Richard and I are finally both back in Gumare. Richard and I went to Kanye, in the south of the country, for Peace Corps In-Service Training. Richard started a week before me- we only overlapped for three days. We were both in Kanye for a total of a week and a half- Richard’s DAC (District AIDS Coordinator) group had training with the Life Skills group and my CCB (Community Capacity Building) group had training with the NGO group. Our Bots7 group went in two shifts because there are over 50 of us (minus the few that have returned home since we arrived in Botswana). Richard got back last Friday and I got back this Thursday. Kanye is very pretty- there are flowering trees, lots of monkeys, a gorge, hills and boulders, and a reservoir. It is very different looking from Gumare, which is sandy, flat, without many tall trees (not that I love it any less).

During our Peace Corps service, we will have several in-service training sessions, where we will get additional language training, as well as lectures on topics of need/interest (some more useful than others). They are also an opportunity to reconnect with other volunteers from our Bots7 group and share our experiences. Having more language training was definitely useful this time because it re-inspired me to make the effort to improve my Setswana. Setswana is a very difficult language and it is easy to get lazy about learning it when so many people speak English. However, many meetings are carried out in Setswana and people are more open with you when you make an effort at using Setswana.

Getting to Kanye took two days of travel for us. Although Botswana has relatively good tarred roads, the distances are long between villages on the sparsely populated west side of the country. There are only between 1.7-1.8 million people in a country the size of Texas- there is actually more cattle than people. For us to get to Kanye (south-east) from Gumare (northwest), we have to take two buses (about 5-6 hours not counting waiting time) to get to Ghanzi, where we spend the night with a friend. From Ghanzi, it is another 6-7 hours on the bus. Many people in Botswana hitch-hike because the buses are infrequent (once or twice a day for long-distant buses) and expensive because prices keep rising with the increasing price of petrol. Hitching-hiking is safe and often necessary here in Botswana. Buses tend to get crowded and hot at times. There is a myth among some people that if you open the windows, you will let sickness in, though I have not experienced this in practice often.

Since Botswana is one of the most prosperous countries in Africa, it is sometimes hard to reconcile what is just beneath the surface of this very traditional country. Many people still believe in witchcraft and hold onto myths as truth. Although many people live in concrete houses, drive cars, watch satellite television, and shop at supermarkets, many more still live in mud huts, drive donkey carts, have no electricity and get their water from outside taps. Despite all the money poured into HIV/AIDS, new cases of HIV/AIDS have barely decreased and the country still has the second highest rate in the world.

There are many theories as to why HIV/AIDS has not been decreasing much in Botswana. One of the theories is that people are becoming desensitized to HIV/AIDS messages since they are so many out there. Second, ARVs are free and now widely available (although not everywhere- my district being a prime example) so HIV/AIDS appears to be a manageable disease since there are no longer funerals almost every day. Also, alcohol abuse is rampant and this leads to problems such as making poor decisions about sex. Additionally, until now, prevention campaigns have focused very little on one of the main drivers of HIV/AIDS in Botswana - multiple concurrent partners. People here do not have more partners than the rest of the world; however, instead of serial monogamy, there is an overlapping of partners. A campaign has recently been rolled out that focuses on the reduction of “small houses” (the term given to multiple partners at the same time). Although the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission program has been effective at reducing the number of infected babies dramatically, many women who know they are HIV positive are still having multiple pregnancies and supplies of baby formula often run out.

The weekend Richard returned from Kanye, a British NGO came to Gumare for two days to provide free vet care. Richard and a Dutch ex-pat went door to door to try to get as many dogs spayed/neutered as possible. We were fortunate to get our three dogs fixed for free. We are down to three dogs since the ex-PCV’s dog Skye moved to Katie’s (the other PCV in Gumare) new house. Richard has been busy since he got back helping plan a health fair that occurred this weekend in a small village called Habu. He has also been teaching kids in our neighborhood how to play a Japanese card game called Yu-Gi-Oh.

On Friday, Richard and I helped three other PCVs with a sexual health fair in Etsha 6, which is about 30 km from us. The three PCVs previously did a similar fair in Shakawe. The fairs are very successful because they provide sexual health education through interactive games, such as HIV/AIDS jeopardy, High/Low/No risk, Myth vs Fact, condom races, etc. It was a very fun day for all involved and the kids seemed to learn a lot through the games. The plan is to have one of these fairs in each of our villages.

It has become increasingly hot here as we move into summer. I like to say that someone has been turning the thermostat up. Of course, everyone has been telling us that we haven’t seen the worst yet- pretty scary since we are already in the mid-to-high 80’s. We have been seeing different kinds of birds and animals now. Unfortunately, there have been some black mamba snake sightings. Recently, our water has been going out several times a week, for hours at a time, so we keep bottles of water on hand. The weekend that Richard was on his way to Kanye and I was home, there was no water or electricity for two days. Electricity is a precious commodity that we import from South Africa (which is short of it itself) so rolling outages do occur. Unfortunately, our water pumps in Gumare are powered by electricity so when the electricity goes out, so does the water.