Mother Bear Project

This week I had to opportunity to be a part of what I would consider pretty special.  About two months ago when I visited the Drakensburg Mountains in South Africa, we got to help pass out homemade/hand-knit teddy bears to a whole bunch of the pre school kids in the Peace Corp volunteers area.  I was able to get a hold of the contact information for the lady that is in charge of this charity.  Her name is Amy and she runs the Mother Bear Project sending hundreds of bears around the world for little orphans or children in poor neighborhoods.  So I got her contact and I emailed her enquiring about the bears... She was fantastic and about week later I got an email saying "bears in the air!' basically meaning she had just shipped me 100 bears to pass out to my kiddos.  They showed up promptly two weeks later at the university post office.  An hour later a very confused employee and lots of awkward walking with extra large boxes, I ended up with boxes of bears taking up 80% of my small dorm room.

I volunteer with a few other exchange students from UB that were stoked to pass them out, we kept it a surprise which was way fun because when we showed up on Monday and told the lady in charge that each kid was going to get a bear, she was almost in tears.  It was so cool.  So after the little kiddies took their naps and ate their snacks we got them all in line and gave them each a bear.  I feel like the best way to describe the experience is pictures, even though it is somewhat impossible to get these kids to smile in pictures- every kid loved their bears and it was fun to be able to say that I (sort of) made it happen.  

This is the day care we volunteer at.

I know that is about 20 pictures but every time I look at them I realize how lucky I am to be able to volunteer with these amazing kids.  If I could have one prayer for these kids it would be for them all to find comfort and kindness.  They have all grown up and seen more in their short life times then I could imagine dealing with in mine.  I wish they could all have the innocents and security I was privileged with as a kid but unfortunately that is not the case... behind these smiles are 4 year old boys that will grow up without mothers or fathers because completely preventable diseases have stolen them,  there are 10 year old girls that have been abused and taken advantage of by people that have a need for power and use anger as an outlet, there are girls in 6th grade that have had to assume the mother role in the house, kids that go to bed with empty stomachs every night, there are 12 year old boys that use violence as a way of getting attention because that is what they see at home, there are 3 year old girls that were born HIV positive without a chance to choose herself and all 100 of these kids will live the rest of their lives fighting to stay alive, to succeed, to get out of the poverty that they were born into.  These kids are the reason I want to travel to third world countries instead of going on cruises, these kids are the reason I want to join the Peace Corp and start my own non profit.   These kids are the reason I am working so hard to be successful one day, these kids (and kids like them all over the world) deserve more then they are afforded. They are my heroes, my motivation, my inspiration, my life. And I have come to discover that even that few hours a week makes all the difference in the world- if all I can say is that I gave 100 kids a hug every week and a teddy bear to hug when I'm not there, I am going to call this study abroad worth something.  

I am blessed. And I am thankful.

Living in Botswana

After we got back from Jo-Burg I decided it would be a good idea for me to actually spend some more time in the place I like to call home because although I have seen and done a lot in Gaborone, there is still a ton of things I really want to do before I leave. And I am proud to say today, April 19th, is the end of the second week straight that I have stayed in Gabs and not gone anywhere.

This past two weeks we have all gotten a little taste of the negative side of Africa.  We went to karaoke night last Tuesday, had a really great time singing Africa by Toto and Dancing Queen by ABBA- two very solid choices no doubt.  Plus one of the best parts about Zoom, which is where we went, is that on one side is karaoke and on the other side is a dance party...best of both worlds. Sing your heart out and then go a little cray-cray across the hall.  Anyways karaoke is not the negative side of Africa (unless Claire is singing). Although that place is great, it is also pretty sketchy and may or may not be where some grumpy people hang out.  Anyways there were about 20 of us, including a bunch of local boys and it is so close to campus so we decided to walk back-yes it was about midnight- yes it was a stupid idea-no we won't do that again.  So a bunch of us were walking at the front of our group and then all of the sudden we hear a scream and turn around to see four of our guy friends sprint off after something and see one of our friends on the ground in the middle of the street.  At this point most of us were confused until we heard her sobbing, saying that they took everything.  What happened was these three guys followed our group, picked out the one of us with the most expensive bag ($500 US dollar bag... with her iphone, passport, wallet and camera) and ripped it off her shoulder, pushed her into the street, and ran off.  Our local friends tried to chase them but one of them got punched and frankly, we are lucky that no one got more hurt then that.  Not a good way to end a good night.  Then we went out again on Friday and another one of our friends got mugged- she got shoved up against a car and about six guys went through her pockets and stole her purse too.  I was still inside the club when this happened, I heard about it the next day.  But its such a bummer because then you loose trust for everyone and again, she got really lucky that she didn't get hurt.  We are all fine, no one touched me, and from now on we are going to be A LOT more careful.

