Earth Day, Camp, and Preparing for the walk

Pictures from the top: Girls at camp in their traditional attire; me with two of the girls from my program; campers with a hip hop artist; Beauty learning how to make beaded jewelry; my "wedding".

The last month has been jam-packed with activities and my blog has suffered a long dry spell, but hopefully someone out there is still reading it! I helped organize an Earth Day celebration for the kids in my program since Barclays Bank graciously donated a bunch of trees and plants to put in at our new center. Kids and staff from Stepping Stones International came together with Barclays staff to plant the new additions to the center, and then followed up with a Mochudi community clean up. It was great to introduce the idea of Earth Day to the community- most people here had never heard of it before.

I jumped right from planning Earth Day into helping pull together Camp Motlhodi- a camp run by the staff at my program as well as some leaders from other non-governmental organizations in the area for adolescent orphans and vulnerable children. We hosted the camp for the kids from my program as well as some other orphans from local schools, making a total of 40 participants. The focus of the camp was to emphasize of recognizing cultural traditions and values while appreciating the need to define personal identity, boundaries, rights and responsibilities in the modern age. This was the first time our organization had created a camp of its own, but overall it was a huge success- everyone seemed to have a great time and learn a lot during the week. The camp was held at Mokolodi Nature Reserve out in the hills outside of Gaborone, creating a peaceful, natural setting for the camp. Some of the key activities included a game drive, nature walks, arts and crafts, sports, life skills training, the Journey of Life (an activity aimed at helping kids come to terms with losses they’ve experienced in their lives and recognize the positive experiences they’ve had), drama presentations, and mock-traditional initiation ceremonies (introducing boys and girls to the importance of recognizing their culture, history, and traditions). There was even a mock traditional wedding to demonstrate how traditional ceremonies take place- quite comically I was persuaded by my coworkers to be the bride. I thought I would be wearing a traditional Setswana dress, but instead I was given a very 80s-eque lacy, poofy white wedding gown and a plastic gold tiara (hence the ridiculous pictures seen here). It was entertaining nonetheless- a very fun experience because the whole group was involved in some way and a fabulous dinner party commenced afterward. The camp concluded with a graduation ceremony, including a speech from the chief of the entire district. The camp was by far the most fun experience I’ve had at work since being in Botswana.

I’m now looking forward to my sponsored walk/hike which is coming up on the 17^th of May- hopefully I’ll survive! It should be a great challenge. Wish me luck!