The Easter Holiday

Trip to Maun
Recently, we travelled to Maun over the Easter Holiday. Maun is a
large tourism-centered village in northern Botswana. It is the seat to
most of the country's Okavango eco-tourism, and while we were there we
made sure to get in some excursions to see the wildlife of Botswana.
We stayed at The Old Bridge Backpackers lodged and paid a small fee to
setup a tent and camp there. The lodge offered bathroom and bathing
facilities so we weren't roughing it too much. There was also a bar
and a restaurant that allowed us to enjoy burgers, wraps, and pizza
most all of the day!
A batch of our fellow Bots11 volunteers joined us at the lodge and it
was fun to see our friends and go on excursions with them. Also,
during our time at the lodge our group became friends with some other
backpackers that were travelling through the area. Cameron and Jake
were a couple of Australian guys that had be travelling through
Namibia, S. Africa, and Botswana on a holiday. We all got along great
and their research of the areas offerings allowed us to do some things
we might not otherwise have known we could do. Firstly, we went with
them on a plane ride over the Okavango where we were able to take in
the vastness of the region and also see some animals (hippos, crocs,
elephants, zebras, impalas, giraffe). The one hour plane flight cost
~P500, which is a little expensive in terms of our meager Peace Corps
allowance, but it was worth it! Later that day we also took a relaxing
boat ride through some of the Okavango tributaries that were near our
lodge which was located on the bank of one of the rivers.
After a day of rest, we embarked on a full day 4x4 trek through the
Moremi game reserve. The Moremi reserve is one of the three major
reserves of Botswana's Okavango region. The drive started at 6am, the
open air truck we were sitting in with 6 other volunteers was pretty
chilly as we drove the hour or so to the reserve. Once we arrived at
the reserve our tour guides setup a cereal and coffee breakfast for us
and after eating we got started with the game drive.
During the drive through the Moremi reserve we first saw a small herd
of zebra and impala grazing only ~10m from the side of the trail! And
then up ahead we were able to spot our first giraffe and elephants.
The animals were generally uninterested in us but would occasionally
watch us closely for a few minutes and then would walk off into the
brush. The impala, giraffe, and zebra were plentiful for most of the
drive, and on the way back through the game reserve at the end of the
day we encountered a lot more elephants that were making their way
from the shade of the trees out into the open areas were they could
get more water and food.
Lunch was setup at the turning-back-point of the game drive in a large
open field. In the distance a large herd of elephants enjoyed their
time at a watering hole and it was the most memorable lunch we have
had in our time here thus far!
After lunch we loaded up in the trucks and made out way back through
the game reserve hoping that some large cats would be out as the day
was beginning to cool down. However, no cats were spotted that day but
the other truck took an alternate route home and happened across a
wildcat which is a species of cat that looks strikingly like a house
cat but is actually 100% pure wild animal (it is not to be confused
with feral cats, which are domesticated varieties that have adapted to
life in the wild). We were told that the wildcat was about twice the
size of a standard house cat and was napping under a bush near the
trail.
Instead of seeing a wildcat on our truck's drive back through the
reserve we were treated to an up-close hippo sighting. The hippo was
grazing a little ways away from its waterhole, and as we sat and
watched it grazing it began to make its way back to the water. The
hippo was accompanied by oxpecker birds, or something like them, that
hopped around on its body eating debris and bugs and also picking at a
pretty large gash on the hippos side. The guide said that lone
elephants and hippos are usually male because unless they are breeding
they tend to live solitary lives in their own separate territories.
The hippo was surprisingly graceful in its walk and stopped to stare
us down after sliding back into the water. As many of you might
already know, the hippo is Africa's most dangerous animal in terms of
actual attacks and deaths each year. They are notoriously territorial
and highly aggressive and kill more people than any other large
animals here. But the hippo we saw wasn't too interested in us and
allowed us to go on our way without any fuss.
After the hippo sighting we game across another large herd of impala
and learned that most heard as populated by many females and a single
dominant male. The male is interchangeable and often challenged by
other lone males that are looking for a harem of females to travel
with.
The last major sighting of the trip was a large herd of 20+ elephants
that were making their way across the trail. They were led by the
dominant female elephant and a small calf. And as the female came to
the road about 10m in front of our truck she turned and balked at us
by stomping her foot, flaring her ears, and snorting. After their
gesture the rest of the herd stopped coming our way and turned around
and quickly retreated back into the trees. The instance was very
intimidating, given that the female was about twice the size of our
truck. But, as the guide explained, she was just unsure about what we
were up to and so decided to gesture towards us to make sure we
weren't planning on doing anything threatening to her and her herd.
After checking us out from a distance she and the calf retreated into
the trees again too.
