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.
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