Beginning in Sefhare

Thank you all for your patience with the delayed blog posts. This week I will update my blog several times, so please stay tuned for more! Well, I am finally at my site in Sefhare! It has been quite an adventure.

We officially graduated from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers on October 15, 2013. Graduation was exciting and emotional. I was sad to leave Serowe and my friends, but equally excited to go to my new site.

I was picked up in Serowe by two members of the Red Cross (RC) chapter in Sefhare: Pascoline (the Rehabilitation Officer) and KB (RC Combi Driver). Pascoline and KB spent the day with me in a town called Palapye and helped me shop for supplies and food before heading to Sefhare.

Once in Sefhare, we stopped by the Red Cross Office to meet the other members of the Red Cross: Cecilia (the Admin Officer), Karabo (the Field Officer), Thobo (the Chef), Elsie (the Cleaner), Marea (Pre-School Teacher), Mpho (Teaching Assistant), Otiliah (Teaching Assistant) and Mma Seema (the School Head/Principal). They were all wonderful and incredibly welcoming. My furniture had not arrived (and still hasn’t!) so they loaned me a bed to sleep on and an electric stovetop burner to cook on.

We then headed to my house! My house in Sefhare has four rooms: A sitting room (currently empty because of lack of furniture), my bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen. As you can see in the pictures below, my house is unique. For example, when I need to go to the bathroom I have to walk outside to get to the bathroom. This isn’t a problem, except for in the morning when people walking in my neighborhood see me in my pajamas. This type of housing is typical of a lot of houses in Botswana. In addition, my landlady is wonderful. She makes me feel safe and welcome. 

Because I live in rural Botswana, there is no grocery store in my town. I can get some basics in my town, for example peanut butter, potatoes, beetroot and beans, but for more substantial food, I have to travel an hour to my shopping village: Mahalapye. At first, I didn’t think traveling an hour to get food was a big deal. I have since changed my mind.

The bus goes out of my village only four times a day. The bus is old, very hot, and packed with Batswana. If there are no seats, people just stand in the aisles. And, the bus almost never takes just an hour. The bus is prone to breaking down. And, since there are only four buses out of Sefhare, if the bus does break down, you have to wait on the side of the road for the next one. Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to me yet.

When I go to shop, I shop for two weeks at a time. I have to carefully plan out what I am going to eat for the next two weeks. And, if I forget something, I have no way of getting it. On the weekends, the food shops are packed with people. It is incredibly overwhelming, and, while I am not claustrophobic, I think I might have become claustrophobic while shopping during my first weekend in Mahalapye. I take my camping backpack with me to put food in. Because of the lack of buses and difficult shopping conditions, shopping is a whole day ordeal, and it is very exhausting, especially with a heavy pack. I shop twice a month, so when I shop, it is food for two weeks.

An additional challenge to having my village so far away is food storage. I have a refrigerator in my kitchen, however electricity goes out often. And, the weather is so hot here that I have lost a lot of food as a result.

Thankfully, my shopping village is only an hour away. I have a friend whose shopping village is three hours away, and there is only one bus out of her village per day. So she has to spend the night in her shopping village.

I have been in Sefhare for about a month now, and, so far, I love it. I have developed a daily routine that helps me feel grounded, and the community in Sefhare has made me feel very welcome. I have met a lot of new people, and everywhere I walk people call out “Mpho!” (my Setswana name, which means “gift” in Setswana) and are eager to strike up a conversation with me.

Please check back this week and next week for more posts about my job at the Red Cross, the progress I have made on my Community Assessment, weather, bugs, and almost everything in-between!