That is all of the stories we have regarding our animal adventures.
The rest of the weekend we were able to relax and enjoy life near the
water. It was shocking how much relief we were able to enjoy was being
near a large body of water. The sounds of the water and its wildlife
along with all of the green vegetation and trees were therapeutic for
us and all of the other volunteers from our group that are stationed
in the desert regions of the country! At out site we rarely see water
outside of our sinks as it only rains about one time a month and
usually for only a short amount of time.
The trip from our village to Maun took us an entire day, and required
us to hitchhike for about half of the journey. But, as we have
mentioned before hitching is an expected part of travel in the remote
regions of the country because the national bus system's coverage is
sparse on the western side of the country. If you live on the Eastern
side, near the larger villages you are able to find taxis, buses, and
combi's (mini-buses and vans) that run regular routes all over the
place). But, when hitching you are usually able to negotiate with the
driver so that you only have to pay the price of the bus fare for your
distance of travel. Although there are some fancier cars in this
country most people either drive beatup Japanese trucks or corollas.
After spending most of my driving life in my own Toyota Corolla, it
was been a strange experience to see so many around and to be riding
around in cars just like the one I used to drive back in the US.
All in all, while travel in Botswana is usually an exhausting day-long
event, the time we had in Maun with the wildlife and our good friends
we well worth the effort! And we are looking forward to seeing more of
the country soon. But for now, school is starting up again and we are
both back at work. However, the maintenance people that have been
slowly working through each of the teachers' houses have finally made
it to our home. They are painting the interiors and also replacing the
kitchen counters and cabinets. To insure the safety and respect of our
property I have stayed home and worked on the computer while the men
went about their business updating our home.
Each day during this maintenance process goes as follows: 8am, the
painter shows up and starts mixing his paint bucket and then
disappears for an hour or two. During his absence the counter and
cabinet replacers may or may not show up. But eventually they will
make an appearance before leaving for 10:30 tea break. Everyone
returns for a flurry of work around 11am and then leaves again for
lunch around 12:30pm. By this time about 1 full hour of work has been
done on any one job. After lunch, the painter really gets going and
usually finishes up a room (our home has a living room, bathroom,
kitchen, bedroom, and short hallway). Needless to say, I will never
ever ever take American work ethic for granted when it comes to
contracting laborers for maintenance jobs. Even if there might be call
for complaint if workers leave a mess or are a little slow in the US,
it is a night and day difference when compared with the efficiency and
thoroughness of work in the US. I am sure this blanket statement
doesn't go for all of the maintenance workers of Botswana, but the
ones that have been contracted at our school leave a lot to be
desired. But, with that complaining aside, we are about a half a week
away from having our place to ourselves again were we will be able to
enjoy a nice fixed-up home.
And to top it off, we have a kitten to share our home with now too! Of
the three kittens we attempted to rescue and hand raise from the time
they were about 3 days old, only one of the kittens has survived. The
first kitten only made it a day or two and passed away. But the second
kitten was the one we had hoped to keep while giving the third to
another volunteer. However, after returning from Maun we collected our
two kittens from the volunteer we had left them with and brought them
home. The one we were going to keep (named Gizmo, after we noted the
similarity in the noises he made with the noises made by the cute
mogwai in the movie Gremlins) was not gaining weight and growing like
the other kitten was. And seemed to be developing some respiratory
issues. We consulted online/email vets and did as much research as we
could online but were never able to find a way that we could do much
to help our kitten get better without veterinary assistance. There are
vets located in Botswana, but they are in the larger villages that are
a days travel from our site. And after a night of labored breathing,
Gizmo died. It was a traumatic experience and after all of the work
and love that we have put into raising these kittens we are pretty
sure that we will never attempt hand-raising orphaned kittens again.
But the experience has been interesting and it has given us a new
distraction from the stresses of service.
The remaining kitten is doing very well and has transitioned into the
learning-to-pounce-and-stalk phase, so we have had a lot of fun
playing with her and trying to not let her get too used to playing
with our hands (as we have heard that too much hand-play can create a
cat that loves to bite and play with hands when they get older). We
are still working on picking out the perfect name for our kitten, but
here are a few of the names we are trying out: beardy, grey beard,
motsomi (hunter in setswana), girlfriend, one tusk, and fang. The list
goes on, but we will eventually settle on whatever seems to fit her
best. But for now, she will just be the kitten with a thousand names.
I will let my rambling account of the past few weeks experiences end
here. We are always available to talk by phone or email so if you have
any other questions or just want to say he, let us know!

