Pluses Still Beat Minuses

This was written on June 10^th. June 13^th is my first official day at the office.  The power was out, so no internet. The power has been out a lot these few days. We get power from South Africa it seems so when they need it, like when it is cold, then Botswana gets less of it. So when this finally gets posted, you will know it is warmer in South Africa.  Anyway…

It’s been an eventful few days. The day we were sworn in (June 8^th), I and three of my now officially PC VOLUNTEER friends went out to have lunch and a glass or two of wine to celebrate. The place we happened to go was right across from where the government workers do their daily picketing, which has been going on since about April 18 – longer than any strike ever in Botswana and frankly no one knows what to do to end it. On that momentous day, they had taken to throwing large rocks into the middle of the road, followed by large branches, looking to block traffic and maybe start a small bbq.  They were dancing and chanting around this pile as Tom and I made our way to the bank to get some cash for lunch.  Returning to the restaurant, a seemingly nice enough fellow kind of pushed me away from the sidewalk near where the pile was accumulating. I don’t think he was doing it maliciously – it felt more like, “heh white lady, we are about to cause trouble and since we never do this kind of thing, we don’t want you to get the wrong idea or be hurt or confused about what we are doing and so please kindly go that side.” Well, I certainly moved along back to the safety of the restaurant.  By the time we finished our meal and left the restaurant, everyone and everything was gone from the center of the road and all we had left to deal with was a torrential downpour which abated long enough for us to walk to a store to do some shopping, get a taxi from Tom’s host family cousin and head home. I was the last to be dropped and walked into the front door at my host families just before another torrential outburst, this time in the form of hail, thunder, lightning, etc. Was quite exciting being viewed from inside a house. My host family uncle arrived about 30 minutes later finding it all and all much less exciting than I did. But then he spent those 30 minutes actually walking in it.

I spent that evening finishing my packing and letting my host family niece Lucia, who will be 13 in September, watch Twilight on my computer for the second time in two days. Apparently I now need to find the sequel(s) as she is hooked. I also discovered that my mp3 player no longer had any music on it, but instead random animated movies of bugs doing various songs, dances, and other fascinating exploits. I was totally not amused. Suddenly, more bereft than ever, without my music, it became an even sadder evening, saying goodbye and being too cold to venture into the bath. Always hoping for a warmer day on which to bathe, I went to bed and had a plan to be picked up by my NGO between 9:30 and 10 a.m. the next morning. They were also going to maybe take my friend Tom to his site which was 30 minutes north of mine, because his site had no drivers due to the strike.

All seemed relatively on schedule that next morning and after various strategizing and coordinating of bags and rides and pick up spots in ways you won’t really understand unless you have been here, Tom, our driver and I set off for the 1 hour drive to Otse. The plan was that we would pick up the keys to my house and the driver would drop me and my stuff there, then take Tom up the road since he had a delivery of sorghum to take there anyway and Tom could be the person to help him offload it (assuming we first loaded it into our vehicle, or changed vehicles or something.) At any rate, when we get to my NGO the driver disappears, there are no keys to my house and we wait around until we decide we might as well eat lunch.

I talk to my landlady and have what is sure to be not the last lesson in speaking English, not American, with someone who speaks English, not American, as their second language. She says in a non-question type statement, “The driver is coming to get you.” To which I respond, “He is coming to get me?” She says, “okay, I am on this side, in the village, and I have the house key. I will come meet you.” So I hang up thinking she is coming to get me or the driver is, or they are both coming together. After lunch, I call her again, since neither she nor the driver has come. Now it is more clear. She is at the house waiting for me. Her statement “the driver is coming to get you” was in fact a question. My answer, “the driver is coming to get me?” was in fact an answer telling her the driver was coming to get me. By now, the driver was certainly not coming to get me and is already in Tom’s town, unloading sorghum, but without Tom or his luggage.

So now my poor counterpart Victor, who is frantically planning a workshop for the next morning, drives me to my house, where we offload my stuff then head with him south (opposite direction of Tom’s town) so he can get quotes for food for the next day. Tom and I, ever hopeful, think maybe after that he can drive Tom north again, and at least I can do some shopping for dinner, although my house was at this point without gas or electricity, so we were talking fruit and power bars.

South in Lobatse, Victor finishes his work, I do my shopping, and Tom texts and calls people at his site trying to figure out if anyone is going to come save him from driving up and down this highway without ever getting closer to his site.  We have by now run through Plans A-J and were creatively coming up with new and random ways for him to get his stuff and his butt to Ramotswa. I guess I was having more fun with this than he was, because as he pointed out, I had my home.  We finally gave up and decided to try again the next day. We spent the evening with our headlamps on our heads, Tom trying to cheat at rummy, as we ate power bars and apples and drank juice.

The next day, Plan A was for Victor would pick us up between 7 or 8 a.m. and take us to the workshop, which was near Ramotswa and where the speaker of honor happened to be the person Tom was going to live with for the next two weeks until the volunteer he is replacing leaves and vacates his home.  We figured we could move his stuff from Victor’s vehicle into her vehicle and viola. Except Victor was picking her and a bunch of other people up so there would be no room for Tom’s luggage. And I had no electrical or gas. The store with the electrical cards (one buys a card here and then enters the card numbers into the meter at the house) in Otse had been hit by a huge piece of metal during the freak hail storm and was closed until they removed it from their roof. Or wait, that was their roof that was now hanging on the ground. Either way, no electricity for sale today.

