Week 6

This was a really excellent week! We did just the right amount of adventure, party, school and everything.

On Tuesday one of my closest friends that I have met here turned 21 so we took her out for the night, needless to say, after the amount of alcohol she consumed, it was no surprise that her Irish accent and overly cuddly self was an enjoyable addition to the evening.  It was a pretty great time because we went out for karaoke and dancing at a local place called Zoom, this has become our favorite place to go.  Anyways on funny story from that night was that Audrey (birthday girl) tried to do the worm in the middle of the dance floor, smashed her face on the ground and ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye- I guess you cant expect anything less from a 21^st birthday.

Also got a chance to talk to my soccer coach because I have realized that I am way less committed to this then they probably want me to be because we go on so many weekend trips and I volunteer twice a week which means I miss training… Anyways I was worried I would have to quit soccer since I couldn’t fully commit but the coach was very understanding and told me to come when I could make it, I get am getting the best of both worlds- traveling when I can and playing soccer when I can’t (two of my all time favorite things).

Volunteering this week was so much fun.  So my Wednesday volunteering is at a place called Happy Hands, it is a club for kids in a poorer neighborhood.  I am in charge of teaching the English class for 5,6,7 graders; teaching them Basic English Skills.  This week we went over punctuation; things like quotation marks and apostrophize.  We also talked about switching from singular to plural, which was so hard. How do you tell a kid that the plural of moose is moose, and for most words with a “y” at the end you “drop the y and add i-e-s” except for not with monkey- you just add an “s” on the end of that one.  This class is actually really good for me since English has never been my strong suit and the best way to learn is to teach.  They are so cute and enthusiastic about learning.

I finally presented for my Traditional and Alternative medicine class and it actually went really well, the teacher liked our presentation and that is saying something since the group that presented after us was stopped 5 minutes in and told to re-do their presentation and present on Friday- harsh guy but I guess that’s good for us?

This weekend I finally got the cultural experience I have been craving since I have been here.  A group of international students went to a festival called “Son of the Soil.”  It is a celebration of the traditional Botswana culture through food, games, dance, music and dress.  So pretty much a little bit of everything.  We showed up and the people in charge were so friendly and nice, they told us to go get involved in whatever we wanted to so a bunch of us went off exploring to see what we could help with.  My first stop was at the spot where the cooking was happening.  We helped make rolls and fat cakes (which are just oversized scones) in traditional ovens and then the real fun started.  We got directed over to an area of the cooking that was working with the meat.  We got to cut up an entire chicken, slice the entrails and intestines of a cow, and cook a pot of chicken heads.  Pretty intense to say the least, the chicken was extremely hard to chop up and I say I succeeded with hesitation because it didn’t turn out too well.  While we were there we tried about 5 different parts of the inside of a cow including the kidney, liver, and intestines.  We also tried chicken neck and feet- personally from now on, I will be sticking to chicken breasts and thighs but to each his own.   After we had finished helping cook, we took a break in some hammocks that were placed in a circle under a tree.  We took a ride on a donkey cart, learned how to play traditional games like man calla, jump rope, and marbles.  Then this little kid came over to me and was attached to me for the rest of the day, we became great friends doing magic tricks, playing with my camera and wandering around.  He was so darn cute; his mom took a picture of us and started calling me “his new mom.”   Then there was a fashion show called “RURAL SWAG” that was put together by a local trying to mix the western trends with traditional cultural outfits, and of course, he asked the white people to be a part of it.  So we went back behind this stage to change into outfits, which we had to alter by ourselves to make sure that nothing was exposed- and then went out and literally walked on a runway showing off the outfits.  I could NOT stop laughing, I think the stylist was secretly mad at me because of it but I couldn’t help it.  It was about 3:30 or 4:00 at that point and most of our group was ready to leave but thankfully, me and two other people decided we wanted to stay and see what else would happen and I am sooooooooo glad that we did.  The fun started after that because traditional dance groups got up and performed both bushman and other tribal dances rolling around in the dirt and acting out war stories and it was amazing. They are great dancers to say the least.  Then there was a little sing off- northern Botswana vs. southern Botswana.  We joined the southern side since we live in Gabs but ended up pretending to be from a tribe in Kanye.  The sing off was pretty exciting because all the songs were in Setswana so the three of us were just yelling at the top of our lungs, but I think we pulled it off because the south won!  The night was finished off by a concert type deal where tons of local performers came with their traditional outfits, backup dancers and instruments to perform for us.  We ended up right in front of the stage and spent the next 4 hours dancing and singing to music.  I found my new husband- who was a back up dancer for one of the bands, one guys band was playing the finger pianos which was sweet, and I got told I was the best white dancer people had ever seen.  I would call that night a win.

making rolls

my little tag along- emanuel

my "rural swag" runway outfit

traditional botswana dancing

cow insides

traditional dancers

i strut my little tush on the catwalk..

boa constrictor.

smallest turtle ever

this is my son.

more traditional dancing

"rural swag" designer- we switched bracelets

my 5,6,7 graders

Week 5 and counting

Well here is to week 5 being just dandy!  It was actually a pretty relaxing week mostly because we hung out on campus a lot more than usual.  It was nice actually just to hang around. 

