Cat's Out of the Bag

So as this title suggests, I got a little Botswana kitten! She is my exterminator of anything having more than 4 legs and my furry companion for the next two years.

I knew I wanted one so I began spreading the word among neighbors and coworkers hoping somebody would know of a litter of kittens in the village.

About a month went by and nada. My neighbors have a very fat pregnant cat right now and offered one of her kittens but they still aren’t even born and will have to be weaned and all. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Luckily my networking and blossoming cat lady status spread. A fantastic woman who works and basically runs the Botswana Red Cross in Kang and who invited me to help her teach first aid to some kiddos after school told me she had six kittens about a month old!

After getting to her house, I had to prove my worthiness. This was no "the wand chooses the wizard" type deal; I had to catch my kitten. After a mad scramble in a shed filled with rusty nails, hay, old doors and mirrors, and I’m sure countless spiders, I caught this little one by her back leg. She wasn’t happy and she made sure I knew it, she hissed and scratched and bit me till I was bleeding. Fortunately, I was at the house of the woman who was teaching first aid. She quickly took out a band-aid, or plaster as they call it, and stuffed my kitten in an old rice bag.

I walked home cradling a rice bag. Many people stopped to greet me and would ask what was in the bag; most thought it would be a chicken. I got some surprised looks once they heard the meowing!

Using my mosquito net as a hammock

Sweet little Sukiri (Setswana for sugar) is quickly becoming fat and finding the most comfortable places for her cat naps. She berates me with her cries for being gone all day at the clinic and cuddles up next to me at night. She’s purrfect.  

Expect the Unexpected

One of the biggest pieces of Peace Corps advice I’ve heard countless times is to have no expectations.

Don’t set your hopes up only to have them tumble down; better to be pleasantly surprised than heartbreakingly disappointed. In theory it makes perfect sense. Every volunteer's experience differs, even within countries. I do my best to follow the advice of the wise sages that are previous volunteers because, of course, wisdom comes from experience! But I would be lying if I didn’t conjure a picture in my head of what my Peace Corps service would look like.

Play along with me…Picture Africa.

Unless you’ve been here before, your mind probably scanned through a plethora of starving children images, war, mud huts, sand, and possibly some giraffes and elephants. Or you thought of the Lion King. Bonus points if you thought of a song (Toto's Africa, The Circle of Life, or Shakira's Waka Waka all count). Negative points if all you thought of was Ebola...

Now imagine Botswana.

I know many of you, my friends and family, had never even heard of it before. If you had to pin the country on a map you are just as likely to point it out correctly as if you had thrown darts whilly-nilly. “Africa” has become such a generalized term that many of the same images from above probably popped into your head. Now, to be fair, there are still malnourished children but not many. Mud huts are commonly found in family compounds but most families sleep and live in concrete houses. Sand is spot on, at least for my village in the Kalahari Desert, and, yes, Botswana has some fantastic wildlife but mostly only in concentrated areas or game reserves. Now if I were to tell you that Botswana is a middle-income peaceful democratic country that’s largest proceeds come from diamonds and tourism, would your thoughts change?

The one main street in my village next to the grocery store.

I’ll admit, Botswana is not what I expected. For whatever reason, my perpetual image of “Peace Corps” is that of a rural village deep in the jungle where I would learn to carry buckets of water on my head, give health talks throughout the village, and retire every night to my hammock on the porch of my mud hut as I watch the sunset.  Its romantic, sounds full of adventure, and can be chalked up to watching one too many episodes of LOST.

Walking through my village

The reality: I work at a 24 hour clinic staffed by nearly 50 people and includes a lab and a pharmacy. My house is rather large with two bedrooms, and two pretty modern bathrooms. I don’t have full electricity (just an extension cord to plug in a fridge and charge stuff) but I have running water (though it does go out multiple times a week). No hammock, at least I haven’t found a place to hang one yet. I can get almost anything basic I need or want in town, the only hindrance is that the ATM is often out of money.

