Blog #17 – 1st Weekend in Maun

It figures that me of all people would spend my first Saturday in at work!

Leslie had just gotten back from the research camp and there was loads of work to catch up on! We had a bright and early start at 8:00am in the morning. I had originally planned on sleeping in on Saturday and possibly getting breakfast in bed…haha, only joking!

In at the office we did a lot of work talking about the plans for the summer and where I would fit in and where I could help out. There is a good deal of flexibility and a lot of things that are going to be decided as they come up on the fly, but there are some really cool projects! The two highlights will most likely be the one-week of the football camp (the actual Coaching for Conservation program) and the second will most likely be the short film documentary that we are helping to create that is on all of the different facets of work that the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust.

I spent the rest of the day structuring and finalizing the curriculum package for all of the school visits. It is an interesting job, since I am only familiar (and have used) North American styles and structures of teaching to plan the lesson, so I have no idea how it will go over with the kids. I am ready to review and have multiple versions of this after we start going through them. The end of the day was spent organizing and planning the logistical details of the week – there is a lot of stuff to sort through and a lot of stuff missing…so this is going to take me a while!

I got home form work just in time for supper. I had been tipped off that Culture Spears, a local traditional dance and music group from Botswana, may be performing in Maun. However, there was no information that I could find about this with anyone I talked to. It either didn’t happen or had quite the exclusive guest list! I am going to have to track them down during my other two months here! They are absolutely fabulous and I have already collected every single one of their albums – I am probably their biggest fan (at least out of the people that have no idea what they are even singing about….the music is all in Tswana) So my evening was full of chilling at the house with the kids and playing games; a nice quiet night.

Sunday morning was as picturesque as could be. I woke up to the sun glowing in the windows, a warm golden hue through the curtains. The smell of hot, steaming pancakes wafted through the house and I was up with surprising speed! Katie, now known as the Pancake Queen, makes pancakes once every weekend. They are quite delicious, made with apples and cinnamon!

After a nice long breakfast we got ourselves ready and packed for a afternoon outing. We headed to Safari Lodge, a quaint resort on the Thamalakane River just outside of Maun. It had beautiful views of the landscape, cascading waterfalls and of course, mischievously entertaining monkeys! I am not sure whether I have told you about the monkeys before, but the yare quite human like! The first one we ran into was at the Chobe Safari Lodge. It proceeded to try and open someone’s cooler full of beer and food, luckily one of the local staff took action! After that he took advantage of an unsupervised Margarita and had a little taste, haha! It was unbelievable! However, the monkey’s here were so heavy into the drink! They were fairly entertaining though – lots of energy and such animated creatures. One of them actually perched on the side of a garbage bin, managed to peel a banana and eat it – definitely more skilled that our educated children back home :) We sat and ate a delicious lunch at the riverside – with quite possibly some of the best chicken wings! Here they count a wing as the entire wing of a chicken – it’s wicked!

Once I got home I got into doing some more work for my placement. I was working on a press release that has to go out by Tuesday morning! After that, given all of my adventures recently, I had my first full real bath in weeks! Haha! It felt so foreign to be so clean and to smell so chemically clean. I think of how crazy it is when people used to take two showers a day back home! Here people take about global warming and protecting the environment and they are decades ahead of us back home in many ways…though there are definitely their own struggles here! They have an obsession to burn things – not like teenage pyros back home at Norfolk County fair – they seem to think that burning garbage is the best way to deal with disposal and many other thoughts about fire’s cleansing power! Anyways, off to bed – can’t believe I have to get up for work tomorrow – it is finally really starting!