- Michael

End of a Term and the Start of Winter

As the first term of the school year comes to an end, we have
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

It's Been Sixth Months, and Now It's Time to Get to Work!

Current State of Life in Botswana

I have just returned from a two-week mandatory workshop put on by the
Ministry of Education for myself and the other Life Skills volunteers
that work in schools around Botswana (our counterparts were also in
attendance). The upside of the workshops was that we were able to
spend two weeks working closely with our counterparts (we are each
assigned a counterpart to work with at our school), and we also had
some interesting cross-cultural exchanges. But, overall the workshop
was not very educational which may be due to the fact that it was
planned at the last minute in order for the Ministry to use up some
extra funds before the end of the fiscal year.
The cross cultural exchange gave us an interesting look at the way our
two cultures approach critical thinking and constructive criticism.
The workshop was focused on the topics of Guidance and Counseling
along with Emotional Intelligence. During the Emotional Intelligence
workshop we were given a very scripted presentation that included a
lot of semi-dated information and was mostly aimed at being a
self-help seminar for us and our counterparts rather than being
formatted to teach us more about how to help our students. Emotional
Intelligence, or the ability to deal with emotional issues in a
healthy way, is something that many of the students in schools here
need. And, in fact, this need also extends to many of the teachers
because emotional intelligence and life skills education is still a
growing field in the school system here which means that many adults
here have not been exposed to healthy ways to manage the emotional
pressures that they face. This state of affairs is one of the primary
reasons we have been assigned to enrich the impact of the life skills
curriculum at our schools because this could prove to have a positive
impact on the HIV/AIDS concerns in Botswana.

As I mentioned earlier, the Peace Corps volunteers were always eager
to learn more from the presenters by asking further questions about
the slides and information they were showing. However, the questions
which were aimed at critically assessing the information we were being
given were often glanced over or ignored altogether. In fact, during
the first week's workshop these questions were taken as an affront to
the presenters and there were moments of poor cross-cultural debate
when this happened. During the second week's workshop, which was led
by a different group put together by the ministry of education, the
questions were mostly ignored and the scripted format was stuck to.
Our counterparts often mentioned outside of class that they agreed
that some of the information was mistaken and/or that certain aspects
of the workshops were poorly planned and unorganized. However, they
added that it is a cultural norm to show the presenters respect by
taking in everything they say and not asking critical questions. The
tension between the peace corps volunteers' desire to delve further
into the information and the presenters' desire to share their
information and be done with the workshop kept things on edge, but
things never got too hostile, save for a few confrontations during the
first days of the workshop.

