Diamond Mines and Halloween – by John

So I asked, how many men does it take to change a light bulb?  I was referring to the small, burned out light bulb in the diamond display case in the Jeweng Diamond Mine in Botswana that we visited today.   20.  Twenty people.  That is the answer, and based on the security procedures, I truly believe it!

The PC took us on a field trip to visit a local diamond mine.  This one happened to be the largest diamond mine in the world, and is only 35 minutes away.   The DeBeers Corporation and the Botswana Government entered into a 50/50 partnership to mine diamonds for profit, when the worlds largest diamond deposit was discover very shortly after gaining independence in 1966!

Botswana has used its profits from mining to provide universal health care, free public education through college (10 years being compulsory), infrastructure, and pension systems for the elderly and many other benefits to the people of its country.  This has jettisoned the country from being one of the poorest countries in Africa to one of the most prosperous and stable countries on the continent over the last few decades.

So much for history!    We all got to go see the diamond mine and it was quite a fun experience.

First, contrary to what you might think, there is no tourism industry in the diamond mine business.  There is no mine in Botswana that any Joe Public can go check out.  The Peace Corps was invited on a very rare and special visit to see the mine.  This was very special for us and it was amazing!   We were required to provide passports and sign ID documents.  The pictures don’t do justice about the size of the mine and the equipment used there.   It was quite impressive!  But probably the funnest thing about the 3 hour mine tour was all the security.  It was more secure than a Maximum Security Prison in the Hollywood movies.  We all had to strip of our phones, water bottles, lipsticks, purses, and/or anything that looked like a container.  They kindly let us keep our cameras.

We toured the Green, Blue and got a long distance view of the Red Zones.  The Blue Zones guaranteed a 50% chance of finding a diamond in any random rock.  The Red zone guaranteed that you would be in contact with diamonds!  We were not allowed in the Red Zone, but the Blue was cool enough.

We were told during briefing that we could not bend over to pickup ANYTHING, even a pen or camera that we dropped!  We were also not to POINT to anything!   We had to get an authorized security guard to pick up any dropped items!   Not even point?  What the hey!   At one stop, our guide was explaining about the surrounding rocks we were all standing near, a fellow PCV in our group pointed to something and she was sent back to the bus!  We didn’t get kicked out, but were all sternly lectured again about pointing or picking things up. They also told us we could not touch each other, hold hands or kiss.  They told us it was best to not look down at the ground, and certainly we should not be kicking rocks or scratching the ground with our feet.  It was crazy!

 

The last stop on the tour was the secured diamond room.   The diamonds are housed in a room locked in tunnel inside a building.

The small room had displays and pictures of the mine.  The showcase had raw rocks and a whole bunch of real raw, uncut diamonds.

Most of the diamonds were tiny, but some were large and they came in all different colors too.  They had a few rocks with the diamonds still embedded. That’s where the bulb was out and we asked about changing it.

After that, we went through the same exits from the mine, as the 5000, full time, 3 x 24 hours shifts go through every day.  We got into single file,

men away from women in front of doors with green and red lights above them.  Once inside, there were two more doors to exit.  We were instructed to go through the door that lit up.   While we waited inside our little dark rooms for one of the door lights to come on,

we were being X-Rayed with some high tech rays that could detect the tiniest diamond on our person.  Even if you got a clean x-ray you had a 50% chance of being sent through another search room.  This was way high security!

One of our guys accidentally chose the wrong door to exit, and that prompted an immediate and automatic physical search!   It wasn’t an entirely exhaustive search, as I’m guessing we were presumed relatively honest people, but it was a solid 10 minutes of checking around!

The diamond company has built a huge game reserve around the diamond and we got to see wart hogs, and a bunch of other huge cool looking animals, but we don’t know what they are yet.

 

 

What a great experience!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrations – by John:

Each day is getting closer to the end of our training.  We finally had our big language test and although Carol and I feel we did horribly on the test, we know that we have gotten quite a bit of the language under our belts given the less than 40 hours of training we have had in the past 7 weeks.

We plan to get a tutor but, I’m not worried about it, since I know we will pick up what we need as we go.  The test being over is a huge monkey off our backs and in 5 days we move to our new home.  We are on the down hill slope and life is good.

We have celebrated several birthday parties so far.  John M.  (he is also married to a Carol) turned 66 and celebrated a birthday for the third time as a PCV.  He is on his second tour as a PCV, and he brought his wife this time.  Our friend Rose just turned 24.  The group skews young, but there are a few people our age and older.  Sometimes we feel old, but the young people usually treat us as peers and we all seem to respect each other and generally we make a nice rounded group.  Everyone is very mature and it’s a fun pleasure to get to know all these new people.  We remembered the camera on Roses birthday:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a constant struggle to keep the bugs out of our room at night and we have to strike a balance between the cool breeze outside and the huge bugs that are attracted to our one 100 watt bulb.

 

 

This little neighbor made his way to our bedroom.  They are cute when they twist their heads all the way around following us with their eyes as we walk around their bodies, figuring out how best to remove from our room:  kill or capture and release?

