Time flies when...you're in Africa?

I know, I know, I am a horrible blogger and haven’t posted in almost a month but I am fixing that now!  The past three weeks haven’t been too event filled but I will give you guys the few updates I have.  It seems like most of my time has gone towards this health promotion pamphlet I am trying to get started.  I have gone to 5 stores and gyms looking for financial support and haven’t heard back from any of them.  In fact, my first one should respond later today so I am actually pretty nervous right now.  I never realized just how tiring it is to interact with all of these people and try to sell the same story over and over.  Nothing is ever done straight forward here so it results in me traveling to different headquarters and making lots of phone calls.  However, if the end product is what I hope it will be, then all this will be worth it.  I find the worst part of it to be the traveling to and from campus in this ungodly warm weather.  Without a car and trying to avoid paying to combis, I tend to go through a lot of clothes these days.  I don’t know what ever happened to “winter” coming because it seems like it has been getting hotter every day!

Anyway, so it was a couple of my friends’ birthdays in the past few weeks so we went out again, my second time since coming here.  It was fun but I definitely don’t feel as comfortable going out here as I do at home.  All of their clubs and bars are in the middle of nowhere which is a little scary.  I try to keep myself occupied on the weekends doing other things though so that works out well. 

Last weekend I stayed at David’s house (the man whose family is taking care of me while I’m in Gabs).  I made them an “American meal” as they requested for dinner last Saturday.  While I fancy myself as a decent cook, I have no idea what is considered “American”.  I would have said hamburger but they already have those here so I resorted to chicken parm and macaroni and cheese.  They enjoyed both but I would say the mac n cheese was the big hit.  They want me to make another meal before I leave but I think I’m fresh out of ideas!  Anyway, the next morning I went to church with the two little girls, the son, and David’s wife, Charity.  It was interesting to see the differences in churches between the Mochudi church, the one in Gabs, and the one she took me to last Sunday.  This one was not the typical church.  They had people from the congregation reading and leading the mass and the most noticeable difference is that there was no building.  We had mass under a tent.  At least I didn’t have to cover my head like I did in Mochudi, that makes it about 10 degrees hotter anywhere.  Speaking of Mochudi, I am going to visit my host family this Saturday so that should be fun.  Also, one of my friends doing a home-stay is offering the family farm for a bunch of us to camp out and do…farm things?  It should be fun.

 Last Friday we went to the Jwaneng Diamond Mine where 80% of Botswana’s diamonds come from.  I have never seen a hole that big in my life!  I can’t even put into words how big it was.  It was about a quarter mile deep and I can’t even estimate how wide.  Its weird thinking the entire economy is based on that one spot though.  They are estimating the pit will last until 2033 but at that time…no one knows what will happen.  That’s not even mentioning the fact that something like 60% of all of Botswana’s water supply goes to cleaning the diamonds.  No wonder people are still digging boreholes here.  Guess it’s time to start rethinking some plans.  The coolest part was probably getting to stand next to a 240 TON capacity truck.  The tires were about two of me high.  Talk about feeling small!

All geared up for our tour (too bad you can't see our steel-toed boots!) 

Open-cast mine.  Those little trucks down there are the ones in the next picture.

Also, on Tuesday morning I went around with the Gaborone City Council who does waste management which sounds disgusting, and kind of is, but it was very interesting.  Again, I just don't understand some of the things they do here.  We went to a landfill which was absolutely enormous.  Apparently they did not build it up to standards so once everything decomposes, the toxins will seep into the ground water thus affecting drinking water.  Something isn’t right there considering half the time they have trouble finding water here anyway.  Don’t you’d think they’d want to protect it?  The other issue was that they use an incinerator to get rid of PLASTIC clinical waste.  Everything I have ever heard says burning plastic is not too wise. 

As for school, I have run into a few issues recently that have made me truly not understand how things work here.  My first issue is that one of my classes, the professor only shows up about half of the time.  I have an issue with that when my program is paying the school which is paying the professor to teach me but he doesn’t do half of his work.  Apparently the students don’t ever complain and at first I didn’t mind some of the days off but now it is getting ridiculous.  Also in that class, we watched a film called Slum Survivors.  While it was an extremely eye-opening documentary, I left the class extremely annoyed.  First of all, the stuff we saw was very intense as it covered the story of Africa’s largest slum found in Kenya and we did not discuss anything we saw.  I am not used to seeing something like that and just leaving after like nothing was different in the world.  The other thing that aggravated me was that the kids in the class were laughing about the whole film.  I don’t understand what they found humorous, especially knowing that is happening in their backyards and they themselves are about 20 years away from that situation themselves once the diamonds run out.  My only guess is maybe it was a defense mechanism but it really disturbed me.

My second issue I have with this school is that yesterday I had a bit of a run-in with a professor who gave me my first taste of predjudism.  In a class of 100 people, three of which are international, we are giving group presentations about traditional medicine in different regions of the world.  After one group member presents, the professor asks one male and one female to volunteer criticism about the presentation.  I wouldn’t feel comfortable standing in front of that many people to begin with but to be criticized by immature college students would make it 10 times worse.  So one girl went up and she was the only girl who actually knew what she was doing so I decided it was my turn to offer comments.   I wanted to make sure she got an honest comment rather than the ones people had been saying such as..”your font is too small” when we couldn’t even see the presenter’s note cards.  Not only did the entire class laugh at me after making my comment (which was that she did a good job and clearly knew her material because she didn’t rely on her notes) but the professor proceeded to make a joke out of my comment for the rest of class.  This really got to me because one other international student made a comment on Monday and was also laughed at yet everyone else doesn’t comment seriously and should be laughed at.  The worst part was that the professor joined in on the fun with my comment.  It is clearly just because we are international and it was clearly a lesson to be learned.  That was the first and last time I will ever raise my hand in that class, if I even go back.  I guess this should be chalked up as a “learning experience” about what people in the states go through but it was probably the most embarrassed I have been since coming here.  After talking about it with a local friend I have, I came to the realization that the students here who claim the teachers aren’t good never do anything about it because they just don’t care.  They aren’t paying for school.  In fact, they are being paid to go here by the government so what do they care if professors show up?  It makes for a very frustrating situation.

Other than my classes, everything here is going well though.  I only have 21 days of classes left which is crazy to think about but it amounts to 46 pages of papers left to write.  I hope something more interesting happens soon so I can update people about cool stuff.  Still, hoping to get to Mozambique over Easter break and will probably go scuba diving there so that will be fun.  Hope all is well at home and that everything in Northern Africa and the Middle East calm down seeing as I have to fly through all of those places on the way home.  That could end up…interesting.