Blog #37 – Tying Up Loose Ends

With only three working days left until our big Week-long Football (Soccer) Camp – there was still lots to finalize, confirm and complete. The end of the week flew by. It was filled with people as the different groups of volunteers started to arrive. Keith arrived first, who was the main visionary of the curriculum for the week. He spent some time in Botswana five years ago, but then left for the States to start up his own company that focuses on environmental education called: ConserveNation (get it…Con-serve-Na-tion…Con-serve-a-tion) There was lots to do with Keith, getting him ready and settled and preparing all of the briefing for the rest of the individuals to come.

On Wednesday I had my very last two schools to visit to do the conservation education presentation with. Both of these schools were a good distance out of town and both were of small remote village – Matsaudi and Shorobe. The schools visits went surprisingly well, and both groups of kids understood what was going on and could participate in the presentation just as well as their town counterparts. It was encouraging to see that these students were not being left behind just because of their lack of proximity to Maun. There was however a discrepancy with age, it seemed that these students were generally older and that they had either delayed or decelerated school experiences.

The rest of the week was spent getting small jobs done for the camp week. I had to go and invite the important people all around Maun to the program next week. I also had to reconfirm for what seemed like the billion-ith time all of the details with the ministry and transportation. One of the last remaining tasks was sorting out all of the details regarding food and water for the coming week. We had to arrange water containers to be borrow, dispensing jugs, how to fill the containers, etc. etc. With the food we were going to be having a traditional meal on the last day of the camp so we had to arrange for cooks (from Shorobe), cooking pots, a cooking location, firewood, cooking utensils, the food itself, etc, etc.

Completing all of the different errand work definitely got me excited for the week – everything was coming together and it seemed like it was all going to go over really well! The last thing I made was different promotional and information publications: brochures, letters and bulletin board to be displayed and available to participants and guests to the program next week. It seemed like we had everything under control. Now we had the conservation coaches and the football coaches to arrive on the weekend. Friday was the last night I had for good sleep before we would be in full action for next week!