 

We celebrated Halloween a few days back.  Carol and I were trying to think of a costume and were procrastinating until the last-minute.   But we use our computer as an alarm clock.   We did not reset the automatic Day Light Savings Time update feature which is not needed in Africa and we woke up an hour late and in a panic to get to language class.  We lost our last chance to make a costume!  Bummer.  However, it seems several people in our class decided to dress up like each other.  It’s difficult to imagine if you were not there and didn’t know the limited style of clothing that most of us wear, but take my word for it that it was quite hilarious to see the imitations. Julia, one of the true free spirits in our class, dressed like Carol.  Julia pulled her hair back, wore conservative clothe and found a big fanny pack like Carol wears every day.  It was quite different from the usual Julia with half a shaved head, and tattoos all over her body, with fun chic young women outfits.  It made Carol happy and she felt much more like she was a part of Halloween having a twin out there.

Given the extremely limited resources we had to work with for costume ideas, I’d say we did pretty well!

After school, we went to play some pool for rest and relaxation. The local’s rules for pool are interesting.  You get two shots if someone scratches, two shots if someone doesn’t hit their intended ball and a bunch of other strange, but fun rules.  The real trick is shooting with sticks that have no tips into pockets barely an atom bigger than the balls and using a cue ball that is little more than a hand carved wooden sphere, painted white and about ¾ the size of the rest of the balls.

We are enjoying some of our last walks to school during these last few days.  We will miss the neighbors, although we weren’t here long enough to get to know any of them other than just saying hello (Dumela) everyday.

This little neighbor of ours is on his way to Wall Street.  At least he has the right idea!

While Life is Good, but not TOO Good…   by JM

Life is good.  We are getting to the end of our training and more excited about moving to our permanent homes and starting real jobs.  Most of us will be within a day or two of each other, and four of us PCVs (PC Volunteers) will live in our same assigned village.  We won’t be seeing most of our friends on any regular basis after training, as most will be going pretty far away, and it will be a tremendous effort to visit them.  We are prohibited from travel during our first three months on the job anyway,  so we won’t be exploring or visiting any time soon.

So far most all of our blog posts have been positive and judging from the feedback they have been enjoyable for most people to read.  We appreciate all the support and feedback and great encouragement we have received.  We really do!   It somehow helps to makes us feel closer to home and justified in leaving when we hear all your comments.   A word or two from home brightens our days a great deal.

For those of you who are at all jealous of all the fun we are having, good we are doing, and wish you could be squeezing so much out of life, I present this post.

So far we have reported mostly positive things about us being here.  All positive comments are truly felt, however, I thought I would make this special post to complain a bit and let everyone in on some of the not so fun stuff that we are going through.

Our training period has been a tough 7 weeks.  We wake at 6 or 7 for a 7:30 departure and walk 15 or 20 minutes to language class held in one of our local “clusters” (which is the front room of one of our overheated homes) or to a taxi to our Education Center (a centralized learning complex with arbitrary air conditioning), depending on the plans the PC has for us for the rest of the day.  We typically sit through either 2 or 4 hours of language training and then the rest of the day in seminars of various subjects like Culture, Security, AIDS/HIV, Monitoring and Evaluating, Community Mobilization, Sexual Harassment and many other topics.  Most of the topics are sensible, but can be quite dry and a bit tedious.

There is no escape from the heat.  Our class room has many windows that are open, but it is stifling and we all sit there all day using our notebooks as fans and just sweating away.  We typically end our school work around 5:00 or 5:30  and take a taxi back home, where we spend 2 to 3 hours cooking and doing the dishes by hand with water heated in a fire and under a single dim light bulb in a makeshift kitchen in the yard.

By 9:00 or 10:00 pm we are ready to start our 2 to 3 hours of very frustrating homework as we attempt to learn this next to impossible language.  By midnight we can barely keep our eyes open, and are ready to go to sleep in our small bed with the bowl shaped mattress, except the thought of laying there sweating is very uninviting.  It’s not entirely unacceptable, but you can imagine it’s not that fun to sleep in a small bowled bed with another sweaty person tossing and turning all night. Lack of screens and security concerns (everyone believes American’s have money or other valuables in their room) mean we can not open the window.

The PC provided us with flannel sheets and 2 very heavy thick velvet blankets which will work just fine when the weather gets cold.  However, the weather is not going cold for a long time.  Quite the contrary.  These days the daytime temperature is well above 100.  It is a very dry heat and there is a slight but constant breeze, but it is still quite hot.  At night the temperature gets down to 75 and sometimes 80.  But some nights it stays above 100 until 8 or 9 PM.  Our little room, which is cinderblock with a tin roof becomes an oven and stays quite hot until 3 or 4 AM.  We have had many sleepless nights lying in our bed sweating in the flannel sheets, wondering how we will ever survive when it gets 20 degrees hotter over the next few months.

Recently we popped for a fan and that helped tremendously.  We will buy better summer sheets once we find out about our new bed.  We bought some bug netting and tried to put it up on the single window in our room so we could sleep with the window open (we moved all our stuff out of reach of anyone who might come looking in the window), but we found out the hard way that there are hundreds of very small bugs that the netting doesn’t catch.   So we are back to keeping the window closed, and trying to air out the room each night to bring the temperature down before we hopelessly attempt go to sleep.

