Daily LIfe in Kanye

Kanye is an “urban village” according to the Batswana, meaning that it has more amenities than a regular village (chain grocery stores, a couple of internet cafes) but is it not a town or city because there is not one primary industry that drives the local economy. Most towns and cities in Botswana were created and are sustained by their proximity to the major industries in Botswana – mining, trucking/distribution, and high-end tourism. None of these industries are a focal point of the Kanye economy and in fact life in Kanye is dictated by its location as the largest village between Gaborone (45 minutes) and Lobaste, a trucking/distribution city very near the South African border about 25 miles southeast of Kanye. Our trainee class just completed our second full week in Kanye and we’re slowly settling into a routine that is dictated by our Setswana language classes in the mornings and Peace Corps project specific training and seminars in the afternoon that go until 4:30 or 5:00. Botswana is a “dawn to dusk” culture and Kanye is no different, so my mornings begin around 6:30 when I get up to make coffee (instant) and heat the water for my morning bath. Breakfast is usually cereal, scrambled eggs (if I have time) or mabele, a sour milk porridge for which I’m slowly developing a taste. It has the consistency of oatmeal or grits and with a little brown sugar it’s pretty tasty. Setswana language training is done in small clusters based on where we live. My current language cluster has 7 of us who all live on Ntsweng and our classes go from 8-12 each morning. We then have a walking/lunch break until 1:30 and the walk from our Kgotsi (village center) to the RIIC Center where our large group sessions are held is about a 30 minutes. Once our afternoon session is done we have free time until it’s dark which right now is about 6:30 pm, when we return to our host families for dinner. Most of us use the afternoon free time to do internet before making our way home. Kanye on the weekdays really shuts down at dark. The main streets do not have lights and with the random livestock roaming around it can be dangerous to drive unless you know where you’re going and there are no real pedestrian rules or laws, so walking the dark streets at night is bit of a roulette game with pretty high stakes. Most of the locals go to bed around 8:30-9:00 which has been a big adjustment for a lot of us, especially yours truly. I typically read, study Setswana (we have homework) or watch old American shows (The Hills, American Idol, Prison Break) on South African TV until 11-11:30. The weekends are a little bit “livelier” with drinking beer and cruising the main pastimes for the locals on Friday nights and apparently all day Saturday. Sundays are especially quite with many of the locals going to church all day. Saturdays and/or Sundays have proven to be the best time for most of us to do laundry, which for just about all of us means hand washing our clothes in big tubs/buckets and hanging them out to dry. Most of our group has never hand washed before and while it’s a necessary skill for living here in Botswana, I’m wondering how long it will take us (especially me) to negotiate a deal with one of my neighbors to wash my clothes or work out barter trade with someone who actually has a washing machine. My first attempt at hand washing 2 weeks ago was enlightening (to say the least) and apparently quite comical as I had the whole neighborhood entertained with my exploits. If hand washing clothes once a week is my new normal, then my definition of “clean” is going to expand greatly while I’m here in Botswana. The other challenge with hand washing is that it’s dictated by the weather and with the rainy season starting early here in Kanye, I’m glad I brought extra deodorant! Most of us have wanted to wash for a week now but it’s rained every day for 7 straight days, not all day, but at least once every day and when it rains here in Kanye it’s like someone turns over a big bucket in the sky. You can go from dry to soaking wet in about 2 seconds and the umbrellas and rain slickers we all brought are no match for Botswana storms. We’re expecting a break in the weather this weekend – fingers crossed!

Next week we embark on one of the highlights of our PST – shadowing. From Wednesday to Sunday next week we all will be traveling to, and staying with, current Peace Corps volunteers and shadowing them at their job sites and learning about their communities, villages, towns, etc. I will be traveling to Sowa, in the Northeastern section of the country, south of Zimbabwe and west of Francistown, along with Blake (who incidentally is from South Carolina as well, a Wofford alum actually) to shadow a current District Community Liaison, Jillian at her work and in her village of Sowa, which is a mining town at the border of the Sowa Pan which is a giant salt plain. According to Lonely Planet, the Sowa Pan is “a single sheet of salt-encrusted mud stretching across the lowest basin in northeastern Botswana.” In fact it’s one of the largest salt plains in the world. We will be traveling by bus/combi from Gaborone which is around 7 hours and I’m sure will be in adventure in and of itself but I’m sure it will be “gaunna matata” (no problem – seriously, pronounced “ha una ma tatta”) to use a popular local phrase. On my next post I’ll give a brief overview of the work that the Peace Corps is doing here in Botswana in advance of our first real exposure to the type of work I’ll be doing once I’m assigned a site and project in June.