Also just a really quick shout out to one of my life long best friends who got engaged this last week!  Megan Gessel, I am so happy for you, I think you and Scott are perfect for each other and I can’t wait to help with the planning from the other side of the world.  Congratulations pretty girl, Scott is one lucky guy. Always knew you would be the first of us to go and it’s weird that it’s not weird that you are getting married.   May 24^th is gonna be a great day.

As far as Africa goes, lets see what stories we got this week…Only got a few, so the AFCON final was last Sunday and we spent it at a really great Bar/Grill that was completely full of avid soccer fans- most of which were cheering for Burkina Faso-including myself because they beat my team (Togo) and it was a pretty awesome game, except for the fact that Nigeria won 1-0.  I treated myself to NORMAL FOOD- I got a super tasty salad with all sorts of veggies in it, which sounds weird because who calls that good food?  Me. Now. After not having veggies for like a month, it tasted sort of what I suspect heaven would taste like. 

Valentines day was a very nice day; a group of us went to the mall called Airport Junction where I treated myself to a mango and a pair of the most awesome pants I had seen in a while. Then it sort of became a bummer night, because the power went out in the mall.  We had just sat down to order all you can eat pizza, delicious when the waitress told us we could only order off the valentine’s menu. Lame. So we tried to go to a different restaurant that the power pooped out on us. So we sat there for an hour in the dark, decided it was not going to come back on so we went to a different mall and ate a different kind of delicious pizza. I had so many valentines that day- when I get home and boys don’t really talk to me again, I am going to wonder where all my game went- then I will realize I never had any, it was just the boys here that have WAY to much.

The weekend was particularly excellent because we went camping at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary located like 4 hours away from Gaborone.    Early Saturday morning a group of 8 international students packed up and walked over to the Gabs Bus Station where we got on a old bus that took us 3/4ths of the way to the sanctuary, then we had to wait for a different bus so we spent a few hours later in the morning eating cool time popsicles (which are the most amazing things ever, I like guava flavor the best) and getting hassled by little kids that couldn’t figure out what kind of creatures we were.  Finally we got to the sanctuary where we spent the afternoon at a restaurant enjoying burgers and fries and playing card games. Then we got to our camp site which was real nice.  We spent the evening climbing trees and setting up our tents.  Then we decided we wanted to build a fire so some of us went on a walk looking for wood- Claire, Audrey and I pretty much tackled an entire tree and took it back to camp which worked out pretty good for logs.  Only problem now was how to start the fire.  Hunter spend an hour working on a contraption he invented trying to get some sparks and finally we forfeited and asked our neighbors for a match.  We got a pretty large bonfire going, toasted tuna sandwiched over the fire and went star gazing all night.  We finally tried to get some sleep by squishing way too many people in 2 man tents on the hard ground, needless to say, sleeping was a challenge even for me (which is saying something) but I still love camping.  At 6am we woke up to go on an early morning game drive in the coolest safari jeep ever, it was like riding the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland so I enjoyed myself besides the fact that we saw animals! The rhinos were super awesome to see but I still love seeing the zebras and the wildabeasts and deer-like creatures.  After a few hours, we packed up and stood on the side of the road until a bus drove by, we flagged it down and jumped on getting back to Gaborone just in time to nap for the rest of the day. I really love camping.

safari!

our 6 am safari car

no clue what this guys is called but he is PRETTY

woot.

Rhino Sanctuary

White Rhinos.

spring buck!

this is white with black stripes- you have to look at the tummy.

stupid birds trying to out run our car.

 bus station

the only time I have been cold, it was strangely nice.

AFCON final.

AFCON final, go Burkina Faso.

One Month Mark

This week was a pretty chill week for the most part.  School actually really
started with week which is just wonderful and I just started working
on my first group presentation for my Traditional and Alternative
Medicine class which will hopefully end up being really awesome.  My
other classes are great too, I really love my Rural Development and
Reproductive Health classes.

