This week, I taught four teen girls how to ‘blog. It was fabulous. Even though I didn’t get the Teen Leaders together on Saturday, I managed to gather up the phone numbers of some girls who were interested in ‘blogging. We set up a time for them to come in, with the vague promise of [...]

(Teen Club! It rocks!) This weekend was the monthly Teen Club; I’m so glad I got to attend one while I’m here: it was a lot of chaotic fun. The agenda is similar every club: first, a warm-up, then activities, then a presentation. Then lunch, then a wind-down and speech from the program coordinator. The teens [...]

I had a hankering to not cook food yesterday, so I headed out to a place nearby that I’ve heard is good. I got there a bit early, so I sat down with a book to wait for the restaurant to open for dinner (places open at 6:30pm here). It was just dusk, and the sky was [...]

I got up the courage to ask for an HIV test on Monday. “Who is the person you wish the test for? Are they an adolescent, a patient of yours?” “No, no, actually, it’s for me…” “You? Oh.” A rapid-fire exchange in Setswana followed between the social worker and the receptionist — the only words [...]

“So, Renee,” my co-worker Natefo said. “Do you want to go to a taping of My Star?” “Sure! … What’s My Star?” Thus began my Friday. It is American Idol, Botswana-style. A bunch of us met after work, and this was how I learned about public transit in Botswana. People get around mostly using combis, [...]

It’s been a busy week, readers. I have more insightful posts lined up (honest! maybe) but for now, sorry: busy. So you get newsy. On Saturday, Gulnur and I went on safari! Well, sort of: it was a two-hour game drive through Mokolodi Game Reserve (check out my photos!). We saw all the usual ungulates, and [...]

We went to a film festival at the local school which serves as an after-hours community centre. It has a courtyard with a permanent food truck serving smoothies and salads and other western foods. As we were sitting eating dinner, we were lucky enough to overhear the Botswana Children’s Choir rehearsing in one of the rec [...]

There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where a Klingon* is attending a banquet on the Enterprise. He points at the caviar, and asks what it is. Data answers: “It is the unhatched eggs of a large, scaled fish…” before Troy cuts him off and says “It’s a delicacy. Delicious.” My co-worker Natefo and [...]

“Practically everybody who works with immune-compromised populations has it.” We’re sitting in our orientation, learning all the shocking facts about HIV/AIDS in Botswana from Melissa, HIV and AIDS Specialist and a development manager at WUSC. She tells us all the numbers, scary numbers, emphasizing the fact that incidence rates here for HIV work like a [...]

The flight into Botswana was punishingly long. Thanks to the distortions of the Mercator projection, we in the west tend to think of Africa as a mid-sized continent hanging by a thread from the bottom of Europe — but this is wrong. Africa? Just enormous: 20% of the land-mass on Earth, enormous. (By comparison our [...]