Spamming

Because this blog is public, there is a certain amount of spamming that happens here. I try to deal with it the best that I can, but lets make one thing clear.

IF YOU SPAM MY BLOG WITH COMMENTS ABOUT AN HIV "CURE" IT WILL BE DELETED, AND I WILL BE SENDING ANGRY VIBES YOUR WAY FOR AT LEAST A MINUTE OR TWO.

That is all. :)

More to come on the GLOW camps soon!

Claire

Shop Talk

We have finally broken ground on the tree nursery, and as per usual things aren't going as planned (but really, when do they ever?)

The guy we got to do the construction is either a.) completely devoid of knowledge for what would be needed for this type of project or b.) an idiot. I know it is probably not that simple, but I wish he would have been more honest with us about the quote. We have had to shuffle things around three times to get him money for supplies he didn't account for. At this point in time the nursery is "complete" but the thing looks bad, and not at all what I think any of us were hoping for. Hoping that there will be some left over money once the solar dehydrators are completed so we can add to what look like a very poor skeletal structure.

Speaking of which...

Nothing in Botswana seems to be set up for DIY construction projects. I have figured out how to get a drill and router (thanks to Hollis, an amazing PCV east of me) but am now having serious issues figuring out how to get the actual materials needed, despite the fact that I have a supplies list in metric now (the first version was in imperial.) There are a few problems, but let me list a couple of the major ones.

Firstly, timber here is not cut into the same dimensions as in the states, so even though I know know that a 19x38 is equal to a 2x4, none of the stores I have been to have this as an option for buying wood. The design I am using requires 2x4s, 4x4s, 1x4s, and 1x2s. The only thing that the shops have out of these are the 4x4s and then a bastardized 2x4 (114x38.)

Secondly, apparently the only people that go into hardware stores to buy this kind of stuff are people that are professionals. I came in with a list of supplies, a rough schematic and a general verbal description of what I am planning to build and got NOWHERE with any of the staff people working at any of the businesses I went to for a quote. No one could help me, make suggestions or suggest replacement ideas of the parts I needed that don't happen here. On top of all this, no one I went to said that they would be able to cut the timber to the sizes I needed, saying I would have to cut it myself, so it is looking like I am going to need a hand saw and a horse.

It doesn't really help that in all of this you have me, Claire, who hasn't really constructed anything in her life without the supervision of someone who knew what they were doing and had access to a fully stocked shop. I have enlisted the skills of Lindsay's brother to help me out but they are leaving on June 10th, and I'm horrified that I won't be able to get the stuff I need. At this point I'm not really even thinking about the actual building part, as much as I am concerned with getting the materials. I will figure the rest out later. EISH.

Please send me some good vibes, I'm going to need them.

Hugs and smooches,
Claire

The Virgin and The Whore

I live on the edge of the community, it’s about a 20minute walk from the clinic and about a mile away from the library. This isn’t an issue to me, because I really enjoy walking, but for some reason I am just out of the radius of how far people are willing to walk to come visit. Where some Volunteers get lots of people “checking” on them on a regular basis, I don’t really have that. For the most part I don’t mind that so much because I’m really only home before 7:15am and after 5pm, and on the weekends and the greater portions of those times are times I want to be alone, or I think I want to be alone.

Anyways, Saturday I had a visitor. Her name is Pelo (“heart” in Setswana) and we met on the bus and struck up a fun conversation. She has come to check me a few times, and usually we just end up talking about the differences between the US and Botswana. This was the first time she had actually been inside my house, so the plethora of pictures and letters that plaster my walls were very much a fascination to her. What ensued was a two hour conversation that ran the gamut of emotions. I got angry when she insisted that her perception of the US was more accurate than mine, i.e. “It is easy to become famous in America, you are wrong.” I was agitated and also slightly tickled at some of her broad sweeping statements, “All white people do look alike, you can’t tell the difference between any one of you.” I laughed when she was perplexed by how much grass carpeted the outdoor scenes in my photos, and promised that if she came to the US to visit that I would show her snow.