Besides that, this week has strangely been a lot of school work, probably because the semester is starting to wind down.  I have had two tests, had like 3 papers due and am starting work on a group paper (shoot me now) and starting to study for finals.  I am getting about a month of university!  Dream Big.  But I have pretty much spent the last week at different coffee shops pounding because the power goes about about twice a week from 6:30-9:00pm and the internet goes out every time the power goes out, and then some. And this is just at UB so we call my main man Bebeto (cab driver) and he drives us to coffee shops with tasty muffins, smoothies and wifi.

A group do international students have also been playing a lot of Ultimate Frisbee which is actually really fun and I can't say I am any good but I can catch so its only when I try to throw the darn thing that I stuff it up.

I FOUND CHURCH. It was awesome and frankly about time because I have been here since January and it literally is a 10 minute walk from campus but I didn't know that.  My sweet roommate Brit came with me and we called a cab to take us, after about a half hour of driving around trying to find it we ended up literally back where we started and found this beautiful church.  The cab driver was confused about how I knew it was the building when I saw it even though I had never been there before. #itsanLDSthing?  But it was lovely.  It was a pretty good congregation size, I want to say about 100 people and there were missionaries, one was a sister missionary from Utah.  So random. But I have missed church and it was interesting because most of the lesson in Sunday School and Relief Society were interactive and consisted of comments from the people in the class and not the teacher- people have some crazy life experiences and we talked about facing challenges and trials, a fitting lesson for stories. And they spoke in english! Hooray.

We also have had a few "cultural" experiences over the past few weeks- last week there was an international dinner on campus themed ASIAN NIGHT.  I wasn't quite sure where the asian came in but Ikram (an exchange student from India) asked me to go with him, besides the fact that most of the international students went, so we all ate a strange dinner, watched a few performances put on by other students-my favorite was a quartet singing group that was super tight.  Last night we went to a play called "seeing life through optimistic eyes" or something like that. It was put on by locals and there were a few international students in it so we went to support them and got to see some cool dancing and bongo drumming.

Good time, good time.  

Crazy side note: I have exactly 29 days until I am home.  I cannot believe how fast this semester has gone.  I am so ready to be done with the University of Botswana but I am so NOT ready to leave Africa, it sort of has that affect on you- once you come here, you become addicted. There is so much I still want to see and do and explore.  But you know what that means... guess I will have to come back next year (mom? dad? thoughts?)

Johannesburg

After we traveled for a month straight being back was sort of a bummer but at the same time it was nice to be back, see my awesome roommate Brit and playing catch up in all my classes which was actually not so bad since I talked to all my teachers before I went.  I had a test and a few papers due that week so I was busy working on that for like the entire week.

We got back and I started playing soccer with some of the local guys that play with a futsol ball and they play where you have to hit this pillar in the pavilion which is so hard but its actually really fun because they are really good and I have to work on my foot skill which has always been where my lack of skills is based so I am working on it.  Lucky for me every once in a while I get a luck shot and everyone thinks I'm a pro which is not true but I'll take it.

Anyways I went to take my test and of course, my teacher decided to postpone the test for a week but its whatever.

After being back for 4 whole days we jetted again.  This time, down to Johannesburg, South Africa for the weekend. It was a good weekend.  We got on a bus Friday afternoon and got there after dark so we caught a cab and went to our backpackers which was an old abandoned mafia house so thats neat. We showed up and just hung out in our room for the evening playing scrabble and bow and listening to music.

The next morning we got a cab to drive us to a shopping center next to Nelson Mandela Square.  So we shopped.  All day long.  And it was a huge shopping mall which is so different then what we are used to around here (the malls in Gabs are "small" but they aren't like Gateway... this place was).