Adjusting to Kanye

So I’ve been in Kanye for almost 2 weeks now and I’m still adjusting to the culture shock of living with a host family in a small, yet very spread out, village in Southwestern Botswana. All of us are very much living, eating, breathing Batswana (the people of Botswana) culture right now, which means getting used to the chickens, goats, donkeys that roam freely in the village and on the roads, running water as a concept not a reality, learning to like mmidi the corn/maize mixture that is in nearly every dish, and the very real fact that all of us, even the African-American members of our group, so obviously stand out, that we all might as well be wearing white robes and turbans at a suburban Cincinnati strip mall.  All of us will be living with our host families until the beginning of June, when we graduate from Pre-Service Trainees with the Peace Corps to full-fledged volunteers with the Peace Corps. Unlike the rest of Botswana which is very dry, hot, dusty and brown (80% of the country is the Kalahari desert), Kanye is in the mountains and is relatively cooler, greener, and lusher than the rest of the country. Most of Kanye can be divided into “downstairs” (Mafhikana and Gakebuang) which are settlements in the valley and “upstairs”  (Ntsweng) which is a collection of developments (called wards here) on the two highest mountains/hills here in Kanye. Most of our PST group (30) live in Gakebuang or Mafhikana while 9 of us (including me) live in Ngsweng and I specifically live in the Chibana Ward of Ngsweng. Which means that I live near the end of the last paved road on the main mountain, about a 30-minute walk downhill from the major “shopping” area (there are grocery stores closer to me here in Ngsweng) and about 45 minutes by foot from the majority of the group. Of course it’s 5-10 minutes by taxi or combi bus (shared bus taxis) but the walking is a nice way to pass the time, especially since it’s not nearly as hot here in Kanye as in the rest of Botswana. It’s been a mixture of sun and clouds since we arrived with highs in the upper 60s/lower 70s and lows in the 50s for now and the last few days it’s rained more than we were expecting and when it rains here it’s like someone turned over a bucket from the clouds. We’re in Fall now, with winter approaching in June which means that it’s going to get quite a bit colder with lows all the way down to upper 30s and high 40s and daytime temperatures in the 50s. Here in the Chibana Ward I live with Mma (Miss) Mpotsan Sephetsolo at her home which has electricity (yeah!) and what I’m calling “water on request.” She has a big (3 bedrooms), nicely decorated house and her son Snoek (his preferred nickname), who’s 42 and lives in the house next door. Mma Sephetsolo is 71 a little set in her ways and is not a big talker, especially when her nighttime soaps are on, but she’s nice and is proud to be hosting a Peace Corps trainee again – she hosted a volunteer in 1998.  My situation is pretty unique to the rest of my group since most of the time it’s just me and her here at the house. Many of the other trainees live with actual families, parents, kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc. My situation is also unique in that I have a private bathroom and many in our group live with families that have pit latrines outside. We have two sources of filtered water, one that we use for washing dishes and for baths, and one for the kitchen tap for drinking water, which means I don’t have to boil the water, which is a huge relief. Even with the recent rain, water is a precious resource in this country so there is a big emphasis on conserving as much water as possible. Overall I like my situation with Mma Sephetsolo in that what I’m losing in more daily interaction with the locals I’ve gained by living in a relatively nice house and I’m VERY happy I don’t have a pit latrine for a toilet!  

So Far So Good

Greetings from Gaborone, Botswana.  Our Peace Corps team of 39 (we lost one at JFK) arrived here on Sunday after a LONG day/night of flying from NY-JFK to Johannesburg, then connecting to our very small plane from Joburg to Gaborone.  Our South African Airways flight was just under 15 hours and while we were all in Economy, I actually had it pretty lucky: My seat 74D was an aisle in the middle section next to a trap door. I’ve flown a lot and never been on a plane with a space set aside for a trap door. The end result was that in a row in the middle that should have had 4 seats, there were only 2 seats and the seat next to me was empty, which meant I had a lot of room and space (relatively) to stretch out and somewhat enjoy the flight. Sunday was a blur as we arrived at the Big 5 Lodge in Gaborone (the Economy Lodge of “Safari” lodges) dazed and confused and trying our best to fight the jet lag. Since arriving in Botswana we’ve spent 90% of our time at the lodge getting administrative briefings, studying Setswana (the language here in Botswana), and getting presentations from the local Botswana Peace Corps staff on the nature and scope of the projects we’ll be assigned to after training. Position-wise our group is mostly Community Capacity Builders (CCB), with a handful Non-governmental organizational Reps (NGO), and District Coordinator Liaisons (DCL) which is my position.  We leave for Kanye tomorrow, which is about 1.5 hours from Gaborone. Kanye is where we will do our Pre-Service Training (PST) and live with our host families. We meet our host families tomorrow which has everyone excited and nervous as from what we know there is a wide range of living situations that we will experience. I will give details about my host family next time I post.  Internet access in Kanye is apparently a bit of a challenge so I have a feeling e-mail communication and blog posts may be somewhat sporadic and limited until I actually move to my permanent site in June.

I have a Botswana cell phone now, the number is 011-267-7656-9961 and incoming calls are free! For those of you in the know technically you can Skype to my cell phone directly for very reasonable rates.

Go siame (Go in peace)

Todd

Time to Go

It's time to go. All 40 of us are ready to go, even our 84 year-old volunteer. I'm combining quotes here but it seems appropriate: "Do good things and be the change you want to see in the world." I look forward to updating when I get to Botswana!