Tuesday, May 26, 2009

A Quick line

I just wanted to drop a short line about our new status. Katie and I find out next Saturday our village of Post. Where ever we go It will be great. We just have to make the best of it and get out of it what we want. With this news: If you are sending mail to the Private Bag address make sure all mail is sent from the U.S. by June 1st or soon after to ensure that we get it before we leave training and go to our post. Once we get to our post we will update with a permanent address. Thanks for the letters by the way. Mail time is like Christmas here.

Short story: So we walk to training around 7:50 am every day because we live close to the Hope Center where we do our language and cross culture. Erica stops at our place at 7:40 to pick us up and then we head out. I day is brightened every morning by this little girl...maybe 4 who, every day on, consistant as the sun, will run her little bear feet out to meet the lekjoas (white people). I can picture here little bald head giving each and every one of your hands a high five, a low five with the biggest smile. No words exchanged just smile. Then she runs here little feet back to here family who are all cooking by the fire. This process in repeated like clock work at 4:30-5 every day after school too. She is such a treat to look forward to each day. The morning she didn't great us I got worried but she was back at 4 just like usual. It was cold that morning.

Lucas

Thursday, May 14, 2009

A Day in the Life


Hey guys, this is my first post so I might be going backwards a little. This is a typical day in my life here in Molepolole, Botswana:

I get up about 6 am every morning. I go to the bathroom which is outside (we have a pit latrine). Believe it or not it is very cold here at night and in the morning so I usually have to sit on my hands while I use the latrine.
Our host mother Ellen will boil watcer for us to take a bucket bath. If you have never been fortunate to take a bucket bath, here is how it goes. The bucket is about the size of a basin you would hold beer in. You get only a few inches of water (which can make for a cold bath in the winter when most of you is not in the water). You basically clean yourself with a rag and pour clean water over you with another bucket. Washing my hair is exhausting and I feel I never have clean hair.
We sit down to a bowl of porage or "bogobe" which reminds me of Cream of Wheat but more bland. So I put sugar on it which usually invloves plucking ants out of the sugar bowl =).
We walk to class by 8 am and sit down to lots and lots of Setswana training. Some days I feel good. Other days I am holding back tears. So, there you go.
We get out of class about 4 or 5. Mondays, Tues, and Thurs we get a chance to go to the stadium. I have found it helps but is not necessary to speak the same language in order to play a game together. I have found a lovely group to play volleyball with. Everyone wants to hit so if you know how to set, it's easy to join the game. I even learned a Setswana chant.
When we return home, one of my host sisters (Thandi or Doreen) will make dinner for us. There are 2 cats that live on the compound (the Batswana don't actually have pets but just animals that are always nearby). The cats eat the leftovers. We have noticed that the cats have gained weight since we arrived...
We wash dishes outside in a wash bin with our host nephew Mompati. Mompati will turn 20 on May 29. He likes WWE wrestling. We tell him we were wrestlers in America but not the same kind. I think he likes us. We played cards with him last night: Go Fish and Crazy Eights.
I ahve noticed how amazing the Batswana can see and hear. Even the old people. There are not many lights at night so their eye sight is just amazing. Kabo and I must look silly running around with head lamps on our head.
We watch soap operas, study Setswana and go to sleep about 8 or 9. That is a day in the life...

