Great Beginnings in Gaborone

Dumela! Greetings from Gaborone, Botswana! Following an uneventful arrival in Johannesburg (well, apart from Ani making a new "friend"--a story she will write up for us later this week) and a smooth little 45 minute transfer to Gaborone (Gabs), Ani and I have arrived at our final destination! Luggage intact and Pula (Botswana currency) in hand, we met Batsi, our CIEE program coordinator; Sharon and Khumo, our “soulmates”—two UB students here to make sure we don’t get too confused; and the nine other program participants (of which two are guys).

CIEE Botswana, from left to right: (top) Ani, Shelley, Dalton, Isabelle, Emma, Sophie, Nancy, Allie, Jenn (bottom) Khumo, me, Sam

For the first three days we stayed just outside the city at what was called a lodge. It was a large residence, somewhat like a B&B and we eleven students filled all the rooms and completely invaded the one conference room that the lodge possessed. Here we had our CIEE orientation, wherein we discussed everything from a brief history of Botswana to the culture shock we are all guaranteed to experience. Currently, we are all in the honeymoon stage—in love with Botswana and thrilled to have arrived. Eventually we will be sad, bitter, and lonely, but we’ll come out of it just in time to fall in love with the place again before we leave. At least we are well-prepared. We also were made home cooked meals that were quite tasty! Here was probably the hardest time to be vegetarian, as a nice meal in Botswana usually has meat.

Our lodge!

We also did a small tour of Gabs during this time, which largely consisted of hitting up the various malls. The city has about four or five, but the two big ones are Riverwalk (about a 15 minute walk from campus) and Game City. Riverwalk has a number of nice restaurants and it was here we all bought cell phones – small Nokia’s with English and Arabic letters on the keys. I have been assured that I will deeply appreciate the Riverwalk restaurants once I start taking meals at UB’s refectories (cafeterias).

Riverwalk, where the cool kids shop

To get around in Gaborone, we mostly take combis. These are small white vans that seat anywhere from 12 to 16 people depending on how you squeeze and that travel all around the city. They’re numbered and have specific routes, but there’s no bus map or schedule, so the process generally involves preexisting knowledge of where each number goes and then a ten to fifteen minute wait for one to appear. Other than that, you can get around by taxi (flag one down) or cab (which you call), or just good old walking, something that can get exhausting for those of us unaccustomed to the Botswana heat. And it is HOT.

At Game City, about a hundred combis wait for passengers

On Monday night we moved into our hostels (dorms) at UB. Batsi tried to get us rooms with Batswana students, but instead we ended up with some of the other international kids. We live with the upperclassmen undergraduates in a block of buildings just off of campus that is known as Las Vegas. Ani and I are sharing a room, which is nice and the rooms are pretty standard—although a giant wall runs down the middle that is sort of obnoxiously divisive and we have to put our own locks on everything to discourage petty theft. Gabs doesn’t have too much crime, but it seems as though crimes of convenience abound. So, for example, if you leave your dorm unlocked, someone might grab your backpack, or if you leave your mobile out someone might decide to pick it up, but it’s unlikely that someone would literally break into your house to steal.

Las Vegas: A different kind of party

UB itself is an active campus that is even now doing extensive construction. As Sharon (one of our soul mates said), going to school at UB—and I would imagine simply living in Gabs—you sort of grow up with the school/city. Botswana has come an incredibly long way since independence when they had only 12 kilometers of paved road in the entire country. Now we zoom around in combis and everyone has a cell phone (although we carry our own toilet paper to the bathroom for reasons unknown to me—this, by the way, has the potential to lead me into many an uncomfortable situation should I ever forget my roll!).

UB’s library—notable for its AC (this is very important) and wireless!

The school is divided up into numbered blocks that I have yet to figure out (that’s my assignment for tomorrow as classes start on Monday!). So there’s the Humanities block and the Psychology block, etc. etc. but they numbered the buildings as they were built and not necessarily with regards to where they are in relationship to one another so 139 is not always near 138.

Ani and Sharon in the Social Science block

The Olympic size pool!

(semi-enlarged for your reading pleasure) Watch that discharging of bodily matter!

As I think I’ve mentioned, HIV/Aids is a massive problem in Botswana with 1 out of 3 people likely to be infected. The school is quite serious about this and so there are free condoms everywhere, free testing (actually, for students—including us international students—all on-campus medical stuff is free from medicine to exams to vaccines), and lovely signs like this one.

Dalton, one of our two males on the program, models the sign

After moving in the next two days were spent doing UB’s orientation, which was a bit of a snooze. However, we did do another tour of Gabs where we stopped to visit some landmarks. The most notable of these is the monument to the Three Chiefs. Essentially, these three chiefs went to England back in 1895 to ask Britain to make Botswana a protectorate to ensure that Botswana didn’t fall to South Africa’s Boers and their racial oppression. England wasn’t going to, but the men managed to visit a slew of UK villages and drum up support for their cause and that’s how Botswana went to the British. However, since the British just thought Botswana was a desert they kept mostly out of the country (except for a visit from King George that resulted in 12 kilometers of paved road :D) and then Botswana peacefully gained independence. The Chiefs themselves are historically a big deal in Botswana, and this is one of the biggest tourist/national monument sites. In the background you can see cranes, which are all over the place in Gaborone.

Three Chiefs and me!

Three Chiefs and Ani!

We also visited Parliament (which we weren’t allowed to photograph) and Main Mall, which unlike Riverwalk and Game City is more of an open pedestrian area with stands where people sell music, food, shoes; you name it, in addition to clothing stores and grocery stores behind them. It’s the oldest mall in Gabs and quite fun.

Ani just outside of the Main Mall

Finally, last night we went to a Motswana woman’s home for a traditional Setswana meal. After busing out of the city, we had to get out and walk the rest of the dirt road because it was too uneven for our bus. Here we sat around a fire outside her (very nice) home and enjoyed all sorts of beans, corn, maize, and (for the meat eaters) intestines and chicken. However, the exotic highlight for all of us young US visitors was the mopane. For those not yet fluent in Setswana, that’s worms – or rather crunchy caterpillars. I would like to announce that all but one of our group at those mopane and here’s the proof:

Ani and Kaija eat bugs

They actually don’t taste bad at all, but about halfway through crunching down on mine (I made the mistake of putting the whole thing in my mouth at once) it struck me that I was eating a caterpillar and the mental reaction kicked in and that made it hard to swallow down. However, if there were no legs and just the taste, they would actually be okay! Juiced a little when I first bit down, but other than that it was crunchy.

Ani and her mopane

Kaija and her mopane

Tomorrow we rise bright and early to climb Kgale Hill, which overlooks Gabs and then Monday marks the beginning of classes! More on that later because right now I have to brave my slightly beetle-infested shower!