Pre-Service Training Highlights

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I just got my internet access at my site a couple days ago. Since I have two months worth of stuff to update you with I decided I would do some of the main things that happened over PST (pre-service training). Sorry if this is really long.

• Big 5 Lodge

The first week we were in Botswana we stayed at a very nice lodge (as you saw from my pictures I uploaded in the last post). Oh how I miss the days of hot showers, good food, and a pool. This week consisted of the beginnings of Setswana lessons, logistics for the next two months, some sessions on Safety and Security, roles as volunteers, and lots of shots and malaria medications. With all the shots, medications, sessions and adjusting to jet lag the week was a little hazy. One night we had a nice welcome dinner with Steve Nolan (the US Ambassador for Botswana), Peggy McClure (US Peace Corps Botswana Director) and some other important people. I got to sit at the table they were all sitting at, so it was pretty cool. They gave some talks and welcomed us into the country. Although during our dinner a local recording artist (Sliza) was shooting a music video by the pool area. It brought a lot of excitement and it was pretty neat to watch after our dinner. I even got a picture with her!

• Host Family Matching Ceremony and Homestay

This is where we got to be matched with out host families. They had a huge ceremony with lots of speeches, singing and dancing. Then we were matched up with the people from Molepolole (Moleps) whom we'd be staying with for the rest of PST. No more life of luxury. Sadly my host Mom couldn't come so she sent her sister to pick me up.

After being matched we had a small meal and then went off on our separate ways to our home stays.

When I got to my house I was greeted by my host Mom. She's a very busy woman. She has a catering business so she was busy washing lots of dishes. Two volunteers were staying with my neighbors on both sides of me, so they came over and we all helped wash some dishes. We even got to see them kill a chicken!

My family consisted of my mom, an 11 year old sister (Onyanna), a 20 year old brother (Tumisuh), my father who only was there for a few weeks because he works in South Africa, and an older sister (Kenosi) who lives and works in Gaborone (she came and visited a few times over the two months I was there). They also named me Refilwe which means we are given.

 The house was pretty decent. I had running water and electricity and a geyser (heats up the water for bathing but you have to remember to turn it on), so I was on the luckier side because some volunteers didn't have any of that. Although the first couple weeks we didn't have running water because the pipes were broken so I had to go fetch water from the tap at the front of our yard. There was also many times when the electricity went off or the water ran out so I had to boil my water and bath in a puddle.

My family owns a pit latrine but I never had to use it since we had a toilet. The first night I was there I saw the pit latrine and didn't know we had a real toilet so I went to use it, no big deal right? It's just like an outhouse and I've used those lots of times. Well I went to open up the toilet seat and there were huge cockroaches crawling all over and around the seat!!! AHHH! It freaked me out. There was no way I was going to use that! Luckily I soon found out that my family had a real toilet and they never use the pit latrine. Thank God!

I also got the full experience the first weekend at home stay when my family decided we were going to kill the 4 chickens in the spare room that Saturday. I got to help pluck them and then watch my mother gut all of them in the living room while we watched TV. It was interesting and I can't say it was something I thoroughly enjoyed. Let's just say after watching that I wasn't a fan of eating chicken for a few days..

• Typical Day During Training

So here is what my Monday-Saturday schedule looked like:

5:30am Wake up brush my teeth, wash my face, eat a bowl of bran flakes, and pack my lunch.

6:30am Meet Sunny and Daniel to walk to the junction to meet up with the other people in my ward to walk to the church training was held at.

6:45am Meet up with other volunteers and make the hour and 15 minute walk to training

8am to 12:30pm Setswana lessons

12:30pm Lunch

1:30pm Various lessons on Community Capacity, Safety and Security, HIV/AIDs, Setswana, etc. Try to convince Ron (our training director) to let us go to the stadium to workout.

4:30pm Head to the stadium to get some exercise in and avoid going back to our host families.

6:00pm Have to be home by this time because it gets dark and host families don't like us being out past dark. Help cook and dish dinner, take a bath, go to room to journal, write letters, read, study Setswana.

8:30pm Go to bed to get up and do it all over again.

Sundays consisted of washing my laundry. Hand washing clothes is not fun. It takes forever and I never seem to get all the soap out of the clothes when I rinse them. They don't use washboards so you have to scrub the stains with your hands and end up getting small little cuts all over your fingers. Boy do I miss the washing machine. I saw on the discovery channel last summer a washing machine that was built out of a bike and a garbage can, maybe I could construct one when I get to site?

