbidden, so I think what we saw was just the courtyard. The plants were overgrown but it gave the buildings a very real feel. The stonework was as ornate as anything we’ve seen so far. There was one doorway that was painted red with gold details that was absolutely beautiful. We spent a few minutes wandering around the market and went back to our room.

I went to bed at 4pm and slept through until 1am when we were up for our hike this morning. I’m still not sure if my sleeping schedule is out of whack from traveling or if I’m still recovering from finals & a long semester.

The rain has just about stopped so I think we’re going to slowly walk back to our hotel and get ready for our Christmas night full of jazz and puppets!

(and hopefully pictures will be up on facebook soon!)

Things I'll Miss about Botswana

Since I leave Botswana today, I figured I'd post a list of the things I will and won't miss mo Botswana. More stories to come about my last few days.... too many adventures and great insights into the workings of the US embassy!

Things I won't miss about Botswana:
Seeing donkeys with their front legs tied together so they can’t walk very fast or go very far
Being honked at by every taxi that passes
Silent TV dinners
Mosquitoes
Throwing my trash on the ground because there’s nowhere else to put it
People who assume I can’t speak Setswana
Foreigners watching the progress of their Batswana construction crew for hours from their air conditioned cars
Slow internet
Not really knowing how to cook anything I’ve eaten here
Kagisong
Food poisioning… Thanks program house leftovers
Being asked where my husband is by every taxi driver. Don’t have one? Then where’s your boyfriend?
Sticking out like a sore thumb
“Sori mma, ga ke je nama.”
Writing papers
Boys peeing everywhere
Passports
Prepaid phone units
Switches where off is up and on is down

Things I’ll miss about Botswana:
Boitumelo, Bonolo, Dimpho, Kabo, Kagiso, Katlhego, Lefika, Lesego, Leungo, Mpho, Naledi, Neo, Tabo
Long good byes outside Bull and Bush with flickering lights and massive audiences
The skies
Letsatsi
Mickey tags
April
Dirt roads
Riding in the back of pickups
Gabs, Kasane, Manyana, Maun, Mochudi
My host families
Maun Homeopathy Project
P10 lunches
Parks
Chibuku cartons everywhere
Dirt roads
Rain storms when the sky seems to rip right open
Rummy 500
Bush breakfasts/lunches/dinners
Brian
My hubby
Department of Wildlife and National Parks
Walking by the State House every morning and afternoon
Wild dogs
Wonderful conversations with strangers
Pap pap
The efficiency of the US embassy
Safari drives
Land Cruisers and Range Rovers
Sunset
Favors
Thunder that booms, crashes and rattles your ribs for thirty seconds
Ame
Diphologolo
Motogo
Sour fruit
Crunchy YumYum
The molapo
Having an MP dad
Random dance parties
Linga Langa
Forked lightening
Football
Thari Daycare Center
Kudu
Liver-looking banana-smelling fruits
Pula
Amarula
Walking by Embassies
LBRs
Weddings
BOFWA
Oranges and peaches right off the tree
Birds
The air-conditioned rock
Quiet picnics under a huge tree
Choppies
Webby
The cool side of Manyana’s river
The Botswana soundtrack
Mokoros
Throwing wine on Lesh
Free internet in the best places; Maun airport, Barcelos, Linga Langa, Equitorial
Trees everywhere
Elephants
My wonderful eating buddy
So many kids
Night time walks
Dinaledi
Mmadua
Monkey Gland Burgers
Backpackers’
Walking
Milky Lane
Being a tourist
Khombis
Bull and Bush
Ditonki, Dikgomo, Dipudi, Dikatsi, Dintsa, Dikoko
Comfy beds
Bucket baths
Booze cruise
Dula
History
Setswana
Backpackers
Beef juice
Amarula
My Birthswana
Namibian women wearing beautiful hats and dresses
Meeting Atlha
My four new families in a beautiful and wonderful country
BOITUMELO, BONOLO, DIMPHO, KABO, KAGISO, KATLEGO, LEFIKA, LESEGO, LEUNGO, MPHO, NALEDI, NEO, TABO