Aside from enduring the two-week workshop sessions during the day, the
life skills volunteers were treated to two-weeks of time to reconnect
and be with our friends/fellow volunteers. We have a great group of
people with a diverse range of backgrounds that has coalesced into a
fantastic group of supportive friends. Most of the nights were spent
having dinner at the lodge or eating at restaurants nearby. Our meal
expenses are supposed to be covered by the ministry through a
reimbursement process. However, like most all reimbursement processes
(both in the US and in Botswana) things can get complicated quickly
and often payments are delayed for excessive amounts of time. I am
just now beginning the process of wading through the countless forms
that I need to fill out.

The workshop also presented Hayley and I with an interesting
experience in that Hayley's program is not Life Skills education like
mine. So, she stayed behind at our site while I traveled 8hrs away to
Molepolole to attend the workshop. The time away was a new experience
for us because we had rarely had reason to spend 2 weeks apart in our
lives in the US. But we stayed in contact by phone and were very happy
to be back together when the workshop was over and I made it back to
my home village.

So, now that the workshop is over and I have returned to my site
Bots11 (the group of volunteers that I came over here with) have just
passed the 6 month service. At times, it feels like we have been here
much long because of the sheer immensity of new experiences and
interactions that we encounter each day. However, when I look back at
my actual work accomplishments it feels like I have only just begun.
The standard Peace Corps approach to looking at your service is that
most of your first year is spent relationship building and testing the
waters for projects that will only really get into gear during the
second year of service.

The feeling of having not gotten much done is made worse by the fact
that the timing of our arrival in Botswana put us into a meeting cycle
that has only given us a total of a few solid months at site. After
Pre-Service Training we were sent to our sites for 3 months in order
to conduct community assessments. During this time we were instructed
to not become engaged in the work of our primary assignments, instead
our job was to get to know the community and our places of work. After
Pre-Service Training we were called into Gaborone for In-Service
Training for 10 days where we processes our first few months at site.
After this we were given another month or so at site and then were
called in to participate in Regional Meetings where we met with
volunteers serving in our area of Botswana (the farthest southern
portions). This lasted over a weekend, and then the Life Skills
volunteers were sent to Molepolole to participate in the Ministry of
Education's workshop (the one spoken about at length above). Amidst
all of these workshops we have not been able to really get projects
going, because the ones that we have attempted to start get
interrupted by our having to leave site for workshops. Now, the hope
for any and all of our efforts here in Botswana is that our projects
will be sustainable. Meaning, they will continue on without needing
our presence to keep them going. Building sustainable partnerships
within the community requires a lot of time, however, and so we are
still working towards the goal of sustainability and we are really
hoping that next block of time that we have at our site will allow us
to get things going in a sustainable way (we don't have another
official Peace Corps meeting until the beginning of next summer here,
which would be the beginning of next winter in the US).
That's all for now! Thank you for reading, and please let us know what
you think!

