As of late I have been a terrible blogger, and I apologize
for my lack of correspondence on this page. I am going to try and make up for
it by filling you in on the last few weeks. This is going to be a long post,
and I will try and insert some pretty pictures in order to keep you entertained
J
Let us start off with my trip to the salt pans over Botswana
Independence! A few weeks back a bunch of us realized that we had a vacation
day coming up and that since those don’t come around every month, we needed to
take advantage and go somewhere cool. There are about a billion cool
destination spots within Botswana to take advantage of and therefore no
shortage of places to go. This time around we decided to head to the
Makgadikgadi Salt Pans.
On a map of Botswana you might mistake the pans for a second
smaller delta, and a few generations ago you might have been right. The pans
used to be a giant lake that dried up; though the water is no longer there, the
deposits that rested at the bottom of the lake are.
When those deposits turn into a salty crust they look like
this:
and it breaks off in chunks that look like this:
And when it gets all over your face it looks like this:
Think of it as a salt pan farmer’s tan.
Anyways the vacation
weekend included camping out under the stars in a child’s tent I bought from
Sefolana (a general store), cooking over an open fire (I can make veggie chili
just as tasty without a stove top), walking around 2,000 year old baobab trees,
meeting loads of cool people that were also touring around, and spent countless
hours swimming in the pool and sunbathing with some of the coolest people ever.
The campsite we stayed at was called Planet Baobab, and I would highly suggest
it to anyone interested in pans camping that happens to be in Botswana...which
I am sure is a ton of you.
You might have gathered based on the name that the site had
Baobabs all over the place. I don’t know if you have ever stood under a tree
that is thousands of years old but it was one of the most humbling experiences
of my life. This big, towering, beautiful life force has been around for so
much longer than I have, and will be around for so much longer after I am gone,
after everyone who is reading this is gone, and our children, and our
children’s children are gone.
Think of what the world looked like when this
tree was small:
That is my friend Lindsay standing next to one
of the larger ones that were on the site. It gives you an idea of how big these
things really are. We got up at the crack of butt in order to get sunrise
pictures of them. I will try and get some of her better ones since my little
point and shoot camera couldn't really do the scene justice. For sure on my
life list of things I need as a committed nomad is a good camera and it might
be something I “invest” in with my readjustment allowance
All in all it was a wonderful weekend, good times paired
with even better company. At the end of the weekend we packed up our tents,
gathered our pots and pans and hitched back to Nata, the closest big village.
Lindsay, Hollis, Mignon and I were able to catch a ride in a thatch truck,
which was a total delight where hitches are concerned.
While everyone was heading back to their homes, I was traveling
south and slowly making my way to Kanye. I would like to give a big shout out
to Jada and her mother for being wonderful hosts and letting me stay a night in
Mahalapye. It totally makes sense that someone as wonderful as Jada would have
an equally fabulous mother. J
The next stop in Claire’s whirlwind tour of half of Botswana
was Kanye to meet the fabulous newbies of Bots 13. As you may have picked up
from the post under this one, I am a big fan of the trainees that made their
way here in September, and it’s not only because the Bots 12 are no longer the
new kids on the block. The group is full of smart, funny, and overwhelmingly
female people. I don’t know what it is about Botswana that Peace Corps
Washington seems to interpret as needing women, but this new group has even
less men than ours did. Out of 40 some volunteers there are 4 men; 2 whom are
married, one in the 50+ group and one in the 20 something bracket.
Back on track, I was at the Bots 13 PST in order to help
PCMO (PC Medical Office) give a presentation on tropical diseases and parasites
or, as I like to call it, poop and bugs. It wasn't so much the poop and bugs
that were the real point of the presentation though it was more making sure you
take care of yourself and avoid situations where you might be exposed to things
like schistosomiasis, malaria, scabies or ring worm. Instead of doing the
standard ‘break into groups and analyze these case studies’ I decided to do a
Jeopardy type dealio and then did what any popular presenter should do to win
over an audience...I promised them candy.
It was a successful presentation and I got to meet these
wonderful new people that, in a few months, will swear in and become fellow
volunteers. I wish them a ton of luck getting through the rest of PST, and I want
to thank them so much for the warm reception upon meeting them. Can’t wait to
come visit everybody at their new villages!
Finally I was on my way home to Ramokgonami, and after two
days so were two Bots 13 trainees. For those of you not so familiar with the
PST training regimen that every volunteer must go through before swear in. Part
of this whole horse and pony show is following a currently serving volunteer
around for a week. I was twice as lucky and received two shadowees due to some
last second budgetary issues and we had a kick booty time! Chiara and Lisset
were fabulous shadows and I could not have asked for better. We walked the
village, hung out with my coworkers and friends and had a wonderful tour of the
junior secondary school.
Going to take another moment to thank you two wonderful
people for being fabulous guests, incredible conversationalists and patient
individuals willing to listen to me gab because I wasn't used to having English
speakers in my house for such a long period of time; you are both tremendous
and I look forward to future visits on both our parts.
Alright, so finally I am home, and I can focus on my work,
right? FALSE! I show up to work Monday to discover that one of my coworkers has
tested positive for TB, this of course coincides with a cold that I had
developed sometime on Saturday. For those of you that know me, I want you to
put this together, I give presentation on disease (which included TB), I am
tired after a few weeks of bouncing around, I find out someone I spend a lot of
time with has TB...I am dramatic...therefore, say it with me people, I must
have TB. I take Tuesday off because I am spewing phlegm everywhere and Tuesdays
are my work with the preschoolers day. Wednesday I take a half day and Thursday
I have a fun conversation with PCMO about another medical issue that had come
up that morning.
The PCMO decides I need to come into Gabs which means, yet
again, I am leaving my village. Here is where I fill you in about this. I did
not come here to bop around the country, I came here to help the community that
I was placed in. Now, not only was I blessed with a job I am passionate about,
I was blessed with a community that I also love and care about. I have been
here for a little over 6 months, and in Rams for a little over 4 months, which
means I haven’t gotten to the point where I can leave my community and still
feel super ingrained even if it’s only for a few days. I feel like I have to
catch up and re-ingrain.
I don’t want this to come off as me being mad at medical, it
is more that I am frustrated with how often I have had to leave my community in
the last few weeks.
At the end of the day everything is fine now, and I am back
in Rams and I am doing the work I came here to do. Life as a PCV was never
going to be consistent so I guess it is just another step in the learning curve
to be dealing with this kind of thing.
Hugs and smooches,
Claire
p.s. sorry for the abrupt ending, limited net time and I
wanted to make sure I posted something, more later for sure!
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