Fish Fish Fisheries

So for the second two weeks of DISP, we were placed with the Fisheries Division of the Wildlife Department. We left Thursday with a man named MN to do sampling close to the village of Samochima, which is on the northwestern part of the Okavango Delta. It was about a five hour drive and it rained or drizzled for a good portion of that drive. There were beautiful lightening storms on the horizon. I also read the New Yorker and slept for awhile. We had a ton of stuff in that truck. Again, we were riding in the bed of a pickup. There were three large, backpacking backpacks with all of our clothes plus four regular backpacks with other stuff. Katie and I had bought three plastic bags worth of food for our six day trip. The other three had bought about six bags worth of food. We also had MD’s stuff and pots to cook with. There were two huge tents at the bottom of the pile, which was covered by our five mats. It was actually quite a comfortable ride since we had the sleeping pads to stretch out on.

The campsite was a nice one. We were borrowing space from a local fisherman’s co-op that was started by the government as a development project. The girls had one tent and the boys took another. There was a great fire pit where we would cook all of our meals. All breakfasts consisted of peanut butter and a grain (granola, bread or crackers). Lunch was typically more peanut butter on bread. And then dinner was typically veggies and chickpeas. For snack: a tomato eaten like an apple. yum.

Vince got up early Friday morning (6.30am) to take out the nets everyone had placed the day before. At 8 we were all woken up to start counting fish. Six nets were put out each day, although ideally there would have been eleven. The other five were destroyed past the point of use by crocodiles. So we pulled fish out of nets for over an hour. I am now an official vegetarian. I won’t eat sea food anymore. Watching the fish try to breathe and get manhandled. There was one species that could literally live for hours out of water. Some had spiky fins that the men just broke to make it easier to get out of the nets. They had to be sliced open to see if they were male and female and most of the fish were still alive when they were sliced.

So we weighed each fish and measured how long it was. We also had to identify each species and whether it was juvenile or adult. If it was adult, it was cut open to check for male female and reproductive stage.

That afternoon MD drove us around Samochima and the other villages. It was obvious we were in a different and less wealthy part of the country. All of the houses were traditional, made of cans covered by mud with reed roves. Almost every house had a beautiful fence made out of reeds that you couldn’t see through. The kids still yelled and waved as we drove by.

That afternoon Ian and I went out to set the nets for the next morning. We drove for about ten minutes before we got to the correct location. I was in front and ended up doing all the work. I had to put the bottom end of the net out as the boat was backed away from shore, where the edge was tied to a few reeds. It was a lot tougher than I thought it’d be. Sometimes the driver went fast and I couldn’t keep up and I’d have to ask him to slow down. Sometimes the net got caught on edges of the boat and we had to stop to take it off and sometimes the net would be tangled and we’d have to untangle it before continuing. Once the entire net was out, we drove in an arc back toward the bank, dragging the net through the water and secured it to other reeds. I think we were catching all fish between a ninety degree angle to the shore and the shore itself.

We asked if we could drive further down the river to see more. We drove by some gorgeous luxury lodges but the driver suddenly turned around. The guy I was next to simply said “hippos” and we headed back to camp. Guess our boat was too small to take on any hippos.

Saturday morning was pretty similar. We took fish out of the nets and recorded their information again. As soon as the first net was done I started to measure and weigh. I really wasn’t into pulling them out of the nets again.

We relaxed for most of the day, playing more cards, napping and reading. Back in Maun, Katie and I had tried a delicious fruit that was both sour and sweet at the same time, and Mma, the one lady who we were working with knew there was a tree nearby. We decided to try to find it. We saw a group of kids walking out of the trees with a bag full of the fruit and asked for directions. They pointed us down the right path. One girl said it wasn’t far at all and another said it was quite a walk. We followed the trail of pits the children had left behind to try to find the tree. After forty-five minutes of walking, Mma decided we should turn back because she was scared of elephants and warthogs. About ten minutes later, my flipflop broke and I had to walk the rest of the way back with only one shoe on. I only had to stop a few times to pull thorns and burs out of the bottom of my foot.

Katie noticed that there was no longer a trail of pits along the path we were on and we realized we hadn’t come the way we were walking. So we decided to just keep walking since we were probably heading in the right direction. Eventually we ran into two men and asked them for directions. They pointed us down the road in the opposite direction we were walking. We came to a fork in the road and luckily saw a group of kids walking toward us. It happened to be the same kids we’d asked for directions to the fruit. They told us how to get back to camp and agreed to take us to the fruit tomorrow, if they could leave the village. We got back to camp just fine and had delicious catfish (caught that morning) for dinner.