A few quick stories to make this more exciting! First one is
about soccer- my paperwork finally went through which means I actually
got to play this week! We all met up to go to our game which was about
an hour and a half drive we loaded everyone onto a bus that should
really only fit about half the amount of people we smushed into it.
When I say I had half-of-a-half-of-a-butt cheek on a chair, that is a
generous assumption. Armpits in my face, sweat making everything
overly sticky and no room to move made for a very enjoyable bus ride.
Anyways we get to the field and its way crappy even by Africa
standards, it was dirt which was fine but the kicker was the bushes
and cow pies scattered around the field.  The refs decided this was
not game ready so we ended up just playing a friendly game which was fine,
but I actually got to play wing which was so much fun! Having a white player
is something of a rare occurrence here so when me and the other white
girl sub'ed in everyone (even fans from the other team) started
cheering at the top of their lungs and every time we would touched the
ball they would shout "lacoa!" which means white in setswana. ha no
pressure, and of course I trip and fall and eat it way hard, start
bleeding and everyone had a field day.  The best was after the game
when the other team came up to me trying to touch my hands and a few
of them even tried to switch me jerseys like they sometimes do in the
world cup. Once the ball went out and it was a corner kick, I went to get the
 ball and kick the corner, and some local guy got the ball for me but when
 he handed it to me, he reached out and just touched my hand- just
stroked it real quick. Ha I have a feeling soccer is going to be one of the more
interesting things I am involved with this semester.

I found places to volunteer!  I have gone to two of the three places
so far and absolutely love them.  The first one is the clinic on
campus where I go and can do simple height/weight/BMI tests along with
simple blood tests for cholesterol and blood sugar, hopefully
eventually I will even get to help out with some HIV/AIDS stuff which
would be sweet.  The other place I have been to is an after school
program for orphans and kids living in vulnerable situations.  So I
get to hang out with ridiculously cute kids for a few hours every
week.  There was one little girl with down-syndrome in the group and I
was immediately drawn to her, lucky for me, she was drawn to me too.
The last place I have to turn in my resume for tomorrow, but the local
hospital might be able to attach me to a doctor to shadow and help out
around the unit for a few hours a week. WIN!  we will see how this all
goes but it seems to be playing out pretty well!

One last story, when we were coming back from dinner on friday
night we got in a car accident.  A drunk driver ran a red light 
and our cab actually ended up t-boning him but we were all wearing 
our seat belts and we are all fine, just a little whip lash for a day but that is
gone now.  We were also way lucky because the police were literally right
behind us which made getting everything sorted a ton easier because
they saw the entire thing.  Moral of that story, always wear your seat belt.
Also, dont drink and drive.

school for orphans and vulnerable children. so adorable. 

my roomie brittany!

my close group of friends- hilary, anna, audrey, claire, me

me and my good "auzie" friend claire

night out at Bull and Bush restaurant, club and bar

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Sarafina!

South Africa and Mozambique (part two)

The bus ride to Mozambique was very relaxed until we had to get off and cross the border.  The second we got off the bus we were attacked and surrounded by about twenty different people trying to get us to buy anything, grab our purses, and just touch us.  Freaked me out a little but totally made the two girls I was with want to turn around and run right on the spot.  Finally with the help of another really nice guy, we got through immigration and back onto the bus safely.  We got to Maputo and I have never seen so much poverty in my life, everyone there lives in a shack at best and every single street was lined with trash and mud, there were people urinating on the side of the roads and people sleeping in a line under cardboard on the side of the street. We were expecting to get dropped off at some kind of train station where we would call the phone number to the hotel we knew we could get a room at.   Nope.  We got dropped off on the side of the road outside a tiny little tourism shop. We went in and asked if we could stay in there until we figured things out, and they promptly said no.  What the! Okay, we finally found yet another nice guy that let us use his phone only to find the hotel we had planned was 6 hours away and you could only get there by ferry or plane. WHYYY? Problem was we had absolutely nothing planned from here, we had no cell phones, no place to stay and no internet.

 So we sat in a ice cream shop for a good hour trying to figure out what the heck we were supposed to do, one of the girls I was with was ready to get back on a bus to Gaborone right then and there but we decided we would at least see the city for a day, we went back into the tourist shop and hassled the worker until she helped us find a small Backpackers hostel no too far from where we were at.  So we went there and dropped our stuff off and asked about getting to Tofo, and something easy! There is a shuttle that come to the hostel every morning and takes you straight to Tofo. Oh good, we are going to be fine.  LIES.  We spent the afternoon looking around the city being completely intrigued by the sadness of this place.  Every single building looks as if someone bombed it or burned it.  There was garbage everywhere and kids begging on the side of the road.  Finally we were a little overwhelmed and went back to the hotel for the night thinking the next day was going to be a breeze. 

