The weather seems to be getting a little cooler now, although it is still hot. Since it is still the rainy season, there are occasional downpours which leave huge puddles of mud. I’ve never seen rain come down as it does here in Botswana. We are still dealing with occasional power outages because of shortages of electricity from Namibia. For example, our electricity was out all day yesterday. Since the water pumps, which also filter the water, run by electricity, we also lose water when the power is out for more than a few hours. When the power goes out during the work week, it is hard to get work done at the Rural Administration Center (RAC) where I work. Luckily, the power outages usually occur on weekends. When they do occur during the week, they usually post signs alerting what times the electricity will be out.

Richard is very proud that vegetables are now starting to grow in our yard. His watermelons are getting quite big and the tomatoes plants have started to sprout. We have also been working on getting a nice garden growing in our front yard. We occasionally have to get our yard cleared because all the weeds grow fast and big during the rainy season. It is nice to see everything green though because during the dry season, everything is brown. I had a happy moment this morning when I walked out and there was a chameleon staring at me in the tree in our backyard.

Work has really picked up for Richard and I. Richard really enjoyed his workshop in Lesotho in which he gained lots of ideas for technology projects aimed at HIV/AIDS. He is hoping to pass these ideas on to our fellow PCVs in Botswana. For instance, using soda cans to give cell phone coverage to places without network. This goes along with a project that uses SMSs (text messages) to remind people to take ARVs.

We have several projects planned for the Month of Youth next month. We are going to do HIV/AIDS mural projects with the primary and junior secondary schools as well as a weekend HIV/AIDS youth forum in Gumare, in which we are going to provide HIV/AIDS education and have the youth come up for strategies for combating HIV/AIDS in the community.

I’ve been going back and forth to Shakawe to help plan a Child Welfare Networking Forum in which all the local NGOs and government offices will meet to strategize on how they can cooperate and work together. The event will finally occur on Thursday and Friday this week, followed by a musical festival on Saturday where all the organizations will have stalls to present their organizations to the public. I’m hoping that after all the work we put into planning, that things work out smoothly.

We have also been planning health fairs. This week, we went to Gudigwa, the furthermost village in our district. It involves going to Shakawe, crossing the river by ferry, then driving down an un-tarred, bumpy road for 2.5 hours then returning, all in one day. We tried to go on Thursday, but the ferry wasn’t working because someone forgot to anchor it and it floated away and they were working on retrieving it. Instead, we ended up doing the trip on Friday, leaving at 6AM, getting back at 6:30. We were hoping to do a health fair there in a few weeks, but we will have to wait until next quarter because they want more time to set up their Village Multi-sectoral AIDS Committee (VMSAC). There will, however, be a health fair in Ngarange, also across the river but much closer than Gudigwa, in the first week of March.

There has been a lot of focus on malaria since our district has the highest rate in Botswana. Several organizations, along with our district health team, are doing door to door bednet distribution in our district. I’ve sat in on one of their planning meetings. The plan is having teams go out to the villages in three stages: first to educate and sensitize, second to distribute the bednets, and third to make sure the people are using the nets. Last time I was in Gaborone, I met up with a wonderful and devoted teacher who has started Students Against Malaria groups in Botswana. He invited me to go out with a group of students from Maun two weekends ago to a village called Shorobe. The students formed teams to go house to house to educate families on malaria and ways of prevention. Tommie and I are hoping to start a group the local junior secondary school in Gumare in the next couple of months. I’ve been coordinating with the Health Education Officer for our district to find out where are students will be most useful (which right now looks like working with students at other schools).

Richard and I took our first out-of-country leave since coming to Botswana. Last week, we went to Dahab, which is in the Sinai, in Egypt. We were gone Sunday to Sunday. It is winter in Egypt so it was refreshingly cool. We had a nice week of diving and snorkeling in the Red Sea and camel rides in the desert. We even climbed Mt Sinai- all 3750 “steps” to the top. The reefs of the Red Sea were beautiful and amazing- so many fish and healthy, colorful coral. One of the dive trips we went on involved a 1.5 hour camel ride since the site was inaccessible by vehicle. We also took another camel trek to a canyon and a Bedouin village in a desert oasis. In the evenings, we relaxed and dined in the restaurants by the sea. Since there are so many cats in Dahab, the restaurants give you a water bottle to squirt the cats because they try to the steal the food from your plate. They actually got food from our plates one night because we felt guilty about squirting them. On the way back on Sunday, Richard met his counterpart and a Peace Corps staff member in Johannesburg airport so they could fly to Lesotho for a week long Peace Corps sub-regional meeting on using technology to address HIV/AIDs.

The week and a half before we left for vacation was quite busy. Richard was helping his office prepare for upcoming DMSAC and TAC (Technical Advisory Committee for DMSAC) meetings and several upcoming events, like health fairs and VMSAC formations. We had a veterinarian, from a NGO in Maun that does free vaccinations and spaying/neutering dogs, stay with us for a week. Since the vet did not have an assistant, I helped her prep dogs for surgery and monitor the dogs during the actual surgery. It was quite interesting to be able watch the whole process. The vet was able to sterilize an average of 3-4 females and 2 males a day, which will greatly influence the dog population in Gumare. As a favor, she neutered our cat Mufasa.

The three days before we left for Egypt, I was in Gaborone to be trained for the Peer Support and Diversity Network (PSDN) for Peace Corps volunteers in Botswana. There were 10 of us chosen from within our Bots 7 group to provide peer support for other PCV’s. One of our first responsibilities will be spending a week each with the new group of volunteers coming for pre-service training in April. We are providing on-site support to the new group because pre-service training tends to be a time of stress and a lot of adjustment.

At the end of the month, there will be a 2 day Orphan and Vulnerable Children Stakeholders Networking workshop in Shakawe. I am currently helping a NGO in Shakawe prepare the workshop, which will provide an opportunity for S&CD and NGOs in our district to get to learn more about each other and problem solve, as well as share ideas, successes, and best practices. We are hoping this will lead to greater cooperation and collaboration in the future.