Sunday was another low key day. I didn’t go out in the boat again. But we did play a lot more cards and the kids came through on their promise to take us to find the fruit. So a group of about eight kids led us through the trees the exact way we’d gone the day before. This time, Mma, Katie, Ian, Vince, Ches and I all went. We brought a plastic bag too, so that we’d be able to bring a lot of fruits back for the rest of the fisheries team. We made it to where we’d turned around the day before and there was the tree. It was literally right to the left of the path we’d stopped on. The tree was huge! It had a massive trunk and the diameter of the branches was probably thirty feet. We collected fruit off the ground because they’d picked all of the low hanging ones the day before. And it was so delicious. They were about the size cherry but had really big pits. The kids picked the skin off but we ate them whole. A young boy climbed about fifteen feet in the air to shake a huge branch and literally made it rain fruit.

After we’d picked our share and the kids had filled a plastic bag to the top, they asked if we wanted to see a croc’s nest. We of course said yes. So we headed toward the river and came to a huge sand pit in the ground. We walked along the croc path to the water where we found a man fishing with a pole and hook. I was slightly freaked out that we were so close to the water with crocs and hippos, but the kids were totally comfortable and I realized we were safe. Or at least I was, standing behind a row of children. We sat down for awhile and Vince and Cuz saw a huge croc swimming close by. The kids got excited and we waited to see it again. After about twenty minutes, we decided to leave even though they didn’t get to see it.

We walked along a different path back to camp, this time with the kids leading so we knew we wouldn’t get lost. We came back to the river at one point and the kids drank the water. They ran to the river, scooped up a few gulps as quickly as they could and ran away again. There, they almost seemed scared.

That night we had more fresh fish for dinner.

Monday was an early day for me. Since the fisheries employees were moving to a new camp, they wanted to get started early. They woke me up at 6, thirty minutes before we’d agreed to go collect the last net. This net had been set a little farther, but I loved watching the sunrise over the river. I missed the initial colors so I saw the light reflect from behind clouds onto the still water. We saw a few crocs on our ride and I got really excited to see my first hippo of the day. Turns out it was right next to our net, and I’d already learned that the men liked to avoid hippos in our small boat. So we tried to chase it away. We would rev the engine and ride toward it, then turn away about thirty feet away and circle back to scare it again. We did this at least ten times. Slowly, the hippo moved away from our net. But then we lost track of where it was and the men got more and more nervous. We drove another few minutes down the river to a nearby lodge and asked two men to come watch out for the hippo as we collected our net.

So two hotel employees hopped into their boat and followed us to the site. I watched the men pull in the net as the other boat was between us and the middle of the river. Once we were finished, we thanked them and they drove off. We rode back to camp and saw the hippo around the first bend. Luckily, he’d swam away when he disappeared and we’d been safe the whole time.

We’d collected the smallest catch so far. Twelve fish. Before, we’d had a few hundred each day. It did make the morning go fast though. The four fisheries employees packed up their tents and gear, we said good bye and they took off for their next site.

MD had brought another man, Rocks, to take us on a boat tour. We couldn’t have been happier. Originally we’d been told we’d do a boat tour during our first full day but it hadn’t worked out. Then we were told we couldn’t all fit on the boat together so we’d have to go out in two shifts. But Rocks decided the six of us would be fine.

Jeez, was the boat cruise incredible. It took a total of three hours, from 11am to 2. There were phenomenal birds everywhere. We drove up to huge flocks of beautiful egrets perched in trees or on the white sand, saw a number of kingfishers and quite a few hawks and African Fish Eagles. We saw our first hippo within the first forty five minutes and saw a pod of about four hippos toward the end of the trip. We saw quite a few crocs, one just across the river from where we got out for a leg stretching break. And where we stopped was gorgeous. We stood in the water as Rocks smoked a cigarette (the real reason for our break). We waded into a little pond covered with lilies and watched the birds hunt for fish and bugs.