Let me say that in the mornings, each day is crystal clear blue skies with a nice breeze and it is beyond words to describe the energy we feel as a result of the fresh tree and flower smells and the day’s beauty.  However, this country has a fanatic fascination with impressions.  Meaning that one’s dress is a limitless expression of one’s self.  While too much extent, this is a valid concept, the need for dress far exceeds what most Americans feel is reasonable.  Regardless of the 100+ heat, or the long walk in the heat to work, the expected dress is business clothes.  Not just business casual, but slightly better.  Not necessarily suit and tie, but certainly no shorts, jeans, casual pants, sandals, short dresses, sleeveless tops or anything short of a collared shirt and freshly ironed pants and shined shoes.  It is expected that we will wash and iron as necessary to wear freshly pressed clothes at all times. As a result, I am perpetually uncomfortable.  I understand my new office will be air-conditioned and I can’t tell you how forward I look to that office.

Back to the language.  This language is exceptionally non intuitive with very few rules and many exception.  It conjugates nouns and verbs.  There are strong and weak adjectives, and weak ones need to the have parts of the noun from the sentence added to its base.  There are 18 different classes of nouns with things like Tribe Names and Nationalities being in Class 1, and certain items of nature along with very specific body parts being in Class 5 and other random things in nature in Class 8 and etc…  The language is tonal, which means the same word said with a high pitch or a low pitch means different things.  Many words mean 3 different things.  And it goes on and on with non sensible, no rule based, rote memorization of words and sentence structures.

The language has no official basis so each of the several available dictionaries (the most recent version being 1993) has different spellings and meanings for many words than we is acceptable today.  Our language teachers all have some sort of certification, but they are not trained teachers and I think that also makes it hopelessly harder.   All of this, coupled with the fact that almost all the young people (at least in schools and stores) speak enough English, and the thought that we will probably never use this language after our PC tour, makes for a very tough time keeping motivated.   (I will admit there are a few people in this class that are totally getting the language and it bothers me that I am not one of them).

Carol and I both did very poorly on our last language test.  Our next and final test is next week and we are both freaking out.  The PC makes it clear that if anyone does not pass the final test they have the option of sending that person home (as in back to America!).  As a practical matter, that is not likely, but the stress we are under, worrying about it, is very high.

Food is very expensive here.  And poor people eat very basic food.  The PC provides our family with a very good food basket ever two weeks, but when it runs out it is back to staple food or we must buy food with very limited funds.  Regular staple foods are basically sorghum, maize and rice.  Sorghum and cabbage become breakfast, lunch and dinner when the food baskets are finished.  We are learning to ration very well, and smaller portions and simpler meals have gotten us both to lose a few pounds.

We will get a much better stipend once our real work starts, and if we get electricity, a fridge, and a stove we will look very forward to being able to afford to eat better then.

Which bring me to our next concern.  Many volunteers are going to very remote places where the closest paved road might be 50 miles away, and many will have no electricity and many will have no running water and some will have neither.  As a computer guy, we are quite lucky to be able to be placed in a large village where there is electricity and water and even internet available.  There will also be several other PCVs being placed there too.  However, this being said, there is still a possibility that our actual house may not have all these desired amenities.  The question of how we could possibly survive the hot nights with no fan is unthinkable.

Back home, Carol had pretty bad asthma and I had allergies to pollen and cats and dogs.   Both cases were pretty much under control and just a little more than an uncomfortable nuisance.  Here, my allergies are completely gone, and Carol’s asthma has all but disappeared, however, Carol seems to have developed an allergy to something we are around.  She is constantly stuffed and can not breathe out of her nose at all at night.  This causes her to wake herself up frequently with loud gags that wake me up with a scare.  We have no way of knowing if the blankets, or the animal dander (goats, chickens, cows all over the place), or the DEET in the mosquito netting is causing this.  Sudafed, antihistamines and other drugs in our PC issued, very comprehensive, medical kits are highly ineffective, and we are left with no choice but to wait until we move to another home and try to eliminate one thing at a time to try and find out what is causing this.

Finally, and most significantly, my back went out a couple of weeks ago and is still hurting worse than it has in 8 years.   This tends to exacerbate all the other “little” issues by about a million gazillion. It is hard to enjoy anything with constant back pain (I think it may have been caused by carrying many 5 gallon buckets of water back and forth to do the dishes).  The PC doctor has provided some very strong pain killers (Oxy Codeine), but he seems to disagree with me that what I really need is just some good muscle relaxants.  There are no back doctors here either, (unless you count the local experts, who might suggest I try slaughtering a chicken and hanging the chicken feet all around the yard while chanting loudly).  I try to rest my back as much as possible, but this life is very labor driven – and I can barely stand to let Carol carry the all the buckets of water for the dishes now.  I hope to have another discussion with the doctor about the muscle relaxants and I definitely need to quit these pain drugs if I have any hope of passing the language tests.

As for all the rest of it, well the good news is that we have think we will get more creature comforts than most of our fellow volunteers.  We knew when we signed up there would be sacrifices and an extreme life change from what we had before (that is the understatement of the year!), and we accepted it then and currently accept it as a part of our experience here.

We don’t have any regrets and knowing we will do good work here makes it worth it, but if we had a choice of air conditioning, better food, a sealed bug proof housing, a nice bed with cotton sheets more sensible training, an easier language to learn and more time to learn it, and no back pain or allergies, I think we would have to say that we might prefer that.  We are hoping some of  that will be more available in our new home.

Anyway, now you know, you don’t have to be jealous anymore.  We are doing fine and we will continue to persevere through whatever is in store for us.  Please continue to join us on our blog, following us, as our lives get deeper and deeper into our new adventure.