Shadowing Brent Keener

Kabo did his shadowing in Maitengwe in the NE on the Zimbabwe boarder. It is a small village with 7000 people but it’s so spread out that it looks like a about 500. Brent, the guy we shadowed is a great guy with tons of tips to make us better volunteers. He does community capacity building (ccb) at the village clinic. James the other volunteer and I went to work with Brent to see what a CCB does. ARV(anti-retro virus) day every Thursday had a line at the door of the clinic of those taking the government supplied ARV’s if they were infected to the point of AIDS. You can’t get ARV’s unless your CD4 count is so low( <200) that you are considered infected with AIDS. Many in the line were new mothers or pregnant mothers who were infected. There were also patients picking up there TB drugs that they had to get in the back of the clinic and swallow them in front of a clinic worker. 80% of those infected with TB also have HIV due to the fact that you are at risk of opportunistic infections when you have HIV.
After that we went on some house visits to pregnant mothers with HIV/AIDS and talk to them about formula feeding vs. breast feeding, making formula, and AZT (a drug for babies born with the infection). Most times the pregnant mothers are happy to listen to the important information. Most days they see 2-4 infected mothers. Each is at a different stage in the PMTCT (pregnant mother to child transfer) program. If we can give them the right information and they adhere to it, the new born will stay uninfected.
Then we walked to a local bar when many men were drinking shake-shake (sorghum beer that looks like vomit). Amy our interpreter/program coordinator does the talking. She starts with STI’s (sexually transmitted infections) and moves into condom use. She almost broke out the wooden penis to do the condom demonstration but the crowd was more interested in talking about how condoms are the cause of HIV or back pain. It was a great experience and great out-reach, males are hard to get the word out to in general. It’s good to meet them at their level. They all spoke Kalunga (a tribal language) so I just smiled and nodded most to the time. This is the kind of work that Katie will be doing (CCB) once we get our placement. This just skims the surface of the overall epidemic with HIV/AIDS.
Side note: I tried the shake shake-later that day, it tastes like a beer that has sat out all night with the texture of a skim milk. Katie and I both tested novice-low on our first LPI (language proficiency test) which put us in a slow group. More than half of the 60 PCV's tested novice-low so I don't feel as stupid. I love fat-cakes; fist size balls of dough that have been deep fried. Yum It is getting cold at night, morning, and evening. Katie wore her down jacket yesterday to sokolo=school.
I’ll have Katie add here shadow experience when we next get to a computer.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Ready For Shadowing

Lesedi (katie) is headed south west about 2 hours to a village called Werda on the South Africa boarder. Kabo (me) is going north east to the Zimbabwe boarder just above Francistown to a village called Maitengwe where they speak a different language known as Kunga. I think that's how you spell it. We are both really excited for a new change of scenery and maybe see the country a little bit. They help us get to our shadowing site but on the way back it's up to us and the Setswana we have been learning. 'Base ya Molepolole ke efe?' Which bus to Molepolole? We are learning and practicing with each other.
Food: Last night we ate chicken intestines...yum..well..not so much. Our host brother said they were very, very good with rice. So we gave them a shot. They have the consistency of calamari and the taste of chicken intestines. Not too bad, I ate all of mine and most of the rice. The meals were the same for the first week. Boiled cabbage, a huge portion of starch (rice, phaletshe 'corn whites', somp, or beans or beans with somp), and a piece of chicken. We would get it for dinner and I really like it and then we would have left overs for lunch the next day. I like it but not twice a day for several days straight. So we cooked one nigh. Mom's meat loaf and mashed potatoes with slices tomatoes as a little extra. They loved the meat loaf but the mashed potatoes didn't have the same hit. It might have been the margarine. We plan on making french toast, some kind of pizza, mac-and-cheese, if any one has easy recipes or a suggestion of what to make pleas comment. We love reading comments.
The training and cultural classes are very informative. We did a class on HIV/AIDS today learning a little bit about how HIV is spread specifically in Botswana. The point of the lesson was to show that unprotected sex with multiple concurrent partners is by far the major contributor to the viruses spread. We are digging more into the topic and how to work with it in a culturally acceptable way.
I better be going, we have to do laundry...in a bucket, pack and sleep some before our bus picks us up at 3:30am tomorrow. Next time I update I will try to get some pictures on. My camera is being fixed thanks to my father in law Cameron and we blew Katie's batery charger for hers when we put 240v into her 120v charger. Life happens. We are having the time of our lives and we get to share it together. More updates to come, Lucas