On our drive back, we essentially chased a flock of small birds down the bank. There were probably forty or fifty really small birds sitting in trees along the water’s edge. They flew further down the bank as we got closer and landed in the reeds. They were perched for less than five seconds before we got too close and they flew again. We followed them for at least five minutes before they figured out that flying away from the water would put more distance between themselves and the boat than continually flying further down the river.

After we got back, MD drove Rocks back into town. We really wanted to walk to Samochima to look around a take a few pictures, so Katie agreed to stay back to watch our stuff while the four of us walked into Samochima. Instead of taking pictures, we found a group of boys holding soccer. In Setswana, I asked if we could play with them. They agreed but didn’t walk toward the field. So I said “let’s go!” and started off toward the goal posts we’d seen on our walk from camp. The clouds were dark and it looked like the rain and lightening was getting closer to us. Perfect soccer weather.

We passed the ball around in a circle for a few minutes, the four of us and four boys who were probably around thirteen years old. They divided us into teams of four on four (with one goalie each) and we started. Our goal was probably six or seven years old and super small. But he was incredible. He dove like a pro and stopped almost every goal. Once the lightening got closer and the rain got a little harder, we decided to stop playing and head back to camp. We didn’t want to be the only tall things in an open field and a real soccer practice was starting soon at the field next to ours. My team ended up winning (!!!) and I think the final score was 4-2.

That night we cooked dinner over a huge fire. We could see a huge lightening storm a few miles away and decided to go watch. So we grabbed our jackets and sat about forty feet from the river to watch the huge bolts. Most of the lightening was behind clouds and instead of seeing the individual bolts, the entire sky would light up. Some bolts were really clear though, and it was beautiful to watch them stretch from really high up to the ground. After we heard a lot of hippo noises, I headed back to camp and the rest of the group followed in a few minutes.

We left Samochima on Tuesday. We visited our friend Amy, who’s on our program and doing basket weaving for her DISP. She’s staying in a village called Etsha 6. There’s a series of Etsha villages that are numbered in ascending order. We met her host family and saw her room and the basket she’s finished. I honestly expected a single colored, lopsided basket with visible mistakes, considering she’d finished it in two weeks, which seemed really fast to me. Instead, Amy showed us a beautiful basket that was a light tan color with a dark tan spiral coming out of the bottom. Although she said it wasn’t even, I honestly couldn’t find a mistake. She’d worked from 8-5, five days a week for two weeks to finish it. That morning she’d started her second basket, which will be much smaller but will have a flower pattern, be closed, and have a matching top. I really can’t wait to see it when it’s done. We finished our five hour drive home without a single rain drop! Again, we were comfortably laid out on our sleeping pads on top of our mountain of stuff.

pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071713&id=1036350539&l=9a11acb4be

Life in Manyana

It is so hard to sum up my first month in Botswana. My last post was from Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana. I wish that hadn’t been my last post, because it certainly wasn’t my happiest. Although living here hasn’t always been easy, it’s been wonderful.

We spent our first few days in the country in Gaborone, learning the basics of Setswana and what we should expect during out homestay in Manyana, a medium sized village where we would be living for the first month. On our final night in Gabs, we drove about an hour out of the city to a game reserve. We went on a drive and saw lots of great animals. After safari-ing in Zambia just a few weeks before, a fenced in reserve just can’t compare, although it was fun to be with thirteen new friends. We had a braai, or BBQ, in the middle of the bush, which was incredible - so much delicious food and a warm fire to sit by.

The next morning we headed out to Manyana. I can’t retell my entire month there, so I’ll try to hit the highest highs, lowest lows, and most typical normals. My family in Manyana was small: my mom, Masa was sweet. She mumbled a lot, so it was pretty difficult for me to understand her whether she spoke Setswana or English. She has three kids, and only the youngest still lives at home. The older two work outside Gabs. April was my 25 year old brother (he was born during the fourth month) who lived at home. He is so incredibly nice and fun to hang out with. His English was great, so we mostly talked that way. He was on Manyana’s best soccer team (a goal keeper… of course!) so we talked soccer a lot. I got to watch one of his games which was really fun, even though they suffered a tough loss. April has a 2 year old son who I was never able to meet. He lives with his mom outside Gaborone. April visited once while I was in Manyana, although the trip was unplanned. He spent two days and one night with his girlfriend and son.

