Dumela, meaning “Hello” is one of the few Setswana words that I can say without totally butchering the pronunciation, though it does not roll off my tongue like a native speaker’s. I arrived safely in Gaborone Thursday afternoon after a long 16-hour flight. Thankfully I wasn’t travelling alone; two other girls from my internship were on my flight, one of which I am living in a suite with. A driver and our student-assistant, Boitumela, picked us up from the airport and drove us to our dorms at the University of Botswana. She is starting her third year at University of Botswana, and she’s very nice and extremely patient. Over the past few days she’s spent essentially all her time with us (myself and the other interns). We are all so helpless and lost and she basically has to keep track and take care of us 24/7. Today at dinner she looked exhausted, yet she still asked us if we wanted to go out to a club after dinner, showing how much she wants us to have a good time. (We didn’t go to the club, everyone was tired and we felt bad for wearing her out over the past few days).
Botswana is a pretty simple city. They are entering the dry season, so everything is very dusty but the trees are still green. Right now there is a lot of construction happening at the University and throughout the city, so there are always big tractors on the roads, which are also simple. One very strange and disorienting thing is that they drive on the left side of the road! I’ve been in a car’s way at least twice, though the drivers are much more tame than Philadelphia drivers, so I’m sure I wouldn’t have actually been hit. Everything is pretty much within walking distance of the university. Most people walk to and from work, but there are also taxis that always loiter around buildings looking for customers. As foreigners, we attract a lot of attention in the form of stares and sometime comments spoken in Setswana. Usually Boitumela speaks to them in Setswana, but when we are without her we usually respond to questions but not really to comments we don’t understand. I haven’t seen any wildlife other than some noisy birds outside my window and stray cats. Ironically, the Johannesburg airport was more stereotypically “African” than Gaborone is. At the airport there were several African stores that sold exotic items like animal skins and totem poles that only tourists would buy. Gaborone actually reminds me of a small town in way northern California, like the ones we drive through on our way to camp minus the excess of concrete and freeways. The weather has been very warm during the days and pretty chilly in the evening. Everyone keeps saying it is cold, but after surviving a few Philly winters my body is much more tolerant.
Because our internships do not formally begin until Tuesday, we’ve spent the past few days adjusting to the time difference (I am 9 hours ahead of west coast time) and buying things for the dorms. There isn’t too much to do in Gaborone during the day, so we’ve been going to the mall pretty much every day to grocery shop and to get random things for the apartment. Tomorrow we are going to hike up a really big hill we drove by this afternoon, and Monday we have orientation. The other girls in my suite and I have been looking through our Botswana handbooks for activities we want to do, and we’ve added a few things to our list including buffets, Quizzo nights at a local bar, art exhibit, weekly movie screenings, stargazing (we can actually see stars here! And apparently the constellations are backwards because we are in the southern hemisphere), and more. So far everyone in the program seems pretty chill and friendly, and so I think we’ll be a close group.
Also, it says that blogs are blocked on this network, so lets see how this goes...