Then we got to the part of the conversation that I knew would come. She asked to see, and this is exactly how she phrased it, my “what.” She asked a few times to see my “what” and refused to elaborate more than that. I finally figured out that she was asking to see a picture of my boyfriend, which I don’t have. I do have a picture of my ex, so I showed her that, while explaining that I didn’t think it was necessary for someone to have a boyfriend or a husband in order to be happy. This concept was so foreign to her that she began to insist that I must still be in love with my ex. I tried to convince her by saying that my ex has a new girlfriend, and that we talked a few time while I was here, and that I wished him well, but am very much not in love with him.

“So you still talk with him, and you have a picture of him...I understand” she said with a knowing smile that made me want to wipe the condescending smirk off her face with a frying pan. I told her that she didn’t understand, and she insisted that she did. I have had enough experience with 17 year old girls to know this was a fight I wasn’t going to win, so though I was incredibly frustrated I let it slide and moved on to a new topic. I asked why, in this culture, people were not okay with someone not having a boyfriend or girlfriend? She said that people who say they don’t want someone must be sleeping around. Those are the options, case closed; you either want someone or you want everyone, wanting just yourself is not an option.

At that point a taxi driver I had exchanged contact information with called me from Palapye. I got this guys number and gave him mine because it is always good t have a few cab numbers in your phone. When it became clear that he was calling to flirt I cut the conversation short and hung up the phone. Her first reaction: “that is your Motswana boyfriend?” I told her “no”, and that I had no interest in having a boyfriend in Botswana, or America. She started to tell me about her boyfriend, and how he was pressuring her into sex, and that she had told him “no.” I gave her a high five and told her that she had EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD to refuse to have sex until she felt like she was ready. She said he told her he would find someone else to be with. She told me that she thought she was going to have to leave him soon, because she didn’t want to have sex with him.

It wasn’t until after she left that the true weight of the conversation we had, had really hit me. This culture, or how she had experienced and lived within this culture, was one where she was required to have a boyfriend in order to avoid the label of being a lose girl, the type of girl that sleeps around and gets pregnant. Within this relationship she was required to have, she was being pressured and threatened with sex which, would again put her at risk for pregnancy. Now, we have talked about using a condom, so I hope when she is ready to have sex she will use one. But I can also imagine there is probably a correlation between boys who pressure their girlfriends to have sex, and boys who pressure their girlfriends to have sex without a condom. I have no data to back this up, it just makes logical sense to me. 

It was an enlightening conversation, and keyed me into the idea that no matter how much time you spend in a place you still have a lot to learn. More thoughts on this later.

Claire

Big Girl Shoes

I have been thinking about the future an awful lot lately. Thinking about what it means for me, what it means for my relationships with people, thinking about jobs and this blog. "A Ginger Goes to Peace Corps Botswana" is fast approaching 25,000 views, which isn’t a ton for something that has been running for almost three years, but considering that it really only caters to Peace Corps Volunteers/people who want to be Peace Corps Volunteers/ my family and friends, I would say that is pretty good. I have been trying to figure out whether or not I am going to continue writing here when I go home, and I think I am going to. Obviously the name will change, and I will probably reformat a bit, but I want to write these things down, and put them out there, and I think this would be a good place to do it.

It’s such an interesting time in your life, your 20s. Some people will graduate from college, out of a school system that they have been in for nearly 15 years, and suddenly you are out in the world, and homework is not your number one priority. You make decisions, decisions about graduate school, or a job, or joining Peace Corps. The world is open to you to some extent and unless you got married or had a kid, you have no one but yourself to answer to. I delayed this whole process by going into Peace Corps, and now I am facing that terrible steppe of opportunity for the first time. I applied for my first big girl job today; an application that wanted a resume, and a cover letter and a writing sample. It would be a dream job for me too, it’s as a Program Officer with the Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get it, but I’m applying anyway and the prospect is thrilling.

