MargieinSweden

My Dad is a wonderful photographer. While he was here last week we spent a lot of time going around the village taking pictures.

I asked my neighbor if we could take pictures at her place. She lives in a very nice family compound, and a beautiful homestead She’s a very old woman, and she was happy to have us come over and take photos. She took me aside and said that she was happy that we came over because she will use her photo as her funeral portrait when she dies.

Kind of morbid, but very touching. She’s 88, but I really hope she doesn’t have to use it any time soon!

I put some of my Dad’s photos on facebook. Enjoy!

So last weekend I went to Tlhokweng, a village by Gaborone, to teach help another PCV with her life skills workshop teaching Abstinence, HIV, and condom use to Jr. High School students. The workshop was run my 6 PCVs, and a few Batswana volunteers. It was great! The kids loved it, and it was great learning from more experienced volunteers about how to explain contraception and STIs to 15 year olds.

Best Moment of the Workshop: I was talking to a group of girls about STIs, and how its important to wear a condom because you might have an STI and not know it. I said it’s important to protect the one you love, so using a condom doesn’t mean you love the person any less. Then one girl stood up and said, “Yes! Using a condom means you love them more.” I thought, yes! Victory!

Worst moment of the workshop: The volunteers were talking to the students about dating. The girl students described their perfect man as someone who was handsome and was rich. Then we asked the girls, what if a man treats you nicely and loves you and cares about you, but doesn’t have any money, would you date him? One girl got up and said, “Well then you should wait to date him until he does have money.” Wah wah.

But it was great doing the workshop with these kids. They asked lots of questions, we drew vaginas and fallopian tubes on the board, and it was wonderful having my PCV friends around. What a great weekend!

This last weekend I went to another Peace Corps meeting (there are so many this month!) but this time in Francistown instead of Gaborone (the capital). F-town is affectionately known as “the ghetto” but it is by far the nicest place I have been in Botswana. An actual city with atms and a mall! Wifi! Indian food! Fresh fruit! Cheese! It was heaven!

I love the other volunteers. The weirdest stuff comes out of our mouths. After a glass of wine too many and an awesome conversation about projects, I literally said “I love HIV!” I just mean that I am super duper passionate about it! We talked for hours about safe male circumcision (which cuts down risk of HIV infection by 60% for the individual), the weird STIs we see in clinics (there have been some doozies), and sex work and transactional sex. One girl, when talking about how she wants to promote abstinence for teens in her community, literally said, “I want to push masturbation in schools!” But it makes perfect sense in context. Doing it yourself lets you put off having sex, and getting exposed to HIV until you find the right and faithful partner.

I love my projects, and I will talk them up to anyone, but it’s really nice to do it with people who understand exactly where you’re coming from, and have been right where you have been. I know some of the stuff I say sounds crazy, but what’s nice is my volunteer friends are right there with me. What a bonding experience! I hope we stay friends for life!

January 9th

During the past month at my clinic I have seen….

1) Two babies test positive to HIV. This is a brutal reminder that although Botswana has a highly successful Prevention from Mother to Child Transmission program for Africa, there are some babies for which this program will just fail.

2) A woman came into the clinic because her boyfriend had beat her and broke her foot in two different places. This wasn’t the first time he beat her, and since she went back to him, I don’t think it will be the last.

3) A rape kit performed on a 7-year-old who was raped by a grown man. The girl tested positive for HIV, and since antibodies of HIV take 3 months to accumulate in the blood, it means she was probably repeatedly raped and it was just brought to light recently.

I was not prepared for this kind of tragedy. Tragedies.

I think I need a drink.

Okay it’s official. The honeymoon period is over. I came to my site in Botswana fresh faced and eager, so amazed by cultural traditions that were so new to me. I saw through the cultural differences to see the similarities between myself and people on this strange and novel continent. I was so happy and content, settling into my new home.

Okay, so I have to say, this feeling of novelty and excitement has gone and in its wake left me to discover the sex, abuse, and violence that wreaks havoc on my community. If I have one more creepy old man tell me he loves me, or see one more sexual abuse case at the clinic, I am going to lose it.