New Home – By John

Well last Monday was a really good day, indeed.  However, last Friday was the best day so far.  All 35 of us were told where we would be living for the next 2 years!   It was a well presented and well organized ceremony with a random drawing for who found out first.

A large map showed all the possible spots with push pins where each of us would put our new location, which we discovered in sealed envelopes hidden under our chairs!  Its was so exciting and energetic!  We must have had 100 rounds of applause for each other and for the PC staff who did such a terrific job with the presentation.

Most all of the 35 sites were in the same general part of the country called the Southern District.  Many of us were unsure if we wanted to be placed in small, medium or large village.   There are many pro and cons to each environment.  We didn’t have any say in it anyway, especially the 4 couples, so it was out of our hands.

Carol and I drew #11 in the random drawing, so we saw 10 of the spots disappear before we received our envelope.

We went back and forth between the two possibilities.  The Northerly, remote areas that are surrounded with the true beauty of Africa and wild animals everywhere and large expanses of lakes, but lots of mosquitoes (much larger malaria potential), MUCH more heat, and fewer resources.  Or the Southern part, that was nearer the couple of main cities, with lots of resources (shopping, hospitals, education centers), fewer mosquitoes, MUCH less heat (although still almost unbearable!) and proximity to other Peace Corp volunteers.  We knew we would more likely see the impact of our work in smaller villages, but our lives would be more comfortable in the larger villages.  We decided we would make any outcome work for us – but we just couldn’t wait to find out!

As it turned out, we were assigned to a village called Molepolole.

Carol likes saying the word Molepolole and it’s one of the few words she pronounces just like a Botswana person!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molepolole

Molepolole is a large village, maybe even the largest village (a village is smaller than a town and there are really only two or three towns in the whole country), and is reported to be the best village in the country!   We did some research and spoke with many people who know the village and who have lived there and they have all said the same thing:  it’s awesome!   We are so excited we can barely stop talking about it!   The village has great shopping, good paved roads that can accommodate bicycles (which is huge), good schools and organizations where we can really make some differences in our work, lots of electricity and running water and internet!

Two other people from our class are also being sent there and another 3 or 4 volunteers live there already.  This means we will have a strong support group there as well as the livability of the village!

We don’t know exactly where we will be living yet, but probably government housing, which is typically good and reliable.  There is always a possibility that we could end up in a home with no electricity or running water, but at this point that is very doubtful!  We are psyched!

Carol will be working in a school that teaches grades 8 through 10.  She will be facilitating or co-teaching and also capacity building (which means helping an individual in authority like a teacher to improve their own skills or capacity) with the school staff.  She will also have several other secondary jobs such as tutoring, teaching basic computers, teaching gardening and lots of other choices that she can do within the community.   I will be working in the District AIDS Coordinating Office as a District Community Liaison.  I will use my computer skills to help coordinate all outreach projects connected with the prevention and care for persons affected with AIDS in the district.  I will also use my technical skills to improve the support systems for the rest of the PC volunteers.  I’m very excited about this and we are all really chomping at the bit to get going.

Once we got our assignments, we all went out and celebrated together and really had a great time.  It was the first time that we stayed out past dark (until8:00 PM) since we have been here and it felt good!

On Saturday, the PC-Botswana had a celebration for its 50^th Anniversary in general, and it’s 40^thAnniversary inBotswana in Gaborone, and we were

provided transportation to attend.

There were a lot of dignitaries and lots of previous volunteers who had served years ago.  Tim, the Botswana Country Director gave some brief training and some great short (in the heat) speeches.  It was a fun party and we met lots of great people.  We connected with lots of resources and expanded our list of PC friends greatly.   We also had an opportunity to meet the Kgosi (Chief) of

Molepolole, which was a great honor for us.  We plan to meet with him again when we get to our village and see how he thinks the Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) can contribute to the well being and improvement of his village.

The volunteer network is a very close family.  Everyone is the same high caliber personality and they all have the same energy and motivation that Carol and I are feeling each and every day.   We are getting to know many of them as good friends and when we all go to our own villages, scattered all over Botswana in a couple weeks, we will be making many plans for keeping in touch, visiting and hosting each other at our homes over long weekends, or small vacations or just pop in visits!

Our village is so centrally located and such a great place for shopping, that many of the volunteers in places up to 3 hours away, will do their weekly or monthly grocery shopping there.   Many of them will need to stay overnight to do so.  They will be welcome in our home, and we will look forward to having them come and visit with us frequently.  We plan to dub our home a Bed and Breakfast and host movie nights with our computer and projector (Thanks Aaron).

Our lives just keep getting better.

 

We returned to our Permagarden project after 3 weeks and found it to

be alive and well.

A random trip to the grocery store brought us past a typical scene:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the grocery store there are some funny items.  The Special is more than the Regular!

 

 

 

Carol Writes….

Great Week Shadowing!

(For anyone who doesn’t know already, you can double clik on the pictures to enlarge them!)

This week was has been very inspiring.  The Peace Corps sends trainees in to the field in the middle of training to try give the trainee a taste of what is shortly to come.  The Peace Corps assigns us to “shadow”, or follow around, another Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) who has been performing as a Volunteer for at least three months and is doing a similar function.

John and I were assigned to shadow Marion and Tish Mobley.  We were both very happy with this assignment as I had started following The Mobley Family Updates blog months before we left home.