The job is based in Oakland, they are looking for someone who has at least five years of professional experience (I have maybe three.) They want someone who has worked out of North America for at least two years (check), and on the posting they said that “proficiency in Arabic or another Asian language” would be preferred. I have a year of college level Turkish, an Asian Studies Specialization and a Middle Eastern regional specialization so though I’m not proficient in Turkish, I am familiar with the region, and I would love to start learning again. The job would require overseas travel after training, and according to the posting would start July 1^st, which clearly isn’t going to be possible for me, but maybe if they like me a whole lot they would be willing to delay that a bit.

One of the tags for this was “LGBT” and they specifically mention trans women in the posting. I don’t think I will get this job, but it gives me an idea of the type of job I am reaching for. The type of job I want to get into, and that is just so terribly exciting. The potential for a job like this, the potential that I have to be the person I am becoming, is so thrilling it makes me want to run around (and I hate running.) It so scary too, what if I fall short, or fall on my face, or fall over my big girl shoes? I get that you never really become a set individual, or at least I don’t think you do, so what if my change is too slow? What if everyone else is changing faster and I am unable to change quickly enough to keep up? You know what is even more scary than not getting a job like this? GETTING A JOB LIKE THIS! What if I did get the job and then suddenly I’m a human rights worker, which I like to think I kind of already am, but this would just make it official. What if I can’t give all the peoples all their rights?

You know what being a human/ civil rights worker entails? It entails signing up for a job that you know you aren’t going to see the end of. It means believing in a cause so vehemently that you don’t care that you will never see the big win accomplished, or the end goal achieved. It means opening yourself up to the evils of the world, and being willing to face and fight. It means casualties, for you and the people you are working with, and not all of them will be mortalities of the human kind (though some, in some fields, will be) but sometimes it means watching ideas die, or hope die, and then you are in charge of moving forward and finding new hope (Star Wars!) and new ideas.

It means cashing in karma instead of a pay check, working odd hours, traveling a lot, and being willing to mystique (X-Men!) your way into new cultures and climates and not in a vacation way, but in a living way. It means putting on others people shoes, or their lack of shoes, and walking more than just the mile. It means understanding that chopping up your heart and giving it to different communities actually makes your heart bigger and not smaller.

You remember the first time you went on a roller coaster? You are so excited and so scared and you get to the top of that first drop and you think you are going to laugh and vomit all at the same time. That is where I am at, I’m at the top of a hill looking down, and I’m about to drop into the world as an adult and I may giggle or I may wet myself, but either way it is coming. My Dad always likes to say “Life is an adventure, if you so choose.” Well, I’m choosing, I’m dropping, I bought the ticket so I’m going to ride the ride.

Here goes...everything

Claire

*Jeopardy Music*

Just wanted to give y'all a quick update on life and the what not, I figured I owed you all after the not so organized mess of a post proceeding this one. :)

Tree Nursery: We have bought the materials and actually everything came in under budget, so we now have an extra p100 to spend on something that may come in over budget. Hoping to start construction next week, and I will be spending the weekend formatting a lesson plan for how to teach the community about moringa. I will hopefully be passing this lesson plan, along with a few community mobilization pointers, on to the ladies by the end of May so they can start running workshops as soon as we have the solar dehydrators built.

-Solar Dehydrators: I have found a brother of a PCV who says he can make up a supplies list for me, at which point I will try and get some price quotes from the local hardware stores. Fingers crossed that we may have the funds to build two of these babies.

Pre School Roof Project: I'm meeting with the Red Cross and the pre school teachers today to talk about a few issues. The two biggest ones are going to be if we can bring the pre school back under the umbrella of the Red Cross and if we can use their bank account to do an Indiegogo campaign to fix the roof so they can actually start having class there again. Send me good thoughts about the teachers showing up, they were unable to the last time.