So Plan B – we decided it would be better to forgo the workshop and get his stuff and him gone from Otse. Victor arranges for our driver to pick us up at around 9 and take us down the hill to the bus stop where we can take the bus north, then a combi (smaller bus) east to Ramotswa.  Tom and I figure we can only manage half his stuff this way and off we go, finally arriving at his new work site which is a small narrow trailer that just got smaller with the addition of a large suitcase, backpack and various random bags full of essential stuff.  We now have a couple of hours to find electricity, get lunch, buy more serious provisions for me, and then get a ride back from Victor when he comes and drops Tom’s temporary housing host back into town. I still have to buy gas, but can’t do it in Ramotswa because gas comes in an actual gas tank, not on a nifty card.  No one has responded to my pleas for a phone number of a gas vendor in Otse, so I am looking at another night of fruit and M&Ms (not a bad way to go, but still).  But if I can get back to Otse before 5 p.m., it might just work.

The car was too full with people to take Tom’s stuff to his hosts home, so Plan C sees his stuff spend the night in the office, while he decided to come back to my house again to get the rest of his stuff for the next morning and also because having electricity and gas sounded like a for sure thing. Back at the house, we can’t get the meter to give us my electricity, so I go next store to my neighbor and ask the 14 year old boy to come help us. He can’t get it to work either, but meanwhile we learn that his family owns a store and bottle shop, so he agrees to walk us down to it while I await the call from the gas man.  Luckily, the kid was able to talk to the gas man for me and it was decided to meet us at the bottle shop and bring us and the gas (and the bottle of wine) back to the house. So we have gas and I made a nice pasta by candlelight and headlamps. We watched Inception right up to the moment where they are approaching the huge safe in the remote mountain fortress because Tom’s computer battery died. Electricity continues to prove difficult but thanks to the bottle of wine I now have two candleholders instead of just one.

Pluses

Great house and garden will large sunny kitchen, fireplace, high ceilings and transom windows to let out the heat during the summer and a nice outdoor porch to eventually hang my hammock on, large bathroom with indoor plumbing, two sinks in kitchen, nice refrigerator/freezer combo (this also goes in the minus column, see below), gas cooking, beautiful village, neighbors are nice and own a bottle shop (that last part also goes in the minus column)

Minuses

Apparently parts of my village (but not entire neighborhoods – don’t ask) have trouble getting enough voltage during hi peak periods (like when everyone is running their space heaters now, or fans in the summer) to run the electric, which includes my geyser (pronounced geezer, as it “old geezer”) – which is my hot water supply, lights and outlets all at the same time.  The outlets use the least, so I am charging things up before everyone gets home from work. I boiled water on the stove for my bath, because seems nothing will let the geyser kick on, regardless of peak time usage. I tried running the fridge, but it is so big and huge and nice that it simply tripped the circuits.  So I guess it will mostly be where I store the food I wish I could cool so my cupboards will always seem bare and I will eat all of what I cook whether I need to or not. The issue may be fixed any day, week, month, or year. 

Now, on June 15^th, when the power and internet are both back on, all in all things are still lining up in the plus column. I mean, cold nights and mornings aside, the sun does shine here almost every day, and these winter days are beautiful.  The power issue has become more problematic for the entire town, as if in solidarity the powers that be decided to shut down the power for everyone for the last two nights, not just me.  I have figured out at least to turn the geyser on when I go to bed, or if I wake up during the night, so at least I am greeted with hot water for a bath in the morning.

George Burns, Jr. Rest In Piece

Well, I certainly didn’t expect to hear that my dear cat George Burns, Jr. died this past week.  Those of you who knew him know how special he was.  And so danged cute! If I ever figure out how to upload a photo to my blog AND have enough internet speed to do it, those of you who didn’t know him will just see that he was the cutest cat on the planet.

George came to me, as most of the cats in my life, purely unexpectedly and by accident, literally. Back in 1999, I was looking for a cat and went to my vet at the time, who had a couple lost causes, brought in by well meaning people who didn’t want to, or couldn’t afford the costs of care for these two unrelated boys who had had a rough start to life.  George had a broken back – possibly due to some rough play with a couple of children. They weren’t sure how much use of his back legs he would recover, but he was making steady progress and they were eager for find suckers, er, a forever home for him.  His side kick at the time was Michael, who was a long haired little guy who had to have his whole body shaved for some kind of parasite issue and looked really stupid, along with having some issues with his lungs. But he is another story entirely.  I think I had finally settled on George, or maybe it was Michael as “the one.”  My friend who worked at the vets office was nice enough to deliver both of them to me, figuring I wouldn’t have the heart to reject either of them, and of course, I didn’t.  In between their convalescing at the vets and when they finally came home, another cat showed up in the picture – Noah – so suddenly there were three new boys in the house, all about the same age.  They bonded and were thick as thieves, harassing the older cats in the house to no end. (No, this isn’t where I tell you how many there were and you start the same old tired “cat lady” jokes.)

Getting to know George was pretty interesting. For one, even though he walked much better than they ever thought he would, he definitely had issues.  Found it out accidentally when I pushed him off the counter and rather than landing on his feet, he did more of a kind of crash landing using his whole body for the landing point(s). The look he gave me was, well, vintage George Burns.  He also couldn’t really stand firmly on all fours and seemed to carry most of his weight in his front legs, thus developing a broader chest than most cats as petite as he ended up being. When he turned he would forget to move his back legs and sometimes, well, end up a bit crossed up. Yet he could run and he could fight. When he was feeling especially feisty, he would run up and down the hall like a Tasmanian devil, harassing his elders to no end. And George could climb trees, man could he climb, pulling himself up with his front legs and using the back ones for balance only. I started to joke that he looked like the guys in the gym who all forgot to work out their chicken legs. Again, I would get that George Burns look.

