Home sweet Botswana - 9/17

While English is spoken in Botswana, Botswana does have differences from America. Botswana is mainly a desert. Animals (chickens, goats, cows, donkeys) have free reign. Normally in the early mornings you will see them returning to their homes for food and late at night they are partying like its 1995 (or at least it sounds like it).

At the house I am staying at we use pit latrines and must fetch water outside for showers, washing dishes, and to get regular drinking water. Our water comes from a faucet in our backyard. These facets are similar to the ones that are used to water your grass or wash your car in the states. I must admit certain things like pit latrines, bucket baths, and washing our clothes by hand sound adventurous and exciting to me. So when I encountered these tasks, I happily obliged.

My room is like a regular bedroom in the United States. One thing unique about my village is that families live in a compound. A compound usually consists of a main house that has a kitchen, sometimes a bathroom, and a couple of bedrooms. In addition to the main house, there are smaller houses that contain only a bedroom and sometimes a place to shower. For example, my host mother and I stay in the main house, and my host brother and sister’s bedrooms are the smaller houses on our compound. We eat and hang out in the main house, but at night we go to our separate spaces.

While only being at my homestay for about a day, I feel like I am integrated into my family. My host mother has already given me a new name, Mpho, meaning gift.

Meet your new family - 9/16

Today, we did our homestay (host family) ceremony. Peace Corps Homestay Matching Ceremony is a ceremony where trainees meet their homestay or host family for the first time. The ceremony is filled with wonderful speeches, food, and prayer. Distinguished guests within the Botswana government are invited and as a trainee we are provided the opportunity to sit and mingle with our new host family as well as meet host families. The day prior to ceremony we are given the names of the head of the household and are told to practice their name. During the ceremony, trainees and host family state each other’s names to the public as a way of introducing each other.

This all happened after being in the country for two days. Having practiced little to no Setswana, I was slightly panicked. The thought of spending a 3 days with a family and only knowing Dumela (Hello) made me quite nervous.

To my pleasant surprise my host sister knew English and was very comfortable with foreigners. She is very friendly and has only made great strides to assist me with getting familiar with Botswana. On my first day at my new home, my host sister and I walked around our village and I met several of her friends. I greeted them all with the only word I knew in Setswana (the most common language of the Batswana people), Duemla. Fortunately, most of them also spoke English.