Best,
- Michael

IST - in-service training and processing the first few months at site

January 29, 2012
In-Service Training
Recently, we were brought into Gaborone for a workshop that has lasted about 10 days. The focus of the workshop was to give us further training sessions and also to help us process the first couple of months that we had spent at our permanent sites. Mostly, though, everyone in our Bots11 group has been focused on reconnecting and having fun with all of our fellow volunteers.
In an experiment in light packing, we decided to try only bringing a few sets of clothes. So far it has been manageable but washing out clothes in a sink with a bar of soap has been interesting. This part of the country is much cooler, and on top of that our rooms at the lodge are air-conditioned, so the things we wash don't dry near as fast as they do at our home in the Kalahari Desert.
The lodge has a few odd animals that wander around the area inside its walls. One is a large leopard tortoise that walks around the edge of the area by the wall doing orbits of the lodge's campus. There is also a small flock of guinea fowl that are pretty noisy in the morning and in the evening when they go through there territorial rituals. Lastly there is a pair of white rabbits that seem almost tame but act like cats when you approach by just barely staying out of reach. It has been a nice change of pace to see these animals in place of the usual batch of goats, cows, and chickens that we usually see at our house.
We recently took a trip into the downtown area to purchase a mobile USB modem from one of the local cell phone service providers but didn't have any luck because all of the shops closed early due to the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament that Botswana is playing in. The mall we went to is a lot like a smaller version of the Town East Mall in Wichita, KS. Facing the masses of people and heavy traffic has been a very strange experience after spending the past couple of months at our home village in a rural section of the Kalahari Desert. During these first few months we were tasked with conducting a community assessment which we were trained to do by conducting interviews, making friends, and shadowing people at work. Basically, it has been a time to get to know our new home and start integrating into community. I spent most of my days at the school. However, we arrived in our village two weeks before the schools closed for the Christmas break and classes started about two weeks before we had to leave for Gaborone in order to attend the In-Service Training that we are currently at.
The beginning of the school year here is interesting because it seems like most of the administrative work and scheduling of classes/teachers doesn't really get done until classes are supposed to have started. So, during the first two weeks of school the students have been left to sit in their classes rooms and go to classes in which there is usually no teacher. Sometimes the teacher doesn't show up because the schedule isn't completed and other times I have observed teachers cutting classes because they don't really feel like working. This fact of life here is one of the things that I intend to put a lot of time into addressing. The general lack of teacher motivation is somewhat understandable given the poor teaching salaries and the general neglect of the ministry of education in listening to and supporting the teachers. But, in the end I would like to think that working with the kids of the school would supercede these issues and that the teachers would continue to work hard in the face of the challenges that they are facing, but this doesn't seem to be the case (of course, not all teachers skip classes and neglect their responsibilities. There are some teachers at my school that are passionate about their jobs and are eager to help the students).
One last experience that I have had in the schools that has had an impact on me is witnessing the implantation of corporal punishment (hitting kids with switches). This punishment is executed on a daily basis on any students that cause trouble in one way or another. During the first to weeks of school, when the students were generally left unattended, corporal punishment was very common. This was because in being unattended and unsure about where they were supposed to be and where their teachers were the students had to manage things by themselves. Usually, the students stayed in their classrooms. Some classes would actually work on studying their past years notes and others were full of commotion and students terrorizing the classrooms. Thus, the teachers were randomly patrol the classrooms and make examples of the more troublesome students by beating them in the front of the classroom. One teacher described this practice as "an African solution, for an African problem".
I am very opposed to corporal punish in any part of life, but I am certainly going to put some effort into the issue here in the hopes of improving the Teacher-Student relationships. As it stands right now, most all of the students are terrified of their teachers and this has had many obvious ramifications on the students' ability to perform in the school. This is because they are less eager to participate in class, and are especially afraid to approach teachers outside of class when they need help with homework or want assistance with some other issue that they are facing.
After two losses (the second of which was really bad 1-6 when Botswana played New Guinea) the Botswana team only has one more game and it isn't looking like they will make it into the next round of the tournament. This reality does not seem to disappoint the locals too much, which is probably because Botswana has never had a team that was able to perform well on the international level. But news stories do talk about the country's efforts to improve their professional sports programs in the hopes of putting together an Olympic team. The prospects of this, however, do not look to promising because there is currently is little to no sports training taking place in the schools here. After a teacher strike a few months before we arrived, the teachers have stopped doing any extra work to coach school teams and lead sports clubs in after school activities. This is because the teachers feel that these types of endeavors should come with extra paychecks and until the ministry of education pays them more there will not be much of a chance of getting sports back into the schools. The students here make due with pick-up games of soccer whenever they have a chance, and one teacher at my school even continues to conduct Karate classes a few times each week.
I apologize for the long lapse in our posts. Once we are able to obtain a mobile modem we should be able to keep you all updated on our activities and experiences!

Girls: U Can Prevent Pregnancy/HIV!