At a fairly young age, he went through lives two, three and four by getting the urinary tract blockage male cats sometimes get – not once but twice - and finally having a dicey surgery to correct it. Even though that counts as castration in most vets’ books, he still acted the tough guy, yet with the sweetest disposition once he let you get to know him.  He had this thing he would do, we would call it  “the flop” and often we could get him to do it on command.  I would call him over and tell him to flop, while pointing to the floor in front of him.  He would put his head on the hard wood floor, turn his face up towards mine, then let the rest of his body just fall – flop! to the floor. Once there and stretched out ever so comfortably, I would spin him in circles a few times, stop, then spin him a couple more times for good measure. Occasionally he would get up too quickly from this and walk a bit wobbly, but mostly he would just lay there looking adorable, waiting for another spin.

All my cats were trained to come running from outside when I yelled “treats” or banged the tuna can with the can opener.  They would spit and hiss at each other til I got the can opened and divvied out.  George ate in his own sweet time, pushing most of the tuna off the plate rather than in his mouth and making quite the mess. I guess he even ate like an old man, which is what we would call him, because he seemed to be such an old, wise spirit, except when he was being a royal pain in the ass.

George developed various ailments throughout his life, mostly kidney infections, which I could always recognize by the amount and places he would decide to pee around the house. Lives 5 and 6 got taken up with these antics. And he almost lost number 7 when I got really fed up with it, but because he was so darned cute, I let him keep it, figuring he would need it later.

George never entirely healed from his back injury and it impacted his legs. I really think whatever nerve damage he had impacted and contributed to the ailments that came along as he aged. He had more and more trouble balancing himself in the cat box, often trying to stand on all fours on the side of the box, something even a more balanced cat would have trouble successfully managing.  But he wanted to do things his own way.  He also was fond of foot soaks, putting his back feet, one after the other, in the water bowl and shaking them off energetically, often knocking the bowl right over. The other cats and dogs were not amused. Yet the strangest things was, when he slept, his back legs were quite active, doing the whole running, rabbit punching thing as if they were perfectly fine. In his dreams, I know he ran like a regular cat.

George would wake me up in the middle of the night by knocking books or other objects off my nightstand as he used them to rub his face. Scared the heck out of me and I finally stopped keeping a glass of water at my bedside. He would find any sleeping hands that fell outside the blankets and rub them like crazy as well, so anyone who ever spent the night in any part of my home was forewarned to hide the hands or risk an early morning wake up loving. When he couldn’t get a hand out, he would settle for sleeping on my head, or as close as he could get to the back of my head where he would gently (most times) massage my scalp. Purrr.

In the summer of 2009 he has more kidney issues and while I spent 2 weeks on a trip to Germany and France in the fall of 2009, he spent most of the two weeks at the vet in intensive care with total liver failure.  The day I was to call to tell the vet to let him go he made a complete turn around and his blood work looked great. I know I had a better time during my two weeks (other than worrying about him), but I am pretty sure his two weeks cost me about the same. Thus, 2009  took up lives 7 and 8.

In December 2010 as I readied myself to go into the Peace Corps in April and was figuring out who would take care of my “kids,” my dog Peata suddenly died. A week later, George was diagnosed with diabetes. I decided to start him on insulin and by the time I was ready to turn him over to my great tenants, who agreed to keep him and care for him, he was doing quite well. George and Debi, my tenant, shared the diabetes diagnosis, she being diagnosed in March, and they were a happy pair until his passing, when he cashed in that last life here on earth.  He could not have had a better friend during his last few months and I know he was happy being the cat of the house and master of the universe he had previously shared with all the dumb animals he felt I used to humor for no good reason. He has been buried somewhere on my property – I know they picked the perfect spot – so that I will be able to sit and talk to him when I return. George Burns, Jr.  Rest in Peace, run fast, flop often and pee where ever you damn well please! 

they don't kick us out for lack of language ability, thank goodness

before I start: "the contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the US Government or the Peace Corps." 

I am supposed to say that and can't figure out where to put it blatantly on my blog, so you will get it each time. It will also keep me honest to remind myself each time. And THIS time, it is a good thing because my opinion is that my Setswana sucks and I hope they don't share that opinion, but they might after today. Lucky for me, I may have other skills worthy of service in the Peace Corps besides my ability/inability to speak Setswana and they have never kicked anyone out for failing to do really well after 2 months. Yet. I swear I really do try and I study harder than others, but it isn't sticking yet. I feel it is on the verge of being there, sticking somewhere, probably right in there with some as yet undiscovered sticky plaques and tangles, and compared to some of  our Twenty-somethings, i feel pretty pathetic.  Yet we have only been  on the ground for less than 60 days so i need to keep it in perpective. So, now to more important things...

Dragged my butt out of my very warm bed yesterday morning at 6:15, as per usual, to be ready to leave the house at 7 for either a 45 minute walk to school or, with luck a 15 minute walk and a 10 minute taxi ride.  Only to remember at 7 a.m. that I only have to get myself “around the corner” to Brittany’s house for our language cluster. So now I can sit with freezing cold fingers and try to type whilst not spilling my finger warming coffee on my lap top. Been there, had that done to me once.  Not fun.

Yes, it does get cold in Africa, especially this far south where if you turned the globe on its head, we would be somewhere like north of Alaska or something or at least that is what it feels like. We arent really as far south as that is north. Of course, if you turned the globe on its head, we would all fall off anyway, so it wouldn’t really matter. As it is, and as I was forewarned, homes have no central heating, no woodburning stoves, and nice cement block walls. Space heaters do exisit if you dare and can afford the electrical costs, but unless you carry them around with you in your house….  I shoulda brought a snuggie, since I don’t think trying to walk around in my mummy sleeping back will end well. Now, my “airy” non-ceiling situation is letting all the cold air in from all corners, which is all focusing in on my blue fingers, so typing is challenging.

The good news is that my house in Otse has a fireplace and the garden that surrounds my house will provide lots of woody things to burn. My landlord cut a bunch of branches off a tree recently, and when her neighbor asked her what she was doing by leaving all the branches just piled up there, she said “composting.”  Well, yeah, given 100 years those branches would compost right up, or spontaneously combust in the summer sun.  Luckily, I have a better plan and it has to do with my fireplace!!! Ah, can’t wait. Wish I had brought my garden gloves and some nice shears….will see what I can find on shopping day which is Friday.

