Pula!

Pula! Pula is the Setswana word for rain. Since rain is very important in such a dry, desert climate as Botswana, the word pula is often seen and used. For example, the word pula appears on the official Botswana seal. Also, at the end of speeches, people often yell “pula!” The rainy season has begun and it has cooled off slightly. We have been having occasional thunderstorms and downpours. By December, I’m told the rains will come almost daily. Millipedes have appeared everywhere- they are even more plentiful than earthworms after a rainstorm in the US.

I finally found a chameleon on Sunday. I have been looking everywhere for one since I was told they are plentiful in this area. However, many people in this region are afraid of chameleons and consider them evil. Many of the children will even try to kill them if they see them. After extensive searching, it turned out that one was in a tree right in my backyard. He was using his long tongue to capture millipedes and he was camouflaged beautifully with the tree’s leaves. He turned about 5 different shades and hissed when I tried to touch him. Richard recently had his second elephant pack sighting over a week ago. He saw them both times while he was in the car between our village and the next village to the south. The elephants come to this area in search of water.

Since the rains have started, we will be starting our vegetable garden soon. Yesterday, my counterpart’s 9 year old son helped us plant watermelon. We have also been collecting plant clippings so we can expand our plant/flower garden. Having a garden is especially exciting since I haven’t had my own yard in over ten years.

I spent last week in D’Kar, which is a San (sometimes known as Bushman) village in the Kalahari. Myself and 3 other PCVs were helping the PCV in D’Kar with data from a health seeking behaviour survey. It was interesting to the see the data (some of which was from villages in our district) and also spend time in another village. D’Kar is home to a large NGO called Kuru, which works with the San and other minority groups in Botswana. You can find some beautiful crafts in D’Kar such as paintings and ostrich eggshell jewellery.

While I was in D’Kar, Richard spent a couple of days in Shakawe at Drotsky’s cabins, helping prepare the annual District HIV/AIDS report and next year’s DMSAC activities budget proposal. We are hoping to get funding to do activities like an orphan needs assessment for the district, as well as life skills camps. On Saturday, we will be in Maun for a Peace Corps regional meeting, and then we will be in Kasane all next week for a language workshop.

Right now we are in the hottest time of the year, where it is over 100 degrees during the day and still in the 80’s at night. We did have a brief rain shower the weekend before last. It was the first rain I’ve seen since leaving the United States over 6 months ago. Recent creature sightings include a small scorpion in our bedroom last week, as well as a plethora of other bugs.

Richard’s office has been busy preparing for the next fiscal year. Richard was working on our district’s HIV/AIDS profile for the 2 day evidence based planning workshop we had two weeks ago. At the planning workshop, DMSAC (District Multi-Sectoral AIDS Committee) members got together and used statistics from the district HIV/AIDS profile to help identify the five most pressing issues to focus on in our district during the next fiscal year, as well as select objectives and activities that address these issues. The 5 chosen issues for our district include High Teenage Pregnancy, Low HIV testing rates, Low Participation of Men in HIV/AIDS, Myths and Misconceptions, and high rates of STI’s.

Richard is now busy helping organize a health fair in Qangwa, which is a small village near the Namibian border. The health fair is this weekend so we will be camping out on Friday night so we can help run interactive HIV/AIDS educational games with the other Peace Corps volunteers from our area on Saturday.

Last weekend, I attended a two day workshop in Maun. A local junior secondary teacher and I applied to bring 4 girls to a GLOW camp in December so the workshop was to teach the two of us and other selected Peace Corps volunteers and local leaders how to facilitate educational sessions at the camp. GLOW stand for Girls Leading Our World (though there is also a Guys Leading Our World) and is an initiative to create adolescent leaders who can teach peers about HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence. I really excited that our 4 girls were chosen since it such a great opportunity for them.

We finally got our new kitten who Richard named Oscar. It is 2.5 months old and very cute (although our dogs seem to want to kill it). Cats are not popular pets in Botswana because some people associate them with bad luck. Richard is hoping the cat becomes good at killing snakes and bugs.

