Week 23: Living in Luxury

 

After three months at site with limited contact with other Americans I know find myself surrounded by my whole intake group (Bots 14). It has been three months of rural village life where internet is only available in the neighboring village. Emails can take up to a half hour to send at the public library by me but this week I am at a hotel with strong enough bandwidth that I can stream Macklemore on youtube (that is if I am willing to have frequent interruptions in the streaming, waiting for it to load). This is because I am in the capital for training. Peace Corps has a variety of trainings through out in country service and my intake group is currently going through IST or In Service Training. This means two weeks of decadence. The hotel room I am sharing with my dear friend is bigger then both of our peace corps houses, we have air conditioning, a pool, and get fed numerous times a day never having to do the dishes. I love my village and I did not move to Botswana to live in luxury, but I am not going to lie, taking a daily hot shower has been nothing short of blissful.

Week 22: The Aerobics Class

fter three months at site I discovered there is an aerobics class in my village. Excited by the fitness enthusiasm and invited by one of the teachers I went to the aerobics class this week. What the teacher failed to mention is that I would be teaching the class. My aerobics history involves playing in the basement in a leotard, while my mother did step aerobics, clearly I am a very qualified teacher. Luckily this teaching opportunity also coincided with a recent half hearted motivation to work out which usually ended with me laying on my floor while Jillian Michaels workout videos played. In the moment I felt lazy for not working out but in hindsight I now realize that I was simply preparing for my new aerobics teaching. Lunges and squats may not be stereotypical “aerobic” moves, but if they work for Jillian Micheals then they are good enough for the aerobics class in Moshana.

I may have never envisioned myself as an aerobics teacher or class attendee however that has been the highlight of my week. Squats have never been so fun as I find myself squatting all the way down to the ground and collapsing with laughter based on the varied interpretations of what a “squat” means and looks like. I am sure that I look just as funny as the other participants, however since there are no mirrors I can only see the ridiculousness of what my classmates look like. Including the open interpretation of butt kicks to mean fist pumping and taking photos of themselves, hey we all work out in different ways. After one week of classes I think my abs may have gotten a better work out from all of the laughter then my body did from the “aerobics.”

Week 21: Happy New Year

“Lesego, you need to put pants on” This was the only direction I was given before going to “dikwaere.” How does one get ready for an all night choir in the Bush? I had no idea, but apparently pants were a must. So I donned my yoga pants, figuring I might as well be comfortable while being confused and off we went into the Bush. To give you a little picture it is 10:30pm on January 1^st and let me tell you this is an hour that I do not usually see, let alone leave my house for, but this was no ordinary day. After an hour walk on a “path” that I had no idea existed, we came upon the dikwaere. There were many people gathered to hear the two choirs sing and dance the night away. Quite literally the choirs rotate singing all night and into the morning. Let me reiterate that 10:30 is past my bedtime and I knew that there was no way I was making it to the wee hours of the morning. Lucky for me I ran into our local councilor at around 1:30am and he offered to drive me home, I was very excited about this since I was now understanding the “wear pants” directive, as the weather was shifting  and I was clearly not dancing enough to retain my body heat. Around 2am I started dancing a little bit more both to dance my way out of conversations with highly intoxicated men and to warm up as I could not find the councilor anywhere. 2:30 I decide that next year I am going with a friend who owns a pick up truck, bringing lots of blankets, and snacks. 3am the councilor reappears and I happily hop in his truck and promptly fall asleep, there were briefly muttered goodbyes and then stumbling into my own bed where I had a new appreciation for my blanket. At that moment I could understand Linus’ attachment to his blanket, blankets are the best.

Dikwaere are a tradition in southern Botswana and are held for Christmas, New Years, and Independence Day (September 30^th).