We will go to Gaborone, with settling in money in our new bank accounts to shop like fiends.  They assured us they would ask us later for an inventory of what we bought, so the clothes hounds best go easy on fashion on this trip. How they are going to then transport our stuff to the far reaches of Botswana is a mystery to me, but some things Peace Corps has done a few times before, so they will figure it out.  I live so close to Gabs that I will go easy on this trip, seeing what I can survive with and without during our two months lock down. I can shop for food locally and as long as I have matches and those trees….

Lock down ends August 7 and then we all gather in Gabs for a 2 or 3 week training. After that, I can start having visitors. Sadly, most of you out there probably don’t want to spend the $1,500 to 2,000 or so just to get a flight. But if you do!! I have a second bedroom and will show you around, have you meet my great host family and generally be very happy to see you!

During lockdown, I should be able to go to the Lobatse Rotary club meetings, because it is only 15 km away and if I can hook up to the diamond cutter who lives in Otse and is also a member, I have a ride back and forth.  I am curious to see what they are doing, though I have been told by my vet here that they aren’t as active as they used to be.  We’ll see if I can light a spark under them – I have all those branches you know.  Otherwise it will be the noon club that meets in Gaborone, a bit more complicated to get to and from, but probably worth it.  I have already received an open invitation to visit the club up in Francistown – a 5 hour bus ride from Gabs – but on my way to Kasane, which is on my way to Zambia and Victoria Falls, so eventually when I have a few days vacation, I will be able to take the trek. 

Til then, I have enough to do just getting to know my small village of Otse (now estimated at having 12,000 inhabitants – the last census in 2001 was about 6500 but the chief (kgosi) thinks it is now closer to 12k and they do the census again this year.)  I don’t think I will get to know all of them in 2 years.  Help me with the math, but that is how many people a day?!

Meanwhile, every waking moment (except these, which I am only accidentally awake for) needs to be spent trying to figure out this language.  More than that, I need to figure out how to understand enough sentences correctly that are being SAID at me.  I am waiting for my extemporaneous speaking ability to kick in here, but it hasn’t switched into the Setswana yet.  Boy will they be sorry when it does.

So they asked us yesterday if we missed being home for Memorial Day.  Well, jeez, we said, not if we don’t get the day off, like duh! Lol  No one will show up tomorrow in white shoes and slacks though – too cold and dirty for that kind of nonsense here.  And I have to say, even with the freezing cold nights and mornings, the sun shines all day long and it feels more like a very warm sunny fall day in Eureka than anything else. And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Of Cats, Goats, private body parts and Rotarians

Well, I stood firm from April 1^st when I left California, to May 14 at 11:26 a.m. Botswana time when I was texted this nice statement, “Hi Maggie, I am Amy. I stay at Camphill with my husband Colin. I heard u will be volunteering at Camphill.  Congrats! Do you want a kitty?”

So during my site visit to Camphill, part of my orientation process was to find out where my closest bank branch was, where I should shop for food, etc.  Turns out both the bank and a nice grocery store are right across the street from the only veterinarian for a million miles. Give or take. And since Ms. Sisi was clearly headed during my visit right into another “heat” and has already had two litters in her two years of life, it seemed like a no brainer that the only way I would take her would be if they had her fixed. And, the only way they could have her fixed, given their work schedules, before this next round of howling, screaming, sneak-out-at-night-and-here-we-go-again moment was for me to take her to the bank with me and er, well, just casually drop her off on my way, um, at the vet. And since I am a volunteer with no car, this meant taking her in a box of some sort on the bus the 15 km up the road to Lobatse and then grabbing a taxi from the bus stop to the vet. We had the box, the tape and were getting ready to practice loading her into the box when we decided to borrow a cat carrier from the vet the day before the big event. A very smart move.

The next morning, at 7 a.m., I proceeded to put Sisi into the carrier and steel myself for carrying a screaming cat for 20 minutes on a crowded bus, with at least 50% of the people either unfriendly towards cats or not understanding the reason for spending money to have one spayed. So, there she goes into the carrier. And then out she pops, having slammed the carrier door open with surprising force for such a petite lil thing. But remember, she is heating up. Sure glad that happened at home and not on the road or I would have killed a perfectly good cat. After learning how to properly close the latch, I walked 10 minutes to the bus stop – carrying her past all the early morning workers here at the center who enjoyed a nice laugh at the white woman carrying a perfectly healthy cat around in a cat carrier.

Wind and cat howling, I stood with others gathering at the stop who were either trying to hitch or wait for the bus.  I had resigned myself to the mortifying bus ride when a car pulled up and people rushed to it to get a hitch.  Exiting from the vehicle was my unexpected knight in shining armor, Victor, my counterpart here at Camphill who I will be working closely with until December, just arriving from his commute from Gabs. In my memory, he appeared to be brandishing his messenger bag like a sword, fending off the hitchers, calling me over as he did so and flashing me that big hero smile.  Suddenly, I am in the car, breaking numerous Peace Corps rules, and getting a ride from a pet owning, Motswana who took me directly to the vets office.

I walk in and realize, I am not in Oz anymore.  Staff are all locals, but the room where the animals are being taken for their morning fixings is full with white South African women living in Botswana with their felines in tow (okay, two women and one 8 year old daughter, but the room was small and they each had brought in 3 really large cats). The one with the daughter was planning to stay for the duration, because her daughter wants to be a vet so gets to actually watch the vet do the fixings. The vet, Mark, also a non-American white person from somewhere else, gave me the poor volunteer rate and threw in a rabies shot and the various other feline vaccines for nothing.  Apparently I am the soon to be proud owner of the only cat in Otse who has had her shots and been fixed. I hope she isn’t shunned for this by the devil-may-care cats in the area.

