My first days at home stay...ups and downs...this one is a long one!

April 7,2011

Today was incredibly overwhelming. It was the first time since I’ve gotten here where I had to ask myself if I could do this. Getting matched with a family and living with them is crazy harder than I thought it would be. Trying to follow what is going on in my family’s life, may it be the big picture or the topic of conversation they are currently having, is really difficult and tiring. I never realized how hard it is to be in an environment where I don’t know what people are saying.

We made it out to Kayne. We were ALL so nervous in the morning. We were crazy with anticipation about how our host family was going to be and what amenities we were gonna have.

 At 11 AM we were given our host families. We were matched and when they called our name, the family member would come up and give their trainee’s a hug, and some were even picked up. Haha, it was funny watching some people getting picked up. I got matched with Rra Sebeelo which basically means Sir/Mister Sebeelo. He was very nice and laughed when we were matched. He gave me a hug and held my hand down the aisle (which all host parents did to their new “children”).  We talked for a bit, it was awkward, but it’s more cuz of the language barrier and understanding each other. I find out he has 5 kids with his wife.  

At lunch we all had lunches with our new host parent. Everyone was given a Setswana name. Rra named me Gorata (Hor-rat-a), which means “to be loved.” The funny thing about this is Amanda means the same, but he didn’t know that. Does that really mean I’m meant to be loved?! Lol. Jk.

 We drove back to his home and his 19 year old daughter greeted me. Her name is Lebo. She was very nice, and explained to me the rules of the house in English (she speaks super good English and understands everything that I am saying…so that’s awesome). They have electricity and running water and a toilet. YAY! J got the basic amenities that I was looking for. Though they don’t have hot water, so I have to take bucket baths. AH! Something new and something I was anticipating. Later my other host sister, she is 16 years old, came home from school. Her name is Kese.

We cook food cuz Rra was hungry, and I learned to make cole slaw. I told them I didn’t know how to cook and they were shocked. Haha. they expect me to cook for them, and I would totally be cool with that, if it was food that I know/can/am used to cooking. I am none of those, so I’m super nervous about doing it. I don’t know how to cook food with bones still in them. And all their food still has all the bones and fat still on it, which is starting to make me consider being a vegetarian for the next 2 months. AH! Anyways, Lebo cooked the chicken. We ate. I did the dishes. This is how they do the dishes. They plug the sink. Add water. Add powder soap into the sink. Then scrub all the plates, bowls, pots, utensils, all in the sink. Strangely, as I continued washing the dishes, they seemed to get less and less clean…if you catch my drift….

Lebo and I decide to go for a walk, cuz she needed to buy airtime for her cell phone. We walk to the general store, where I manage to get caught in a prickly plant, that decides to leave their pricklies in my shirt. So I spend the rest of the walk trying to get all the pricklies out of my shirt. I get there and there are a few girls as the general store around my age or younger.  My host sister introduces me to them and they get a kick out of my very limited/shy Setswana. They ask me how my hair is the way it is, and what I put in it to make it so straight and soft. Haha. I let them touch it, and they LOVE it. One started to braid my hair. They were fun. They joked around with me and asked me about where I was from and if I had a husband/boyfriend. They also asked me if the rest of the volunteers were asian like me, and I told them that I was the ONLY one of the group. Haha. When I left with my host sister from the general store, the girls told me to come back and hang out, and that they were my new friends. YAY! I apparently made new Batswana friends today! J I have started the integration process! WEEE!!!! J

The rest of the night was spent sitting around awkwardly because the TV was broken. My sisters taught me a few new words like “one” is “bongwe”. We chase a cow out of the yard. I show them pictures of LA. I am exhausted by 930. Tell them good night. Write in my journal. Then pass out instantly.

All in all, it was a very long day. And just incredibly overwhelming. Just trying to integrate into someone’s family is a lot harder than I ever thought it would be. They talk about me, but I don’t know what they are saying and it’s hard to decipher. But they are a cool family and I can see us having a lot of fun. I just wish I could understand them NOW. Lol. Something to learn…patience is a virtue….hopefully. 

April 8, 2011

I woke up today with 15 mosquito bites. Awesome. I am itchy all over. And took my first bucket bath. Haha. This consists of me heating up water over the stove in a designated pot for boiling bath water. Pour the hot water into my bucket. Add cold water to the boiling water in my bucket so it is just warm water. Crouch in the bath tub. Use my hands to form a cup and splash water on myself. Put shampoo/conditioner in my hair. Put soap on my body. Then once again use my hands to form a cup to wash the soap off. After a while, it wasn’t coming off, so I started just dumping a little bit of the water from the bucket on me. I’ll just say…I am so glad I cut my hair! Though I did feel cleaner, so it worked! YAY!! My first bucket bath completed! J don’t necessarily enjoy it, but it will do, and I will get clean. The end.