Http://mobleyfamily.info

I think their blog is one of the most informative Blogs in the Botswana Peace Corps.  Their blog truly teaches people in American (and world wide) about Botswana, the issues the county is facing, the role of the Peace Corps in that county, the history of HIV/AIDS, as well as it documents their personal experiences.  I have been looking forward to meeting them for months!

Another reason to be excited is that Marion is an IT guy.  John has also been assigned IT work.  Since IT assignments are new in this county John was very anxious to see what type of work Marion actually did.  Tish is working for a Not For Profit (Non Governmental Organization NGO)  Stepping Stones International (www.steppingstonesintl.org), which is an NGO that helps teenage orphans and vulnerable children.

Every part of our week was incredible and the entire experience has motivated and inspired both of us about our work in the Peace Corps.

About Marion and Tish:  They were the most gracious hosts we could hope to have.  They told us they had an incredibly good shadowing experience with the McGee’s and they hoped to provide the same to us.

Their home is very nice.

They had several issues that made their housing situation take months to get resolved – but they moved into a new house last month.  It has two bedrooms and two bathrooms, with hot running water!  We were able to bathe in hot water every day!!!!!

Tish had planned a menu that included foods we never thought we would be able to get in Botswana and made us special treats each night (including pizza, hamburgers, meatloaf, home-baked breads, and swag bars).  Hot coffee was available every morning!  What a treat!

All of us have had similar interests in the past and it was nice sharing our past lives, current experiences, and future hopes.

The general policy when we travel and stay for “free” at another PCV’s home is that we either bring enough food to share equitably or we pay them for the resources that we use so that no one is prejudiced.    This is a difficult at best solution, however most visiting stays are worked out to everyone’s satisfaction.  Marion and Tish had a great idea for our stay that we plan to implement for folks who come to stay with us.  They told us they would simply pay for everything and provide all the food and drinks and all else and in return we should pass this “savings” on to the next years’ group of trainees who will be visiting us.  This seemed like a decent proposal and we appreciated the simplicity.

Carol’s Peace Core Preview:  After spending a week with Stepping Stones International I can’t tell you how anxious I am to finish training and be assigned a school and a job.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in this county has left more than 50% of the children without at least one parent.  These children are at very high risk of living life in poverty, starvation, abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, obtaining a limited education and ultimately catching and spreading the virus.

Botswana has many orphanages filled with these vulnerable children.  Stepping Stones is an incredible organization that focuses on teenager orphans, which is often a population overlooked since many people think teenagers can or should be taking care of themselves.

This week Stepping Stones was launching its Grand Opening of its brand new Leadership Center.  They planned to help these children “find the leader in themselves”.  The organization has study groups, drama groups, tutors, mentors, social workers, computer labs, gardens and about 80 teens they work with every day.  They also provide them with at least one meal a day.

It is amazing to see the children here thrive.  So many children in this culture are shy and lack confidence to the point that it is disabling.  However, the teens here are truly finding their voices.

John and I had an opportunity to run a focus group (government speak for survey) with some of the older teens (18-20).

The US Embassy wanted to get opinions from the youth of  Botswana in regards to the countries problems, the perception of the US, and what the youth though the US could do to mitigate the problems.  It was incredible to hear them argue and articulate their own thoughts and idea about the Botswana government, the American government and their own community.

 

 I wish I could be there to see the young children who come in so quiet and thin with old and worn clothes actually turn into the mature, young adults sitting in our focus group.  I realized I would get to play some part in this, somewhere else in the county very soon.  This is the exact experience I hoped to have in the Peace Corps.

The launch of the Leadership Center was a huge event.  Business leaders, cabinet ministers from the UK and Botswana, ambassadors for several counties (including the US), not for profit organizations, teachers, students, churches, and all other sorts of people from Europe, North American, and Africa attended.  After the event I had a chance to meet the founder and executive director, Lisa Jamu (www.steppingstonesintl.org).  She told me Stepping Stones was in the process of building satellite programs across the nation and she hoped that I would contact them when I got to my assigned school in hopes of starting another partnership!  I can barely wait to do just that.

I am so excited and so motivated after this visit.  It was great seeing and hearing how Marion and Tish settled into the Peace Corps and dealt with issues and problems and also see them making a difference along the way – doing Peace Corps work.

I hope to take up Marion and Tish’s request to “Play it forward” on every level that they made the request.

 

John Writes…

It was great spending the week with Marion.  We spent several hours going over the technology available in Botswana as well as the general skills levels of the local people.  He also spent hours helping me upgrade my blog.  I finally have it in a format I like and feel comfortable with.  While you all can see some of the changes I have now implemented all sorts of behind the scene widgets and gadgets so the blog is backed up, optimized, and even ready/optimized for mobile phones!  Check it out on your smart phone!

In addition to being the IT guys that Carol outlined, Marion and I are also District Community Liaisons.  I’m not entirely sure what that title means, but Marion showed me what it means to him.  I will be a part of the District Aids Coordinated Office (DAC), which is responsible for overseeing all efforts related to AIDS/HIV in the district, which is a large geographic area of the Country.  The DAC Office, with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health Care, local governments, NGO’s, and anyone else participating in the eradication, all attend to the treatment and care of AIDS/HIV.

Marion has also taken on a few secondary jobs.  He goes to the library twice a week and teaches people how to use the computer.  It is a very rudimentary learning environment and most anyone with some basic computer skills could teach the kids something.   They are all so grateful and most of them seem to learn the little tasks we give them very quickly.   I expect I will have the opportunity to participate in similar activities in whatever village we are assigned to.