I decided to invest in a hard drive to be able to back up my entire laptop, a mini speaker and a really nice leather jacket.  Then after a good long morning of shopping, we went to a craft market that had everything.  I love and hate those places, like I said before, because they have such amazing stuff but I feel like I should buy something from everyone and I really HATE bartering so its a long road before I actually buy anything but I got some presents out of the way (even though I have a lot more to go) and bought myself some happy pants.  Story behind happy pants: when we were in Malawi, I was wearing some and this guy that was trying to hit on me was like "oh boy you are wearing happy pants... want to know why they are called happy pants?  Because they are so loose and comfy you can't not be happy wearing them" So far, this is true, I am always happy in my happy pants.

Then we went and got dinner in China Town which was great because we brought Meendy with us (she is chinese) so she knew exactly what to order and it was all delicious. We tried like 8 different chinese desserts and my favorite was this little egg custard pie thing. Strangely tasty.

We went back to our hostel and the bummer about Jo-burg is that it is not safe at all to be out past about 6 pm so we spent our evenings in the hostel but it ended up being fun because we overloaded on drinks and snacks and played Bow.  Then it was movie night and we watched Charlie's Angels and Easy A which was a good time.  Charlie's Angels is now my favorite movie.  Then everyone slowly started to poop out and we went to bed.

The next morning proved to be one of the best mornings EVER.  We went to this place called Lions Park where they breed and take care of lions and a few other random animals.  The best part of it was that it was almost an interactive zoo.  We showed up and found a giraffe standing in the parking lot.  We wandered around for a little while and looked at everything including a black leopard- the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. Strange looking hyenas that are wayyyy bigger then I thought they were, they were like lion size.  And a few other giraffes and meerkats.  THEN THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD HAPPENED.  We got to play with baby lions.  Let me repeat that again, we got to play with baby lions. We  went into this cage with about 4 baby lions and got to pet and play with them.  I showed up and I sat down next to this little tiny guy just to have one of the bigger ones plop right down on my lap and start chewing on my shoes and my happy pants.  We battled for a good minute and a half because he ripped a hole in my pants and was determined to destroy my shoe but it was me verus a lion.  The paws on the baby were unreal in size and strength.  We we only got a few minutes in there with them but it was great.  It was like the best minutes ever. 

Then we got to go on a little drive through the different lion enclosures and we watched them get fed- here is the issue.  I am all about rehabilitation but watching these animals, they will probably never get to go back into the wild because of how dependent they have become on humans.  Hypocrite much?  I go and play with the little babies and then decide I am against them trying to domesticate lions.  It was pretty intense, the lions had the feeding schedule down, knew the truck that was carrying the food and started chasing it until big cow body parts got dumped all over the ground. It was however, really cool to watch them eat.

We got on a bus after that to get back to Gabs and when we were loading onto the bus, my bag landed on a fire extinguisher and the whole thing exploded into a cloud of dust right in my face.  NEATO.

Back in Gabs and ready to actually stay in Gabs for a little while- like two whole weeks!  Dream Big.

A Long Journey Home

Once we got back to our backpackers in Blantyre, we set up our tents and sprinted to the showers.  After not showering for 4 days it was just about the most amazing feeling in the entire world to rinse off the dirt that was caked in between your toes, under your fingernails and wash your hair [although my dreads were very nice because I really didn't have to worry about my hair while we were hiking] and decided we just wanted to chill for the afternoon. So we all picked a comfy place to sit and relax.  Then Audrey and Claire went over to the bar to be social and I just didn't really feel like talking to anyone so I sat and read for a few hours then decided I should probably go have some human interaction since we didn't have any on the mountain.  Apparently I had "TALK TO ME, I'M AWESOME" stamped on my forehead because the second I got to the bar area, people attacked me.  We found these two guys that had a car so we went out to a chinese restaurant for dinner that was actually run by an American guy that went to USC so he and I had a long argument about american football and who were the best teams in the nation because clearly USC is not one of them, even though he thought so.

But we went back to our hostel after that and I got proposed to twice, one of which was the security guard who would not leave me alone, he was hot but man alive 'coming on strong' would be considered an understatement.  So I stole a spoon from the lodge.  It was on accident but then I decided it was what he gets for being so annoying.  Anyways we spent a good amount of time playing pool and then at like midnight, everyone decided it would be a good idea to go dancing.  So we went to this local place and danced till about 4 am which was really fun.  We went cray-cray for a few hours and even though my dear security guard friend joined us, I just avoided him as best I could because all the other guys we went out with were really awesome and fun to dance with.