• Shadowing Visit

So the next cool thing that happened was we got to spend a couple days with a currently serving volunteer, to see what sort of things they do. I got to shadow Derek who was a Bots 7 CCB volunteer working in Gakhibane through the Social and Child Development Office there. It was a really cool experience and it came right at a good time in training. Right before shadowing everyone was starting to hit a wall, so it was nice to get out of our host family's homes and be with another American for a few days.

Gakhibane is a village down in the Kalahardi District and only has 500 people in it. It was pretty much in the middle of no where. It only has one general dealer and I got to experience the art of hitching rides to get to and from there from Tsabong (which was an hour and half drive away), the next biggest village where Derek would do his grocery shopping. The village is up on a plateau and there is literally nothing around it except sand dunes. I didn't have cell service and Derek didn't have running water or cell service for the first year he was there. He said they didn't even have a tarred road to his village until about 6 months ago. He lives in government housing, so his house was pretty nice. He has a solar panel so his electricity goes out and he has no fridge. Derek had a little bit different experience with his village because for most of his service he didn't have a counterpart at the S and CD Office so he was pretty much the social worker in the area. In Gakhibane they speak Africanize more than Setswana, since we were so close to South Africa. Derek was fluent in Setswana, so most of the week I had no clue what anyone was saying. My Setswana skills are not very good. One day we got to go to another village (Khawa) to ration out food baskets to the orphans and the destitutes. This village was even more remote than Gakhibane. Most people live in the traditional huts and they only have water when the government brings it to them. The rest of the time I just followed Derek around and saw a little bit of the type of stuff I could be doing once at site.

 Towards the end of the week the volunteer who was living in Middlepits (about 20 minutes away) and the Volunteer shadowing her came to visit us and we made pizza for dinner. It was sooo good! Shadowing was a great time. It was nice to see what it will be like at site.

• Setswana and LPIs

Ok so you probably noticed that our schedule is mostly Setswana lessons. We would have anywhere from 4-6 hours of Setswana a day. It was really rough. We had teachers called Language and Culture Facilitators(LCF) who would teach us our lessons. Then every two weeks we would take the Language Proficiency Index (LPI) to see where we were. This consisted of going into a room with an LCF and answering questions in Setswana while we were being recorded. Not fun! After they rated you then we would be put in a small group of 4-5 volunteers with a new LCF for the next two weeks. We had three LPIs over PST and the final LPI results were sent to Washington DC for statistical purposes. I guess we will have a few more throughout our 2 years to see if our language has improved or not. My first LCF was really nice but not all that great of a teacher, so I didn't do very well on my first LPI. I don't think Peace Corps will kick you out for not doing well in your language so I don't think I need to worry. My Setswana skills are horrible, so hopefully at site I will be able to get a tutor.

• Cultural Visit

About a week after shadowing we got to take a Saturday off and experience some traditional Botswana culture. We went to this one place nearby that had ancient cave paintings and a really old tree called the Livingston Tree. It was pretty cool. Then we went to the Bahurutshe Cultural Lodge and saw a reenactment of a welcoming ceremony and a wedding ceremony with traditional singing and dancing. Then we got to eat some traditional food for lunch. I also got to try some Shake-Shake, which is their beer that is made from corn meal. It's pretty disgusting. It kind of tastes like rancid milk. Don't think I'll be trying that again anytime soon.

• Site Announcement

The next big thing that happened during training was Site Announcement Day! This was two weeks after Shadowing. Everyone was very anxious and excited to see where they would be placed. CCB's are placed all over Botswana so it was luck of the draw for where I would be placed and what my site would be like. We did have some interviews with PC staff on preferences. Mine were to be kind of close to other volunteers and in a smaller village. When we got to the center we all sat in chairs and under our chairs were numbers, that was the order we would be going to find out our site. When it was your turn you had to find the envelope with your name on it and in it was number and a saying. The number was a number you had to find on the map to find your site.

My saying was "Enjoy what you have, and hope for what you lack in…" and my site was Machaneng!! Machaneng is a village of about 3,000 people in the Southeast of Botswana near Mahalapye, right on the Tuli Block, and close to the South African border. It has a pre-school, primary and junior secondary school, a post office, a police station and a prison. I will be replacing a Bots 7 volunteer and will be working out of the Machaneng clinic. My house is on a family compound and has electricity and running water.

