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