completed the first 6 months of our service. The reality of Peace
Corps service being about relationship building is very clear now that
we have finished the first quarter of our time here, and we are still
primarily trying to build relationships and understand the current
systems that we work within.
The relationships that I have been focusing on are with the students,
teachers, and administrators at the school I work with. Unfortunately,
after becoming close friends with some of the teachers at my school,
many of them have received their long awaited transfers to work in
other schools closer to their homes and families (alright, so it is
unfortunate for me but it is definitely very good news for them!).
My current plans are to continue working with the PACT club (a peer
counseling club) and to create clubs for bother English and Test
Taking/Study Skills. The teachers and administrators at my school
believe that creating these clubs will help improve the 56% passrate
at the school because students will become better readers of English
which is the language that their tests are written in. As it stands
right now, many students simply do not understand the questions posed
to them on tests and I often see tests in which the student has
rewritten the test questions in the spaces provided for their answers.
The students and English teachers also hope to create a school
newsletter in the English Club. Aside from that, I plan to incorporate
movies, internet, and various reading materials to help the students
become more comfortable reading English through materials that they
are interested in.
Next month, the new group of volunteers is scheduled to arrive in
Botswana. They will be Bots12, and have a very active Facebook group
already. Only 7 months ago Hayley and I were trying to come to grips
with the idea of moving to Botswana after two years of wading through
the Peace Corps system and were frantically talking with people on our
facebook group to learn more about what we were getting into. And this
seems to be exactly what the upcoming group is doing as well. I do not
envy their task of packing their suitcases! It was a two week process
of packing, weighing, unpacking, eliminating items, repacking, and
reweighing suitcases into the early hours of the morning.
As some may have already seen on Facebook, we have taken in a few new
born kittens. They had been crying through the night for a couple of
days in the abandoned lot next to our house. So once we were able to
locate them we kept tabs on them a day to see if there was any sign of
a mother and when we saw they were unattended to, we decided to adopt
them and try to take care of them. After two days one of the kittens
stopped eating and remained asleep all the time until it died. We put
it in an empty hot chocolate box and buried it a little over 1ft under
the sand in our backyard. We even took the time to make the grave with
an old floor tile that had been trashed in our backyard. After two
years, we discovered that the box had been exhumed and the kitten had
been eaten… We suspect the pack of dogs that roams the school grounds
at night. They are friendly dogs during the day that pal around and
get into trouble afterhours.
The other two kittens are doing very well. One has a grey tabby patter
and the other is black and white. The past week has been spent
beginning the weaning process and we are relieved that they are
finally starting to eat on their own now. Getting the kittens to
transition from bottle to wet food has taken a lot of time and almost
more patience than we could spare! I have a new found appreciation for
mother cats, and all mothers in general, for their innate ability to
care for kittens, and babies in general. I had not idea how much time
and effort goes into feeding and cleaning new borns until now!
We mash up dried cat food and mix it with milk because there is not
kitten food or wet cat food available in our village. Like all things
gourmet, items like fancy cheese, wine, wet cat food, etc are
available in plenty in the major cities of Botswana, but we live too
far away to take advantage of these offerings.
We plan to keep one of the kittens. News travels very fast through the
Peace Corps Volunteer grapevine, and another volunteer asked if she
could adopt the other one only a few days after we had made the
facebook posting about our new found kittens!
Although I began this post while school was still in session, I am
wrapping it up now that school is closed. The last week of school was
a free-for-all for the students because they had completed their end
of term exams over the previous two weeks and during the final week of
school the teachers spent their time in an in-school workshop and also
grading tests and inputting the grades into the schools networked
database. During this time the students were mostly left to their own
devices and spent their time talking with friends and playing games.
Now that the equinox has passed, the weather is changing noticeably
from week to week. Three weeks ago the morning began to be very cool
while the days remained hot. Two weeks ago the equinox passed and the
days were filled with very nice cool breezes. And now over the past
week the days have been on the cold side. We were disappointed to see
that the enjoyably cool temperatures of fall only lasted about a week
and not we are on a speeding freight train into the coldness of
winter. However, I am not sure if they are actually cold or they just
feel cold relative to the extreme heat we have become accustomed to.
At the moment we don't have a thermometer and so are unable to really
gauge the day to day temperatures be they feel like they are in the
60'sF which probably wouldn't feel so cold if these temperatures had
been more of a gradual change and had not been dropped on us within a
week. Anyways, the we were told that the winters are extremely cold,
especially in the desert region (the geological and environmental
conditions conducive to creating desert regions are known to bring
about extreme heat in the summer and cold in the winter) that we live
in and we are now starting to appreciate just how cold things will
become over the next month or so. One of the major downsides to the
winter season that we are starting to see is the fact that our clothes
take at least a full 24hrs to dry when in the summer time they took
only an hour or two.
Finally, we are planning to visit the Okavango region soon and so we
have high hopes for seeing the famous wildlife of Africa! So, soon we
will share pictures and stories from our first R&R excursion in
Botswana.
We continue to receive packages from family and friends on an almost
weekly basis! And they are all very much appreciated. These points of
contact with our home culture and love ones make the tough times more
bearable and the good times even better!
- Michael
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