The last member of my family was my 5 year old nephew. His name is Brian. When he was born there was too much fluid in his brain and he’s now mentally handicapped. His head is much larger than normal, but he may be the sweetest child I’ve ever met. He can’t walk yet although he’d be physically able to learn with enough practice. He can’t talk or really communicate in any way. He mostly sits and giggles to himself. Sometimes we’d sit on the couch together. I’d have to keep my notebooks out of reach so he wouldn’t rip the pages, but he loved to play with my water bottle.

The hardest adjustment was seeing the living conditions he deals with. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t know what going on around him, although that didn’t make the reality any easier to deal with. He’s still fed three meals a day by someone else in the house. His mom works somewhere else and only came to visit twice while I was in Manyana. There are no resources to help Masa raise her grandson, and so without any judgment, I’ll describe Brian’s life. He has his own room in the house. There’s a low bed with blankets as well as a few blankets and pillows from an old couch on the floor. There’s a dresser tied shut with a piece of cloth in the corner. There’s a huge window that’s covered with a pretty transparent sheet. When Brian’s inside the room, the door is locked shut with cloth that is attached to the window on the other side of the wall. Essentially, it’s locked from the outside. Brain was pretty much only brought out for meals and little else. After eating, he stayed out for anywhere from three to thirty minutes, depending on Masa’s energy level and mood. He’d be put back in the room and the makeshift lock secured each night. Since he loved to play with and explore anything that moved, Brain loved to tug on the door. I could often hear it opening and closing. The lowest low I ever hit was when I had to put Brain back in his room for the first time. When I tried to leave, he crawled after me and whined even after I shut and locked the door. Then I could hear him pulling the door open and listen to it slam shut. I wish I could have kept him out and listened to his laugh all night. Before that, I’d only taken him out to feed and play with him. During those times, he always smiled.

Our house was great. Manyana wasn’t near as rural as I expected, but the surprise made the experience fun. My house had three bedrooms, a sitting room and a kitchen. We had electricity (lights and plugs in the wall) in every room. There was a water spicket in the backyard that we constantly used. My room had a queen sized bed and a dresser filled with Brain’s mom’s clothes. There was a comfy wicker chair, two bed side tables and two huge windows draped in a lacy covering. There was a fridge/freezer in the kitchen and a gas stove, plus lots of cabinets and storage space.

The bathroom situation wasn’t ideal… an outhouse in the back corner of our beautiful yard. The hole was covered with a seat, and there was newspaper there, although I opted to use the tp I’d brought from Gabs. The shower situation was worse. I had a green plastic tub (three feet wide, two feet across and one foot deep) and a small bucket at my disposal. Each morning, I’d heat water on the stove and mix it with cold water. I’d fill the bucket with that and take it into my room, where I had to wash with only that water. If I wasn’t smart with my rationing and ran out, I’d have to reuse the dirty water. Needless to say, I perfected my bathing ritual quite quickly. Since washing my hair and body at the same time wasn’t really an option, I switched between the two. Jesse, another student from Pitzer, described showering as “petting yourself with water” and she was exactly right. After each shower we’d dump the dirty water down the outhouse hole. Adding bath water to the small room somehow magnified the smell by at least 20 times, no exaggeration.

Our yard, both front and back was incredible. I’ll try to get pictures up ASAP, but it’s unbelievable. We had three magnificent orange trees that ran along our front fence. The gate always opened with a recognizable creak so that we always knew if someone was coming or going. There was a path that led up to the house, lined with bushes. Some of the bushes had beautiful pink flowers while others had striking white thorns. To the right, Masa grew sugar cane, which April was often munching on. To the left was the outside kitchen, where Masa built a fire each morning and did work outside. That kitchen was attached to what April lovingly referred to as his “drunk house.” It’s the room he moved into so that he wouldn’t wake his mom up all the time when he came home after she’d gone to bed and locked the doors.

