Kill and Defeather

Written on 29/09/09

Posted many days after - so our next blog will be about this amazing trip.

Matt killed and defeathered his first chicken. We ate it last night. It was pretty good. It was a little tough but overall I would have to say it is pretty amazing knowing everything about what you are ingesting in a night.

This Tuesday is Botswana independence day. We are headed to the Sowa Salt Pans. We are visiting a PC friend who lives up there. There are like 15 of us going. Definitely too big of a crowd but I am SOOO excited to get out of our village. Jillian, our friend, lives near these salt pans and we are hoping to go out there and camp for a night. They are supposed to be really cool especially since they are waterless now. She also lives within a few kilometers of a Refugee Camp so we are going there for sure.

I guess it is the rainy season. I can never get a straight answer from anyone. However, it is storming every night. Huge, noisy, cuts your electricity out for hours storms. They are awesome. We have a tin roof, so it is literally so loud you can not hear each other. It is amazing last night; it rained for hours and I woke up this morning and I could not even tell. Funny how you know you are in the desert no matter how much rain we get.

Last Friday was a huge event at our school, called Prize Giving. They honor the best students throughout the school. I cut cabbage for three hours. It was terrible. However, while cutting I got to hangout with students. We laughed alot, sang a little Akon and practiced my Setswana. The kids really enjoyed the day; it was really nice to see kids being kids.

A child got really sick during the activities. She fell to the ground and from her waist down she started shaking like she was having a seizure. It was so weird and when I asked her if she had talked to a teacher she said no. So of course, I took over. We tried to calm her down. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen while working with kids. She was shaking uncontrollably but only from the waist down. We got transport to the clinic and they immediately put us in an ambulance to the larger clinic with a doctor. The doctor said she thinks it is an emotional response to something that is going on in her life. Who knows. She gave her anxiety pills and sent us away. So many unanswered questions. And this is the second child I have seen that has done this.

Today the girl was back in my office with the shakes again. I treated it as if it was a neurological reaction to a trauma in her life. I had her count her breaths and when ever the shaking started again i told her to focus on the tree we were sitting under. I am going to figure this out. The girl is coming to my house next week and we are going to talk. This culture does not allow children to talk to adults and you are not allowed to air your problems in public. I hope by being at my house she will open up and we can get to the problem. But, shit, who knows if that will even help. I am still not totally convinced that what the doctor said is right. But for now I will listen to the doctor and will try talking to this girl.

It is so weird that I am here to teach children about self- awareness, being assertive, and about gender roles all to help prevent future HIV/AIDS infections. Yet, we are still in a country in which children are not free to express themselves. Their stressful situations manifest themselves through these strange illnesses. I wonder if by teaching these children these things we are creating too big of an imbalance and we are the reason that they are having these 'panic attacks'.

Posted some more pictures from the prize giving

http://picasaweb.google.com/mattandlaurabots

have a great week.

love
laura