Mochudi Days

Mochudi

Starting on Saturday 9/3 all the CIEE students were taken to spend a week with host families in Mochudi, a “village” which is 45,ooo people strong. It takes about two and half hours to commute from Gabs to Mochudi. The income level goes from very poor to rich and everything in between. Batsi selected our families for us (of course) and he scattered us both around the village and in terms of the income level of our families. We are expected to live not as guests, but as actual members of the family and help out with chores and so forth,

I think I ended up in a pretty good place. I have a mother, a granny (whom I never interact with. To tell the truth, she is a bit scary and stays in her room), a 28 year old sister, a 15 year old brother, and a 5 year old niece. They live in a nice house, which consists of a main house where most of the family lives, and a back house where mom and I stay, and a bathroom attached to the back house. The bathroom has a gigantic tub and HOT WATER! The hot water from the tub is also what the rest of the household uses for washing dishes. There are also two sheds, one of which is home to three tiny two week old terrier puppies. They are so cute! I can't even handle it most of the time. They are just learning to walk, and since they are so new they spend most of their time sleeping in a heap wherever Mama Dog decides to stash them. I need to think of names.

Besides Mama Dog, there is another small white dog with long curly fur and a cheery disposition. His name is Fundi and he is chained up all the time. He's not dangerous, he just goes berserk with joy whenever anyone comes near. There is a third adult dog who is much larger and is a mixed breed. He/she looks similar to a German Shepard/Australian Shepard mix and is very pretty and very shy. This dog is more aloof where as the others are centered around the house. Yesterday evening I went to the shop right across the street from my house with my brother, Lesedi, and I bought a can of dog food for them. In Botswana dogs are not pets, so they stay outside, are very dirty, and don't get a lot to eat. I thought I would give them an extra treat. Mama Dog especially needs extra food and a rich diet since she has three pups to feed. Lesedi, who is uncharacteristically fond of dogs for a Batswana, helped me dish out the treats. He is always the one who gathers table scaps and leftovers for the dogs.

My sister, Sapiso, is mainly in charge of helping me out. She cooks and takes care of her 5 year old, Lone, in addition to doing her own thing. In the morning she makes me breakfast and sends me to school with a lunch. She helps me get around and she sent me to church on Sunday with Lesedi and Lone. Church, by the way, was a very interesting experience. My sister Sepiso lent me a head scarf so that I was properly covered as all women are expected to cover their heads. I walked with Lsedi and Lone the ten or so minutes it took to get there. It was a medium sized building with a wing for senior and important women, a wing for men, and a wing for everyone else, namely young women and children. Lone went and squirmed with the little kids, Lesedi went with the boys, and I sat on a bench amongst a group of girls my age who were all wearing the “church uniform”. All the men and women who were members had a conservative blue and white outfit that matched. I say members because this is my best guess as to why most people had on matching outfits and some didn't. The whole service was conducted in Setswana and there was a lot of singing. I pickout the Joy to the World tune, as well as Clementine. A man would be preaching, and at any given moment one of two of the women would decide that it was time for a song and so they would start to sing, which prompted everyone else to stand up, start singing, and clap. Sometimes less than a minute would elapse between song interruptions. The service was still going strong at 2 hours and 45 minutes when Lesedi came and got me and told me we were going home. Lone was already outside.

I spent the rest of the weekend watching Botswana TV and eating. So far this week the majority of my time has been spent commuting, I think. I get up at five or six am in order to catch a bus to Gabs and get onto campus on time. Monday morning Sapiso put me on a cab to the bus stop, where I met up with Megan (another CIEE-er) and her host sister. We were supposed to be waiting for a bus to Gabs, but her sister flagged down a car and put us into it. Before I knew it I had officially hitched a ride in a car with several other commuters. We made record time into Gabs for only P10 (the same price as the bus) but we had also broken a cardinal rule of Batsi's. Oops. The car dropped us off in the outskirts of the city where we caught a combi to Main Mall. From there we made the aquaintance with another American, a lady in the Peace Corps who hailed from none other but Green Bay, WI. She pointed the way to UB for us, so we walked the rest of the way.

Tuesday was a little smoother, but I walked to the bus stop just as the sun was coming up. It was cold, and I was alone this time. I got on an actual bus, and later on a bunch more of us CIEE kids got on. I took the bus to Main Mall and got out and walked again. Now it's Tuesday afternoon and I think I have to navigate back to Mochudi on my own. Yesterday I caught a combi to the station, got on a bus to Mochudi, then in Mochudi I got on another combi to my house. Yep, that's a solid sweaty and cramped 2.5 hours of transit all for the bargain price of P16.60.