At the school where we live in Botswana, Africa, there is a mural with a caption in big red letters: "Girls: U Can Prevent Pregnancy/HIV". I tried to film a video of me talking in front of the mural about how the words send a flawed message to high school students. Basically, the mural's words imply that HIV and teen pregnancy prevention falls solely on teenage girls' shoulders. It is an issue here in Botswana that is too complex to try and sum up in a few words for a video camera, so I decided to write about it instead. Because the gender issues surrounding HIV are so dear to my heart and purpose in the Peace Corps, I am sure this will be a topic that I revisit time and again during my two years here in Botswana.

Unfortunately, teenage pregnancy and several types of sexually transmitted infections including HIV are prevalent for Botswana teens. It is unfair for a mural to depict prevention as an issue for girls only. There are many people who influence or affect this situation including: boys, men, and women in the community, parents, teachers, school counselors, health professionals, local and national government, media, foreign aid, etc. (The list could go on and on.) However, teenage girls are blamed for unwanted pregnancy or for bringing HIV “into the family”. When a girl becomes pregnant, she must take an HIV test at the clinic or hospital where she receives antenatal care. If found to be HIV +, the partner or family often blame the girl/woman for bringing the virus into the family/relationship and accuse her of acting promiscuously. However, rape and defilement are often culprits of teenage pregnancy. During my staff meetings at the hospitals, it is not uncommon for me to hear about young girls being raped by their uncles, friends, or other acquaintances, so it is important to note that most rape cases occur domestically and by someone the girl is very close to.

Additionally, there are “transactional relationships” that influence teenage pregnancy and HIV infection. This is when young girls are enticed by older men to sleep with them in exchange for some gift such as a cell phone, food, clothes, etc. Sometimes families are even aware of these relationships and do nothing to prosecute them as defilement cases because they know the girl is bringing goods into the household or they consider the man to be worthy of marriage and trick themselves into thinking that the daughter will marry the man someday. Some families even encourage girls to enter these relationships for “the sake of the family”. Since the girls are much younger than the men in these transactional relationships by anywhere from 10-40 years and because of long standing gender inequalities surrounding sexual behavior, girls are unable to make the man wear a condom. In addition, men often tell the girls that since they are getting a provision of some sort for the sex, it is not their place to stipulate condom use.

Girls who want to attend secondary school (high school) but live too far away from the villages the schools are located in must live at the school as a boarder. This can be a dangerous situation for girls because they are often sexually abused by the boys who board at the school. This is an infrastructure problem because of the way the boarding houses are managed and because of how close together the boys and girls dormitories are located. In some situations, there are only one or two “boarding masters” for 200-400 children living at any one school. These boarding masters are supposed to keep a close watch on the children after school hours but are not always “manning their posts” properly or are unable to regulate all illegal and dangerous behavior of hundreds of children at once.

Gender inequalities, poverty and economic opportunities, and education are just three of the major areas that go into preventing such a deep seeded issue like rising teenage pregnancy rates and HIV infection in Botswana. I am not by any means the foremost expert on the issue and have only lived in Botswana for four months, so I'm afraid I have not done the issue justice with this short note. I hope to readdress the topic at some time in the near future. However, I hope I have driven the point home that girls face a tremendous amount of stigma surrounding teen pregnancy and HIV in Botswana and that this issue is one that falls on the shoulders of many different people, not just girls.

If you would like to get a better understanding on why the HIV prevalence is the second highest in the world here in Botswana, please check out a book called, The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS by Helen Epstein, particularly the chapters on Southern Africa. The book is not about Botswana only but it does address the contributing factors in Botswana. Also, you can read Saturday is for Funerals by Unity Dow that is strictly about the HIV epidemic in Botswana and is written by a Motswana writer.

Thank you for taking the time to read about this issue that is so dear to my heart and I hope you will continue to follow our blogs and facebook postings!

