Internet is sparse.
Therefore this post will only be a brief summary of the last 3 weeks, but it should be implied that everyday is packed to the brim with cultural, social, and educational activities; stories of which you will have to hear from me personally one day!
Side-note, peace corps is all about the acronyms so you better get them down because soon these posts will all be written in code.
Currently, I am not a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) but a Peace Corps trainee (PCT). As a trainee I go through what is called Pre-Service Training (PST). During this time, we live with a host family and have different language, cultural, technical, and safety training throughout the week. This will continue for 10 weeks till we are officially sworn in as PCV's mid-October, yay! PST is exhausting. We have class from 7:30 am to 5pm everyday and then go home and do chores and cook with the host family (which can be taxing in itself, but also super fun and rewarding!). By the end of it, we should all have the skills we need to be set loose at our own sites, all alone. This is a great chance for us to bond as a group while also learning Batswana cultural norms.
I love my host family. My mother is in her sixties and is a sweet woman very intent on teaching me all the cultural experiences I need to know. She had six adult children but currently only two of her sons live at home during their vacation from university. Also living in the house are two of my mother's grandchildren, my host niece, Yaone age 13, and my host nephew, Lesego age 10. Extended family is huge here and there are other family members sprinkled all throughout my neighborhood including aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, and more young nieces and nephews. Often, family members will stop by for a visit unannounced sometimes even spending the night.
My house is a lot nicer than I expected with running water and electricity though both do go out occasionally. The flooring is all tile and the kitchen is tiny, but otherwise an average house. There is no hot water and no shower so I take heated bucket bays instead. It's taken mea while to establish the people way to bath (yes they say "bath" here instead of "bathe ") but I think I'm finally getting it; at least I haven't started smelling bad so I must be on the right track!
Daily life consists of Setswana lessons every day but Sunday with my wonderful LCF (language and cross cultural facilitator) Last Lucia, and a couple other trainees, and carps lessons addressing HIV signs, gender empowerment, how to deal with unwanted attention, etc. I have a 45 minute walk to and from school everyday and must always be home before dark for safety reasons. When I get home I often hang out with my family, eat dinner, bath, then retreat to my room to read and go to sleep by 9:30.
The food here is interesting. I haven't had any bad experiences but all of it is cooked with lots of salt and oil and can get a bit repetitive. Breakfast normally consists of a cup of rooibos tea, and a fat cake or moguina (basically just a ball of fried dough!) spread with peanut butter. Dinner seems to be either one of two meals. We often have rice or pasta with a sauce they call " soup" because it's made from powdered soup packets (minestrone seems quite popular) with some potatoe, onion, and carrot chunks, butternut squash, coleslaw made from cabbage and tangy mayonnaise, and chicken. Or on alternate nights we have paleche (looks like mashed potatoes but is really maize flour added to water till it gets stiff, kinda tasteless), beef, and morogo (bean leaves that taste bitter like seaweed). My lunch usually consists of leftovers from dinner the night before or an occasional fried egg and fat cake.
I am enjoying my house family and training bit I am excited to eventually be of on my own. Training, being so scheduled, can be tiring and you hardly get any time to yourself. BUT tomorrow, we will be taking a break from training and going to the rhino sanctuary in Serowe which should be a blast! And in another week we have site visits where we travel to stay a few days with an existing volunteer to see what actual life in the field is like! AND in 3 weeks, we find out our site placements; where we will each be placed in Botswana do for the entire two years!!
Tsamaya sentle
Go well
