#6 Mo Okavango!

Well hello! It’s been a while. In this post I’ll cover the end of training, swearing in ceremony, travel to site, Botswana Independence Day, and my first few days of work. Appendices include what I’m supposed to do during my first three months here, a written house tour, and more.

I left off during the last few weeks of training. For the most part, we learned more about what to do during our first three months, were introduced to some technical trainings, and hung out. Before we visited our sites training was nonstop 7:30-5, five days a week, but after we returned it was much more relaxed. We had more time in between classes and some afternoons off, which was much needed and greatly appreciated. Highlights of the rest of training include making pizza from scratch for my homestay family (I was taught by the best!), visiting the farm with my host father and helping harvest/wash/bag carrots, spending the day in Gaborone with John to get a gift for our homestay families, and a homestay family appreciation lunch.

Towards the end of training I was ready to go to site. I felt sad to leave my family but was ready to have more freedom and start working. After the volunteers planned, prepared, and put on the entire homestay appreciation lunch, which I MCed, we started to understand how much work goes into the events that Peace Corps has been putting on for us. On the 24th, we had our swearing in ceremony, which put our little event to shame. Weeks prior we had all picked fabric and styles and gotten tailored traditional outfits, which we all debuted together at the ceremony. John and I had been having an ongoing conversation about whose suit would be better; he refused to tell me what style he had gotten, and had taken to saying he got suspenders, tails on his suit jacket, a hat, etc. just to throw me off the trail. When it came to actual day, we both looked great, as patterned blue suits can’t really look that different in the end. Anywho, the ceremony had all manner of important people speaking, songs by the volunteer choir (I was a bass. Me! A bass!), and speeches from two volunteers, TGurl and KG. Plenty of pictures were taken, food eaten, and laughs had.

Brace yourself: I’m starting to talk about books again. After the ceremony we had the chance to go to Gaborone for a shopping trip, which I utilized not to buy anything sensible, but rather an obscene amount of books. I have talked quite a bit about the kindle that I have, but there really is no substitute for a real book. The bookstore, which is one of 2-3 bookstore in all of Botswana, strangely had a decent selection of Tintin comics. As some of you many know, I’m something of a Tintin fanatic, and have read them all several times. I treated myself, and got three of them, planning to read one now and save the other two for Christmas and or low points. I also got a copy of the Count of Monte Cristo, which I was already ½ way through on the kindle. I just finished it, and I have to compare it to Dune by Frank Herbert. For both books, which are massive, 1000+ page epics, I absolutely LOVED them while I was reading, and rarely struggled to pick it back up, even though it is daunting. But again, with both books, after I finished them, my mind soured a bit. Perhaps it is the emptiness of completed revenge that left me uneasy, or simply the disappointment of finishing the book and learning the much-anticipated ending. If anyone has read either of them, as Charlie knows, I love to talk through the books I’ve read and am always a phone call away.

Back to normal programming…

The last night with my host family was lovely. They had asked what I wanted from Gaborone for my last meal, and they dragged out of me that I would like something I wouldn’t be able to have in my village. Lo and behold, they bought a pizza from Debonair, chicken and hotpot from Nando’s, and a cake from Woolworths. Talk about feeling loved. We sat and watched the South African soapies together one last time, and then I left early in the morning. Phoebe (henceforth Loapi) and I managed to fit all our stuff into the already-half-full-with-baby-formula pickup truck that picked us up, and we started up to the delta. We drove a different way this time, passing through Ghantsi, which skirts the western side of the Kalahari. That means that now I have driven a full loop around the Kalahari desert, on the huge ring of highway that connects the few bigger towns. We spent a night in Gumare, bought some things in Shakawe, and headed down to our respective sites.

I arrived here in my village on a Friday, and that weekend, the last of September, was Botswana’s independence weekend. Every village spends a lot of money on a public ceremony and food for anyone who wants it. No expense was spared here, and we ate Seswaa (pulled pork but beef) and samp (some kinda corn that ends up vaguely being like rice). The ceremony was very nice, although I barely understood it, and several people sang and danced for the community. I asked to help with some of the cooking, and before I knew it, not one, not two, but five phones were filming me. I’ve had random people come up to me in the days since and say “I saw on so-and-so’s social media that you were making Seswaa!” Oh, small town life. I thought Red Wing was small…

First few days of work were on par for most of my experiences here so far: hilarious. Long story short one day I found myself in a five-hour long workshop detailing the diarrhea outbreak in the Okavango district, and what to do as a clinician to fix it (But Nick? You aren’t a clinician, so why were you there? Ohhhhh believe me Believe Me I fully explored that line of thinking in those five hours). The next day was the same workshop for the health education team, so I went again thinking that the material would be different. You can see where this is going. Word for effing word the same. Sigh. But I did get some serious thinking done during that time, so it wasn’t all wasted. Another fun thing I did this week was learn how to weigh babies! All kids under that age of five are brought in weekly to the health clinic to be weighed and examined. I now know how to ask, “Do you have this or this or that at your home?” in Setswana! And my goodness the paperwork. Sheesh. Mountains of it. In triplicate.