So I left her in good hands, ran my official errands and headed back to Otse on the bus. The return trip was legit, as my agency’s project coordinator was going into town with his wife (who is also my landlord) and took me along so we could chat about the agency. No lie. I waited with my spayed/drugged kitty at the vet while they did their banking and got to learn all about the 4 leopards that live in and around my town and kill and eat the vet’s calves but he refuses to try to kill the leopards, because, well, duh, there are only 4 of them and as he said “if we are going to leave our calves laying around in the bush…”.  He talked about the sick vultures at the vulture sanctuary/nesting area here in Otse who are too sick to get to the top of the hill where they are supposed to sanctuate/nest and thus sit on telephone poles until they get too weak and fall off and are picked up by the vet’s staff at his ranch who bring them in to him to treat. He tells me about the people who stole a bunch of his goats and then sold them to locals in smaller herds, including a bunch of castrated ones he had rescued from the SPCA. Apparently whoever stole them eventually got caught and the un-eaten goats were taken to the local chief’s office for the vet to identify and reclaim.  As he stood with the chief, who in this town happens to be a woman – a rarity – the delighted goats approached them and quite happily made it known to her that they did indeed belong to the vet. I guess they were almost petting zoo variety and must have somehow convinced the people who misappropriated them that they were too cute for goat stew. As I guess not many castrated goats are.

As I was waiting for my boss/landlord/ride the vet takes a call from a fellow on the other side of Botswana who is working with some cattle farmers. Seems one pregnant cow lost her vagina (I kid you not) or rather it had dropped outside of her, as apparently can happen to pregnant cows. Gives new meaning to the words “difficult pregnancy.”  Well, the cattle farmer didn’t deal with this right away, so the poor girl has been in this state for a couple of weeks!  I now know a lot more about how to fix this particular problem in cows than I ever thought I would. If I had too, I could probably do all but the stitchery part of it. Knowing that sugar is better to use than salt was also helpful.  The vet also was a wealth of information about who’s who in Otse as far as businesess and Rotarians, as the nearest Rotary club is in Lobatse and I hope to be able to attend some of their meetings. The guy who owns the diamond cutting business here in Otse is apparently a Rotarian, but I don’t think the dutch cheesemaker is, although he does own the most pretentious house in town, sitting on the side of the hill a bit above mine with big huge round windows staring back at the town folk like empty eyes.

Leaving Sisi safely at home to sleep it off, I got back to the office by 2 where I experienced a very slow internet experience so instead went for a walk across town to see if I could find a shorter route to my soon to be home. Walking back from there I picked up Jim, another PC volunteer, at his work site and we ran into the village chief who walked us part of the way home.  He is 46 years old, which is pretty young for a kgosi.

Sisi had been in heat and recovered well from her surgery. Her silly 3 month old kitten (Colin and Amy call her T-bone, I call her Pudi, which is “goat” in Setswana and sounds like how tweedy bird says “pussy” in the cartoon. Another PC volunteer, Ameila will have to straighten all this out when she finally gets that kitten for herself) was very upset with her upon her return. T-bone/Pudi, threw a total hissy fit at her mother (heh, now I know where that comes from!) for a couple of hours for god only knows what reason. The next day, when mom was feeling more herself, she hauled off and smacked the Goat and I applauded her parental acumen.

Its nice to have a cat with a name pronounced the same as Ceci my trainer at Praxis back home. Perhaps seeing Sisi laying around on the couch sleeping will be the motivation I will need to do a few push ups and crunches from time to time. Eish.

My Botswana Workout and Diet Plan

So, since we aren’t leaving to visit our sites this week due to the teacher's strike, I thought it was time to revisit and share with you my workout and diet plan while here in Botswana.

Weekdays

Up at 6 or so, stretching if I have time before leaving at 7 a.m. for 1 hour walk to training site, rain or shine, with day pack full of books, lunch, water bottle and laptop. Walk can take more or less time depending on how many people I need to stop and great, or how many kids I need to teach high five to. Sometimes I walk down to the main road to try to catch a cab, which may or may not come and decide to take me where I want to go. This means either a vastly shorter or a vastly longer walk.

8 to 4:30 - Sit on butt in training, interspersed with random stretching opportunities to keep from going stark raving mad. It’s not that everything is awful, it’s just that we are anxious to get going, there is some duplication, and well, it just isn’t part of my workout plan, let’s just say that.

Once every week or two we get a 1 ½ hour “healthy outlets” session, where we go to a local school and use their volleyball court, pathetic weight room, or tennis court to play 5 on 5 soccer. Last time, I was the only woman lifting the weights with our male Batswana teachers and drivers. One of them is totally buffed, but the rest, not so much.  I had to politely leave to avoid hysterics as one of them used the “butt shaker” machine. You know, that thing from the 60’s that women stood on with a wide band around their hips that vibrated their butts hoping to shake off the fat. This one was minus the band. Jeez, if a person could shake off the fat then riding in one of our vans over some of our local ward’s dirt roads would have shaken me into a stick by now. And another universal cultural truth: men here don’t like women telling them their body mechanics while lifting weights suck either.  So, then out to the soccer court.  After 10 years of soccer retirement due to an ankle injury, I can proudly say that I was a tenacious defender of our goal against all but one or two very lucky (J) shots. One of our teacher’s (“Z-Man”)apparently talked about it with the guys all the way home (I wasn’t there but wouldn’t have understood it anyway) and the next day told me he would pay me to let him score next time we played.  Later, he realized it would make more sense to simply draft me to his team. Drat. I need the money.  At any rate, these periodic “healthy outlets” only serve to cause us all to be incredibly sore or injured the next day, but since the next day is Saturday and we only have half days of school, it means most go to medicate at the local lodge. Enough said. Sadly, my old soccer injury is acting up, so Z-man will have to play without me next time. The best part of healthy outlets is they drive us home afterwards.