I make tea and eat a piece of bread, and my host sister Lebo walked me to the bus stop where the PC was going to pick us up to show us how to get to our training site. I get there and people start trickling in. We all look ragged and confused, and definitely overwhelmed. I am so glad that it wasn’t just me. We were all basically on the same page with how confused and tired we all were. They had tried to prepare us for what was to come for home stay, but it was STILL overwhelming once we got there. We all traded notes on what we each had. Some only had pit latrines and no running water. So I guess I got a pretty good deal.

My mosquito bites are starting to blister (though this isn’t unusual, since this has happened to me before...but this time I have 15 bites all doing this). I am uncomfortable. And my yellow fever shot I got a week ago is still very much swollen and radiating heat. I decide to go see the doctor…which is all the way back in Gabs (a 45 min drive). There are 4 of us that pile into a car to go back to the clinic. He gives me antibiotics for the shot, and some cream for my bites. Glad I went! We go to another clinic so another volunteer can go get lab tests. Which gave the other 3 of us time to wander around a bit. We go to Choppies (a grocery store chain), and I buy my first Botswana objects, lemon and custard crème cookies, pistachio nuts, and a bottle of water. Yay! We then drive around the city looking for a US to Botswana adaptor for my computer. We went to 4 different stores and finally found one. We walk through a huge mall that makes me feel like I’m back in the US. I saw my first OTHER asian. It was a fun site to see. Haha. glad to see they exist elsewhere! Yay! Anyways…finally get an adapter, and we drive back to Kanye.

I get back…and YAY…the TV is back. We watch Oprah…in Yosemite. Lol. Awesome. Then dinner. Then we dance around in the living room for a bit. My host sisters tried to teach me how to dance. OH!!! Another awesome thing about Botswana is that they love house music. And they have some pretty sweet beats. I’m loving it more and more. I do love house music. I’m gonna come back a total house head. Erika and Joe G, you’d be so proud! And you’d LOVE all the music here. Anyways, my host sisters love house too. So they were teaching me Botswana house moves. I, of course, have no rhythm, so they laugh which is fine, cuz I’m sure I am a pretty funny sight to see. We go outside and dance some more with the neighbors. We watched their favorite soap opera, called Generations. I am once again exhausted. And here I am typing away.  But I am going to bed now, cuz my eyes are tired. Night night!

April 10, 2011

Jesus, this has probably been the longest week of my life. Seriously…it feels like I’ve been here for like months already. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It’s been a CRAZY week. And I’m still wondering what I got myself into. But as I said before…I’m attributing it to being overwhelmed right now. It’s strange being a world where a majority of the time I have no idea what is going on and what is being said. In fact, I’m getting pretty used to it. People just talk in Setswana, and I kind of just space out until I hear my name “Gorata” or “Rati” then I’ll just look and reply with “eh?!” and a confused look cuz of course I have NO IDEA about what people are saying. They usually just laugh, then sometimes, if they feel like it they will ask me again in English. If not, they continue their conversation, and I go back to spacing out. And the cycle begins again. This happens when I’m doing the dishes, this happens when I’m doing my laundry, this happens when we’re watching tv, this happens when we’re walking somewhere. I know I will never be fluent, but I will truly be amazed if I will ever be able to catch onto a whole conversation. One of the volunteers (that actually JUST completed his service the day we met him) said that Setswana is an impossible language. They talk SUPER fast…or so it seems as of right now. It’s been a little rougher than I thought to getting used to my environment. Hopefully, I will get there sooner than later. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a terrible time! People here have been incredibly accommodating and very patient with me. They are super friendly too. I think it’s just difficult not being able to understand. But, my neighbors have been inviting me out with them. They’ve come over to ask me questions about their school work. They’ve had a dance party with me. And this is all within a span of 3 days. Not too shabby. I’m having a great time, I’m in a pretty good situation! I just hope the rest of my 26 months doesn’t feel like it drags on as long as this past week has…

