Happy Valentine's Day

Things are good here in Bots. I am keeping extremely busy with work and yearly planning. I thought I would give you an update of my work progress and new projects.

I’m really excited because The District AIDS Coordinator’s office asked me to help on a project for the district. Basically the project is teaching life skills to junior secondary school students (grades 8-10). My job is to plan life skills camps throughout the year for these students as well as train the facilitators who will be running the camps. All in all if the funding comes through and things go as planned, by the end of the year we will have trained 250 students and 50 out of school youth (ages 18-25) in the following life skills: HIV/AIDS Education, listening, non-verbal communication, peer pressure, communication with parents, alcoholism, health & reproduction, gender awareness, relationships & family, decision making, goal setting, career options, fiscal responsibility, money management and budgeting skills.

It sounds like a lot of things to cram into a week long camp… and I’m sure it is. But hopefully with the right amount of planning, a productive and energetic crew, and a little bit of luck it will turn a few lives around and help the kids make better decisions and life choices.

My first goal in this project is to find a great group of people to be the management team. Considering everything I do as a Peace Corps Volunteer is focused on making things sustainable, I am looking for people who will be able and willing to continue on with the project after I leave. I already have a few amazing people who are helping, they work for YOHO (Youth Health Organization) and BNYC (Botswana National Youth Council). Both of these organizations already do amazing work with the youth here in Bots and I know they will do a great job with this project as well. I’m also really lucky because I have the help of a few PCV’s (Nadine, Robert and Chami) in my area who have taken a role in helping me plan these events. There is no way I would be able to do this without them.

My next goal is to find 50 facilitators for the camps. It’s my desire to use out of school youth between the ages of 18-25 because they are a very high risk group for contracting HIV. If I can train them to be life skills facilitators as well as peer educators, then maybe they will make wise decisions preventing themselves from becoming infected throughout their lifetime. Since this is a District project… I am looking for facilitators throughout the district. Lucky for me, my district doesn’t have a ton of villages, and I work closely with 5 of them. Robert, Nadine Chami, YOHO, and BNYC are also helping to find facilitators.

I’m still waiting to hear if funding for my project comes through. But even if it doesn’t my hope is that we are able to train the facilitators anyway. Funding is always a struggle and it never comes in on time, so I am just going to cross my fingers and pray.

As for other projects: I am still working with my primary school GLOW girls. Unfortunately the beginning of the year is extremely busy for the schools and all of them are currently trying out for various sports, so the club has temporarily been put on hold, but they are all extremely excited to get started again soon. And I am SUPER proud of my Junior Secondary school GLOW girls because they have started the club at the school on their own. I think their first meeting is this week. I’m looking forward to attending. The girls who came with me to Camp GLOW have taken the initiative and started things on their own since I have been extremely busy with the life skills camps as well as the clinic. But they know I am always here for help and support.

The Library clubs are doing well also. I have a new group of standard 4 students this year, and there is something like 43 of them. It’s a lot to handle at one time, so we are working at splitting up the classes. It has also been fun to see how much the standard 5 students have grown since last year. They are more outgoing, and much more focused. All together I think there is something like 60 kids in library club. Just this week we made Valentine’s cards. It’s not often that kids get to express themselves creatively and they are all so artistic, so I wasn’t surprised that the cards turned out beautiful.

Things here at the clinic are also going well. The clinic staff has been changing a lot lately… one of our nurses transferred, one is in Kasane filling in for someone, our driver retired, we had a new nurse transfer in, we had a new driver transfer in and we are getting ready to receive a Doctor and a Pharmacist. Plus one of the staff members just found out she is pregnant with her first baby. I’m completely stoked about the last one because she listens to the little bit of advice I can give her and seems to be doing really well and happy. Plus I will still be here when the baby is born.

That’s pretty much it for things happening here. I’m keeping very busy and really enjoying myself. I hope you all are doing well. Thank you Mom and Kali for sending me the new pair of flip flops, I absolutely LOVE them! Thank you for the other stuff in the boxes as well…

With the election stuff getting close, could you start sending me info on the candidates? I get Newsweeks from PC, but they are always months behind what’s going on.

PS Thank you to all of you who answered my plee for play money for the life skills camps. It should be really cool and I look forward to your packages!