keep your shoes on

Things started gaining some traction at he University. I was able to get my student ID today which I had started to give up hope on and although my physiology class was cancelled, a man came in and dropped off the syllabus for the class, which was a step in the right direction. Then I had my first official class at the University of Botswana. It was my Setswana course and we covered some basic vocab and phrases. In addition to ‘hello’, I can now say ‘how are you’ and ‘my name is Mike’ and ‘I like to eat meat’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘goodbye’ and I’ve actually had a conversation or two now where I only spoke is Setswana.

After class the other Macalester student, Derek, and I went to the Center for the Study of HIV/AIDS (CSHA) to inquire about possible volunteer positions or at least to make a connection for our research projects. We ended up doing both and then some. We got to meet with the director of the CSHA, Billy, and we sat and talked for almost an hour. He outlined some sweet activities the CSHA had planned for the semester and told us that we were more than welcome to help our or even come up with projects of our own.

As Derek and I brainstormed on the way home, he came up with the idea of holding a soccer tournament for students that could act as a fundraiser as well as raise awareness for HIV/AIDS prevention. There’s a similar event in place at Macalester where teams of four or five pay a small entry fee to compete in the tournament and get free t-shirts, paid for by sponsors. The event at Macalester is called Lose the Shoes, as the games are played barefoot, but all the fields we’ve seen here are dirt and gravel, so maybe we’ll switch it to “Keep Your Shoes On”. The major obstacles for implementing such a thing in Bots would be obtaining local sponsorship and spreading the word to students, but we’re going back to see Billy again tomorrow and so maybe he’ll have suggestions.

On a different note, the family style dinner that the gang tried the other night has really caught on. We have a nightly showing of about 12 kids and apparently kids from outside the graduate housing are getting jealous and trying to work their way in. Each night two of us are responsible for dinner and we rotate around to a different common room every time. My pair cooked the first night (when we recruited the German chef) and we’ve had three delicious dinners since. It’s been great to not only have set dinner plans, but to bond with the gang (plus some) and have a little taste of home here and there.

Played pickup soccer again today. Steak fajitas with the gang for dinner…