The next morning after about two hours of sleep we got on another bus to get to Harare, Zimbabwe.  It was a 16 hour bus ride where we had to pass through Mozambique and head down from there.  That is where we hopped on the struggle bus.  When we got to the boarder at Mozambique we were hoping to get a transit visa since we were only going to be in Mozambique on a bus for about 5 hours but nope. $86 U.S. dollars and an hour of waiting later, we got through the border and on our bus through the country [also a scary side note, about a week later, the same bus that we had traveled on, got shot at and three people were killed... apparently Mozambique is unsafe during elections] but then we got to the Zambia border and realized that we needed to get visas on that border too and we were almost out of american money, which was the only currency they accept.  So we scrambled for a bit and luckily we had just enough for our single entry visas so another $30 U.S dollars and 3 hour wait later we got back on our bus to finish out the most stressful of bus ride so far.  We showed up at the bus station in Harare, Zimbabwe (the capital) at about 11:30 pm and were trying to figure out how to get to our lodge when another little "mom figure" came to the rescue and saved us.  She was catching a bus the next morning as well and she was just sleeping on the bus we just got off and catching a cab to the bus station in the morning so we stuck with her, spent the night on the bus and bright and early got up, got a cab to a restaurant for breakfast, where another random guy came up and asked for my phone number, and then eventually to the bus station where we got haggled onto the wrong bus.  Luckily I checked and we got off in time to get on the right bus that got us all the way back to Gaborone in like 22 hours.  Once we got on the bus, all was well.  It was Easter Sunday so we treated ourselves to chocolate and were content with the local singers on our bus that were jammin out to church songs in like 4 part harmony.  Very enjoyable.  Then the rest of the bus ride went down hill.  Background: there are two male conductors on the bus.  For some reason, they both decided they wanted to date/marry me.  Literally the last 6 hours of the bus ride, they were arguing about who got to sit next to me and talk to me.  I tried real nice to explain that I had a boyfriend that I was madly in love with back in the United States (whether or not that was actually true I thought it was my best defense) but they didn't seem to care.  One was suggesting that I could love him and my boyfriend at the same time.  Claire and Audrey just sat there laughing at me because apparently I am too nice to people and I need to just tell them to "get the heck away from me" but I can't be mean.  Its a problem.  

We got back to Gabs at 5:30 am and went to our rooms after 24 days of travel.  It was an awesome month. I learned so much, had so many new life experiences and would not take one second of it back.

Mount Mulanje

On our last night at Cape MaClear, we found this really cool guy that was probably pretty close to my dads age who was driving to Blantyre (city in malawi) the next morning and had room in his car for us, of course we jumped at the chance to have an actual car ride rather than another mini bus.  And it just so happened that we were trying to get to Blantyre so that worked out way nice.  Thanks kind man, you are great.  I love random strangers that realize you dont have a mom or a dad with you so they decide to assume the role.  So lovely.  

Anyways we got to Blantyre and stayed one night in the backpackers there because we wanted to drop off most of our stuff before we attempted the next thing on our "to do list" so we spent that night kicking butt in pool and trying very hard to cook our food over a non-existent fire. The next morning we got on a bus that took us to Mulanje, a very small village at the base of the third highest mountain in Africa, Mount Mulanje. 

Hiking this was our next adventure and it turned out to be nothing short of an adventure.  We got dropped off in the little village and hitched to the base of the mountain with people that actually worked in the tourist office so they were on their way to where we were going, woot.  We went into the information center, told them we would like to spend three nights and four days hiking this bad boy- we picked two peaks that looked like the highest ones, hired a guide and set off with our 30lb backpacks.  

The first problem with this mountain: people here do not believe in switch backs so when I say that the path was straight up and super steep, it was.  I am not the best hiker ever [sad to admit] so I was a little bothersome I am sure to everyone else when I was asking for breaks every 5 minutes and being the 8 year old asking "are we there yet?" but we took a pit stop and went swimming in a waterfall which was so lovely and refreshing.  The best part of the swim was when our guide decided to join us... he stripped down to his tighty-whities climbed up onto a rock and then we hear "yooohoooo" in a little high pitched voice and look over to see him waving at us, then he jumped on in.  I was laughing so hard I almost drowned on that one. 