-Hayley

10 Things you learn after moving to Botswana

1.) Get yourself on "Africa Time" asap; it can be quite nice if you learn to embrace it

2.) Expect everything to happen or nothing to happen at any given moment

3.) African insects are genetically superior to all other insects around the world

4.) Carry toilet paper or kleenex with you everywhere b/c all toilets and latrines are without TP

5.) Carry handi-wipes or soap with you b/c even hospitals do not have soap in the bathrooms

6.) Livestock animals are everywhere; get used to it and go ahead and embrace them using your yard as a giant litter box

7.) Pretend those roosters crowing outside your window from 2:30-6:30 AM are a sound machine, lulling you back to sleep

8.) Learning everyone's Setswana name is next to impossible but you must keep trying even when you feel like an idiot for asking people to repeat their names five times

9.) Drinking room temperature water (90-100⁰ F) in the Kalahari Desert will drive anyone crazy after three months

10.) Just relax. You live in Africa now and to survive, you have to go with the flow

A Good Day – December 4th, 2011

Today we spent the day satisfying a couple of invitations that had been extended to us earlier in the week. First was lunch at the home of Indian immigrants that Hayley passes by on her way home from work. She often stops and talks with the lady of the house (Sumaya) when she sees her in the front yard watching her two children (Azan and Ayan). After becoming acquainted, the family asked us to join them for lunch and we gladly accepted (the family is very kind and friendly, and we love Indian food!). At the luncheon we learned that they have lived together in our village for over five years, and that the husband (Nasim) has been here nearly eleven. He owns and operates a food deli that sells meat pies and other quick meal options to the people that work in the downtown—downvillage—area. Needless to say, the food was fantastic and Hayley is looking forward to helping Sumaya cook some dishes in the future.

After eating we sat and talked with the family for another hour before heading back home to wait for our ride to pick us up and take us to a recreation lodge on the outskirts of the village (earlier in the week an Afrikaner woman named Cornel had picked up Hayley as she was home and gave her a ride. After getting to our house they sat in the car and talked for a bit and Cornel invited us to go with her to a lodge outside of town on Sunday). The lodge is setup in the countryside with some cabins and camping areas and offers visitors the chance to see some of the animals that live in the area (this includes: an Alpha lion and two young male lions that are vying for the chance to take over as the current Alpha becomes older, many different birds, blue wildebeest, aardvark, ostrich, various antelope, and many other typical African animals excluding elephants and Rhinos which avoid the desert locale and instead live up in the wetter regions of Northern Botswana).

The lodge is operated by a pillar of the community (Jill) that has an amazing history of work and study throughout the region of Southern Africa. She has worked as a nurse, biologist, and community leader for much of her life and even spent time living with a KhoiSan settlement as part of a team put together by a group in London to catalogue social, environmental, and linguistic information on some of the most at-risk indigenous societies of the world (Native Americans, Indigenous tribes in South America, Inuit, aborigine, and the San bushmen).

Our ride to the bush lodge was provided by Cornel, her two children, and a friend of hers. They often go out to the lodge for a few hours on the weekend to relax, enjoy the scenery, and chat with Jill and others that might be staying at the lodge. We ate a Jell-O cake while enjoying good company in the cool air of the late Botswana afternoon. Normally, the weather is not so cool but the past week’s heat was broken up by rainstorms which were brought in by merciful cold fronts that brought the temperature down to bearable levels!

We got to see some pretty birds and pet some friendly dogs that live at the lodge. After being in Botswana for around three months we have been deprived of quality time with friendly well behaved dogs, because the standard care for dogs in Botswana in severely lacking and most of the dogs are hyper and/or terrified of humans because of the mistreatment they are subjected to. However the dogs we met today, owned by Afrikaners, were like so many of the dogs we loved to pet back home. They included some small, fluffy terriers, a laidback hunting dog mix named Blue, and a Boerbol (named Lola) that must have weight at least 140lbs!.

The warmth and openness that these people, and others, in the community have showed us over our first few weeks here have given us a lot of hope for our future in the village and made the transition much more enjoyable as we try to figure out how best we can be of service here. These experiences are not unique to us as volunteers in Botswana. Many of our fellow volunteers have said the same thing about their communities and experiences. This shows that, for the most part, the people of Botswana are very friendly and eager to bring visiting strangers into their homes and show them a level of hospitality that is rarely seen today.