4:30 on non-healthy outlet days - 1 hour walk home, again, longer or shorter depending on activities required along the way. Sometimes there is a diversion to a drinking hole.

6 to 8, food preparation and clean up, sweeping and/or mopping, playing with kids, etc. (see below)

8 ish – bath – hauling 3 or 4 buckets of water from kitchen to a very nice bathtub that doesn’t have enough water pressure to run an actual bath. When water heater decides not to work, I must first heat the water in an electric tea pot, or boil on stove when the tea pot breaks or electricity is out.  I have yet to perfect the exact proportions, so baths are either scalding or luke warm. Another component of any bath at my home is the “bathtub slow motion vault” which I use to get myself safely out of the tub with my feet going directly into my slippers, rather than on the cement floor, which is really hard to keep clean. The tub is so high, that simply stepping out and down can be tricky, so I use both my arms to lift myself up and lower one leg at a time into my shoes. Those pushups are paying off here, to be sure. It is also trickier at night, because the window in the bathroom is broken, which means that anyone walking by and looking in the general direct could be scared silly by the “lekoga” (white person) performing this slo-mo vault, so I have to wrap myself in my towel before executing the move. 

After this work out, I generally study until 10 or 10:30 and go to bed, after generously spraying my clean body with bug repellant and making sure now large insects are lurking nearby. If I feel the need, a bit more stretching before lights out.

Weekends

Saturday looks a lot like the week, but we get out of training by 2 or 3 (well, or 4).

Sunday

Wake up late (8 ish), stretching before anyone knows I am actually awake and starts to wonder what I am up to.

Sweep out bedroom, hallway and bathroom areas with a short hand held whisk type broom that requires a person to be bent over (20-30 minutes cardio workout if done properly, which also entails breathing in some nice dust)

Usually also laundry day: Filling huge tub outside with cold water and detergent. Washing clothes: scrub, scrub, swish, scrub scrub swish. Then, wringing them out and putting them in rinse basin, followed again by serious wringing, then to another bucket of just plain water for final rinse and more wringing. Then hang on clothes line.  Then haul dirty water away in buckets and dump in yard. Dump remaining water in large basin. If laundry isn’t started early enough in day to dry, it is then taken down and rehung in an inside room on lines so high up that even I have to stand on a sketchy stool or bench and wonder how many spiders I might be disturbing in the process.  This process and accompanying worry definitely burns extra calories.

Other workout activities: 

Daily - Picking up 15 month old and 2+ year old kids and doing overhead presses, bicep curls and other various lifts and throws to provide them with fun times and me with a workout.  They are growing quickly, so I either need to do this more often or find smaller children.

Randomly – pulling weeds and hauling them to “compost/garbage” pile, using a funky wheelbarrow in semi-deep clay sand.

Also randomly, and hopefully even more seldom – killing huge cockroaches and spiders. I have killed one while visiting another volunteer and screamed for my host mom to kill another, which sadly, was in my bedroom at home.  I think this uses up a huge amount of calories due to the stressful nature of the activity, using the proper technique and maintaining proper body mechanics. It appears so far that they do not travel in large packs. Or is it a gaggle of cockroaches? 

Cooking and cleaning: besides my room, sweeping the house and the dishes, I have managed to get out of mopping the floors when I did it one morning and slipped and fell, landing hard on my ass before wacking my head (also hard) on the ceramic tile floor.  My ass hurt for the day, but the whiplash I received hurt for the next week. Now my kind family won’t let me near a mop. Where were they when I grabbed it the first time?  Sigh. I wonder if there is a safe way to get out of the cooking and dishwashing that doesn’t involve self-injury. When I get to my final site, I won’t be cleaning, cooking or doing laundry for anyone but myself, so I may find time for more varied workout activities and will seek out new children for a portion of my weight lifting workout.

Diet – I have cut out alcohol except for maybe one or two drinks on Saturday. Uh, or when we find out we aren’t going to our site visits and want to “de-tress”like yesterday, and maybe again today. I was hoping walking more and drinking less would make a weight loss plan effective, but so far same-o, same-o.  I don’t eat a lot of the meat which is a workout in itself because they like the meat tough (no hormones, free range chicken and cattle mean less fat), and I have avoided the one time we had tripe. Sadly, the carbs come fast and furious, since that is something cheap and easy for families here to fill up on. Potatoes, rice, pasta, corn, and something called phaleche, which is made out of corn meal and which when you first see a pile of it tricks you into thinking it is mashed potatoes. It is not. It isn’t bad, it just has no taste and probably little nutritional value. We get plenty of apples, oranges, carrots, green bell peppers, onions and cabbage, eggs, bread (oh yea, another fun starch, and let me say, when I get home I will probably avoid peanut butter for about 100 years.) I buy bananas occasionally, broccoli, yogurt and cheese but we are given about 25 pula a day ($4.50) to spend on taxis and whatever else, so buying food to supplement what peace corps gives our family and what the family buys on its own isn’t always feasible.  The good news is that 21 Pula today bought me: 1 banana, 1 chicken pot pie, 1 kit kat candy bar (an occasional treat), and a bag of ginger snaps I am saving for a special occasion. 

Sadly, it appears another universal cultural truism is that the men are losing weight due to the diet and the women are either staying the same or gaining.  When we get on our own we will be able to control our diets better and many of us plan to start veggie gardens as projects.

At site I plan to supplement my workouts with painting, gardening, and working hard trying to figure out what the heck I am doing and what the (more) heck they are all saying to me.