Anyways, let’s start with my day, and I will go into tangents with my thoughts to commentate on the situation.  I woke up, ate corn flakes (probably the most American thing I’ve eaten since I’ve gotten to Kayne). Then did all the dishes, and cleaned and swept the kitchen (yes…I am slowly being domesticated).  Then came the big task of the day….LAUNDRY.  First, you fill a bucket with water. Then you fill a second bucket with water. Then you add powder soap the first bucket. You start with your light colors first, and that doesn’t include socks. You scrub and scrub and scrub, basically with your knuckles and on your wrist. You gotta put a lot of umph into it. Then you do the dark colors and socks. This is when I started to get a little annoyed with doing my laundry. Turns out my sisters are sticklers for being super clean with their clothes. My socks…well, they may be a bit brown on the bottom. But hey! When you put em in the washing machine, many a times, they still come out slightly brown on the bottom! And they’ve been like that since I’ve gotten my socks! Anyways…so they expect me to scrub my sock until they are white, with no brown. That’s impossible!!! I swear. Dude, they came in my luggage tinted brown to begin with. Now you want me to scrub out dirt that ALREADY existed before I got here?! You gotta be kidding me! But…no they weren’t kidding! They wouldn’t let me throw my socks into the other tub until they were white. Omg…someone please send me black socks, so they can’t see the dirt that’s still on it when I wash them! I swear…I think I spent 15 minutes on ONE sock. I am going to hide my socks from them when I wash them. JEEZ. Lol. Anyways…after you scrub your clothes well enough (or to your standard or whoever’s standard is watching you wash your clothes) you throw it into the other tub with just water to basically rinse out the suds. Then you hang them up on the line. Shirts hang upside down. Shorts hang right side up. Pants hang upside down. OMG…about 2 hours later…and rubbing burns on my knuckles…I was done. I think I’m just gonna start wearing the same thing ALL week so I don’t have to wash it. Haha. I’m really beginning to realize how lazy I am. I don’t want to wear clothes, because I don’t want to wash em. I don’t want to eat sometime (like sweet reed) because it takes too much effort to eat it. I want to buy black socks, because I don’t want to scrub the noticeable dirt out of my white socks. Is this laziness a product of being an American? Or is that just my personality? I haven’t quite figured out how to categorize it yet. I’m sure as time progresses I’ll get a better idea of where to be placing this trait in my mind.  Though, right before I left…my mother was crying at the airport about how I am lazy…so maybe it really is just a personality thing. Lol. Oh well…

Anyways…YAY! My first hand washing laundry experience was completed! Time for my bucket bath. I took a cold one. I didn’t even care at that point. And it was pretty warm out, so it was kind of refreshing. This time…instead of cupping my hands to get water, I took a spare water bottle that I have, and used that to pour the water on me. OMG…so much easier! WAY more control over the water. Anyways…nice and clean! My sister takes a bath. And off we go to meet up the other trainees…just to get together. My sister and I walk for like 40 minutes, and finally after twists and turns through little paths weaving in and out of roads and houses, we finally find 4 other trainees.

Something I really want to add about this “walk” or just “walking” in general here in Kayne and I’m assuming for the rest of Botswana besides the big cities. What we call “walking” here in Kayne, is what we would call “hiking” back in the states. Lol. We walk on dirt paths, weave in and out of bushes and grass paths that were created by people who have been walking. There are rocks that you may need to climb over. We go in between houses. We are constantly surrounded by chickens, roosters, donkeys, cows, dogs, goats. We go up hills. We go down hills. And like 90% is all on dirt roads. So, mom and dad, YES I am “hiking” in LA terms…in my chucks. To add to it, you would be surprised as to what would be called a road…and what a car can actually drive through. Their “driving” here, would be OFF ROADING in the states. I have no idea how some cars can fit on some of the roads that they have here. They have some magical tires. My tires on my old car would have died about 50 meters onto one of these roads here. Lol. As I said earlier…my tangent!

Ok, so we meet up 4 other trainees and a trainee’s host brother. The 6 of us walk towards downtown to meet up another group. Once again, zig zagging through houses, grass, etc, we finally make it downtown about 30 min later again. At this point, I’ve basically be walking for about an hour and half…and I have NO idea how I got anywhere. We meet up the other group at Choppies in the town. I grab a bottle of water…omg…delicious cold bottle of water. I was a happy camper again! There are about 12 of us at this point. I show them were the internet café is. We just sit and talk outside of it for about 30 minutes. It was good to see everyone. It seemed like FOREVER since I had seen them…even though it had only been 2 days.