We got back on the trail after a little bit so that we would get to our first little hut [campground] before it got dark and after about 4 hours of calf burning "fun" we made it to this cute little cabin type thing where a grounds keeper got a fire going and we got to relax for a little bit.  We put up our tent thinking we would sleep in it but it was so warm in the little hut we all knocked out in there after cooking our dinner of rice/ beans and minced soy in mini bowls over the fire- it took some skill but by the third bowl of rice we had a pretty good system down considering we had absolutely no cooking supplies, so we ate dinner by the fire and we were all so pooped we knocked out at like 7:30. That was probably a good thing though because our plan was to summit one of the peaks the next morning and we had to get an early start (5:00 am) so we woke up all in good spirits sort of excited about the monster ahead of us.  We were excited, that is, until about 1/3 of the way up the mountain when we realized that we were literally rock climbing and scaling this mountain and if we fell, we would be in trouble.  Then our guide proceeds to tell us that it is very dangerous from here and he knows 5 people personally that have died trying to reach the top of this mountain and there are many more that have also died.  Then he tells us most people use ropes (which we don't have) and asks if we want to keep going.  We did.  And after some pretty adrenaline filled moments where you knew if you fell you were toast, we all made it to the top safe and sound and dreading the way back down.  But it was beautiful up there.  We were so high we were above the clouds and the sun was shining, it was worth it even though I was second guessing myself at the time.  This peak is the second highest but the hardest by far, and all three of us had just finished reading the book Three Cups of Tea where the author has a failed attempt at K2 so we decided this was our K2 and we were clearly way more awesome then Mortenson because we made it to the top and he didn't.

Then we came back down and literally just slid on our butts the whole way and made it in one piece, although that is more than I can say for my leggings--> they got trashed and had like two huge holes on each butt check, they were retired shortly after this trip.  But we made it back to our hut after a good 5 hours of hiking, our legs felt like jello and I was not in the best of moods, all I wanted to do was sleep and never hike again, although I prefer rock climbing to hiking.  But we had planned to hike up to the next cabin later that afternoon (three more hours of hiking) and our guide dropped the bomb that it was going to rain, and if it rained we would not be able to hike the peak that we had planned for the next day, which was the highest one.  So we decided to stay at our little cabin for the night and hike a different peak the next day.  So we spent the afternoon napping, reading, playing more Bow and cooking dinner over the same fire as we had the night before.  Again, even though we had all taken naps, we knocked out at about 8:00 pm.

The next morning was another 5:00am wake up where we packed up our bags and literally walked in a circle to get to a different summit that we passed on our way up the first day, it was our guides favorite peak and I enjoyed it except for the fact that we had to summit it with our back packs which made my legs burn sooooooo bad. Hooray for involuntary work outs!  But it was pretty up there too and you could see the K2 that we had hiked the day before from the top of the mountain and I gotta say, as much as I complained, I was pretty glad that we made it all the way. 

We finished that day at a waterfall/lookout point where we hung out for a while since we could see the entire valley below us and waterfalls are always nice.  Then we hiked another few hours to our last little hut and spent the evening reading on the porch.  Then we ran into a couple from Zambia that was staying there too and they had so much good food which they were nice enough to share with us because we were living off rice and tuna sandwiches [I think they felt bad for us]  so we had what I would call a feast that night with meat and pasta and rice and tomatoes and toast, we even got custard for dessert.  Then guess what? We knocked out at about 8:00 again. 

The next morning I wanted to kill someone because my legs felt like jelly and I had blisters literally all over every toe and scattered over the soles of my feet- and even more because we started hiking at 5:00am which meant we had to get up and pack at 4.  I also hate mornings.  But once I got over my bad attitude I realized that today was a down hill only day because it was our last day and we needed to get back to a bus to take us to Blantyre where all our stuff was. So we spent like 6 hours that morning hiking back down and got to the base to find so many little villagers that had never seen a "muzungu" (white person) so we had to stop and play with some kids a few times which was fine with me.  They are always so cute.   Anyways it was Easter Saturday and when we were on our bus we saw so many different celebrations including tons of people re-enacting Jesus walking with the cross- not sure what thats called?  But it was sweet!  

So all in all, our hike trip was a success and even though I hate hiking while I am hiking, I am always really glad I did it after.