At exactly 4:40 am, we climbed onto a “shuttle”  (a combi, which is a really old and broken down bus)  thinking well this sucks, this is going to be one long ride without a toilet.  But that wasn’t it.  They took us to a different bus station where we got shoved on a different bus, we paid our fee and sat. and sat, and sat.  A good hour and a half later, we had not moved but we had been shoved and prodded to fit as much stuff at our feet as possible, no leg room AND no toilet. Bummer.  Then these two guys started talking to us about how the roads were supposedly flooded so it would probably take about 15 hours to get where we were going, and we weren’t going to leave this bus station until every seat and then some were full AND there was also a good possibility of more rain so we would probably get stuck in Tofo.  NOT ideal and the two girls I was with started freaking out (totally validated) so we decided that this was just not going to happen and was not a good idea, so we got off the bus and asked the bus driver for our money back, the two guys we were talking to tried to help us get it back and it never happened.  That jerk face didn’t give us any of our money back so we went back to our little hotel with WAY less money then we had before.  

Again we spent the day wandering the city, we got on a ferry because we had heard of a little beach no far from there and we really wanted to see the beach.  Of course, again, it was not what we had planned.  We got off the ferry to find worse then we had just left.  There was mud and bugs and garbage and people selling fish and moldy fruit and cat-calling at us so we quick ran to the beach which was also covered in garbage and some other stuff that I don’t even want to guess what it was.  We found a few pretty seashells and got right back on the ferry where a man came over to me and told me all about how he was suffering and I needed to marry him and take him back to the states with me.  Broke my heart.  Anyways we wandered to the nicer side of town that day, tried some really strange looking but delicious fruit called leeches and bought some pretty African fabrics.  Finally we got our bus tickets back to Jo-burg and from there, Gaborone. 

Got on the bus and finally for the first time in two days, felt safe again.  Made it back to Johannesburg just to spend another entire day in the bus station but I really didn’t not want to do that so we asked around and finally we found a tourist bus that was promoting a “safe tour of the city of gold” so we hopped on and saw everything from townships, mines, downtown, and Nelson Mandela square.  We also took a few hours to stop and go to the Apartheid Museum, which was one of the heaviest places I have ever been.  We spent two hours in there and saw less then half of the museum because there was so much to see and read and watch but really that era, just like all others like it just disturbs me.  It makes me so sad but I am strangely interested in it.  I can’t believe it was still around 20 years ago. There was so much hurt and anger and fear that makes no sense to me. There was a whole exhibit on Nelson Mandela and honestly that man is the reason that the country is moving forward.  Pretty amazing.  New hero.  But after two hours, we had to get back on the bus, finish our tour and get on a bus ride back to Botswana.  And that is a not at all condensed version of survival mode for the week. 

Theme of the trip:  Dear Mom, if I die, you have every right to be mad. Sorry. 

apartheid museum

Nelson Mandela bridge, Johannesburg

Our ferry in Mozambique

The beach looks sort of nice

Reality on the beach

artwork at the hostel we stayed at in Maputo

Tourists for the day!

Our neat african fabric

Leeches.

Nelson Mandela exhibit, my new hero.

South Africa and Mozambique (part one)

Here’s to another week of adventure in Africa, this one mostly consisted of a trip that went just about as far from planned as possible.  The Plan: take a short and easy bus ride to Johannesburg and then get a taxi to our hotel which was strategically placed right next to the soccer stadium, spend the weekend in South Africa going to the soccer tournament African Cup of Nations to watch some legit ball, find a taxi ride back to the bus station, get on an over night bus to Mozambique where we would meet up with our friends and go to the nicest beach in the world, Tofo.  Get a really nice tan, drink coconuts on the beach, go snorkeling, and be completely stress free for a week.   Reality: almost none of that.  Here is what really happened, I am in Africa and for some reason; I just assumed everything would run here like it did in the states.  Back home I would totally plan a weekend trip and leave that same day so I assumed, how different could it be? VERY DIFFERENT, but here is the key difference… back home I would have my own car, a GPS, a cell phone that worked, my laptop, road signs, easy access to internet, safe roadside hotels, insurance, and my mommy and daddy a phone call away. On this trip, I didn’t have any of those things, not one. 