We part…being that everyone else and their moms live in the same area, except for me.  We take a combi home. I guess I was more tired than I thought I was…because my other host sister found me passed out on the couch about 30 minutes later. She has cooked dinner…I think it’s about 5 PM by this time. I eat some of it, then we decide to go to the stream/gorge since the neighbors have been wanting to take me this whole weekend. The four of us begin our journey, and later Lebo joins us. We walk for about 25 minutes, once again, zig zagging through I don’t even know where. We finally end up at a stream or gorge. I run into 2 other trainees with their families there. My sisters, me, and my neighbors decide to start climbing all over the rocks. We take a ton of pics. It was beautiful. Green everywhere. Trees everywhere. Bushes. Rocks. Boulders. Sunset. All awesome! Good times. J We walk back the same once…once again, I have NO idea where I am…and to add to it…go lefifi…it’s dark! There aren’t lights, so not only do I have no idea where I am, I can’t see shit (literally and figuratively). Lol. AWESOME. I put all my faith in these people to get me home. And of course they do, and my shoes are shit free. Yay! Success!

I check on my clothes. Half of it is dry. My jeans, sweats, and some socks are still wet. So I guess they’re staying up for the night. Dang it, that means I got no PJs for the night, and leaves my legs as munching grounds for bugs. Otherwise, my clean dry clothes are good to go…and they I guess, smell, like…African air? Haha…I guess I’m just used to my clothes smelling like Bounce or something. So when I smelled my clean clothes…they didn’t exactly smell like how I remember them to smell…Lol. But i do know my clothes are clean. YAY! Success. My family finds it so funny that I don’t know how to do these basic things. And when you really think about it…it is pretty funny. But what can I say?! I’m a spoiled American! Hey, give me some credit, I’m toughing it out now! I’m seriously trying! J Anyways, I think I’m gonna end my night with a Korean soap opera, Jandi. I think I walked like 8 miles today…in the hot African sun. I’m tired. And I got a sun burn with an awesome tank top/backpack tan line. SEXY. Robala sentle! Sleep well!

April 11, 2011

First day back in class…so it seems. It was a REALLY long weekend. I have no idea why it felt so long…but it really was. Anyways, back in class again, I spent most of it just thinking about how itchy my bug bites are…which reminds me…I need to put my cream on.  Ok…much better, except now I just feel like a grease monkey…like seriously a greasy monkey from the 10 bites I have. Anywho, spent the morning catching up with everyone’s weekend then doing some “Why we are here” exercises. Then they gave us our walk around allowance (yay! Money!) and 4 books about Setswana and the Batswana culture. Then after lunch we were off to meet the kgosi!

Kgosi means chief in Setswana. Each area has a kgosi. He basically overlooks disputes in his area. They basically cover the title of sheriff, judge, and leader, all rolled into one. It was a formal ceremony, we had all dressed up to meet him. Did the proper handshake, where you hold your right elbow and shake his hand. Then you say, “Dumela, rra” or “Dumela, kgosi” and we sit. We ask him questions about how things are run, and what his role is in the community. Then in turn everyone else (including the VDC – village development committee) gets to ask us questions about why we are here and about the US. Many questions we didn’t have an answer for. Like what is the crime rate in the US? We had no idea…we just said it depended on where you lived. Or what is the HIV/AIDS rate in the US? WOW…now that one we should have known….we had no idea also. I braved the question to ask the kgosi about HIV/AIDS (they are normally very private about these topics here) and he just said that it is very secretive here and that no one talks to him about it. Interesting…I’m hoping later, with whichever village I end up in, I will be able to talk to the kgosi openly about programs I would like his/her support in for HIV/AIDS. Oh! And on a side note…the kgosi’s dad…fricking awesome! He was wearing a tie and vest…some chucks….and fedora…and he was 90. He looked like an old Cuban man that should be in a rocking chair smoking a cigar. So wish I took a pic of it. He was straight up BALLER. Lol.

After meeting the kgosi, we went home. I cooked dinner, but really couldn’t eat it anymore, so I just told them to eat without. I gathered up 2 more trainees, and headed back into town. They wanted to see how to get there and where the supermarket and internet café was. So we started hiking down, then…ok parents and people of the US…don’t freak out…we HITCHED a ride down the rest of the way. A guy pulled up and asked if we wanted a ride to where we were going. I figured, there were 3 of us…one being 60+ years of age, it was probably harmless, and it is a mode of transportation out here… Turns out he was in the police force. YAY! Now we didn’t feel so worried about. He dropped us off at Choppies. YAY!! My first hitched ride, and no glitches! SWEET.

Since we got paid today…we decided to splurge a little. I bought CHEESE. Omg…I was sooooo excited to make a grilled cheese sandwich (which was DELICIOUS and exactly what I needed!). Showed them where the internet café was. Then took a combi home. And did I forget to add….we did this all on our OWN. No other Batswana with us. I was so proud of us! J I’m starting to really get comfortable with the environment. YAY!!! That’s about it for today. I watched my first episode of Mad Men, now I’m going to read a little then go to bed. But hey, I’m getting there…I’ll be ok. J