Cabin Fever

*written shortly after midnight this morning. although delayed in posting, I leave it raw because tampering with past words when trying to record moments just seems wrong.

Alright, so the last entry was rushed, typo-ridden, and dry like the biscuits served on South African Airways. Let me add a little flavor (hot sauce? garlic? mango? whatever you fancy.) Like kids (or grandmothers) on bicycles, it takes a bit of practice before you feel the breeze in your hair.

A cast of characters perhaps?

ENTER, stage left, right, and center, THE COCKROACHES:
The University of Botswana graduate dorms are, apparently, a pleasant paradise for our tiny friends. My suite has successfully sprayed an entire can of DOOM since our arrival, and I have stopped tallying the insect fatalities. On our first night in Gaborone, we experienced one of the frequent blackouts (there are energy problems in South Africa,) and we spent two hours chasing roaches by candlelight.

THE CATS: there is a family of black bodied, white pawed cats that inhabit the trashcans outside our rooms. They screech late at night and it sounds like murder, which has caused me to jump and check my locks more than once.

LORATO: her name means love in setswana, and it is quite the appropriate moniker. With a laugh like boiling water, she has thus far been our most tremendous chaperone, guidebook, entertainment, and friend. She shows up at random times (always without warning) and offers to take us out shopping, eating, drinking, etc. At the moment, she is our sole connection to Gaborone social life and a car. She also really enjoys Hunters Dry Cider.

THE INTERNS: Residing in the graduate hostels are 13 students from Penn, and three law students from the University Cincinnati. We’ll all be interning in different fields, but I’ll be working most closely with the lovely Abby, at the Kamogelo Day Care center. Our dearest Brazilian, Julio, is present and accounted for as well (if anyone was wondering).

*Abby, Rebecca, and Jen are my suitemates, along with two older Botswana women (I cannot yet tell whether we are a nuisance as newcomers, or welcome company.)


As of now, that is the extent of our world. Since we don’t yet have cell phones, it is difficult to contact cabbies, and until instructed as to proper etiquette and how to determine routes, the combies are off limits (privately owned, but government controlled vans that serve as public transportation). It is apparently not too safe to walk anywhere at night, so we’ve really yet to step far outside the University boundaries.

To get a little personal (don’t worry, I won’t pull any moves), the days and nights have been a strange, strong brew of intense feelings. I never thought I would miss water and vegetation so much, and it has taken an arid, land-locked nation to remind me how much I enjoy my greenery. It also never quite registered with me that I have spent my entire life on a river or a coast, and it leaves me a little panicky when I think about how far away the ocean is.

I also find that “WHAT?” has set up camp in my head. He has a sleeping bag, a tent (I could feel the pegs being hammered into my soft skull) and a loud, stern, booming voice. WHAT skips rocks through my brain at random intervals, causing splashes that sound like questions, that sound like worries, that sound like fears. At stores and restaurants I also have to repeat his name, kindly, and with an imploring, “please forgive me, I’m a silly foreigner” look, because the blend of Setswana and English (heavy in the rolling, lolling R’s) is a bit tricky for my ears.

Things are brighter in the daylight and darker at night (logical, but it always catches me off guard), and more than a few tears have dampened my University of Botswana issued pillowcase. Honestly, it’s the songs that get me. A little “I wish that I knew what I knew now, when I was younger” and I’m a lump of mush. Otherwise, aside from a few acute moments of discomfort and longing, I’m A+, top notch, FDA approved, stamped sealed and sent, good.

These long entries have me feeling a little self-conscious, a little indulgent, a little embarrassed – I don’t know what I’m looking to write but my production feels muddled and blah blah bland. Hopefully once I get out into the city and start doing some research (with the aid of the library and the internet,) things will be a little less amorphous. Dearest friends, family (and anonymous internet community?) please humor me, I just removed the training wheels.