After everyone found out their sites we all went to one of the staff's houses, "the mansion" as we like to call it, to have a Brii, which is what they call a barbecue. Everyone made and brought stuff to eat. I made puppy chow and no-bake cookies, which everyone loved! There was dancing and drinking and everyone had a great time. It was fun to just kick back and let loose a little bit. Some people had more fun than others! Haha. I danced a little but didn't get too crazy (Lindsay, Ashley, Bri, and Siesan, I didn't bust out my crazy dance moves from Miami, wasn't sure the other volunteers were quite ready for those yet haha!).

• Site Visit

The next week we got to meet our Supervisors/Counterparts. We had a two day workshop at Lemepe Lodge in Moleps with them about expectations and communication. My counterpart, Montebatsi, is the head nurse at the Machaneng clinic. She seems very nice and I am very excited to work with her. On Wednesday we headed in a kombi with 4 other volunteers in my district and their counterparts to our sites. Botswana are not very time conscious. They told us we would be leaving around 10am so we all met at the Lodge to be picked up. Well our ride didn't come until 2:30pm. So I didn't get to Machaneng until 8pm. I got to stay in my house the rest of the week. The previous volunteer left me some stuff so I didn't have to get too much for my house when we went shopping the next week.

The rest of the week was just meeting anyone and everyone in the village. I was introduced to all the important people. I met everyone in my clinic, my neighbors, the kgosi, the police officers, the post office workers, the headmasters at the jr and primary schools, and some more people. There is no way I will remember everyone! Friday night Maggie (a woman who lives on my compound who works for the agriculture department) and Theetso (my landlords granddaughter) took me to a going away party for someone at the agriculture department. It was pretty fun. I learned some valuable lessons about giving out my number. When you are introduced to people here they immediately ask you for your number and if a guy says they want to check you later it is not necessarily meaning to make sure you are doing ok. This would have been good to know before site visit so I would have known how to handle these situations, but now I know how to tell them no in a nice way. There is one thing I don't want in my village and that is for boys to be coming over to my house all the time. It just makes you have a bad reputation and that is one thing I don't want. One of the general dealers in my village is owned by couple who own property on the Tuli Block. Machaneng is located right next to the privately owned game reserves on the Tuli Block. I met Lynn and Marina and they told me that I could come out to their property to see the wildlife sometime. I'm pretty excited for that, so hopefully in the next few weeks I will get to go stay with them.

• Host Family Thank You Party

The next Saturday we had a thank you party for our host families. There was singing, dancing, and a talent show. I actually got to be in the talent show because one of the weeks we went to local clinics and did presentations to teach the patients about an issue related to HIV/AIDS. My group did a skit all in Setswana about Multiple Concurrent Relationships and how that lifestyle can easily spread HIV. Everyone loved it so my group preformed it for the talent show. Another volunteer made a thank you video (which is on my video page). BTV was there filming, so I was on TV later that night. After the ceremony we had some American food cooked by fellow volunteers (sloppy joes, vegan mac and cheese, cole slaw, and rice crispy treats. Everyone loved the food. After lunch we had a soccer match PC Staff and Volunteers vs. Host Families. Peace Corps won :). It was a fun day.

• Swearing In Ceremony

The couple weeks after site visit were pretty rough. We all were getting pretty tired of Setswana and were anticipating becoming real volunteers!! My family made me a traditional dress and headwrap for me to wear at the Swearing In Ceremony, which was pretty awesome. My  host sister braided my hair too.

At the ceremony many of the volunteers had traditional attire. Mine was a different fabric than everyone else's and many people said I looked like a true Botswana! Haha. The ceremony was very nice. There was lots of singing and a couple of PCVs gave speeches all in Setswana. It was a great day! The next day we got to go to our sites. PST is finally over and we are now real Peace Corps Volunteers and no longer Trainees! The past two months has had its ups and downs, but I'm glad to be moving on to the next phase of my service. We will have two months at our site where we aren't supposed to leave and then in August we all get to meet up for two weeks for In Service Training.

Ok so there is a summation of what I have been doing over the past two months. Thank you for reading all of it, if you made it this far. I know there's a lot of stuff I talked about. Sorry for the length. Now that I have internet at my site I hope to blog more often so the posts will be shorter I promise!

