Back to Gabs before the Big Motse

Dear Mr. Rogers,
I just got back from Manyana, Botswana, a small village south of Gaborone. My neighborhood for the last five weeks was just a little different than yours. I did have an uncle who was pretty anal about the whole family taking off their shoes to go inside. :) Well i've had tons of adventures in the last five weeks! My host family was great. i adore my host brother named elvis (18 ys old) but he was mostly at boarding school. he is very gregarious and told me he wants to go to USC for college and be a comedian. I also had presley (12 yrs old), malabogo (8) also named granny....yeah i know. and the 15 yr old twins godfrey and gordon. Godfrey was my homie that made sure i didn't blow the house up trying to light the stove and was my personal setswana tutor. My host dad had one eye and my host mom was super fun and liked to dance. I actually had my own room which was kind of a godsend except for when there were cockroaches that looked like they could survive nuclear halocaust and could fly. I also learned not to use the pit latrine after dark...just not fun. The stars here were so beautiful and there were some awesome views of radical thunder/lightning storms in the distance while looking directly up at a clear orion's belt. I had some trouble sleeping due to the large population of roosters and rediculous donkeys (who knew they could wake me up from a dead sleep-they sound like the are dying when they decide to make noise).

We had setswana class 5 days a week at a church. We had to cross the river everyday and this was usually fine except when it rained (it rained a lot) and would flood. so much for not walking in water here...hello schistosomiasis...uhhh right. Hopefully not. Rain pretty much always came down in a complete downpour and one day we had to stop class for an hour because it was raining too hard on the tin roof to hear our teacher. One of my favorite words is pudi (goat) and sharpo (means cool/everything is a-ok). i got lots of setswana practice because manyana is tiny (about 4,000 people) and everyone a)knows everyone and b)greets everyone they pass. Sooo especially being a foreigner i had to talk to everyone! It was nice though seeing the same people every day and saying hi.

We were kept very busy-visiting the chief (kgosi)...yes there is a chief...after a long speech in setswana he exclaimed "oh my word of honor"when he began talking about Obama. we also saw him selling fruit at a football game. We also visted a traditional doctor, went to customary courst, attended a funeral, built with a dung/clay material, and spent a day with the local ministry of agriculture office. I am managing to bathe in a bucket although i inevitably spill so much water everywhere. I have eaten motogo (sorghum porridge) everyday for the last 5 wks, sometimes twice a day so I'm pretty psyched to be in gabs right now. The food was not as bad as i had heard though...my family had a mango tree (!), we had homemade fried bread that was sooooo good, and i really like the phaleche which is a white maize meal dish that has the consistency of cold mashed potatoes but slightly breadier. I also watched more WWE wrestling than i ever thought possible. Who knew Batswana loved wrestling so much? Church was very interesting...the singing was out of this world cool (people would just break into 3, 4, and even 5 part harmony the downside was it lasted usually 4 hours and once 5. I also was given a prophecy that i had to go to the church headquarters in south africa within the month by a very frightening very large lady in a bright blue church uniform that was later rescinded (it was for that boy..."what boy" that boy, you know him...oh ok right that boy. i had no idea what she was talking about...clearly. I had no major mishaps just the usual getting stuck in a thorny acacia tree, almost peeing right in front of my host brother, making my host dad tea with rotten milk, and a wasp coming out of the toilet and chasing my around the outhouse with my pants down. Not to mention i was a constant source of comedy for my host family because i literally was at the level of a 7 year in botswana life skills. I miss you all so much and I think about you a lot. If you need to contact me, talk to my parents because i talk to them fairly regularly.

xoxoxox love (lorato ka setswana)
caitlin

ps happy birthday mom!!!!!