 We were set to go, had our bus tickets, had our visas, had a hotel in South Africa and we headed out.  After a pretty relaxed 6-hour bus ride, we made it to Johannesburg, which we thought was really close to our hotel and the soccer field, this was our first fantasy.  Turns out the soccer stadium is 2 hours from Jo-burg in a place called Rustenburg so luckily we found a bus the was on its way there, only thing was it was 100 degrees on the bus and no one would freaken open a window- pretty sure me and all my friends got heat stroke and could have died.  But on a happier note: there was a really cute kid sitting in front of me on the bus and I started messing with him by smashing my nose against the window, not 5 seconds later, he was doing the same, then he found a hair that belonged to me but had somehow gotten to his seat and this sparked about an hour long game between the two of us.

  Anyways, we finally got to Rustenburg and got dropped off at a bus station that was chaos at best, we asked and asked about some sort of taxi and after being hassled for a good hour, we found a man that was willing to drive us to our hotel- which ended up being about a 45 minute drive on a gravel road out to a little farm in the middle of no where.  I do have to say, besides the fact that it was far away, this was the cutest little place EVER.  Finally we were safe in our hotel that has emus and guinea pigs for pets. We got a barbeque dinner and met this guy from Pretoria who was taking a weekend trip to go to a game reserve about 10 miles from the hotel.  Honestly I am not sure what we would have done without him, but he offered to take us with him for the safari the next day and of course we accepted! So we went to a park the was a lot like Yellowstone set up where you drive through it craning your neck so see animals. And we did! A lot of them.  We saw hippos, giraffes, zebras, wildabeasts, rhinos, turtles, springbuck, warthogs, and some other deer like animals that I cant remember the names of. That was lovely. 

Then our next challenge came about: how the heck are we getting to the soccer game? And how are we getting to the Spar store to pick up our tickets?  The nice man who took us on the safari was so helpful, he drove us EVERYWHERE and after going to multiple different stores trying to find one that had our tickets, we finally found one and we told the guy he could go because he was trying to get home and had wasted like 2+ hours helping us. So again we were stranded and side note: taxis DO NOT exist in South Africa.  DO NOT rely on public transportation.  Again, thanks to a really nice manager at the store we were at, we got hooked up with a guy that was planning on going to the game anyways so he ended up being our taxi/body guard for the night. Once we were at the soccer stadium, it made all the struggles getting there worth it because of the amazing energy and excitement surrounding us.  There were people dressed from head to toe repping their country with the constant sound of vovozelos buzzing in our ear and sometimes people thought they were super funny and blew them right in our ears, turds, but you couldn’t help but laugh.  Finally we found our seats and there was a guy with the coolest hair I have ever seen sitting in front of us which is funny because he turned around during the break between games (we watched two back-to-back) and talked to me and asked for my phone number and asked to let him “show me off after the game.” One really different thing here, one of the first questions I ever get asked is “do you drink?”…no…”oh, do you smoke?”…no….and no one can quite wrap their brains around the idea that I don’t want to.  Anyways the games were super intense and there was a wave and people singing the traditional futbol song of South Africa which I am now addicted to. We left the game like 5 minutes early because our bodyguard friend told us he didn’t want to get stuck in traffic, which we figured was pretty fair.  

We got back to our hotel real late and all of us just were so drained from the day we passed out, trying not to think about how the heck we were gonna get back to Jo-burg the next day.   Woke up in the morning and went to breakfast to see if the nice lady that owned the place had any ideas for us, and again thank goodness for nice people, she offered to drive us the whole way back which was actually a really interesting car ride because she was telling us how corrupt the government is, they can somehow get away with STEALING money for different projects throughout the country.  There are roads that have been torn up and never re-done because the money keeps disappearing and the one that really gets me is they steal from the children’s education system.  Last year they stole all the money for textbooks so the kids didn’t get any.  BOTHERSOME.  We also drove past quite a few shanty towns which just breaks your heart, people literally live in what we would consider a small tool shed in your backyard with tin roofs and dirt floors with no running water, sewage systems or electricity.  Basic needs are not met which is not fair.  Anyways, we made it back to the train station just to wait around for the ENTIRE day to get on our bus to Mozambique.  We tried to go wander around the block just to get a taste of the city and the first street vendor that saw us told us to stop what we were doing and turn around unless we wanted to get mugged.  We had literally walked about 5 feet out of the train station. So we talked to him for a minute and he said that because we were young and white we were the prime target.  So we turned around and walked around a fenced off parking lot instead which you could at least see part of the city from.  FINALLY after the entire day in that stupid train station, we got on our overnight bus to Maputo.

Warthog babies!

ZEBRAS!

The four of us at our cute little hotel.

AFCON 2013!!

Royal Bafokeng Stadium

this is a giraffe

shanty towns in SA

Algeria vs. Togo... GO TOGO!