Kang Clinic

Botswana is in its awkward stage of adolescence, you know, with braces and pimples. Its not quite rich enough or populated enough to run with the big guys, but its quickly outgrowing the “starving, war-torn, Africa” stereotype. They’re in an awkward stage of having fast developing cities but slow developing rural villages. Despite its progress, it still has one of the highest prevalence rates of HIV in the world which why Peace Corps returned after already graduating the country from its programs.

I did not expect to come to Botswana and have it feel so similar to home. Albeit there are differences, don’t get me wrong, but it is not the impoverished Africa you see on TV. Part of me wanted to live in a mud hut with no water, electricity, or Internet. Now, in my tiled and clean but spider filled house I can’t help shake the feeling like I’m missing out on a “true” Peace Corps experience. Those darn expectations have scoured my view of this wonderful country, and why? Because it didn’t live up to what media had told me Africa looked like. It doesn't feel poor enough or needy enough...see what I did there? Those thoughts are awful. It should be fantastic that Botswana has escaped widespread hunger and avoided civil wars; their progress should be celebrated, not cast aside because its not what I expected. 

This is not the Peace Corps experience that I imagined. But the truth is it doesn't matter any more because I don't have to imagine it; I'm living it. I can make it the experience I want it to be. There was a huge push for "owning your service" during PST. Basically it means that you have the ability to make or break your experience. You can sit back and complain about everything that is wrong, or not what you want or you can decide to be optimistic, to never stop trying things, to get messy and make mistakes, and dive in cannon-ball style. 

No matter what I imagined my living situation to be, or my community to be, I came here to work with the people of Botswana to inspire individuals to take ownership of their health and their country and to work towards positive change. I came to empower youth to become healthy, confident adults. I came to share American culture and absorb Botswana culture. I came to explore both a new country and to explore my own limits. After years of imagining it, I'm finally living it.

I am fully ready to dive in head first and expect the unexpected.

Life in a Sand Box

Immediately the day after our swearing in ceremony the new volunteers of Bots 15 were scattered and sprinkled across the country. After being confined to a small village in sessions all day with 72 other people; forming bonds over crazy host family stories, Setswana struggles, and the hunt for reliable internet, its normal to feel a bit of separation anxiety! Its as if we all just graduated high school and are moving away for college!

It has been two weeks now that I’ve been in my new home in Kang, Botswana. It is a medium sized village of about 6,000 people situated smack dab in the Kalahari Desert along the Trans-Kalahari Highway leading to Namibia. It has a couple fill stations (British for “gas stations”), 2 primary schools, 1 junior secondary (middle) school, 1 senior secondary (high school), a small sprinkling of shops, a larger sprinkling of bars, and a rather large clinic. It is very sandy. Walking anywhere besides the one main road feels like walking on the beach, only with a bunch of thorns tossed in. My chacos are quickly becoming an all-purpose shoe!

My little pink house in the sand!

Sunrise!!! I watch it almost every day as I drink tea. Work starts at 7:30.

Now that I am here, I have entered the next phase of Peace Corps Service: Community Assessment, also lovingly called Lockdown. For the first 2.5 months at site until we have our in-service training (IST) in January we are only allowed to leave our sites to go to our shopping villages, otherwise we’re locked down and confined to our prospective placements. This is so that we can complete a community assessment, which is finding out everything you could possibly know about your village. That means being social, really really friendly, and asking A LOT of questions. This phase is crucial to understanding how things work in the village, who are important stakeholders and willing to assist with projects, what the village sees as problems and needs, and integrating as a community member rather than a foreigner or tourist.

My little neighbors, Ayanda (3) and Romeo (4) finding the stickers 

I’m not allowed to start projects until after IST so until then my days will be mostly filled  by chatting and networking with community members. Its important that I, as a PCV, do not enter the community with my own agenda. Sustainable change won’t occur if I come in and start a support group or teen club that simply dissipates after I leave. I am here to mobilize the community in projects that they want and build their capacity to address needs within the village. The community already has the systems in place and people who are working on key issues. I am merely an instigator, a fire starter, a fresh face of enthusiasm to build them up.