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