Home at last

Howdy,

I have come to terms that I am bad at blogging and was pretty bad at updates, but I tried... At any rate, I'm home! I thought I'd share some final thoughts.

First off, I want to commend the airline industry. Although I had a few delays, for the most part everything was extremely systematic and arranged very well. I had doubts my luggage would ever be claimed, but was pleasantly surprised every time. I'm sure there is so much behind the scenes and much thought is probably put into every step. Sleeping is just very hard sitting up. Maybe planes should have people stacked lying down.

Traveling has been great. Although this security lady in London caused me to break some souvenirs, for the most part, people are pretty nice to foreigners. However, I knew I arrived in the United States when a TSA agent was being extremely rude to a confused foreign traveler. C'mon guys, let's not come off as rude and impatient. Also, British English is much harder to understand than I thought. I was listening to some Brits talk and initially I was trying to figure out what language it was until I realized it was english... haha

Living in Gaborone for a month has been a great experience. I think everyone at least once in their life should immerse themselves in a different culture. It puts things into perspective about what truly is important. There were quite a few times (especially the last week) where our power went out unexpectedly. People there just deal with it. Restaurants don't always carry what you want and things are very unexpected when you're trying to make plans. People are pragmatic and peaceful in Botswana.

Shout out to Sunday, PD, OG, OT, Nigel, and.... I think his name is.... Dreekey? Whatever, he probably wasn't important. (haha) Thank you so much for teaching us about your culture and being so protective of us. I know a few of you guys became good friends too on this project and I am extremely happy about that. Something about having friends way across the world is comforting to me. Play more mafia, spoons, and ultimate frisbee! I'll attempt to play soccer...

We're so cute

Also shout out to the US students Nicole, Sam, Melissa, Andrew, and Amanda. It was really neat experiencing and bonding a different culture with you guys. I like that we're literally scattered all around the country. It was amazing how well we got along.We'll chat often and plan our reunion in a few years! If you're ever around Case, let me know!

Here are some miscellaneous pictures I thought were worth sharing. 

Sam dancing at the cultural center

Check flabby sound!

I am terrible at soccer.

high fives!

Amanda, Nicole, PD, Dricky (fat.)

Dricky, OG, me, Melissa

Andrew, me, and Amanda

Nicole, and YOLO (melissa and sam)

Nigel, OG, Sunday

During the last week when we were all writing our final reports for our research projects, Dricky and I also compiled a movie where we interviewed each other about ourselves. I'm not the most camera-sexy, but enjoy it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFqpAx7ehDw

Tsetseng visit

Hey everyone,
So I just came back from a trip to a village called Tsetseng in Botswana. Gabarone is the really developed city I've been living in at the University of Botswana, but Tsetseng was and eye opening experience. I had an intuitive sense of what poorer villages lacked, but really seeing it brought me down to earth.

Another group is working on a developing a hybrid power supply system for Tsetseng and we all worked together to collect data. We surveyed villagers and asked them questions about the appliances they had, if they'd be willing to pay for electricity, and if they had it, what would they want it for. The clinic and school was also visited. The interesting thing about the school was that they have computers and pieces of technology that is pretty modern, but no electricity. I think a lot of people have this false sense that donation of things to Africa will really help, and as nice as that is, without infrastructure and electricity, what's the point of the high end pc that was donated?

School kids were so fun! More pics to come hopefully. I taught them how to do that flabby cheek thing I do so well...

Sam teaching the kids useful skills

I knew that I would grow to appreciate what I have at home by seeing the contrast, but I can't help but feel a little uneasy about the disparity in wealth. Everything back in the states seem so... excess. I really have to digest how I feel about it.

During one of the surveys, a villager asked Dricky and I to get the goats out of her yard before she answered questions. I can honestly say I had no idea what I was doing and was just randomly baa-ing at the goats. My partner Dricky says I'm crap at it haha. It was fun. 

Damn goats.

What was also eye opening was the lifestyle of people. Without internet or even snail mail, it is very hard to get anything done. We talked to an older lady and she was taking a nap outside in this small fenced off area on her property:

Dricky interviewing a napping lady

I'm pretty tired from walking around in the sand all day, so I'm gonna cut this one short. Hope you guys enjoyed this post! I think I have a few unresolved feelings about what I saw today and it was kind of overwhelming. Save for another post perhaps.

Ciao,

Richard