Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Holy Toledo! One whole MONTH!

(Sooooo I just posted this and realized its a novel... My apologies!) 

Hey friends!

Guess what? I've lived in Africa for a whole month!!! Sometimes I'm like, wait what?! I'm in Africa?!?! But mostly I think my head has processed this information. Mostly. 

Botswanaaaaaa you sure are crazy sometimes!

SO.
Week four was pretty solid all around! Here are some things that happened. 

- First of all, Art for AIDS came and did a session, and oh my GOD it was great! It was so, so, so great. Go to their website (www.artforaidsinternational.org) to check them out, its a Canadian-based organization, and the guy who runs it (Hendrikus Bervoets) is phenomenal. The session was held with the older youth at Stepping Stones. He started out by introducing himself, and shared some pretty personal details of his initial struggle as a young adult and his bleak future being a father of two before turning 24. He continued to tell us about how he found his passion for art, and did a complete 180 in his life. He then talked about HIV and AIDS in Botswana. Botswana has the second highest prevalence of HIV in the world (first being Swaziland, third being South Africa) so its obviously a REALLY big issue here. He got everyone to reflect on the impact of 1 in 4 people being HIV positive, and stressed the importance of getting tested. He spoke about the essentiality of being secure in ourselves so we can make good choices, and about the meaning we can get in life when we focus our energy on something we are passionate about. He was basically full of wisdom and everyone was really captivated. THEN, he taught us all how to make collages. I feel like generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of collages. But these were NOT your average-Joe collages. THESE were crème de la crème, beautiful, artistic collages. He taught us a whole bunch of techniques to make each collage look unique and expressive and the pictures he supplied were basically National Geographic-style images. The students were SO engaged in this process, I've never seen them so focused. Art is a bit of a luxury here so it was excellent that everyone had a chance to produce something beautiful. Their creative juices were flowing and they were rocking it! And here's the cool part. After participants in Art for AIDS complete their collages, he takes them all, and selects certain ones to be shown at exhibitions all around the world. The chosen prints are sold at the shows and online (hint hint- check them out) and all the funds go to supporting AIDS education programs and running their workshops. This basically gives any child the potential opportunity to gain international recognition as an artist! And as if THAT isn't cool enough, after the collages are taken and the prints are made, they are sent back to where they came from so every student gets a beautiful print of their collage to take home with them. AMAZING! I'm so grateful that I had such good timing. Taking part in that session was so educational and FUN! And the program itself is really quite something.


Hendrikus Bervoets doing an Art for AIDS International workshop. AMAZING!
Working on their masterpieces


So much creativity!





The final products- SO NEAT!

Such great pieces






















- I co-facilitated another session this week with the leadership youths (the older ones), and I am beginning to understand the IMMENSE challenge of facilitating in comparison to teaching or participating. As a teacher, you have most of the authority and you kind of spew your knowledge at someone. As a participant, you can voice your perspective and position yourself for or against whatever you want. A facilitator, however, guides a discussion and let participants use their own knowledge to come to a conclusion. Tricky tricky tricky business. The session was called "Leader for a Day" and students were asked what they would do, and how, if they were elected as the president of Botswana right that very moment. Most of the things the students were focusing on were excellent ideas. But then, we started talking about the death penalty, and I'd say over 80% of these kids were ADAMANTLY for re-instating it. I am very much against it. But of course, as a facilitator, I needed to stay relatively neutral. The kids voted, and almost everyone agreed that if you kill someone, you should be killed. I had to respect their democracy, but it was HARRRRD! I was challenging them a bit (what about prison reform? what about the perpetuation of violence? what type of culture does this create? is it just a bandaid for a broader problem? etc etc) but they were having none of it. So… much to my dismay, it was the third most important priority for these hypothetical presidents. It was a challenge for me. And I should also add that moderating a debate on hot topics like abortion was EXHASTING! Basically everyone yelled over everyone and I spent most of my time trying to get some kind of order to the debate. Phewwwww!

- Special education reading is the most phenomenal way I could ever spend my time. Every single time I meet with these kids, I get a little better at customizing our sessions, and the progress the kids make is 100% the best thing on the planet! I'm seriously head over heels for these kids. I love love love them!

- We also randomly had a trio come from the US to run a session on country music. If you didn't know, country music is my kryptonite, but I was pleasantly surprised by it all. It was actually pretty fun and with minimal twang. They were a talented family for sure, and the kids were SO entertained by the concept of "Yeeeehawwww!" Plus, they played "Wagon Wheel". I never in a million years thought I'd hear that godforsaken song all the way in AFRICA!




Country music. In Africa.
The kids were VERY entertained by the sounds of the banjo

- I can buy vegetable curry in a can, and it tastes good! This is really exciting!

- Its really funny how things shift. Now, its things like having full screen brightness on my laptop that are real treats

- I had a super interesting conversation with a co-worker about the challenges successful women face in Botswana. There is this thing here called "pull her down" syndrome that people refer to here, and I guess men have a particularly hard time with women who are independent and educated. I think this majorly stems from notions that masculinity/manhood means being a provider. This definitely speaks to how complex gender oppression can be. Some women may be groundbreakers with their success, but they are still have an entire society that is resisting their empowerment. I could write a lot a lot about this, but for now I'll leave it at this.

- On a completely different note about manhood, I'm learning more about Men Care. You HAVE to watch the videos on www.men-care.org. I watched them and was literally in tears of happiness to see the beauty of fathers becoming involved and loving parents to their children. Yes, I am a total sap. But it was SUCH a great thing to watch!