Also I want to take a moment to thank Mom, Aunt Jana and the boys, Lindsay Arrington, Michelle Jones, and Mary Widener for the letters and packages. They mean so much to me more than you can imagine!

Travel, Exhaustion, and Rabbits

Wrote this yesterday and was finally able to post today. Want to put up pictures but I have a meeting to go to. Sorry!

Excuse the length but have a few days of stuff to update you all about :)




Arrived in Philly around 8 am. After I got my all my baggage I had to figure out how I was going to carry it all and put it on but I was able to manage. Although I'm pretty sure the military guy that walked by was laughing at me as I struggled to put my huge pack on. Then I hailed a taxi and got to the lovely Holiday Inn in the historic district. I wasn't able to check into my hotel room so I had to waste some time until registration at noon. Once registration started it was cool to meet everyone and calmed some of my nerves a little bit. Basically during staging we did some ice breakers and learned about what was expected of us, what to expect in country, what we want to get out of PC, and why we made a commitment. After a short break we talked about everyone's fears, anxieties and threats. It was nice to hear and see that everyone in the training group has the same ones as me. It made me feel better about everything. We then ended the session with some logistics and this dot activity which made us think about thinking out-side of the box and remembering that the people in our training group are our family now. Aww pretty heart felt, but basically we should always remember that we have 57 other people who are going through the same things I am so don't forget to talk to them if you need someone to talk to. Oh by the way my group has 57 volunteers, 6 of which are married couples. Pretty cool, and no one has dropped out yet..

All my stuff for the next two years

A cool giraffe in the J-Burg Airport. Hopefully I'll see a real one :)

View from the plane :)

After staging session we were finally allowed to check into the hotel room (the hotel was very busy and kind of unorganized, but that was probably because there were numerous wedding, bachelorette parties, Philly fans, and ghost hunters from Syfy staying at the hotel). After I checked in a few of us went to John's (one of the 3 Stooges) restaurant for dinner. I didn't get a cheese steak cause the flatbread sounded better. I'll have to get one another time, but after dinner one the other girl volunteers and I went and walked over to Independence Hall (where the constitution was signed) and the liberty bell. I didn't get to take a picture but it was cool to see it. I went to bed around 11:45pm but had to be up and ready to go in the lobby at 1:45am to get on a bus. Needless to say the next couple days meant not much sleep. I did sleep on the bus a little bit. We got to JFK airport around 5:30am but couldn't check in for our flight till 7:30am but that was ok cause that meant we all had time to weigh our baggage and make sure it was within the weight restrictions. The 15 hour flight wasn't bad because there were plenty of in-flight movies and I lucked out by getting a 4 seat row to myself and only had to share it with one other person, so I was able to spread out and sleep fairly comfortably. I actually finished my first book during the long flight which is nice, maybe I can trade it with someone else. We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa around 7:55am Monday and our next flight wasn't until 3:45pm. Therefore there was some more time to sleep :) The flight to Gaborone, Botswana was very short and everyone was very excited to get to the hotel.

My hut I stayed in at Big 5 Lodge

The hotel we are staying at is call the Big Five Lodge. Its pretty nice. We get to stay in these rooms that look like little huts. There is a pool but it is open from 10am-6pm so we won't get to use it that much. We are only going to be here until Friday and then we will go to the training village of Molepole (Moleps). Botswana people like to shorten things (Botswana-Bots, Molepole-Moleps, etc.). Everyone is very tried from the long days we have had, so pretty much everyone is taking showers, updating blogs and going to bed. Tomorrow we have to give up all our valuables (laptops, money, extra passports, etc.) to be locked up and not to be seen until June when training ends. Therefore I won't be able to be on the internet much at all after tonight unless I go to an internet café. So it was funny everyone was on their computers a little bit ago getting updates sent out and answering emails and such. Tomorrow starts some Setswana language training, malaria medications, and rabies shots! So far Botswana is very pretty and very hot, but I'm really excited to be here and its been great getting to meet all my fellow Bots-9 volunteers. I do miss everyone at home though and can't wait to hear from everyone! I get to get my new phone tomorrow so If you get a call from a weird number it is probably me. :)

My bed in my hut

The lovely pool (yes we were on the Peace Corps Resort Plan)

Trainees getting in their last bit of internet time

Oh something else funny here at the lodge are the huge rabbits that are roaming around. They look really cute and I want to pet one but they might have rabies, or it could turn into a crazy rabbit like the one on Monty Python with the Huge, Sharp Fangs, so I think I'm going to play it safe and leave them alone. Well I need a shower really bad and am pretty tired. Not sure when I will be able to update again. But I will try to keep posted as much as possible.