Food.... mmmmm. I certainly tried lots of new food, some of which I loved and some of which I didn’t. I decided that while I was in Botswana, I’d eat meat. I’ve been a pescitarian for about three years now, and going back to eating beef and other meat wasn’t easy. I decided to eat meat because food in general is such a large part of Setswana culture and I’m not opposed to the way animals are treated here. Although I was expecting to eat fresh meat here, the majority of meat that I ate came from cans and looked just like cat food. During the week, we ate breakfast and dinner at home and had lunch at school. We ate all weekend meals at home. School food wasn’t much different from what we got at home - it was all soaked in oil. Vegetables are never eaten raw and the meat is cooked until it resembles jerky in texture. On one of my last days, I tried chicken gizzards. Ick. The staple dish is phaleche, which is similar to nsima in Malawi. It’s made by adding maize flower to boiling water and stirring incredibly hard and fast. We didn’t eat phaleche very often, but when we did, it was either with morogo (vegetables) dripping oil or heavily seasoned meat. Other dinners included rice or pasta with vegetables or meat. Breakfasts were pretty much always motogo, or sour porridge. Plain, it was pretty gross. Not even a Motswana will eat motogo without ample amounts of sugar and milk. I learned to ignore the gross amounts of sugar I added each morning to make the porridge sweet and yummy. When we were lucky or Masa had just been to the store, we had scrambled eggs for breakfast. All of that said, I also had some delicious food. Our house often had homemade bread as well. There were lots of delicious kinds of bread, dipapathatas are similar to English muffins, magwina aka fat cakes is dough boiled in oil and dumplings are dough boiled in water. I didn’t get to cook as much as I would have liked. One of my assignments for a class was to write a narrative about any cultural experience we’d had. I decided to write about trying to cook, and my paper's the previous post. Just know that while I do enjoy cooking, I have a hard time without a recipe.

On days off, I went on a few hikes with friends. We found a few great spots. The first was a rock overlooking the entire valley. The view was breathtaking. We tried to hike up toward the end of our trip to watch the sunrise but the day we picked was too overcast. We ended up watching the world around us get lighter without actually seeing the sun.

A really common hangout for us was at the river. Since it’s heading into but not quite the rainy season yet, the river was pretty low. There were a few spots we’d hangout in the afternoons to pass time. Sometimes we’d work or study, sometimes we’d all read silently and sometimes we’d just talk. I always managed to take my shoes off and stroll around in the cool water. One place had incredibly gorgeous rocks all around. You could see the layers and imagine the time that had passed. Here, we’d either sit on stepping stones in the river or about twenty feet on a cliff up above, looking down on the water. We lovingly referred to another favorite spot as “the waterfall.” In reality, it was another beautiful rock face where water trickled down. The water source was as huge field that had once been dammed. It was maybe thirty feet tall, with no “waterfalls” bigger than two feet anywhere. There was one tree that provided shade on hot days. When the sunset, the view was breathtaking. (again, see facebook pictures)

One Friday, we went to Mankodi’s Culture Day. Mankodi is another village, about twenty minutes from Manyana. We took public transportation for our first time. There is a completely different concept of personal space here. People were literally sitting on my shoulder. We got there at 8:00, right when it was supposed to start. We anticipated waiting around a little since we’d already become very familiar with “Botswana time.” The event didn’t end up starting until 11. We had also anticipated seeing cultural dances, hearing songs and experiencing other aspects of Setswana culture. In reality, it was an event based more on talking about preserving culture than it was actually preserving it. The day started off with a procession of men, followed by women in traditional dress into the kgotla. When the kgosi (chief) entered, we all stood. We then sang the national anthem, and people were really impressed we all knew the words. We’d been singing it every morning since arriving in Manyana. A series of men made speeches about the importance of preserving culture. Unfortunately, they were all in Setswana so I could only pick out words. We saw one youth group perform a song/drama about HIV/AIDS and how having multiple partners can quicken the spread of the disease. We left at 1 because we had to get back to Manyana for a wedding. None of us had ever met the bride or groom but we were ushered into the tent. In Setswana culture, events don’t require an invitation; you can show up to a wedding, funeral or party if you want to. Invited guests were seated under the tent and everyone else was seated on the ground or on rocks outside. We dressed formally – in black and white. We’d missed the ceremony itself and showed up for the reception, which could have taken place anywhere in the states. It was held until a white tent, with plastic chairs covered in white material and beautiful settings on the table. The bride wore a beautiful wedding dress. Her train was lilac, to match her bridesmaids. There was a ring bearer as well. We were served yummy, yummy food. What we’d been told about, and certainly lived up to expectations, was seswa, or shredded beef. There was a choreographed dance for the wedding party, but really no other dancing.

