I'm writing this as quickly as possible in the hope that we do NOT have yet another power cut in the next half hour. It's pretty unbelievable how many times the power has shut off in the last week, especially considering it didn't happen at all in our first couple of weeks here. Our Harvard crew made the best of one particular power-out session that occured around 9:30pm when we were all sitting in the staff room. We were suddenly thrown into absolute darkness and nobody had any desire to attempt to walk blindly back to our boarding houses, so we continued sitting right where we were (conveniently under epicly large blankets) and told riddles and ridiculous stories. We really couldn't have been luckier in terms of how well we all get along. What's so nice about our time here is that there is often not much that we absolutely have to do, so we can chat or "gab" (pun on Gaborone's nickname "Gabs" fully intended) for as long as we want most evenings; we even now have two designated Gab sessions - one after dinner before we tutor in the boarding house ("Gabs 1") and the second at 9pm when prep hours finish ("Gabs 2"). Despite spending some busy daytime hours tutoring, in general our time here is pretty slow-paced and relaxed, like the laziness of a normal summer vacation without the summer heat...and in school...
Last weekend was particularly great. That was despite things getting off to a weird start on Friday night when we were audience members of My Star, Botswana's American Idol equivalent (the show started two hours late and, when it did finally begin, consisted largely of people complaining about the corrupt voting system). On Saturday, I spent almost the entire day outside; I watched some of the students play tennis at a tournament in the morning and played games with over 100 children aged about 3-8 at the Salvation Army house in Old Naledi, a really poor village in Gabs. The kids were heartbreakingly adorable. As soon as we joined in their BIG BIG CIRCLE they vied for the chance to stand next to us and hold our hands. By the end of our two hours with them, they wouldn't stop hugging and high-fiving us and, to be honest, I didn't really want to stop hugging them either! Although games like Duck Duck Goose were difficult with such a huge group, the kids seemed to love it when I just sat on the floor with them and made as many different animal noises as I could think of. We didn't get to see much of the village of Old Naledi, but the fact that many of the kids weren't wearing shoes while they trampled over tiny glass shards behind the S.A. house is a suggestion of their living conditions.
On Sunday a really nice teacher took us on a short drive in the local game reserve. The most exciting animals were zebras and warthogs, so it didn't compare so well with my memories of the Kruger Park last year, but it was still fun to watch the rest of the Gabs crew get really excited at the first impala we saw, only to be pretty bored by impala less than two hours later. It was (hopefully) a great warm-up for this upcoming weekend. We have Thursday and Friday off so tonight we're taking a ten to eleven hour (!!!) bus overnight journey up to Kasane in the north to go on a serious game drive and to cross the border into Zimbabwe (!!!) to see Victoria Falls. Should be absolutely amazing.
I'm actually about to go pack right now, so I'll just finish up by saying how great the students are. We've been able to hang out with them more recently what with a pajama party that we threw in the girls' boarding house and a school-organized braai (bbq) with all the boarders last night. Whether we're talking to them about college or the US, they're telling us about their lives here, or they're teaching us insulting phrases in Setswana, we always have a ton of good laughs when we're with the students, former students, and other young staff members.
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