Recently, my friend Erica asked me what my daily life is like. I spent a lot of time pondering this question, and ultimately decided to turn my answer into a blog post. I have good days and bad days, like everyone, but today was a good (well, great) day so I'll write about that. Here we go.Today I woke up when the sun entered my room, at 6:30am. I was a bit upset that I had slept through my alarm, but consoled my [...]

Today is my sixth month anniversary with Botswana. We're starting to get serious. It does and doesn't feel as though six months has passed, so in order to contextualize my experience I brainstormed some ideas of what can happen in six months. Here are my findings.Six months equals 26 weeks, or 182 days, or 4,368 hours, or 262,080 minutes (and counting…).In six months, a baby goes [...]

Recently, a couple of people have asked me about the new cast of characters in my life. Although I reference my new friends here and there, some more than others, I don't provide any background into who they are or how they behave. Well, today is your lucky day! I'm going to tell you. I have several close friends in Bots 11, but my best friends are Julia, Alex, Caitlin and Supriya. The five of u [...]

Well, like I said my week was pretty crappy. Here's what happened.SundayOn Sunday I was heading back to site from our two day Peace Corps regional meeting. I hopped in a kombi at the hitching post, but since it wasn't leaving now now I jumped out to ride in the back of a pickup truck. This was a mistake, because the pickup then drove into Molepolole to get more people instead of head [...]

The past week has been a crappy week, full of a few ups and many downs. In the emotional rollar coaster that is the Peace Corps experience, I definitely went down Splash Mountain one too many times during the past few days and vomited. Now on the rebound, I can say that I have already learned many, many lessons this week. Here's a summary.Lesson #1: Poverty sucks. No [...]

For the past 3 weeks, the Peace Corps has been dragging Bots 11 around the southern half of Botswana for trainings. The sessions are boring, but spending time with my friends is fun! Here are pictures! [...]

For the past month, my village has been suffering from water shortages. When I left for in-service training (IST) in mid-January, I had had limited access to water for two weeks. When I returned home, two weeks later, there was still no water. It just returned yesterday, after a whole week of being absent; well it sort of returned. Water does not gush through the pipes like you would expect. Rather, it tric [...]

I arrived at Hatsalatladi with no idea what to do or where to go, but with a clear mission in mind. Although the roles of Peace Corps volunteers in their communities vary according to the person, program and village, I had starting concocting project ideas before ever seeing my site. When I arrived, I was determined to start a pre-school. The main motivation for my project was a conversation that I [...]

Or Becky Chanis: King of the BatsSunday night, I walked into my living room after brushing my teeth and discovered a bat circling my living room. I screamed, as my gender is wont to do, and retreated into a corner. Panicked and unsure of what to do, I called Supriya and explain [...]

School let out at the end of November, and with it went a lot of my work. December is summer in Botswana and, as Americans do in June, most people in Botswana take leave. Entire offices shut down, and what work there is slows to a snail-like pace. Everything I want to plan inevitably gets deferred to January because so-and-so is out of town or such-and-such office is closed. The summer storms have come late [...]

A week before Thanksgiving, I was contacted by the Peace Corps office and asked to help facilitate a youth camp run by the Ministry of Education. I was told that several Peace Corps volunteers had been asked to attend, and we would act in a role similar to camp counselors. It would be ten days long, with the first day being devoted to planning the forum, and almost all of the volunteers were from my training gr [...]

Dumela friends, family and strangers! I realize that I have left you all hanging as to what happened to me once I moved to site. Let me take these next few moments of your lives to debrief you.I'll start with my village: Hatsalatladi (pronounced Hatsa-la-tla-dee) is a small, rural village teeming with donkeys, goats, chickens and a few people. As far as I can gather, the population of Hatsalatladi is [...]