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?)
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