Blog #31 – Work Week 3

T-minus less than two weeks until the week-long football camp of our Coaching for Conservation program. It was also oddly only my third full week on the job. It seems like ages that I have been here. There was lots of work to be done and some of it would be easier than others. To help the workload there were two big changes. The first was that we had fully moved into our new office while I was away and now the Internet connection had failed!

Our new office is quite swag compared to the last one even though it is just across the road. It is at Plot 520 Eagle Building on Mopane Rd in the Light Industrial area, Maun, Botswana. That is how you give an actual address here, there is no 911 numbers or house numbers, it really much more based on general regions and local knowledge. There are two building. The first is our big new office with five workstations (from two), and now a boardroom, bathroom, kitchenette, reception area and space TBD. The other building is serving as the new lab that will be processing all of the blood and other animal samples collected in the field. As much as possible will be done here locally instead of shipping it down to South Africa, which is great!

Another exciting development this week has been the addition and integration of our documentary crew. These two ladies went to University of South California and were here to film their own documentary as well as produce some materials and a short documentary film about our programs – including Coaching for Conservation. Ashley is the director and producer – and really running the show. Maura is her cameraperson and audio technician. They have a pretty sweet job if I say so. Getting to travel around and film people. What a way to see the world!

Anyways, today they were going to be filming me as I got right back school visits. There were still five schools to be done, but I could only get two done today. The other was scheduled for Thursday and the other two we couldn’t visit until next week.

The first school today was another primary school – Leopotswe. I haven’t done a private school since my very first school back two weeks ago. However, those kids were very fluent in English, so I was hoping again for that kind of experience. I thought that the private schools all might be similar. How wrong I was.

This private school had a primarily local student population – not the international domination of OIS the other private school. The building was a big two storey building with a huge glass entrance way. It was the same salmon colour of the government schools, but you could tell that it was much better funded. We were greeted by the teacher at the door and led to the library for our presentation. Along the way I couldn’t help but notice the signs painted onto the wall that said, “Be Quite. No Talking. No Laughing.” It was a tad bit disturbing.

My gut feeling that this was going to be a strict school war right. There wasn’t the sound of a single child as we came into the school. We went into the library, which consisted of a few stacks of books and nothing else. I was told that, “we do not allow tape on the walls”, so I had to improvise my presentation. I was also mic’ed up for this presentation and on film, so that just added to the pressure.

The children eventually filed in and sat perfectly in lines on the floor. Regardless of the overtly structured environment, the presentation went well and I think that the message got across. Their grasp of the English language was not nearly the same extent, and I could tell that for the most part they were only forced to use it here at school and not necessarily at home.

Ashley and Maura stayed at the school afterwards to film the children playing soccer and to interview some of the teachers and coaches. Kenny and I headed over to another school – this one a government run one called Shashe. I don’t know whether it was coming from the structure of Leopotswe or not, but the kids here seemed so much more alive. They were active and laughing. They didn’t have fancy classrooms or equipment. A ball that the kids were kicking around was a simple bag of bags with tape all around it. But these kids seemed happy and that there were much more excited to be here. The presentation was a little more challenging as these kids didn’t get English that well, and so I wonder if that is the price that these kids have to pay. Can learning English not be achieved in a more inviting environment?

It was a long day, but it was nice to be back at work and in the schools again. Sarah and I had planned to make dinner – but we didn’t make it home until just after six o’clock. We were going to have a hurried time making everything – luckily Sarah had done all of the grocery shopping while I was working. Unfortunately, not many things on the list are available in Maun and so we were going to improvise. A sweet & sour chicken stir fry with original vanilla cheesecake were on the menu.

Knowing the desert would take the longest we started with it. There was no normal cream cheese so we had to use whipped cream cheese – which completely throws off the recipe…but wait I didn’t have a recipe, I was going by my head, so no worries. There was no graham crackers, so we used arrowroot biscuits instead. I have dreamed about good cheesecake since trying (and giving failing grade) to all of the cheesecakes in this southern continent. But it wasn’t shaping up all that good. However, we eventually got it into the over. All the ingredients were there (with a little extra sugar and flavour to make up for it) and the consistency seemed okay. Now we just had to bake it. Best part was that it was a gas oven, the controls were only 1 through 5, so I compromised with 3. It was going to take over an hour to cook, so I would just watch it and wait. I set my timer for an hour.

In the meantime with started in with the main course. I got the meat cut, breaded and fried successfully and Sarah took care of the vegetables. I had to go off of memory for the sweet and sour sauce – with NONE of the normal ingredients, so that was entertaining as well. Luckily the meal was based around delicious ingredients, so I knew that it would taste good no matter what. The only downside of the cooking produced heaping sinks of dishes. My mum would not be impressed, as she was the queen, and supposedly taught me, all about the clean-as-you-go or one-pot cooking wonders!

We got dinner served up as the cheesecake was still cooking away. Just as we were getting ready to sit down to eat, Sarah smelled something burning. NO WAY! I couldn’t believe it! The elements were off, so the only thing that could be burning was the house or the cake…unfortunately it was the cake :) It had only been thirty-five minutes! The bottom had just begun to blacken and the top was definitely a tad past golden brown. Luckily, it was salvageable and so we pulled it out and left it to cool. We went back to dinner – which was much more successful and went over well with everyone!

I decided to make some white vanilla bean sauce for the cheesecake – partially because I love vanilla, and partially to cover up the slight over cook-ness. The cheesecake ended up being fine, actually, much more that fine, I thought it was delicious. The crust ended up being the only really ‘burnt’ part, but it was just crispy and blackened on the bottom. Regardless, with the sauce it was unbelievably good and by far the best cheesecake that Maun, if not Botswana, has ever seen – haha! (well, as far as my taste buds are concerned, and I promise to not stop looking!)

It was a fun night – and cooking brought back some really nice memories of home. It also got me really excited about my apartment next year, and I cannot wait to cook there once I am back in Guelph. With good food, there just isn’t anything worth complaining about in life!