Marion has also volunteered to teach children at Stepping Stones International, (that Carol mentioned above).   I can easily see Carol and I finding some projects to help children or adults obtain some skills that will help them for the rest of their lives.

While we were in Moshudi with the Mobley’s, we did a lot of walking and a bit of hiking.

We hiked to the top of a small rock mountain where an old school had been converted to a Museum.

It wasn’t the Art Institute of Chicago, but it had some interesting history and pictures of the local tribes over the past 200 years or so.

There was a very old gas station there with some old pumps.

 

 

The view from the top was pretty cool and standing on the edge of the large rocks looking down gave me the hee-bee-jee-bees!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moshudi is another old village with many typical Botswana houses.   Typically unfinished, even after 20 years or more of working on them.

They tend to build their homes over many, many years, small bits at a time, as money comes available to them.

We passed this donkey cart as we hiked up the mountain, but when

I took his picture he insisted on some money, which caught me off guard.  I will try to ask first, next time.

 

 

This cactus had an interesting look.  A giant asparagus seemed to be growing from it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While we were in the bus station at the end of our shadowing assignment, we went to a casino for a few minutes to lose $20 on an automated Roulette Wheel.  They were nice enough to allow us to check our heavy backpacks full of a weeks worth of dirty laundry.  We spent a few hours checking out the city of Gaborone, which is the biggest city in Botswana.  We went to the mall, which was quite adequate for just about anything you could want.   There was pretty much everything that a mall had in America, just on a smaller scale.  The big problem would be how to transport anything large without the use of a vehicle.  We will have to wait and see how that goes.

We stopped at an open air market and pondered some fun looking unknown cooking foods.

Beans, grains, spices, leaves, seeds, and about everything you could want to cook with.  I even tried my first (and possibly only) dried caterpillar.  It was not as bad as I thought, and all the vendors were saying they were so much better when re-hydrated in cooking oil and served in a light tomato sauce.  I’m not sure I want to go that far.

 

 

 

The week was great, and I feel fully satisfied that we accomplished the goals that Shadowing had in mind.  The Mobley’s home is so nice that now my biggest fear is that Carol and I may be downgrading from our current nice conditions to a place with no electricity or running water!   We should know soon where we will be placed!  Stay tuned…..

 

 

A long week; A new Chief and another wake – October 8, 2011 – by Carol

Sorry we have not written in a week.  We had a first language proficiency test, safety test and Peace Corp Development tests this week and we just couldn’t get time to write a post, let alone get to the internet cafe to actually post even if we would have had time to write.  (We are still banned from using the internet available at the school until October 15th).

Despite, or maybe because, of the time crunch we are still loving the Peace Corps, our host family, our class mates and the Motswana people.

The Host Family:  Lillian and Morgan, our Botswana mom and dad – are truly great Peace Corp parents.  They give John and I the space we need while always being inviting and finding little and sometimes big ways to help us integrate into their family and community.  They are both salt of the earth type of people and constantly look for the bright side and accept things as they come.  The also work very hard for people their age.  They are always up when I get up at6:00 AM and they are usually working in the garden, the yard or doing some other manual cleaning.

When we get home at night the house is always scrubbed clean and the yard raked in perfect lines.  All the pretty purple flowers from the huge flower trees are swept up each day and the yard is perfect.

Sometimes when we get home from school the very last thing I want to do is cook a meal for five people from scratch – but I don’t see how I can tell these seventy-something year old people I can’t cook their dinner (especially since John cooks with me).  The other night when we got home they were still working in the garden, which is the size of a basketball court.  It contains about 20 garden beds that are partitioned by big bolder rocks that have been terraced on a hill. Lillian and Morgan dug all the boulders out by hand and terraced this rock garden over the last 20 years.  The dirt is fairly decent for growing if enough rocks are removed and the ground is leveled.  Lillian and Morgan are living on a very limited income and the garden is a necessity.  When we got home Monday night they asked us to help in the garden, which meant pick ax the ground to break up the rocks and move the rocks to the wall barriers.  So we spent an hour doing that, and then cooked dinner, and then the dishes in the outdoor kitchen with the water drawn from the bathroom.  We didn’t get started on our homework until10:00that night and finished aftermidnight.   It still gets pretty darn cold at night so we did our homework in the freezing cold.

I know it sounds like I am complaining – but I’m really not.  Truly there are very few things more gratifying than helping good hardworking people plant a garden to feed themselves.  We have been invited to return for the harvest and if possible we will come.

The Coronation:  The village of Kayne has been planning the coronation of a new Paramount Chief for the last year – and the ceremony was this Friday.  Again, we are lucky to be Peace Corp trainees because we got front row seats to this incredible event.

A new paramount chief only gets coroneted about once every 20 or 30 years and there are only 9 Chiefs inBotswana.  It is big deal, where literately thousands of people attend.  The entire village chips in to provide for the coronation, the feast after and all the presents for the new Chief.

The village bought him an Arabic Luxury SUV, many horses, 100 cattle, several special chief chairs and a bunch of other things I didn’t see.  I guess it must be really good to be chief!  We saw the really great dancers from the previously discussed culture night, several choirs singing awesome African traditional music and unbelievable amounts of speeches and prayers in Setswana language.  Apparently speeches and prayers are as necessary at coronations as inaugurations.  However, Motswana people seem much more accepting about these very long, drawn out activities than Americans.

