Good news. Even though I accidentally locked Sisi in my closet for…ehem, well more than 12 hours, she didn’t pee, poop or otherwise ruin anything, and was quite okay. Bad news is that Tsatsi, her daughter appears to have spent most of that time clawing at the front door. I’ve just become the reason landlords don’t rent to pet owners. And I have renamed her Pudi, which is “goat” in Setswana. Tsatsi and Sisi are too close in sound and I want Pudi to know when I am distinctly yelling at her and not her mother.
I almost gave up carrying the overly large, 24 lb. box my sister sent, full of my own stuff, at about the 1 mile point. The only thing that kept me going was the promise of M&Ms and well, my nicer clothes, inside the box. An older woman kindly offered to carry the box the last ½ mile, and up the hill, on her head, as it is properly done around here. Forget Setswana. I need to learn how to safely do THAT!
I love it when I walk out of a store in Gaborone, make the mad dash across decidedly un-pedestrian friendly streets - carrying quite a bit of shopped for items and a load of books from the Peace Corps office -and find myself at the bus stop just as my bus shows up. AND there is a front seat open so I can clearly indicate to the conductress when I need to get off. How cool is that? 30 minutes later and the bus would have been full and might not have even stopped!
Oh, and I almost came face to butt (hmmm) with my first baboon yesterday, in Gaborone, of all places! I was walking up to the Peace Corps office when this big black dog came running toward me. I was still trying to figure out what kind of dog it might be, given that most of the dogs here are much smaller and brownish tan, when it lumbered by me and I said, "Holly sh--" and stepped back two steps and waited until it was off to the trash bins. I heard a fellow chuckle behind me and then he came and explained to me about this troop that lives just in the hills on the other side of the office complex. They come down every morning and this guy (the baboon, not the fellow talking to me) and his little baboon gal friend come to the dumpster because he has been neatly butt kicked by the dominate male and is on the low end of the food pecking order. The fellow (not the baboon) further explained that the baboons tend to attack female (humans) more than men because women tend to feed the baboons and giving food to other baboons is a sign of weakness. Also, carrying handbags can be a sign of weekness because to baboons it looks like we are carrying food to give to them. My backpack was firmly on my back and I had left my apple for baboonn panhandlers at home, so I was in good shape. I thanked the fellow for the information and made my way.
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