Exciting News

First, I figured out how to use Google Talk to call home for free, so whenever I am here at the training site I can call home using the internet. Bad news is it is 9 hours later here than in California and I am at the school from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and really can only call before 8, after 4:30 and during our lunch break from 12:30 to 1:30, so do the math and if your phone rings at a very odd time, it might be me. I tried it Friday at about 6 a.m. Pacific Time and I am pretty sure my brother-in-law hung up on me. Then I called my niece and got her voice mail. So when she woke up she had a message awaiting her.  Once I get to my site and if I can have internet there then this should all become a lot less complicated.  Which brings me to the really exciting news…

I received my site placement.  I am going to a town just south of the capitol called Otse  to work with a nonprofit organization (called NGO or CBO – community based organization) that serves people with disabilities.  The announcement ceremony was pretty interesting.  Most of us seemed to be happy with our sites, although in reality none of us know what it will be like where we are going, we only know what we think we know.  Over time I have discovered, and continue to discover that what I think I know doesn’t mean squat.  So the organization I am going to is called Motse Wa Badiri Camphill and directly translated it may mean Village of Workers Camphill. It is part of the Camphill Movement which works to create communities in which children, youth and adults with disabilities can live, learn and work in healthy social relationships based on mutual care and respect. Google that for the background.  Camphill Botswana, through the Camphill Community Trust Botswana, runs three community based projects in Otse, the one which I will be at is a community where adults with disabilities learn life and vocational skills.  They also run a school for children with disabilities and a community for teenagers with disabilities. The two volunteers in my group who got to go visit it said it is an unbelievable site – lush landscaping, a pottery program and a place they grow plants, probably both as revenue generating activities. They also do some interesting movement therapies with the folks, so I am very excited to see what is up.  My immediate task will be to work with a consultant they hired to develop grassroots disability support groups to build their capacity in the district I will be in.  This will include working with the consultant to  engage members of disability support organizations in planning and strategic development, advocacy and support services for the disabled, and developing networks among these organizations to increase information sharing.  There is a recognition that people with disabilities are not fully included in access to services generally, and to those related to HIV/AIDS specifically, which is our focus.  My role will also be to help these grassroots disability support organizations (GDSO) work together to develop action plans, set priories, create new policy and systems, coordinate resources and share best practices related to serving this population. Sounds interesting. We shall see what it looks like on the ground.  I am excited to visit there next week and then get there for good on June 8^th to start learning about Otse and the people and needs there.  Apparently, it is a nice village and includes the highest point in Botswana (don’t ask me what that is, but it isn’t too high, I am sure). I will be glad for the hill. When I traveled up north a few weeks ago to visit a current volunteer there I was reminded of the flatness of the California valley – not my favorite landscape.

There is currently a Bots 8 volunteer in Otse  who is ending his service as mine begins.  (I am Bots 10, by the way.) He and his wife, who worked at a different organization, had a fancy schmanzy house on the Camphill property, but I will be getting a different living arrangement more suitable for a solo volunteer. I really don’t want anything too big because housecleaning is pretty important here when you think about wanting to keep bugs and sand/dirt out of your house. Cleaning a large house, coupled with handwashing and hang drying all my laundry will cut into my free time.  Then again, not having a television to waste time in front of will probably free up a lot of free time to fill up again. That and not being able to go to the movies, hang out at Lost Coast Brewery, go out to dinner with friends, hang with my family and Stan should mean I have A LOT of free time. One volunteer is repainting the inside of her house – I see that in my future as well.

At any rate, I visit the site next week and will see my house and figure out what it has and doesn’t have (running water, electricity, latrine or indoor toilet, curtains, furniture, etc. etc.) and then go from there. The Bots 8’ers Colin and Amy have an entire household of various items and I am hoping they are eager to offload some of it for a decent price. There will be another volunteer from our group placed in Otse, Jim who is 84 – our eldest – and I can hardly fight him for the stuff.  None of my colleagues at HSRC would approve, but hopefully there will be something for both of us.  Colin and Amy also have a mother cat and one remaining kitten….I was holding firm that I would not get a cat. After the trauma of leaving my babies at home and all. But various currently serving volunteers, even those without pets, are pretty encouraging of the idea and there seems to always be another volunteer coming into country willing to adopt pets that volunteers who are leaving have to leave behind.  If I get the mama, she will be getting spayed with my first paycheck. Or I will take the kitten and get to figure out a name for it.  There is a stray kitten hanging out at our training site – named Magwinya, which means fat cake in Setswana. I love fat cakes. Picture a ball of dough deep fried and warm and yummy.  They eat them here just like that, but we have put a dessert spin on them – filling the dough with fruit or jelly or chocolate or ?? before deep frying, then rolling in sugar and cinnamon and I think with a scoop of ice cream would be cool. 

We have been learning all kinds of ways to cook flour into bread. We just ate huge dumplings tonight (madombe) and there are things call diphaphathas which with a fried egg and cheese inside are better than any breakfast sandwich at any fast food joint on the planet.  I plan to NOT make any of these things on a regular basis or my new name will be Magwinya as well.

My Host Family

I haven’t been able to post as much as I would like. When we do have a chance to get on line at school I don’t always have the time to compose anything or the blog page is down for some dumbass reason.  So I have been remiss in telling you about my great host family. I want to say I have been lucky because some of the volunteers in my group have had hard times for one reason or another with their families. Mine is pretty cool, and I am not struggling all that much with living with a bunch of other people. Thank you to Jamie and her kids and Gail for getting me ready for this!