Goodbyes and Farewells

Last Saturday I had a going away party at my house. My parents kindly opened up my house for the day so people could come and go as they pleased. My mom made tons of food, shredded chicken, hamburgers, hotdogs, and fruit pizza were just a few of the delicious items on the menu. She was going to try to make a Botswanian (not sure if I spelled that correctly) dish but decided not to conquer that challenge. Maybe when I come home I will be able to show her how to make food from Botswana (like the mopane worm). Here's some pictures from the day:

These were cool contact cards I made for my guests so they will be able to keep in touch with me while I am gone.

Some of the delicous food!

The Cake my Mom  got me :)

The weather threatened rain but stayed pretty nice throughout the day.

People played corn hole.

My friends from Miami (Lindsay and Siesan) came to visit.

Me and my cousin Sara

David (my older brother) was able to come as well.

And so was Ben! I'm going to miss him a lot :(

So all in all the party turned out really well. Alot of my friends and family were able to come and see me before I left. This past week I've spend most of it packing and geting myself ready to leave. Yesterday I spent the day at the spa with my Mom and got to see my Grandma one last time. I still can't believe I am leaving tomorrow it doesn't seem possible. I finnally finished packing a little bit ago. I'm soo glad to be done. I spent most of Wednesday packing and got really frustrated when my one piece of luggage was waaaayyy overweight. After some reajusting and moving things around I was able to get everything packed and withing the restrictions. I'm trying to get around the one carryon by having a carryon and a huge bag purse as my "personal item". I hope it works or else I'm not going to have anything to read on the plane. That would not be a fun trip over. Now I can just kind of relax and spend time with some friends and family before I leave for the airport at 4am. The only thing I have left to do on my list is find some pictures to put in my little photo album and finish downloading movies into my external hard drive.

I'm sure you are probably curious as to what my traveling and next couple of weeks are going to look like. So heres the layout. Get on flight to Philly, PA from Columbus at 6:40am Saturday. Arrive around 8:10am. Check into hotel. Registration begins at noon with some ice breakers and turning in final paperwork. Have some lectures to sit through till 7pm. Then I am free to do whatever until 2am when we check out of the hotel and get on a bus to JFK airport. Flight to Johnasburg South Africa leaves JFK at 11:15am. Then we are on the for about 15 hours. We have a nice 8 hour layover in Johnasburg and get on another flight to Gaborone, Botswana. Will arrive in Botswana around 4:45pm Monday. Then we get bused to be in a lodge for 5 days right outside of Gaborne. There we will have a little bit of training, vaccinations and stuff like that. After the 5 days we go to our training villiage of Molepole (1 hour outside of the capital of Gaborone), where I will get to be with my host family for the next few months. So its going to be a very tiring week, but I am very excited to embark on this new adventure.

 As the time gets closer and closer to when I actually am going to leave and the more goodbyes I have to say it gets harder and harder. I am still really excited to go but I am going to miss everyone so much. I know I have a loving and supportive network of friends and family and it makes it hard to leave that here and go into a new place where I will know noone and be on my own for the most part. It's a little scary to think about and as the time apporaches I get more and more nervous and my fears are becoming reality. My Mom and I went to a Volunteer Send-off Celebration party at OSU campus last night, which helped me overcome some of my fears and reservations a little. There were a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) who talked about their experiences in the Peace Corps. It was really cool to talk to them and hear some of their experiences. It got me super pumped for my journy I am about to take. One of the RPCVs had served in Botswana which was pretty cool as well. That said it still is hard to say bye to your loved ones. I will miss you all greatly.

Oh also to let you know, my internet access is going to be limited for the next few months during training. I guess the only access I will have is if I am able to go into the capital. Not sure how true that is or how often will be but I will find out once I get there. I will try to keep this updated as much as possible, and you can always write me. Letters are always a nice comfort. :) Well I probably should get some pictures printed off so I have some of my friends and family to look at when I get homesick.