Kilimanjaro: Has been canceled since I couldn't get a large enough group of people together to make it affordable. The two front runners for Claire's ever changing COS trip plans are now Budapest and Barcelona, and then a quick hop over to Belgium to visit my friend Andrew who is living in The Hague (the area not the ICC itself.) I'm keeping it in Europe because I got a partial e-voucher from British Airways after the crash when I went home and it expires after a year, so I would really love to take advantage.

LGBTQ Support Group: So our Easter retreat got canceled which makes me sad, but I'm hoping I will get to help participate in the other fun stuff we are going to be doing over the next two months. Also looking forward to getting my copy of the GENDER book, both for my own personal use and education as well as starting to pass around a second copy to interested groups in Botswana.

Women's Empowerment Workshop: The library is hosting a woman's empowerment workshop tomorrow night that they have asked me to come sing/ play guitar at. I was kind of happy to have my hands off this one because things have been so busy with the other projects, but I'm happy to lend a hand the day of. Should be a fun time, I have been asked to wear an "evening gown" which I don't have, but I will work my best.

That is pretty much what is going on in the world of Claire. Turning 25 next week which is a little crazy, seeing as I started this whole Peace Corps process at 21. Weirdly enough this whole portion of my life has both made be think about my biological clock and the goals I want to accomplish in my life in relations to a family and babies and the like, as well as want to put it out of my mind forever. Fingers crossed this is just a mid twenties insecurity thing.

Hugs and smooches,
Claire

Hardest Thing

One of the most common questions I get as a Volunteer is what is the hardest part of my service. There are a million answers to this, depending on the day, depending on my mood or what may be irking me, but we are going to look into some of the big ones.

The first and foremost for this is loneliness, hands down this is the most common “hard thing” I deal with on a daily basis. I’m a people person so being on my own is difficult, and it has only gotten worse as my service has gone on. I used to be SO PUMPED about weekends on my own, weekends where I could write and clean and read a book and just enjoy my time without having to worry about work or inter cultural communication. Now I dread them. I’m sitting here in my house writing this blog post on Botswana Labor Day because sitting in my house alone makes me desperate. Do I really have any business posting stuff this personal online? I guess my shot at a political career was probably killed when I started talking about sex toys and lube J

On a particularly emo day I wrote into an online advice site once and asked “How do I deal with loneliness?” Their answer focused along the lines of being okay being by myself and making sure that I wasn’t afraid of being alone because I was afraid of the company I would keep. Unfortunately, this isn’t really my situation, maybe it was at one point, but I truly believe I have passed beyond it. I still do need alone time, truly, but the amount I get is too much for an extrovert that needs someone to debate politics with, who doesn’t cook very well unless she is cooking for someone else, and who likes to talk about the books she is reading with other people. I live 30mins car ride from the closest Volunteer, which in Peace Corps land means practically next door, but I want to be around people more often. I want to be able to talk gender, politics, identity and race with people that can follow me, and don’t immediately switch to “homosexuals are Satanists”, or just have those conversations without having to tip toe and wonder if I am going to put myself in danger. That just isn’t possible with where I am currently living.

The next biggest thing is that I tend to over compensate with those I am trying to communicate with back home, which I then over think about, and then stress out about. I am one of those types of people who can be pretty damn confident in person, but have a lot more confidence issues when communicating through writing (which is weird because I LOVE communicating through writing.) Example, one of my absolute FAVORITE bloggers asked for politically minded people to watch a video of them answering questions that mostly dealt with intersectional points between race, fetish, sexuality, identity and gender, and to give them feedback on language and possible touchy points. I was SO desperate to be a part of conversations like this, and to be a part of the work they are doing that I stupidly offered to do so. I have very little formal training on gender work, I have slightly more education on race and pretty much my entire library of queer knowledge has been acquired due to my own initiative here, through online blogs, books, conversations with the LGBT community in Botswana, and my own experiences. I HAVE NO BUSINESS CRITIQUING A GENDER EXPERT!!