- Power outages power outages power outages power outages! ALL THE TIME power outages! On Friday the power was out from 11am to 930pm, and it threw a major wrench in my plans that day. When it went out we were like siiiiiigh, another outage. It usually doesn't last long in the day. But this went on for AGES! We ended up just playing with the kids for hours since there was nothing else to do. The kids are now on winter holidays for a month and they're out of school until August 6th. Its kind of neat to see them in normal street clothes. This means they will be at the centre a lot longer during the day. I'm totally up for it. The more time I spend with the kids, the happier I am.

- I miss the internet. I miss it for obvious reasons (like duhhhhh, life is incomplete without videos of dogs on surfboards) but I mostly miss having constant/easy access to information. I'm always like "Ahhh I gotta remember to Google that next time I'm online." And the other day I wrote my uncle an email in French and it was like … no translating websites?! Vocabulary challenges over here!

- I called my 93 year old grandmother, and she NEVER in a million years expected to hear from me, so it was a really great conversation. She could barely believe I was actually in Africa. Mom has been reading my blog to her, so she was like "ohhh my dear, it is SO nice to hear about that BORG of yours!" Hahahaha my grandmother is the best human!

- Botswana has Skittles. Its a miracle. I brought one pack of Skittles and I was saving them for a dire, dire time, but I'm in luck!

- I don't know what is happening, but I am BIG TIME FAILING at hand shakes. So sometimes you shake someones hand. Sometimes, you fist bump. Sometimes, you shake, lock thumbs, and shake again (for an added level of "hey, we're friends"). Sometimes, when your name is Shila, you shake someones fist, or miss the thumb lock thing and awkwardly let go, or fist bump someones handshake. I can't even believe how often I screw it up. Kate gets it right every single time, and I am the BIGGEST awkward turtle with introductions. I am determined to get my act together. Yiiiiiiiikes!

- Friday night we finally went to a bar. It was… interesting. We attract a lot of attention since we're by default the only white people virtually anywhere, so when we entered this very rural bar we were a bit of a scene. The main demographic was middle-aged men, so it was a little intimidating. Luckily we had our neighbour Kemelo with us as a guide and translator. I ended up with a cooler instead of a cider because of a language disconnect, and Kate successfully ordered a beer. It was interesting because the DJ was UNREAL, it would have been epic to dance to the beats, but there wasn't much of a dance floor going on. Also, it was so strange, Botswana is really into braai. Braai is basically a BYOM party (bring your own meat, obviously), so you show up to the bar with your own meat, and everyone cooks it on a big fire. Random or what! Lots of families have braai, which makes sense because its like a barbecue, but the whole cooking meat at a bar is so strange.

- We went to the capital on Saturday and we had kind of reached our threshold of attention from strangers. Gabarone was even more nutty than usual since it was the end of the month AND a long holiday. Batswana only get paid once a month, so at months end people FLOCK to shopping centers/restaurants to spend their newfound dollaazzzzz. It was too much though. Public transit is a little intense sometimes. There is zero concept of personal space and sometimes the buses are so full that we have to cram into the aisles and stand for the ride. We came home straight home after getting our bedding. A night at the bar followed by a CRAZY busy day in Gabs was a little too much.

- Sunday was MOVE DAY!!! We are now settling in to a house where we each our own bedroom, and it seems like a decent set up so far. We are living with a 19 year old student and he has been really accommodating, and for the first time since getting here I'm fully unpacked, have space for my things, and don't sleep a meter away from Kate. We both deserve BFF medals for getting along so well for an entire month cramped in a room together. The new space is a breath of fresh air, although I’m losing Kate’s good influence of going to bed early and my night owl ways are already creeping back in. I hung up my pictures, set up my reminders from home, and I'm getting used to the new space. My room doesn't have an electrical outlet at the moment so we're going to have to work on that. It would seem that I'm not destined to have charged electronics these days. We will miss our host family and seeing Kemelo everyday after work, but we'll be visiting them for sure.

- Today (Monday) is a public holiday, President's Day, so we had the day to ourselves! Happy Canada Day! It was nice to sleep in my new bed, and it was THE MOST WONDERFUL to have an actual pillow that isn't as flat as a pancake. What a treat! Kate and I went back to the capital today and we got a few more things for the new place. Hitchhiking is proving to be a muuuuuch easier/less crazy method of transportation- and I promise its safe and super common to do. We also went to see Monsters University, that animated kids movie, and it was LOVELY!!! It was really enjoyable to shut my head off and the movie itself was great. We followed that with a nice meal and some ice cream. We had a little trouble finding our house in the pitch black after the bus dropped us off, so that was a little stressful, but we're back home, my belly is full, and all is well for me in Botswana!

- This week I'll be heading to the bush for a camp being held for youths from Mochudi, so if you try and get in touch with me I'll be off the grid until next week. There will be 250 ish kids there (sadly not my beloved SSI wonders) and I'll be sleeping in dorms with them in the middle of nowhere. I think it will either be fun or a gongshow- only time will tell! I'll be doing another sex ed session there and helping facilitate everything. Wish me luck!

Thats all for now. Thank you so much to everyone who has written, it is the BEST!

shilaleblanc@gmail.com
A badass cactus

One half of my window sill with my good luck charms from Canada <3

My new roooooom!


Our sign language teacher.

A vanilla latte! I just died and went to heaven!!!
Happy Canada Day!!!
The kids just hang off of us and its pretty great

The beeeeautiful sunset on our walk home!

Our little cutie, so knowledgeable about current affairs!
This is our neighbor Kemelo!











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