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.