I am so happy that I will be going to 2 week meeting with other volunteers from my intake group at the end of the month. I just need some time to regroup and talk about these issues. Someone outside my community, who gets what being an American in Botswana is like, and someone who doesn’t think it’s appropriate fro men to be asking sex from me just because I’m white and they see white people have sex all the time on TV. GRRRRRRR! Just ten more days until the conference, I hope I can make it until then.

November 5th (This was originally a diary entry)

As a big thank you for our host families, the other trainees and I threw a big thank you party the last weekend of PST (pre service training). The theme was Thanksgiving, since it was November and we wanted to share a little bit of American culture. The decoration committee made big paper turkeys, and the entertainment committee held a play in Setswana about the Pilgrims. I was on the cooking committee, and because there is no turkey or pumpkins this time of year (or ever?) in Botswana, we had to improvise on the menu. We did have stuffing and mashed potatoes, but the meat portion was substituted with American meatloaf. Cooking for 150+ people is difficult. We had to get cheap ingredients in large quantities, and spent about 12 hours total prepping and cooking. The party was a success, and it was nice to get together with our adopted families. They even acted out their holiday similar to Thanksgiving, which happens in April (our spring, but fall in Botswana!), where everyone brings the harvest to the kgotla and sings traditional songs. They even brought us traditional sorghum beer, which was served in cups with rounded bottoms that you couldn’t put down or else they would spill, encouraging you to drink it as soon as possible. It looks like a recipe for a drinking game gone wrong. Good thing we ended up sharing.

It was funny though, even though we were so happy with our cooking results (which were delicious by the by), the Batswana didn’t seem to like it. They went for the rice and steamed vegetables that we made as “extras”. It just goes to show you that what food you like is totally dependent on you were raised and your culture. It’s good to try new things though!

Coronation of kgosi

Okay, I should have blogged about this earlier, but here goes. Earlier this month, peace corps trainees and I got to attend the coronation of the paramount kgosi of Kanye. The kgosi is like a chief, but more of a community city council chairperson, who takes care of the issues (domestic and public) of his ward (or neighborhood). My ward has a kgosi, but then above him is a paramount kgosi, one who looks after the 70,000 people and hundreds of wards in the area.

In an amazing stroke of luck, the new paramount kgosi happened to be crowned in the 2 month period that we are training in Kanye, and we got invited to this event which only happens every 25 or so years. So cool! The ceremony was amazing. Kgosis came from all around Botswana, South Africa, and even Lesotho. There was singing and dancing from all these different cultures. Diplomats from all over attended too, even the US ambassador was there. Probably the coolest thing was the President of Botswana Seretse Khama was helicoptered into Kanye for the ceremony. Not only that, but since he was a pilot in the Botswana army, he flew his own helicopter! So badass!

The ceremony itself consisted of a lot of speeches in Setswana. In addition, the kgosi was adorned with a dried leopard skin that he and his kgosana and killed in the couple weeks before. He looked awesome! I’ll have to post pictures soon.

My host mom helped me get a traditional dress made for the ceremony, which was great too. Although I definitely got sunburned during the 6 hour ceremony, I am so happy and grateful that I got to see it. What a cool experience!

I found out where I’m going to live for the next two years! It’s a village called Mookane, a small village of 2,000 people, 2 hours north of the capital. I will be working in a clinic, which serves as the HIV medication clinic and maternity ward for 6 villages in my area. Yesterday I met my counterpart, a HIV counselor and tester named Ernest. He is really nice and very welcoming. We are going to start nutrition projects, to help ameliorate side effects of ARVs (anti-retrovirals, that help keep HIV viral loads down), which are more prevalent in patients with poor access to good nutrition. I can’t wait to start work!

So I got back from shadowing on Saturday, and the first thing my host mom told me is that now she has bought a laptop and satellite tv. 

This is not the Africa I thought I would be living in.