Latest Events

With all the work I've been doing in the library lately, I've become quite friendly with all the curious children at the school. It's mostly standard 7's who come in to actually help me clean, but there are always at least 10 or 20 standard 2's and 3's who run in and out of the library, laughing at me or watching me through the windows.  Just last week, they've started to come "check me" at my house (to be "checked" is a Botswana term, meaning when someone comes to visit you). They bang on my door relentlessly until I open it, and try to explain that during school hours they can't come to see me, they have to stay in their classrooms. Of course they have no idea what I'm saying, so they just giggle and ask to see my pictures. Here are a few of the regulars:

A week or two ago I had two girls, Shady and Onnie, come check me who I had never met before. They just finished Form 5 in Kang, and are about to go to University this coming August but are living in Motokwe until then. Apparently there's a rumor going around the village that I bake a mean chocolate cake (which is true), so they wanted me to teach them how to bake. They are the closest people to my age that I've met so far in Motokwe, and I'm really excited to hang out with them until they have to leave. Thanks to all the great work they did with their PACT club at Senior Secondary School, they are the ideal role models to come in and talk to the PACT club at Motokwe Primary about the importance of this Life Skills curriculum. I'm already anxious to get them in for some activities and inspirational talks with the kids. They took me to their homes last week to show off their amazing, lush gardens. I had no idea you could grow so many different vegetables in all this sand, so I'm excited to get home and let them help me start my own garden!

Look at that little baby watermelon!

On Friday, I went to Caitlin's village, Dutlwe, to help her do some health outreach with the clinic there. We started off by playing a game called Lions and Elephants to help the villagers understand and conceptualize how HIV affects the human body. It starts by inviting one person to be the baby elephant -- this represents the human body. Then you invite 4 or 5 people to be the adult elephants -- this represents the human immune system -- and they form a circle of protection around the baby elephant. Then you invite 5 or 6 people go be the lions -- this represents the diseases that can harm the human body. The lions stand in a circle around the adult elephants and, holding balls of paper, attempt to throw them at the baby elephant and hit it. The idea is that the adult elephants will protect the baby so that ideally, no diseases hit the body. The people at the clinic LOVED this game!

We went on to pull in more people to represent HIV and how it affects the immune system's ability to take care of the body, and then to represent ARV's and how they help curb the impact of HIV. It was a lot of fun and I hope they got the message, despite our sad attempts at Setswana (thank goodness for the translator we had). After that we did a few condom demonstrations for the group to explain how to properly use one. 


Then we played a game like Hot Potato, where we blew up condoms (to demonstrate how durable they are) and folded up small pieces of paper with questions on them, and put them inside the condom. We sang a song in Setswana as we passed it around the circle, and whoever was holding it when the song ended had to try to break open the condom and answer the question. The group was mostly girls, and there was a lot of laughter but they really knew their condom facts!

And then to cap the day off, we had a condom water balloon toss! This went over really well, and it's a great activity to demonstrate how hard it is to break a condom. They were dropped all over the ground with the rocks and sand, and lasted through a few rounds. 

We ended our day around lunch time and headed back to Caitlin's house to relax, but first stopped off at her post office. It's super fancy and brand new, can't you tell?