Being in the Peace Corps has given me the chance to catch up on reading. I am finally reading all the books I wanted to read before I came to Botswana, but did not have the time for. I’ve read over 30 books so far and Richard has also read quite a few. Both Richard and I are working our way through the Harry Potter books right now. I’ve also read through the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Club series, which takes place in Botswana, in addition to a variety of other books. We share books with other Peace Corps volunteers, especially those close to us in the Delta, so we have a pretty good book exchange going on here in Botswana.

Since we live in a government neighborhood, most of our neighbors have satellite television so when kids come to our house, they are fascinated by the fact that we don’t have TV or video games systems (which they think all Americans have). There are even more amazed when they discover that we like to read for fun.

We’ve actually been busy on the weekends since a lot of events are scheduled on weekends. Last Saturday, Richard and I went to a PACT club (which focuses on HIV/AIDS) workshop at the secondary school. I actually had to give a talk on decision- making skills, which I had little time to prepare since I just found out about it that day. On Sunday, we borrowed a braai (barbeque) stand and grilled some chicken and meat with friends.

Now that it has gotten very hot, we have been seeing a lot more critters. There are definitely a lot more insects, including the baby wall spiders which seemed to have hatched in our house. Luckily the wall spiders are harmless, don’t use webs, and chase smaller bugs to eat. Everyone except us seems to now have big huge geckos in their houses- of course we are one of the few that actually want them in our place since I have a love of lizards.

Richard and I actually heard the sad new that Bacchus, who was our pet iguana of almost 5 years, passed away in New York this week (he was being cared for by a foster family while we are gone). Also, we are down to two dogs now. Our 6 month old puppy Peba went to go live at a co-worker’s cattle post because she was getting into too much trouble in town. She was chasing goats and donkeys, barking at everyone on our street, and was following us to work and going into offices to bark at our co-workers. I am told she is doing well, is well-fed, and is a perfect fit for the cattle post.

We are now dealing with almost daily water outages, especially during the weekends. We’ve learned to get up early to do our wash on Sundays before the water goes out later in the morning. We also keep bottles of water filled, as well as pots for cooking and the tea kettle. Since we are usually sweaty and dirty at the end of the day, we just bucket bathe when the water goes out in the evening. We have a big water tank called a Jo-Jo that is hooked to our gutter to collect rainwater during the rainy season so we have back-up during the dry season. However, the water is not drinkable and used only for bathing, washing, and cooking.

It has gotten very hot as we roll into summer. When it first started getting warmer, the nights remained cool. Not anymore- it is already in the mid to high 70’s as we walk to work at 7AM and it is still in the mid to high 80’s when we get home around 5PM. At night, we have to lay on top of the covers with the fan on us. I am told that when the rains arrive around December, it will cool down a bit.

Tuesday was Botswana Independence Day so there was no work. Richard and I went to Etsha 6 to help with a 4km marathon for Men’s Sector. Afterwards, Richard and I hung at with a couple of the PCV’s who were also helping with the event. In many of the smaller villages, everyone meets at the kgotla in the morning on Independence Day for speeches, traditional dancing, and food. Later in the day, everyone parties and there are small bonfires. I am told that in the larger cities, there are bigger festivities, as well as fireworks. The day after Independence Day was also a public holiday so there was no work that day either.

There have been wildfires burning in our area. You can see the giant clouds of smoke from our village. There are no organized fire departments/volunteers here so when there are fires, all able bodied citizens (men and women) are expected to help fight the flames. On Monday, there were very few people at work since it was the day before a two day holiday, but the ones who were there were called away to help fight the fire.

On Saturday, Richard and I went with another DMSAC member to Qangwa and Xai-Xai in the western part of our district, near the Namibian border, to meet with the Village Development Committees and the VMSACs about setting about a Health/AIDS fair on November 1. The only way to get out there is by a 120 km gravel road. Both villages are mostly composed of San and Herero peoples and there is no cell phone reception or electricity. We did get to see the Aha Hills which are beautiful rolling hills in the middle of the flatness of the desert. There are supposed to be some impressive caves in the area, which we hopefully get to see in the future.

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.