So my “mother” is Lenah Tutuwe, a widow of about 6 or 7 years who is 52 years old and works as a housekeeper at the town’s hospital. I am pretty sure she looks much older than I do at 49. She has had a harder life, to be sure and is also diabetic.  Lenah named me Katlego, which means “achievement"in Setswana. No pressure.  It has been an achievement just to say it correctly, but at least she didn’t give me a name with any “r”s in it because they roll their “r”s here like you wouldn’t believe. She is very kind and the first few weeks when I was on my way out to school she would stop me and say a 5 minute prayer for my safety. So far, so good. She has five children, the oldest is her son Phemelo (“Protection”) Joseph who is about 35 or 37 or something. He lives here but travels to Gabs every morning (about an hour or so on the bus) where he works as a driver.  Lots of government and other groups have drivers to take employees to various meetings and such, because everyone doesn’t have a car here like in the US. His girlfriend, Lorato, who is 22, lives here at the house with us and their two kids. Lawrence Tao who is almost 15 months old and Alicia who is almost 2 ½ years old.   When I figure out how to put photos on my blog, you will see. These beautiful babies are so much fun, though I can’t understand them at all. When I have had a stressful day at training or just adapting to life here, a few minutes playing and laughing with them is all it takes.  One of my first lasting memories at my host family is dancing with Alicia on the porch and trying to keep Tao from crawling off the edge and dropping the 3 feet to the ground (no porch railings at this homestead).  Fun times which later expanded to them bouncing on my bed and me trying to keep Alicia from bouncing right onto Tao’s head or him off the bed.  They slobber on everything, have snotty noses when they are sick, and pee on the floor with startling regularity, but I love them and little Ali said to me the other day “ke rata mma Kattie”  which means I love mama Kattie (my Setswana name is Katlego which is Kattie to the kids).  Their mom, Lorato has the most beautiful laugh and a singing voice to match. As the main person doing the cooking, she took me “under her wing” to teach me how to cook correctly.  I have humored her since they do things differently here and only had to tell her once when she told me how to chop the carrots for the “soup” which is more like a stew sauce they use at every meal to go with the bread or phaleche (more on that later), that I have been chopping carrots longer than she has been alive.  Now she tells me when to chop carrots, but no longer how to do it.  Progress.  I know she gets bored being at home with the kids and waiting for Phemelo to come home each night around 8 or 9 p.m.  She said today she wished she could work to help him with money. 

Lenah also has four daughters, three living and working in the capitol – Gaborone – we say Gabs, and one living in the opposite direction in Jwaneng, basically a town built for mining purposes only and full of male workers and prostitutes. Well, and government workers like my sister.  The oldest sister, Madgeline Malebogo (“Gratitude”)works as a secretary and is the mother to Lucia, a 13 year old who lives here at our house full time.  She has been my language teacher, speaking the best English of any of the permanent residents here. She is very funny, loves to speak English, watch English movies and shows on tv, and is your typical scatterbrained teenager.  She helps take care of the kids when not at school and is supposed to help with laundry and cooking and cleaning, but gets so distracted sometimes, it takes her forever. I have been teaching her card games, including solitaire, which she is enjoying. I showed her my book of 150 ways to play solitaire, but took it from her when I saw her eyes rolling into the back of her head. That isn’t for beginners.

Next comes Boikanyo (“Faith or Trust” I am not quite sure which) Amelia, who is a hair stylist, also living in Gabs, then Tshegofatso (“Blessing”) Sophia, who works at a government job in Jwaneng and is the first of my sisters I ever met, lastly the baby Khumo “Wealth” Sinah, who is a police woman in Gabs.  I remember the day I met the first one. She came home for a weekend and greeted me with such friendliness and sisterliness. She told me, “when I come home I take care of momma, and you are my big sister so I will take care of you!”  I almost burst into tears because I was expecting to have to chop carrots, onions, green peppers, cabbage and potatoes just so for yet another soup and just wanted to crawl into bed! I loved her from that moment on and forever. 

All the sisters came home for Easter and it was a hoot. Nothing special happened for Easter. I was blessed to be with a family that doesn’t spend the entire Easter weekend at church, as do others here. Then two came again for mother’s day, although so briefly I was in school most of Saturday and barely saw them on mother’s day before they had to leave.  I am so happy that I will be living near them and Kanye so I can see them and know I have a place in country to come “home” to if I need to get away without being able to truly get away.

Lastly, there is my uncle, my deceased father’s older brother, who comes into town once or twice a week from the cattle post.  Here in Botswana, cattle ownership is very important. The more cattle you have, the wealthier you are. When you marry, the groom pays lebola “bride price” to the bride’s family and the number of cows varies from community to community. Here in Kanye area it is set at 8 cows.  Up north, there is an area where it will cost you 12 cows for your bride.  Weddings are a topic of another post.  At any rate, uncle blows in, blows out.  He speaks very little English but seems kind enough. When he is here, I can often hear him and mom late into the night talking and maybe playing some kind of dice game. I just hear the sound of what sounds like domino pieces and their low voices. 

This brings me to tell you about our house.  First, it is pretty decent by comparison to some of the other places volunteers are staying, but not the best of the bunch.  We have a compound, with three older buildings on it besides the current house. It appears each of the older buildings were previous houses –  each having two rooms attached but with their own entries, metal roofing and no running water.  Our current house is a three bedroom, with a large living room, smaller kitchen with no built-ins or cabinets except a double sink.  The bathroom situation is a toilet and sink in one room, a huge deep bath tub with small sink in another, and a shower room. The shower doesn’t work and has no door, the tub has no real water pressure so we still have to haul hot water from the kitchen sink. For the first week I was here the tub room’s door wasn’t attached and I had to move it over to block the opening.  The first time I used the toilet, I ended up locking myself in because there was no door handle on the inside.  Phemelo came home that weekend and fixed these two things for me!  The house has a great tile roof that looks well built. I know this because I can see it, along with all the cross beams, when I lay on my bed because we have no ceilings.  Which is why I can hear mom and uncle whispering away.  Last week Phemelo was gone in Gabs all week so Lorato and her kids and Lucia and mom all slept in the room next to mine.  They sounded like girlfriends at a slumber party, laughing and giggling.  It was nice.