Some things I’ve forgotten to mention:

A few weeks ago, walking that perilous stretch of road between the DHT and the mall, one of those horrible children walked up to me and hit me. He was probably 8-10, short, and laughing maniacally as he open-fistedly hit me in the right arm. I was too stunned to respond. When I told my friends at HBC about it, they laughed. When I told my friend the teacher about it, she said the boy did it because he knew he could get away with it. She said if I had beaten them after the times they’d chased and grabbed me, he never would have accosted me. She thinks I should have beaten him when he hit me, and that if any other brats approach me in that way I should beat them, too. (By the way, this friend actually is NOT usually one to advocate beating kids; she’s one of the few at her school who refuses to do it.) As much as I would like to, I’m pretty sure Peace Corps would send me home immediately if I beat a child, no matter how much the little s*#% deserved it.

For 2 weeks straight, there was NO produce at the grocery store ( -- the good grocery store, in Phikwe, an actual town!). Literally, no fruit and no vegetables. I have never experienced this before! This week, I found some vegetables but no fruit. I guess ‘tis not the season. Luckily for me, mangoes ARE in season! They are imported from South Africa, sold everywhere, and are Huge. I made friends with one of the ladies who sells mangoes at the bus rank, so I’m learning a lot about them.

Happily, I’ve tried some new things: fresh honeycomb and fresh sugar cane. They are both exquisite! Fresh honeycomb absolutely melts in your mouth, though you need to spit out the waxy part left over; I don’t think I can ever go back to cheap honeybear now. Sugar cane when raw is a pale greeney-white stalk that is peeled then chewed until the moisture has been sucked out, then the remains are spit out. It’s good for hydrating one’s self, kind of like coconut water.

A lot of random strange women tell me they “want a white man” and that they want me to set them up with my brother. They don’t seem to believe me when I say I don’t have a brother. When I ask why they specifically want a white man, many Motswana women (“basadi,” bah-sah-dee; plural of “mosadi”) have told me it’s because the men in Botswana don’t treat them well (beating, cheating, taking their $$) and a white man will. They honestly don’t seem to believe me when I say that any man can treat a woman well or not; color has nothing to do with it. A lot of random strange men recently have told me they love me and want my phone number, without asking for my name or even saying hello. Yeah, like that approach will charm me and make me want to date them. They tell me they “want a white woman.” When I ask why they specifically want a white woman, they don’t explain their reasons and don’t answer the question. They usually just repeat that they want my number, and say they are coming to my house that night (to which I always reply “No”). (Gee, maybe they don’t have a good reason? Ya think?!)

Some of the female PCVs receive many marriage proposals here. (I haven’t. Oh darn.) The proposals come from strangers, usually following the request for one’s phone number. One of the more outspoken PCVs thinks it would be a fun test to see what happens if she does accept one of the marriage proposals. I told her to negotiate a high number of cows first.

When a man proposes marriage to a woman in Botswana, the woman’s uncles then negotiate how many cows she is worth. The man or his family must then pay her father that number of cows (8 is standard) or the equivalent sum of money, in addition to new clothes for the uncles and father. This “bride price” is called lebola (lay-boh-lah). The couple do not get the cows to start off their lives together. Since cows are wealth, marriage is expensive, and a prominent factor as to why so few people get married here.

If a “boy” gets a girl/lady pregnant (one is considered a “boy” until he is 29), he is liable for child support, though it is not always enforced. There is a version of lebola, a sort of “sorry I knocked up your daughter” price that is often sought by the girl’s father. Again, her uncles negotiate the sum, which can be around 9,000 pula ($1500.00).

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Well, one of the APCDs came to Bobonong to visit me and my counterpart. This is the 3^rd time. While I very much appreciate her taking the time to travel here and try to sort things out, nothing is going to change. Just like site visit, she talked with me, then my counterpart, then the matron, then all of us together. I was very honest with her about how my counterpart interrupts and talks over me, how I feel attacked when she snaps at me, how she doesn’t communicate with me and is never at the office (yes, she is very busy; too busy to have a PCV); and how this behavior makes me feel that she thinks I have nothing valuable to contribute, that she doesn’t want me/PCVs here, and that I absolutely do not want to work with her any more because the relationship is unhealthy and cannot be repaired at this point. The APCD thought I should say those words to my counterpart, so I did. However, my counterpart ignored all of that and focused on the fact that monetary reimbursements in this country take time. We all agreed that communication needs to be improved by both of us. The fact that neither the matron nor my counterpart responded to any of the things I brought up was frustrating. I give up. I will continue to try to improve communication until the next incident, then I will avoid DHT altogether for the remainder of my time here. That is the only viable solution I can see.