Blog #40 – C4C Take-Off! Day 1

It began today.

The Coaching for Convervation program started five years ago with just two coaches and a handful of kids from one remote village. Today we had all nineteen schools and over four hundred and fifty schoolchildren. This was the very first year that a concerted emphasis and environmental education curriculum has been developed and implemented into the program. It didn’t come easily, and today was a testament to that.

As there was a lot of running around to do, errands to complete and things to triple check, it was a bright early start for a Monday. It began with a quick visit to the Ministry of Education to make sure that transportation was arranged and all good to go for the day. My hopes and faith in the system could not have been crushed more. The two ministry officials I had been working with (who I had invited to the program last week) had picked up and left Maun – “not to be expected back this week”, I was told. It was like starting from scratch.

We needed to get two hundred and fifty students from all over Maun (some schools as far as forty-five minutes away) to the Stadium in just over two hours. I went to speak with the three staff that were left in the education office. They were chatting socially with each other drinking coffee around the “water cooler”. When I asked about the busing and the transportation the answer I got was, “oh! We have a paper about that somewhere…hold on.” As they shuffled around the office, with all three of them looking, one of the ladies finally pulled out the letter with all of the school and transportation logistics times from under a pile of stuff on her desk. “Here we go!” she said happily. I was not impressed. They had done nothing – and they would have done nothing until god knows when!

I had to sit down with them and work through every single detail of the transportation. How many buses did they have? Two. “Ah, but one they say she is broken”. Okay, one bus. One bus to transport all of these kids from all of these schools was just not going to cut it! Then they added, “but the working bus is not here now, it is still coming back from Shakawe (and was still two hours away!)”. I was fitting to not blow it on these people and to keep my patience. “What else do you have to transport these students with?” A big flatbed truck – with no seats, no side bars – but that is Maun and that is what we work with.

Over the next thirty minutes I worked out a schedule of what schools they would start with when with what vehicle and how all the pick-up and drop-off times would work. I had to do this after living here for less than two months, and visiting most of these schools only once. By the time we finished, I had them call the truck to begin its route – what a nightmare! And to think I wasn’t even going to stop and check in on transportation.

On the bright side of life, the day only got better from there :) I ran the remainder of my errands and got everything else we needed to the Stadium with half an hour to spare before start time. Considering that there was no way transportation was going to allow us to start on-time, we were golden. In the end the first school that arrived actually walked there by foot. Made me feel great about all the pre-planning I had done. But it was still a school and it was that much closer to running the program.

We ended up starting the program an hour late. I was the master of ceremonies for the week and I got to do the welcome and the energizer and then introduce all of the different people that were helping out. It was a lot of fun! This is what I had been waiting for! This is why I was here. The morning activities had been squished down so we had been trying to do what we had planned in less time. Luckily, I was already familiar with the language barrier, the kids level of knowledge, and the kids all knew and remember me (which was really touching, but then again how many other 6’5” white lanky people did they interact with in their lifetime?!) I managed to get through all of my activities – the only one of the three conservation facilitators. It made me really happy!

Today, we learned about different animals through what we called animal forms – teaching them stretches and stances to prepare for, play offense and play defense in – it was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time with it. After that we plaed a game called, “oh! Impala”, which was a little more challenging to get across but with enough time, actions, examples and exaggerations it worked. We were teaching kids about limited natural resources and competition between and within species. Nothing like an intro to ecology to get conservation lessons kicking!

By the end of the morning I was wiped! It was 1:30pm – the hottest part of the day – and I was sweating and my voice was going. Luckily we had an hour break before we would get the second load of kids.

In the afternoon we managed to get started only half an hour, which was awesome – and may also have been contributed to by the fact that I had erroneously told these schools that the start time was 2pm instead of 2:30pm. It was the same routine of activities and games in the afternoon and as the other conservation coaches I had worked with in the morning had seen it all before I started handing over the reigns to them and allowing them take the lead – it was a beautiful experience!

The day couldn’t have ended up better. From a major low in the morning to one super high by the end of the afternoon, I was loving life! We decided to all go for dinner together at the Buck & Hunter to celebrate day one! By the time we had everyone and had managed to sit down for dinner, it was already past sunset. We had a marvelous dinner and had attracted the attention of some Ex-Patriots (or expats) – people who live and work in Botswana but aren’t from there. The Buck & Hunter is a notorious hang out place for a lot of the expats in Maun, especially the pilots who run trips into the Delta.

Needless to say, there isn’t often a lot of “fresh meat” for these people to socialize with – and being university students from North America – we were probably the coolest and most interesting people there ;) just kidding! We ended up making friends with another large group of them and pushing our tables together. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out with this lot over drinks, music and some dancing. It was a lot of fun and the owner of Buck & Hunter came over and hung with us too for a while. It was a great day and a great night of fun!

That was Day 1, and what a first day it was!