I watched the video, took running notes throughout about what I would have gone about differently and proceeded to write almost four pages to this person. I edited, re edited, took out the majority of my opinions, and re worded things a million times. I was worried that they would think I hadn’t watched the video, which would come off as unprofessional, and seeing as I want to do similar work when I get back, I didn’t want them to think I had just forgotten about it, so I sent it. I sent it and then I freaked the hell out. This is an email, this individual doesn’t know me in person and though I meant everything I pointed out from a loving perspective, sending opinions on race and identity through an email can get so twisted, and they are an expert, and who did I think I was??? I also riddled the email with small jibes at myself about how I wasn't qualified to do this, which just made me look more like a psycho. I called my partner and proceeded to freak to them about what I had done, and which point they tried to get me to calm down.

You know the GENDER book I was plugging in a few different posts on here? As much as I have only received positive feedback from the group that are running the project, I still worry that they view me as the freaky girl in Botswana who is a little stalkery in her enthusiasm. I sent an email to Ivan Coyote, whose books have been an amazing support and outlet for me here, and all I can think about it how, after the second update on how the support group was doing, that they probably weren’t interested and I was probably wasting their time...DESPITE the fact that they sent me a book...a signed book. You question yourself here in so many ways that you never would have thought about back home because you have too much time to be in your own head. I get that this is a normal process for a 24, soon to be 25 year old, and I can’t wait to get a little older, and to be a little bit more stable in myself, but I have the ability to be such a confident mofo, and the isolation just points out so much that is hard to escape and it throws me off my game.

Thirdly, and this is a super duper fun one, Peace Corps can sometimes act as this weird twilight zone kind of space when viewing your past and your future. I will preface this one with the fact that this maybe a specific experience for someone who has joined the service young. It is your real life, but it is nothing like the life before, so it is hard to mesh them together. It makes you question things like whether or not you actually want to live in the united states for the rest of your life, it makes you wonder about whether or not this nomadic type living may be what you want forever. It makes you think about what your life would be like had you stuck on the course that some of your friends had, like graduate school, or getting married, or babies. A friend of mine had an INTENTIONAL CHILD! I had a friend who had been married for a few years and actually planned, and succeeded in getting pregnant. I had friends who had unintentional babies, which was wonderful and still a delightful surprise, but people my age are now planning on getting pregnant and...you know...doing it...DOING IT FOR THE SAKE OF BABIES!

I’m planning a trip for after COS, and it was supposed to be Kilimanjaro but it doesn’t appear like I am going to be able to get a big enough group for it, so I’m planning something else. What I really want to do is go to Mongolia for the Naadam Festival which is this awesome nomad sports competition, which includes one of the largest horse races in the world. I want to do this, because the logical choice of Spain, seems to easy for me now. It doesn’t seem like enough of a travel challenge. SPAIN, I’m such a snooty world person now, that freaking Spain, which is one of the most interesting cultural clashes in the world of Islamic and Christian empires, doesn’t seem like it would be interesting enough. I have half a free ticket through British Airlines, which doesn’t fly to Mongolia, but does to Spain, and still I am thinking about Mongolia. I have spent the last 2 yrs getting paid about $300 a month, and half a plane ticket isn’t tempting me enough to knock out other options.

Stupid Peace Corps...

So the hardest thing about Peace Corps, is being in Peace Corps. It is going to open you up, rip out your insides, smoosh them around, and then put them back in you and do a shoty job of stitching you up. It’s going to make you question, and doubt and turn things around over and over in your head so much that they wear a track between your frontal lobe and the left and right hemispheres of your brain. It’s being your only option for company, and cooking for one, and questioning whether or not your role models think you are creepy, and at the end of the day going to bed, knowing you are going to have to wake up and do it all over again.

The best part of Peace Corps, is knowing that you can, and that you will, and that the painful process of expansion leaves you with a version of yourself that you love that much more.

It really is the hardest job you will ever love...

Thanks for reading my freak out, hope all is well where you are!

Claire