Lillian was very excited about this event and she convinced me to commission a traditional dress for the coronation.

We went to the seamstress and there were no pictures or patterns.  Instead I was to verbalize the design I wanted it would be done two days later.  We also decided John should get a traditional shirt.  I had to go back twice the next night (while studying for the language exam) and the next night too.  I had low expectations because my capacity for clothes design is untested.  But, I LOVE MY DRESS!!!!  I got a shirt, top and headdress.  John’s shirt didn’t get done on time, but the basic design looks quite promising.  Everyone was very impressed with my Motswana clothes.

The dress fits pretty well, except for a clump in the lower back that we asked the women to fix.  She informed us that it was not fixable on her end – it didn’t fit right because of my body.  I’m trying to decide if this is an issue I need to take up with God or maybe just take Lillian and ask her to ask the women to fix it.  (We will post pictures of the dress when John gets his shirt too).

When the new Chief finds out he is to be coroneted, his mophato (group of friends from childhood that now get to hang out/advise/hunt with the Chief as a job) are to find and kill a leopard, and cure the skin for him to wear at the ceremony.  (See pictures).

 

The mophato present the skin, a spear, and a shield and the new Chief has to wear this leopard skin though at least two hours of the ceremony.

Funny thing about the mophato group.  They carry high old, high power hunting rifles on their shoulders (mostly just for ceremony) and one of their functions is security so they stand around the chief and watch for any potential problems.  The funny thing is they won’t let anyone sit or stand in a potentially harmful-to-the-chief place, and they are constantly moving people around and out of the way, however, if you have a camera in your hand, they will let you through to take a close up picture of the chief.

Our culture advisors told us they trust that no one wants to harm the Chief.  Their idea of security is certainly different than American ideas.

Women from the village line the walkway with their legs stretched in front of them, waving tree branches and making very loud banshee noises with their tongues at all happy points of the ceremony.

The President of the county attended the ceremony, but he did not talk and was not the center of attention.  The President also gave permission to hunt and kill a leopard for the event as they are not allowed to be hunted.  The President seemed to give very high homage to the naming of the new Paramount Chief.

Overall it was quite impressive (minus the sunburn from 6 strait hours in the blazing sun and the extended speeches and prayers).

This is a life moment when I think “I can’t believe I am inAfrica, at a Paramount Chief’s coronation, in the second row seat because I am serving my county”.  I still have so many moments here that I can’t believe I get to have this life and experience these things!

In Botswanathe legal system is very similar to the legal system in Europewith an elected parliament and President and court system.  However, the government has also allowed local governments to keep a local Chief.  The Paramount Chief is sort of like a governor that does not have to deal with a general assembly, but instead consults with local Chiefs or advisors.

The people of the village can choose to allow the police/court system to deal with civil or some basic criminal problems or the local Chief (called Kgosi’s).  The Chief’s decisions can be appealed to the administrative courts if the outcome is not satisfactory – but most people I have talked to state they would rather work through the Chief system.  It seems to be a unique way that this society

has maintained some of its culture while also moving into a more modern government system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wake:  After the ceremony we went back to class and then home.  Morgan’s aunt had died and we went with the family to another wake service.  I am happy to inform you that during the prayers, songs, and support, the really old women were not forced to sit on the floor so men could have seats, just us middle aged and young women.  After the service the men left to go grieve in their own way.  John told me this included jelly sandwiches, hot tea and lots of talking and conversation around a small camp fire a short distance from the grieving families home in the local Kgotla.   Interestingly the women did the exact same thing in the living room.  Wonder how long until everybody agrees these things can be done in mixed company.

We were honored that Lillian and Morgan asked us to come as we are part of the family.  Lillian has asked us to attend the funeral on Sunday too.  The funeral starts at5:30 AM, but we don’t have to leave until6:00 AM.  We were told the funeral starts so early because it is too hot in the afternoon.  However, the night before we had to take our weekly dose of Malaria medication and along with a full day of sun, John seemed to be feeling a bit sick, so when6:00 AMrolled around we just couldn’t get out of bed.  We were VERY grateful that Lillian let us catch up on our sleep, although we felt very bad that we could not attend the ceremony.   As it turned out we were very glad for the much needed sleep and the Sunday to get things done preparing for our week long departure to visit our sample work sites.

Language Test:  Ok- what everyone has been waiting for.  I didn’t get my test results back – but as soon as it was done Oteng (our language tester) asked how I thought I did.  I said I thought I did pretty poorly.  He affirmed and asked why I made it so bad.  I told him I didn’t mean too, it just happened.  He said I need to try harder, learn tenses, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, and then I would be fine.  I feel much better now that I know what part to focus on!!!!  I will get the final grade next week.  John thinks he did better, but he didn’t ace the test either.  Many of the people here were feeling bad about the test and their abilities.  They are smart people use to success and they have very high standards and expectations for themselves and it is hard to just fail.  We will all be allowed to hire language tutors if we have not mastered language by the end of training.

This is a darn hard language to learn.  Nouns and verbs are conjugated, there are different words for affirmative and negative concepts and all kinds of other non intuitive, non rule based construction!  Also, half the words in the dictionary (latest edition published in 1993) are no longer used and our language teachers tell us we should ask them about any words we want to use in the dictionary – since a great many of the words don’t exist any more and even they don’t know what the words mean!!!!!

