Monday I went to
Mahalapye to pick up my trainee. I actually had a little bit of trouble getting
a hitch out of my village so ended up taking the bus which got me to Mahalapye
a little later than I had wanted. Luckily some of the other volunteers in the area
had met up with her at the bus rank. My shadowee was Tracy who is from Kentucky
and serving here in Botswana with her husband John, who was shadowing another volunteer up in
Francistown. I had a few errands to run, mostly dealing with my rent, and then
I showed her the Regional Administrative Center (RAC) where the District AIDS
Coordinator (DAC) works. Tracy is actually in the DCL (Disctric Community Liason) program and
not a CCB (Community Capacity Builder) like me, so I thought it would be
important for her to see what the DCLs do in the DAC offices. Once we were done
there we headed over to SPAR to pick up some groceries then headed out to the
hitching post to catch a ride back to Machaneng. Luckily it wasn't too long of
a wait.
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| tracy and me
One thing I wanted
to do for my shadowee was make sure they got feed really well. I remember back
in training I was very excited during my shadowing visit to eat some pizza and
have a break from sesewa, palache, and the other monotonous foods they
eat here so I wanted to give my shadowee the same break. Over the course of the
week we made pizza (from scratch), hummus and flat bread, taco salads including
salsa and guacamole from scratch, omelets, brownies (from scratch), and my Aunt
Jana's Peaches and Cream French Toast. Everything we made turned out great and
I am 100% Tracy enjoyed it, considering we had no leftovers at the end of the
week! She told me I was a great cook so if I haven't learned anything these
past 18 months I can say I have learned to cook. Though we ate well all week,
we also ran/exercised everyday, so I think we earned it :)
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| flat bread and hummus with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese. Soo classy! (Photo taken by Tracy) |
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| peaches and cream french toast (picture take by tracy) |
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| taco salad (photo taken by tracy) |
The rest of the week
was spent taking her around the village and showing her what I do. Right now my
main project is teaching the staff at the clinic how to type and use the
computers, so majority of our time was spent doing that. One morning we headed
over to the Police Department so Tracy could get some crime statistics as part
of her shadowing assignment for her training portfolio. When we received the
results I was actually very surprised by them. Over the past year (September
2010-August 2011) in Machaneng there has been:
9 Drug related
crimes
18 Burglaries
28 Sexual and
Domestic Abuses
44 Break ins
236 Thefts
And a whopping 442 Violent Crimes!
Crazy!! I was really
surprised by this and it kind of made me a little concerned. What exactly is
defined by a "violent crime"?
And maybe I should look into getting some burgular bars over my door…? If all
else I do have my can of pepper spray my Papaw gave me before I left.
Another part of the
shadowing assignment was to host a focus group discussion. The US Embassy in
conjunction with the US Peace Corps are currently researching what the youth (in-school
and out-of-school) believe to be the main problems in their communities, attitudes
towards the economy, and views of the US and the US-Botswana relationship. I
actually had already done a focus group discussion with the PACT Club at the
Jr. Secondary School back in September. This time I was wanting to get a group
of the older out-of-school youth, to participate in the discussion. I had told
the Out-of-School Youth Officer about this before I left for Namibia, and then
Tracy and I checked in again early in the week to make sure it would happen. As
far as we knew it was a go and 4pm on Thursday we would be hosting this
discussion. Thursday came around, we headed over the Officer's house to find no
one there. We waited around for a good hour and still no one. Finally a lady
came by and I asked her were Ookeditse (the Out-of -School- Youth Officer) was
and the lady told me she had gone to the hospital in Sefhare (a near-by
village) because her son was sick. Since Tray had to go back the next day to
training we weren't going to be able to complete her assignment. Opps :( On the
bright side while we were waiting some neighborhood kids ventured out from
wherever they were and did their shy stare at the makgoa
(white people) thing that they usually do. Being bored we decided to entertain them
by playing a few rounds of "Refilwe/Wame
Bua" (Simon Says). I don't think they really understood but they
sure did have a good time following whatever motions we were doing. On our walk
home we were called over by a group of Primary School girls who were playing a
game with string. Basically two girls stand a good distance apart with a string
wrapped around their ankles or knees. Then the other girls try to jump in and
out of the strings without breaking it. It is kind of like Double Dutch but
less scary because you don't have a jump rope swinging at you. After we watched
them a couple times they then asked us to join in. It was much harder than
it looked but good fun.
Friday morning I
took Tracy to the preschool to play with the kids. Fridays are their Physical
Education day at the preschool so it's fun to go over and play games with them,
that get them up and moving around. We played versions of sharks and minnows, duck
duck goose (they do zebra, zebra, lion), and many other fun little games. If I am having a bad week going to the preschool usually makes it better. The kids are soo adorable! After
we spent a few hours there I took Tracy back to Mahalapye to catch a bus back
to Gaborone and then to Kanye.
I had a great time
hosting and I hope I will get another shadowee when the next group comes in
April. I hope Tracy had a good experience and was able to learn some things
from me and have some fun too.
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| sooo cute! (photo by tracy) "Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced." John Keats |
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