Time has been flying as usual.  It is June tomorrow, which means we have been at our site for almost a year now.  When we were in training, the PCVs that came before us kept telling us how the second year of service gets much easier and is much more enjoyable.  I definitely am comfortable at my site now and have established good relationships with co-workers and others.  These relationships definitely took a long time to develop, but have been worth the effort. 

I just finished spending a week in Molepolole with the new group of PCVs who arrived in April and who will be in training for another 3 weeks.  I was there for peer support since I am on the Peer Support and Diversity Network.  The new group was amazing and asked lots of great questions.  They had their site placement yesterday so they now know where they will placed.  We will have a few new people in our area, which we are excited about. 

It was interesting to think that we were in training this time last year, dealing with all the frustrations that go along with it.   Training was definitely the hardest part of the last year.  However, spending time with training staff this week, made me realize what a hard job they have.  While in Molepolole, I stopped by and visited my host family.  They were very happy to see me and told me how fat I have gotten (a complement here). 

Richard was in Gaborone the week before me.  He was helping to set up an internal Botswana website for PCVs as part of the PCV ICT (Information, Communication, Technology) committee.  While he was in Gaborone, he was invited to the Gaborone Senior Secondary School (GSS) to talk to a Business class and answer their questions for a couple of hours.  I have been working with the Tommie who teaches the class, as well as computer classes, at GSS.  Tommie has helped start several Students Against Malaria groups in Botswana and teaches students ICT skills.  We invited him to train a group of students in Gumare and he was finally able to come a couple of weeks ago.  Tommie is very dynamic and the students really respond to him.  Unfortunately, the internet is still not hooked up at Gumare’s junior secondary school so Tommie wasn’t able to show the ICT skills, like how to communicate with students around the world about issues like HIV and Malaria, that he would have liked.  Richard has been working the 2 last weekends, though, to demonstrate the internet and sign students up for email in his office at the RAC.  Hopefully, when the internet is working at Gumare’s junior secondary school, the students in this new group will be able to communicate with other students around the world about their work. 

The women I am working with in the Orphan Caregivers beadmaking group are becoming very good at making beads out of paper from magazine, boxes, etc.  In a couple more weeks, they will be given the equipment from the NGO Mothers for All to  make jewelry with the beads and the NGO will start buying from them.  The women in the group are wonderful and very enthusiastic.

Richard has started helping the local basket co-op with business development.  A couple of the women are actually teaching Richard how to weave a basket, which is fun to watch.  Richard and I have also started mentoring 4 students each at the junior secondary school, which we hope will be a valuable experience for them.  

The last month has sped by. We had a very nice 10 day vacation in Namibia. We went to the capital of Windhoek, the big sand dunes at Sossusvlei, the seaside resort town of Swakopmund, the rock paintings at Twyfelfontien, Brandberg Mountain, and Etosha National Park. We camped most of the nights, except in Windhoek and Swakopmund. I really enjoyed seeing how beautiful the desert can be. We saw lots of creatures like chameleons, a sidewinder, geckos, weird insects, etc. Namibia is very beautiful and much more hilly/mountainous compared to Botswana. We really liked Etosha National Park because you can just sit by the watering holes at the camps and see tons of animals like rhinos, elephants, warthogs, lions, zebras, etc. without having to get in a car and drive around for hours.

Since we returned from Namibia, we have been busy. The bead making group, sponsored by Mothers for All, for orphan caregivers has been trained and the women are working hard at practicing making jewelry from magazines and other types of paper. We finally had the Employee Wellness fair on Thursday and it went very well. Lots of people came for HIV testing, BP screening, Diabetes screening, BMI calculation, oral health screening, eye screening and information on STIs, nutrition, breast cancer, cervical cancer, etc. I was elected as the one to give nutritional information, while Richard did the opening prayer.

Last weekend was a three day weekend so we went to the Maun music festival. We had a great time connecting with friends. This week, we had a couple from the new Peace Corps group shadow us for a few days. We took them, along with the District AIDS Coordinator and a couple other volunteers, to Tsodilo Hills yesterday to see the San rock art paintings. They also got a good view of how the area has flooded because the water was all the way to the road in some spots. The water in our house is still going on and off. Even though the rainy season is over, it rained a few times in the last week, though the flooding is coming from Angola.