The first few months here, until we have more Peace Corps training in December, is to create a community profile and then perform a community assessment on my village. Picture a research project/paper on the village with a special focus on health, and youth health. I’ll be writing up all my results and then working with my counterparts here and my bosses at Peace Corps to design some projects for the 21 months after I finish the report. So my next few months will be unstructured, mostly consisting of conducting interviews to try to understand the village better.

A written house tour! Ready? My house is very nice for just little old me. It has two bedrooms, a large living room, a kitchen, bathroom, and toilet. It’s about double or triple the size of most other volunteer housing I’ve seen. I live in a compound (within one wall) with two other people: my host sister and her son. I am leasing from an older coworker, who recently got married and moved out of this house, hence why it is so nice. The front porch is completely burglar-barred, so it looks silly. But it is nice to have the space where I can sit outside. I am planning to get a table to put out there with one of my chairs. I can’t wait to eat my breakfast out on the porch with a book. In through the front door, you have the living room, which right now is completely empty and very dark. To the left is the second bedroom, which I leasing to the rats/mice/bats/chirping animals for now. They are a few days behind on their rent, but my host mother and I have a meeting with them soon to clear up the misconception. And to the right, across the echoe-y room, is a hallway that has doors to the rest of the rooms. I had a heck of a first few days cleaning and getting everything where I wanted it, but I didn’t have much else to do so it was great to keep myself busy doing that.

I have a request for comments on liked and disliked Peace Corps acronyms and lingo. Right off the bat, all Batswana (remember, Batswana people = Botswanan) pronounce Peace Corps with a hard P at the end. Kinda bothers me. Next, allll of the health acronyms. Useful, but there are so many it quickly becomes annoying. PLHIV, OVC, PMTCT, MUAC, and more. I have three full pages in a notebook filled with them. Also all the government organizations and NGOs have acronyms. PEPFAR, NAHPA, DHMT, DAC, GoB, etc. Can’t tell you I like much of any of it to be honest with ya. ET, PCV, PCT, and Adsep all peeve me. Nothing that quite rises to any level of importance, but really is just my gripes with reporting/classifying everything when I just want to be in my community.

I’ll make this brief because none of us want to dwell on it longer than is necessary: the Twins. Sigh. Deeper sigh. Welp. I guess…there’s always next year!

Some random shorter things:

The new country director arrived right before we were sworn in. We got to meet him; he seems a lot like Tim Walz. Friendly, good smile accomplished (has a hell of a resume), and feels like he will be a good fit with the country. I like him.

Especially for my politically focused family, I have stopped reading the news so much now that I am without internet most of the time. It is very freeing. I am in a news slump recently, where I feel like everything, I read is negative. Simply cutting off access by moving to the African bush is a great way to solve that problem! But I still check in now and then and am incredibly proud to have already cast my absentee vote for Kamala Harris for president.

I went to Shakawe, my shopping town today, and spent the entire three-hour ride both ways sitting in the middle seat. Or rather, sitting on the center console with a pillow on it. My ass feels like it’s in seven pieces now. Had to eat dinner standing up. Will be limiting future trips to Shakawe.

I’ve been chuckling about the names of the two main brands of insect killer stuff here for a while. There’s “Blue Death,” and “Doom.” I mean c’mon. Doom? How hilarious is that. “Can you buy me some Doom at the store?” I’m cracking myself up just writing this. Doom even has three separate lines too: ‘Climate Change’, ‘Donald Trump Reelection’, and ‘Extra Strong’.

I almost forgot! My midnight express furniture delivery. I bought a bed and fridge in Shakawe around 1pm, and the store confirmed I would have it that day so that I wouldn’t have to sleep on the ground. This was my first night in the house, so I literally had nothing, and just had strewn my things all over the place on the ground. 6pm, 7pm, 8pm go by…no word. I called them around 8, they promised to be there by 9, no such luck. Finally around 11pm they call me and say they’ve made it, they need directions to my house. I directed them to my supervisor, because I have no idea how to get to my house yet on my own. Midnight rolls around and they still haven’t arrived. I saw some headlights in the distance when my supervisor called and told me to come out to the truck, which was the headlights I could see. Walking out from my house, with absolutely no idea where I was going or how to get back to the house, I just hoped I was going towards the right car. When I got there, I found that they were stuck in the sand, which is so deep on most of the roads that cars really struggle. So this is how I found myself pushing a furniture truck next to another jamoke at 12:15am in the middle of my village trying to get it unstuck so that I have a bed to sleep on.

Alright. I started this thinking I had nothing to say but clearly a week living alone has already changed me. I pity those who stick around for the next two years of these, cause it this one is 2200 words then Sheesh the last ones are gonna be long.

But! Everything from here should be straightforward. Not much more travel, just here in my village and starting to work. If anyone is struggling to reach out via WhatsApp, my phone number is +267 71 394 886, not my American number anymore.