the start of a routine...

Hello Friends,

So it has been a while since I wrote last. This is due to the hectic week of training that just ended. Everyone has more or less left for their placements throughout the country, there are a few stragglers leaving tomorrow morning.

I started my first day at work on Wednesday. It was a slow start, just getting oriented around the facility and figuring where exactly I will fit in. However, everyone is really nice and I am looking forward to really get into things. Seems like there will be some great opportunity to do some traveling in Botswana for work at the satellite projects for teen club. Here is the website to see what sort of things I will be doing. http://botswanateenclub.wordpress.com/

Apart from that there is also the morning play program for the kids who are waiting hours in line for their appointment to see the doctor. Between 9:30 and 11:00 volunteers come and play with the kids and run some activities and lessons. There are no appoitnment at the clinic, its simply fist come first serve, so naturally the lines and the wait are extremely long and the clinic lobby is always full with kids and their parents. I will hopefully be working on expanding this program and writing some proposals for some more funding. Should be interesting.

Aside from work, let me tell you what we were doing the last week and a bit. Most definitely saturday was one of the busier days. It began with us waking up at 4:30 am to get ready for a hike up Kgale Hill in Botswana. The reason for the early rise, was to avoid the heat, trying to hike any later would have been suicidal. The hike took about 2 hours to get up, and naturally I won the award for sweatiest person, however the other intern Tony came a very close second. The view from the top, was great. You could see all of the city of Gabs and also got to see the Gaborone Dam which surprisingly has a yacht club (at least thats what the sign said). Apparently you can go kayaking and such there, will have to check it out at some point.

The walk down was nice, and then from there we went back to the house and then off the lunch at river walk. The mall not far from our place. We all decided to eat at Nandoo's Chicken which is normally delicious and famous for its piri piri chicken/sauce. Well today I decided to be bold and order the Hot chicken wrap along with a few others. Basically the mild was what should have been the hot and the hot was as Jeff said "Lava in his mouth". It was a challenge to finish, but I was starving after the hike and got it down. My stomach was on fire!

From there we got our own Combi take us to the Mokolodi Game Reserve in Gabs. Which is an animal sanctuary, housing a few domesticated elephans, kudu, rhino,zebra, giraffe, 3 cheetahs and leopards.

It is a small and mimimal park in comparison to Ngorongoro or the Serengeti in Tanzania, but its still awesome seeing these animals. (unfortunately the Rhinos and Leopards have eluded me yet again). If Johnny comes and visits we will head to Chobe national park where there are a plethora of Rhino (hopefully).

Then from there it was off to the expat bar Bull and Bush, which was hosting a University of Botswana dj party, but we just stayed for dinner and a dance or two.

Another component of this week was the plethora of MEAT! Beef here is in abundance and is really REALLY good. On Sunday Kathy Stiles, the regional director of WUSC invited us over to her house for a Brai (bbq) and a swm in her pool. The steaks were delicous, so were the burgers and the sausages. She also had an awesome newfoundland dog.

Besides that it was two days full of Setswana lessons, and workshops on HIV as well as speakers form a number of local NGO's and governemnt agencies. Overall, it was a productive week, kind of tiring but great. Everyone has gotten along great and as much as I am excited to have some routine, the house will seem a bit empty for a while. However, we will see each other again in a few months for our mid term work/training in Maun (near the Okavango Delta). Work holiday SWEET!!! Besides that the only other traveling, is probably a trip to Cape Town over the Easter long weekend.

So thats it for now

Go Siamme (ho-see-a-meh)