Update from the Kalahari!

Hi everyone! It’s been a while! How is everybody doing? Enjoying summer and all its greatness I hope. We’ve had an extra cold and wet winter here. Back in June we had 3-4 days straight of rain and not a glimpse of sun throughout. And it was coooold. People were saying that hasn’t happened that time of year in a long time, if ever for as long as they can remember. I thought maybe that was it and the worst of it was over, but oh no, I’d say most of July was torture. You’re probably thinking, “Torture? Please! Have you forgotten what MN winters are like!?” and to that I respond, “No, but most people in MN have a handy little something called heat!” I will, however, admit that 5 months of winter with heat is still probably worse than 2 months without. I will give you that. But for someone who would prefer 0 months of winter and is a total baby when it comes to the cold, these 2 months were torture. I tried my best to fight it. Most days I wore a ridiculous amount of layers. On top of that I wore a jacket, wool socks, scarf, hat and my MN-winter mittens (which I choose to believe my coworkers were just jealous when they called them baseball gloves and oven mitts, pfh, whatever!). I used an extra blanket, drank lots of hot tea and baked a ton trying to heat up my house. Some of it helped, some of it didn’t, but it doesn’t matter now because I made it through! And I won’t have to deal with it again because right when it starts to get cold again next year, I’ll be finishing up my service and heading back to the US to enjoy a second summer! Woop woop!

Other news, in May my family came to visit South Africa. They did a safari at Kruger and then I met up with them for a week in Cape Town. That was a lot of fun. I had heard from several people that Cape Town is awesome and I’d have to say they are right. There are lots of things to do and see. Especially see. It seemed like everywhere we went you could take a picture and it’d look like a post card. Everything was so picturesque. We went to Table Mountain, the Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Point and a good chunk of wineries. It all came as a welcomed change of scenery from the flat flat desert that I live in. We really lucked out with weather, too, since South Africa’s rainy/winter season starts right around the time we were there. And of course the restaurants… how I miss restaurants! Not that I don’t like me some take away! Dinawa le soupu? Sign me up! But sushi and sandwiches and green salads… yeah… that’s what I’m talking about. Mmm.

On to work stuff- I found out this past quarter that I’m not the only one who despises the cold. We had 2 workshops planned (one in June, one in July) and people didn’t show up until the morning was half over. The excuse I heard the most was that it was too cold earlier in the morning. So lesson learned. I know now not to hold workshops in the winter, or at least to not pack the morning schedule so if people do show up late your workshop’s not all in a mess.

Besides the late and narrowed attendance, both workshops went quite well. The first in June was the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Behavior Change workshop put on by our VMSAC (Village Multi-Sectoral AIDS Committee). It targeted out-of-school youth and covered the effects of alcohol and drug abuse, gender-based violence, teenage pregnancy, discipline, importance of education, youth empowerment, and self employment and training. We had a smaller turnout than hoped for and almost all participants were women, some of which were no longer youths (you’re a youth until you turn 30 in Botswana), but even so the sessions went really well. Each active department of VMSAC presented on a topic relevant to both their department and behavior change, and most included some sort of activity or group work to have participants using the information they just learned.

The second workshop in July was the one I had been planning with another PCV to address abuse towards women in my village. We had the NGO W.A.R. (Women and Men Against Rape) come and facilitate a day and a half workshop for women. It covered topics like their rights and actions to take when they are abused as well as exercises that allowed the women to share and discuss their personal experiences and struggles. The planning got a little challenging when the other PCV and I didn’t look at our schedules closely enough when we picked the date and we ended up being away at our mid-service training the week before the workshop. That created quite a deal of stress and some bumps in the last minute logistics, but in the end it worked out. A team of women was created from the workshop with the objectives to remind each other and others not to remain silent about violence, not to be perpetrators of violence themselves and to put the exercises learned in the workshop to use. The team met this past week and developed a meeting schedule and a rough work plan. I really hope the group continues to function and becomes an active voice in the community.

Another activity that took place in the past quarter was a composition contest at the school. The purpose was to get students to think critically about what a positive role model is and who in their life they would consider their role model. After beginning the contest I was informed by the teachers that the students don’t do very well on composition writing in exams so the contest would be good practice for the exams they’d be writing the following month. Excellent! I went to the school two afternoons a week to help students with their compositions. At the end of the contest all compositions were collected and judged by the Department of Youth. A week later we announced the winners at school assembly and presented them with prizes. It was suggested that we hold a composition contest every school term in order to improve the students’ English writing skills. Sounds like that might be possible, so we’ll see.

That’s pretty much it for activities in the past 3 months. Plans for next quarter are to get the women who attended the abuse workshop together again to give us feedback on the workshop so it can be improved and replicated in other villages in the district. It’s also been brought to my attention that the workshop caused some buzz among the men in the village and they are requesting a workshop for themselves. I’m all for that because if abuse towards women is so rife it would be smart to include men in the interventions! Especially if they are requesting it!

Also, a youth corner has been created in the clinic to offer youth-friendly services. I’m still a little unclear as to what that encompasses but it seems to be pretty open. One of the active youth in the village has shown interest in being involved and we’ve been working together on some ideas. He’s been wanting to start up a youth support group for some time for youth to share their frustrations and work together to create change in the community. I found a book of games that can be used as tools for educating youth about reproductive health. So as you may have guessed, we’re going to put the two together! That way we’re talking about health and we’ve got a venue for a group to meet and discuss other issues as well. The first meeting is going to be next week, so hopefully we’ll get some youth to show up, build on their interests and grow from there.

Alright then, I think that’s it! I hope everyone is doing well. Let me know what’s new with you! It’s only fair if this goes both ways, ya know! ;) Ok, go siame!