Shila Travels: Puppies forever

Hey internet folks!

What an interesting week it has been! So many things!

It feels pretty great to be back in the swing, I was missing the kids while we were adventuring! Here are some old-ish/random pictures from before we left.

People have these gorgeous gardens of pots and I looooove them.

One day Thato told us about a new path to take home, but said it was too dangerous for us. Of course we were completely determined to go. We had to cross a river with all our electronics in our bag- kind of scary, mostly really fun!

My iMessage has been down for months, so I was thinking an update might help. 109 hours?!? Ohhhh Botswana internet.

Our SSI gals playing some netball

Footballers

They must have been in a hurry to get playing :)

The girls were super enthusiastic cheerleaders

I swear to god this place never ceases to surprise. Nothing like a casual ol' horse ride by the mall.

Hey pals!

The leadership kids singing some lovely songs

The Gabs Rotary Club brought the kids some excellent dictionaries

Sooooo as for my more recent life. I'll start with some work-related things.

- I went to a gender panel in Gabs and it was SUPER interesting/a little crazy. It was a screening for Girl Rising (a must-watch people!) except for the sound system was broken so we ended up watching it in silence with subtitles. The film was great, but the discussion afterwards was BONKERS. Gender is debatably my life's biggest passion, so when some of the panelists were spewing some nutty things I had to take some deeeeeep breaths. One of my colleagues, who runs our fathers' group and is a fantastic feminist, gender activist, and father of three, received considerable hostility from some of the women as he was the only man on the panel. They were questioning his position as a man working in gender issues. It KILLED me. The last thing my colleague is doing is trying to advance "men's rights". He is dedicated to ending gender oppression especially for women and children, in collaboration with women and children. The discussion just didn't make sense. It was very frustrating to witness. To assume that only 50% of the population can create social change is a little silly. Every single human should be rallying for a more equitable way of doing things. Everyone. There is a zillion pages of research to back up the benefits of educating people on the downfalls of the gender binary. We need all hands on deck! Thank god some of the University of Bots kids had solid things to say.

- I've been working on a pamphlet for what seems like ages, and FINALLY, it was completed and sent to the printers! I'm so excited about it! It's a one-fold handout with general information about fatherhood and the MenCare Fathers' Group we run in Mochudi. I even took the cute picture on the front! We got 1000 copies made, and they will be distributed all over Mochudi (hospitals, clinics, grocery stores, government offices). I'm pumped! If you want the PDF let me know.

The fatherhood pamphlet I finally finished. Photography by yours truly- isn't it cute?! The inside has the top 10 things to being a better dad, and a check list to see if men are prepared to be fathers.

- Did I mention that it's hot? It is.

............................ I'M MELTING

- Halloween in Botswana was really entertaining. It isn't really a thing here, so Kate took it upon herself to try and teach the kids about it, but it ended up being a lot trickier than expected. For one, the concepts of witches and ghosts were immediately associated with black magic, curses, and Satanism. We were trying to explain our Western idea of witches, but they kept thinking we meant everyday women who did voodoo on people. And then, after Kate put a lot of effort into getting the kids some squash to paint (so they could be cooked afterwards and not wasted), almost all the kids' artwork ended up being patriotic and not Halloween-related at all despite a lesson on jack-o-lanterns and pumpkin carving before the session. Halloween is actually a little weird to explain when you aren't raised with it. We celebrated by watching Hotel Transylvania. I miss my flamingo hat.

Painting their squash

I painted a clementine

Very patriotic, not quite Halloween haha

"Let's make a circle, a big big circle"

- The fatherhood research is stressing me out to the max. I have a mere four weeks to finish the ENTIRE write up… I hope I can pull this off! Right now I'm sifting through a ton of sources, but the power outages are killing me! And my procrastination isn't helping either. Fingers crossed on this one!

Some non-work things

- First, some context to this situation. There are three things in the world that I care a lot about that make me emotional: children, animals (especially baby ones), and senior citizens. In particular, I am a HUGE dog person. So a kiiiiiiiiind of stressful/awesome thing happened this weekend. We woke up Saturday morning to find out that the 19 year old boy who lives on our plot just bought a 3-week-old puppy. Of course, I'm really excited and completely in love with our new friend. She is the most PERFECT tiny little pup EVER! BUT. I'm also MAAAJORLY concerned about the welfare of this tiny baby. The owner isn't a particularly reliable or responsible character, and doesn't have a lot of resources. So far he says that he only wants this adorable puppy (whom we named Sunshine, by the way) as a guard dog, to be forever chained outside. MY HEART STRINGS!!! I've only known Sunshine for a little over two days and I'm already completely attached. Sure, we can buy some dog food for the next month, and we'll take great care of her, but what will happen when we leave?! This is simultaneously the best and worst thing in the world. Getting to cuddle with the world's most cuddly little squee is the absolute best thing, but our impending departure is stressful enough as it is without worrying about a dog we fell in love with. We're maaaajorly concerned, and working on some options to fix this. This just won't do.

Oh, and this 19 year old also plans on bringing 200 baby chickens into our backyard this week… details of our baby animal saga to follow!

SUNSHINE STOLE MY HEART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BFFz forever!

Hi cutie! You're really really really precious!

She loves to watch Modern Fam with meeeee <3 This pup has GREAT taste

By my smelly old Birks? Sure why not. CUTENESS.

- Lately the power has been super sketchy and SUPER annoying since it goes out for anywhere from a minute to a day. We didn't have power for most of Sunday, and when our fans don't work our house is pretty unbearable. We had a particularly trying day before our trip where we had no power OR water for almost 24 hours. Siiiiiiiigh. We ended up doing yoga by candle light, which was nice, but EXTRA hot and sweaty because of the heat from the flames.

- BUGS. I know I know, I always write about them. But this week, Milena had a cockroach ON HER LEGGGGG people. ON HER LEG. It was big and awful. We also killed a couple others this week. And found another scorpion. And saw the biggest spider yet, which I'm pretty sure was a half-grown tarantula. Save me from the bugs!!! Exposure theory is nonsense, I'm not getting used to this.

- Speaking of unwanted visitors, a random thing happened: I woke up to the sound of wings and jumped out of bed. I thought there was a flying cockroach behind my curtains but I was too scared to look. I went to the kitchen, and then the discovery of the puppy happened so I forgot about it, and sure enough about an hour later Kate found a BIRD flying around her room. It was hard to get the poor thing out, but in an impressively calm fashion we eventually got the little guy out a window. HOW DID IT GET IN?! My windows AND bedroom door were closed until I got up in the morning. There is a sketchy hole around the wires of the light on my ceiling- was the bird stuck in the roof?! I dislike that an animal that size somehow got in here….

- FIIIIIIIINALLY I finished The Sopranos. Phew! I was working on those seasons for months and months. When we were in Cape Town Blake gave me Sons of Anarchy, but after watching the pilot and learning that it was about motorcycle gangs, I realized it was probably a good idea to take a break from these super intense, violent, hyper-masculine shows for a while. Not sure what my next show will be, but at the moment I'm enjoying the hilarity of Modern Fam.

- Our weekend was pretty low-key. We went to Gabs for a lovely movie called "About Time" followed by a lovely dinner.

- There is a mountain behind our house that Kate recently discovered, so she took us up there for some yoga and a sunset. WOW it was lovely. Mochudi is so scenic from above! And doing some sun salutations up there was really really great. Such a nice hike overall!