This language is fully under development still and we see continual differences in pronunciation and meaning of words and sentences used by different generations.  There is no set standard or set of rules like there is for so many other languages.

We did pretty well on the rest of our tests (culture, Peace Corps Mission, Security and community integration) though.

More Peace Corps:  We will be doing “shadowing” next week.  This is where we individually all go to spend a week with another senior volunteer and they show us the ropes of what we might be doing and how we might be living.   We are going together to Mochuti, and we will be with Marion and Tish Mobley. Mochuti is only 45 minutes (driving directly – 2 hours by local buss), but many of the other trainees are being sent 10 -14 hours across the country.  Some of them will have to take several busses and spend a night alone in a village somewhere along the way.  That is quite intimidating and I feel a bit sorry for those that may have to do this, however, those that are going a long distance will also get to see some other parts of the country which are VERY cool.  Up north is the Safari area and even when you are not on a safari, you will see many wild animals.  I know we will get a chance to travel up there in the future.

Anyway, Marion is another IT guy and John is very excited to be working with him.  Tish is an NGO (non government organization) person – so I won’t get direct Life Skill training, which is what I will be doing on my permanent job, but her work seems like it will translate to several Like Skills programs.  It seems that the Peace Corps has a lot of flexibility and variety in assigned jobs – and I don’t think it will be a problem.  We are really looking forward to seeing what PC volunteers actually do.

Anyway – life is good and getting better everyday.

Language and Culture – by Carol

Three or four days a week we are scheduled for language classes in small groups with a PC Staff local teacher.

I am such a disaster!  I only understand the spoken Setwana when spoken at 5MPH.  I massacre the pronunciation of nearly every word, and I catch John cringing often trying to decide how many times he can ask me to try and say it right again.  One of the four people in my class is excellent and has picked up the cadence, vocabulary and rules as though she is a born linguist.  John and Rose are pretty good too.  They both get stuck from time to time, but are miles and miles ahead of me.   Despite this tribulation, I am not worried about this very much.  Either John or something higher has given some amount of confidence that it will be ok – somehow.  Either I will learn the language or it won’t matter.  I really really want to learn this language and I intend to devote considerable personal resources to this outcome.

A couple of days ago we got a surprise at the end of the night.  We were invited to go to the Kanye Culture Night event at the main Kgolta (the place where the village chief meets with his people and conducts the community business) and it was a unique experience that included a Kgosi (sort of like an alderman) speaking to the history of the Kgosi, women parading in traditional dress, skip rope shows, really cool native dancing, a poet, some traditional instrument playing and several speeches.

 

 

 

The native dancing alone was worth a visit.  The dancers were dressed in furs and hides of local wild animals and the dancers were so athletic and graceful; they were beautiful with perfect bodies moving in perfect rhythm for 20 minutes without sweating.  Their bare feet continuously slapped the concrete floor and I swear it sort of sounded like tap dancing.  It was great!

The Peace Corps employees were honored by being allowed to sit in front row seating.  We were served “ethnic food” which many people were not adjusted too yet.  Apparently a cow had been slaughtered for the event and all parts of the cow including intestines, stomach, and head parts are cooked.  The men are separated from the women and the men are given the best innards to eat while the women must make do with just plain pounded beef meat.   While a few people thought this was discrimination, I think women came out the winners.  Especially the American women who don’t really want to eat that sort of food (several persons in the PC are vegetarians).

The event was interrupted once when a baby snake crawled on stage and the event came to a stop until the snake could be delicately and respectfully removed.

The event planners asked the Americans to come up and do something cultural.  We tried to think of something American Ethnic and clever, but the best we could muster at the spur of the moment was a very sad rendition of The Macarena.   Hardly truly American, but the spirit of the attempt carried us.  It was very nice to be asked to participate and I am proud of the people who got on stage and came up with a fairly organized impromptu dance.

There were no concession stands or rides or distractions.  People came and watched and enjoyed the community event.  I have to say I missed the concessions for sure – and think it would be a real good addition for every one.  I can’t yet separate from my American ways and I think events are more interesting when there are choices of things to do, food and games to spend my money on and socializing which is easy with the additional mobility – but maybe I am starting to see things in a different way.  This event did seem much more of a community event and people truly looked as though they were enjoying themselves even though there was no food, games or booze.

Communication Update:  The standoff is over!  Both sides of the hardly waged war over the use of the Training Facility Wi-Fi Internet have finally come to an agreement!   We will be allowed the limited and controlled use of the Training Facility Internet in two weeks (Oct 15^th or so), so communication should be easier, at least in regards to reading and responding to emails.  The Botswana Country Director spoke to the issue today.  He stated that there had been many complaints and he wanted to fully discuss the issue.  He also wanted to clarify that the Bots 10 group (the training group that came before our group called Bots 11) had NOTHING to do with the denial of the service.  It was more of a world wide Peace Corps issue.

Regardless of reasons or methods – we should be able to use email communication on a more regular basis from October 15^th – November 10^th, when we move to our new home.  We will update you on the best communication methods then.

Miss you and love you all!

Carol

So far we have seen a bunch of new insects.   The Grasshoppers are about 4 inches long and rather fun to play with.  They actually respond to your hand movements and are quite harmless.

The two Spiders we have found in our small room under our luggage on the floor have bodies the size of a quarter and with their legs, they are as big as any Tarantula I have ever seen!  London would love this place!