I had the most incredible experience shadowing a potter. It was another group’s Day in the Life project, but I decided to go along and make a pot. We ended up spending five afternoons with the potter, each making our own unique pot. On day one, we made the top half of the pot. Two days later, we made the bottom. The next week, we smoothed the outside with a rock and then rubbed goat’s fat on it to make it smooth. The next day, we smoothed the inside with part of a soda can. We each had to find a soda can and then rub the top on the cement until the very top became detached. We used that to scrape any bumps off the inside of the pot. On the final day, we fired our pots using cow dung, which we had to collect off the road. Our pots all turned out wonderful.

On our last Sunday in Manyana, a group of us went to visit the mosimo, or the lands. We went with Robert, one of our Setswana teachers who’s from Manyana, to see his family lands. Although we’d planned to head out at 3pm, we left around 4. We walked for at least forty minutes through gorgeous fields. There were occasionally cows and goats. We eventually got to Robert's lands which include huge granite hills. As I understand it, his family is currently negotiating with mining companies to extract the rock. We kept walking and eventually came to a pretty sizeable hill. We climbed/scrambled/jumped up the hill to what is now known as Pride Rock. The land stretched forever in all directions. We could see fields, the outskirts of the village, animals, more hills, and beautiful trees. We stayed at the top until the sun was completely behind the horizon and then headed down. We ended up walking home in the dark, but it was worth it.

Sunrises in the morning were beyond description. I tended to wake up right at 6:30. I’d walk to the bathroom and stop every time to look at the sun. I never saw the beginning of the actual sunrise, but my timing couldn’t have been better. The full sun always hung just over the horizon. The sky would glow brilliant pinks and oranges. I love that moment when the sun is still dull enough to where you can look right at it and soak up the new rays.

We saw all sorts of animals everyday in Manyana. We passed donkeys, chickens, goats and cows on our way to school. Since it was spring, there were lots of babies everywhere. Sometimes the animals were penned and sometimes they weren’t. Lots of the goats and cows had bells on. One day, on the way home from school, Ian and I came across a chicken fight. I’d never seen a chicken fight before but watching was pretty incredible. We stopped to take some pictures and I luckily got some great shots. A few batswana stopped to watch us watching the chickens.

Stars were incredible in Manyana. Since most homes had electricity, outside lights were often left on and contributed to the minimal light pollution. Just on the walk from the house to the bathroom I could pick out the very few constellations I know in the southern hemisphere: Scorpio and the Southern Cross. When I’d walk around at night, I could find patches of sky that were breathtaking. The Milky Way was visible every night.

TV in Manyana was insane. My family watched all the time. When I got up in the morning, it was already on. Most of the time, a show would be on but gospel radio would be on the audio. One morning, I woke up and it was eerily quiet but I couldn’t figure out why. I tried to turn on my light and realized the power was out, and so the TV was off. Most of the students got hooked on a soap called Generations. It’s a really funny show filmed in South Africa. At least three different languages are spoken and subtitles were in English. At the first break of Generations, a commercial for Omo washing powder always came on. It was by far my favorite commercial. There were also a lot of commercials for HIV/AIDS prevention, testing together, and the possibility of having a negative baby even if the couple is positive. My least favorite commercial’s tag line: “Unsure? Insure. Be sure.”

For my last morning in Manyana, I woke up at 530 and climbed a hill in total darkness with Ian to watch the sunrise. It was great to watch the whole village light up before our eyes. There were clouds that they lit up brilliant colors. The sun didn’t rise above them until I was walking home, but the view was still beyond words.

I hope that was enough of a description for now! I'll try to write and post more often, and hopefully I'll have more access to internet in the near future. Now, we're spending one night in Gaborone, where I'm online checking email and writing this. Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn (Botswana time) we leave for the northern part of the country. We're spending 8 days touring Chobe and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. I can't wait!

pictures from Manyana and Vic Falls: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065125&id=1036350539&l=c6e0c95b23