Often called the all purpose
tool,
Whoever said that was no fool.
You aided me as can be seen,
By helping me attach window
screen.
You truly are my new best friend,
Yet I am sad that you are at your
end.
Message from all this: send duct
tape, I ran out.
A strange way to start a blog
post I suppose, but I needed to express my new love of duct tape. It has helped me control the heat in this
village. So I managed to get to site just
less than two weeks ago, so it seemed a good time to do a quick update on some
of the new things in my life. First of
all driving into the village I got to see two wild ostriches. Still no lions yet, but I am hoping sooner or
later.
Moving in was…well a huge pain to
say the least. I had the keys to my
house for days, and when I finally got there the place was just filthy. The keys I had were the ONLY keys, so that
meant no one had cleaned the place since the old volunteer left. So after storing my stuff at another
teacher’s house (where I was going to sleep originally) I made a huge effort of
cleaning that place so that I could move in that night. And I was successful. It still took almost the entire weekend to
get everything unpacked and arranged how I liked it, but it is finally a place
I am proud to call home, despite all of the ghetto rigging I have done. I have shoved a couple puzzle books that I
finished under my front door since the gap is big enough for mice to crawl in. I also have cut up an old mosquito net and
used my new best friend to affix it to the walls to make screens. This allows me to keep my windows open
without fear of bugs so I can regulate the temp a bit.
I can also say we have officially
entered the rainy season. As I am
writing this I am currently trying to out noise the rain on my tin roof by
blasting music. This is the third storm
in Kaudwane in a week, which kinda sucks since I have to leave the village
tomorrow to a Youth Forum (although by the time I post this that tomorrow will
be meaningless).
I can’t say too much on my day to
day yet, still trying to remember names of people and meet and talk to
everyone. So I don’t really have a
routine yet, and the school closes in two days from now, so I will probably be
pretty bored very soon. So instead of
giving boring details of these past two weeks here are two interesting cultural
things I have encountered here. I should
note that these are not typical to ALL Botswana, but my location in a Khoisan
settlement gives me some more culture stuff.
First one: The kids have some of the strangest nervous
tendencies I have ever seen. By far the
best of these though was the hand thing.
I can’t think of a better name for it yet, but I will work on it, after
I get over trying to laugh when they do it.
I saw it the first time the other day.
A kid didn’t know what to do and in his nervousness he put his hand up
towards his face (not touching). Next he
stuck his tongue out and ran his hand down in front of it. Once again, not touching, but still just
strange. Then he walked away without
saying a word like it was the most normal thing.
The other one was explained to me
by one of the other teachers. Two
students were wrapped up in blankets that their parents rushed over from home
during the first of the big storms. This
is when I found out that it is part of the celebration of becoming a
women. First of all a girl will be in
the house for seven days when it is her first menstruation and people will come
and sing songs to celebrate her becoming an adult. Then, during the first storm following she
needs to be wrapped up because it is an old cultural belief that unless she is
she will be a target for lightning strikes.
Well that is my bit for now on
attempting to impart some Botswana culture on America. And expressing my love of duct tape. Seriously, send tape. Any kind too, I am almost out of scotch tape
for putting stuff on the walls.
P.S. I wrote this two weeks ago, but was at a ten
day youth forum, the blog post on that will be ridiculously long and full of
great stories, so be ready for that in a few days./weeks
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