I Pledge to Uphold The United State..blah blah...

We were sworn in as official Peace Corps volunteers on June 18th, yes training is over. We got placed here in Molepolole, the same village we have been in since day 1. At first it was fairly uneventful as it would be nice to see some other parts of the country, but we are very happy. The rest of the country can wait as we will have plenty of time to travel in the coming years. I got placed at the District Health Team office with the PMTCT (Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission) coordinator and Laura at a Junior Secondary school developing a life skills curriculum.

Molepolole (Moleps) is a very large village, somewhere around 60,000 people with most every convenience you could want in Botswana. The grocery stores are filled with many things. I never thought all of these choices would be possible before arriving. Having spent some time in West and East Africa with really no options, I would have to say it is pretty nice to have some things available. Batswana (people from Botswana are called Batswana) call it a village but I consider it more of a town compared to some of the other villages. Nonetheless, it is the village we will be living in for the next two years and since it really is the only place we have been since we arrived, we have grown to like it very much, especially now that we have our own house.

About the house and ward! Moleps consists of many wards, or neighborhoods, and is very spread out. Many volunteers get placed in government housing, which all look the same and are surrounded by other government employees that usually are not from the community. We really lucked out because we are on a family compound in the community, more specifically the Lekwapheng ward. It is exactly what we hoped for as far as living in a locally. More importantly, it gives us a chance to fully integrate into the culture and community as a whole. It is definitely on the outskirts of town but only a 10-15 minute walk for Laura to get to school, which is quite nice. Being on the outskirts, it gets a bad rap as one of the more dangerous and impoverished areas of Moleps but we could not be happier about our location and house. The landlady, whose front door is about 30 feet from ours is super nice and maintains a nice compound. There are about 20 chickens running around and a “guard” dog named Lion. He isn’t much of a gurad dog but still tours the grounds like he owns it. She really wants us to be comfortable and feel at home and loves to call us her children. I guess we kind of are considering we are sharing her plot for quite some time.

Our house is brand new, just finished being built and is bigger than any apartment we have had in NYC. We have two bedrooms, yeah I said two bedrooms which means there is plenty of room for those of you that want the Botswana experience. We have a huge sitting room, full kitchen, and a nice bathroom. Moreover, we will hopefully have hot water and yes electricity is here as well. So here, you wont feel too far away from home other than the fact there are no ceilings in the house. Just rafters and a tin roof, which makes for very very cold nights right now. Seriously, it sounds crazy but right now there is frost on the ground in the mornings and it basically feels like you are sleeping outside with no insulation and/or heat. Our tent would be warmer. We were typical volunteers that really didn’t believe anyone that it gets really cold, simply because they were telling us this when it was snowing in NYC last year, but its COLD. Things should get really interesting when the temp reaches 115 F and radiating through the aluminum roof. In any case, the place is nice and as volunteers we are super lucky as many of our friends don’t have anything and they are getting the true Peace Corps experience , no electricity or running water.

The ward we live in is really interesting. Walking through the ward you definitely realize you are in Africa. Dirt paths, chickens, goats and of course our neighbors have the nicest donkey cart in town. It is strange that our house is so nice because most of the compounds in our ward consist of dirt round houses or very modest cinder block homes with a water spicket if they are lucky. Most of the compounds probably don’t have electricity.
In Botswana there are many cars, and some very nice, but in Lekwapheng there are many donkey carts cruising around getting the job done. We have yet to cruise the ward via donkey cart yet but we are slowly learning which dirt path takes us where.
We have a kitten. Definitely does not take the place of Nubs but he is sure nice to come home to. His name is Kgosi (chief in Setswana). I know that him and Nubs will get along famously. For all of you who are wondering- of course we are bringing the little flea bag home, we have very different ideas about how pets should be treated than the Batswana.

Our jobs are slowly coming along. We are meeting people in the office and trying to get their very difficult names down. It is challenging adjusting to a very different work environment and work ethic but we will find our roles soon enough. The school I am in is great. It is sooo good to be back in a school. No matter what crazy things happen or how frustrating a day is, I am always guaranteed to have some beautiful African teenager smile and make my whole day better. There is a lot of work to be done there and I look forward to two years of enhancing the already strong foundation at the school.
With that said, we still have great days and days when we question what we are doing here. This country is fairly developed and sometimes we both don’t know if Americans need to be here at all. There is an estimated HIV/AIDS prevalence rate of 25% (depending on whose research you read). It seems like much of the countries economy is based on such a high prevalence rate. So many people are employed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It also seems like they have all correct programs on paper and are doing what they should be doing yet somehow the prevalence rate continues to rise. At this point behavior change is key, and we constantly ask ourselves if this a role that we as Americans can partake in without being to patronizing.

Overall, after being here almost three months, we are so happy and firm in our decision to see this thing through and learn as much as we can. We love living in Africa and waking up to the roosters crow and a magnificent sunrise that fills the horizon. We are so excited to have this to experience and learn all there is to learn from this crazy little place called, Botswana.
Miss you all more than you know....
- written jointly by matt and laura