Lizzard Lounge :P

Last night we went out on the town for the first time since being here. We went to Lizzard Lounge, which is one of 3 night clubs in Gaborone, with our student guide Carol and her boyfriend. It was a lot of fun, but we got there early (meaning like 11) so for a while we were the only people on the dance floor. But some Batswana did come over and dance with us, though a lot of them just stared at us. It was a great time, and people thankfully didn't laugh at my complete lack of dancing ability. We did get hit on a couple of times too, which is always entertaining!

On the walk home, I was talking to Carol and she was telling me some very interesting stuff. She was telling me about body image in Botswana (because she says she can't wear heels because she's too tall there). She says traditionally women are supposed to be short and round and guys are supposed to be tall and skinny, but now with American magazines and media that's changing. The "in" thing to be is skinny. Its interesting that the US media has such an impact on standards of beauty in a place so far away.

On the whole, it was a really great Saturday night!

Gaborone Rocks...literally!

So yesterday morning Alex, Tamar, and I decided to climb up Khale hill, which is the highest point in Gaborone. Except that the cab driver did not know where to go. He first dropped us off at the rock quarry on the other side of the hill. When we told him this was obviously not right (no hiking spot would be located right next to a blast zone) he talked to the guy and took us around to a very sketchy set of steps, with no one else around, that lead to what was sort of but not really a path. We decided to climb it anyway and it was a half made path (though marked in places!) that was absolutely grueling. Though what we climbed was not Khale hill, but rather the hill next to it, it was still a blast. I had many possible near-death experiences climbing on large cliffs/boulders since there were no park rangers to tell me no. We got a great view of Gaborone and could see just how widespread the urbanization has become. My legs are quite scratched up now but it was great. Another time we'll climb the legit Khale hill and hopefully in better weather so I'll have better pictures. Days in Gaborone are usually in the 60s/70s and always sunny with bright blue skies, since its winter and the dry season. But this weekend for some reason its been cold/overcast/ and even rainy. Yuck. Oh well, more adventures to come. :)

Food!!!

Food in Botswana can be both the same and different as in the US. On the whole its very good. Going grocery shopping here is exactly the same as in the US. The two grocery stores at Riverwalk (which are nicer than FroGro btw) have all the same things we do, even some of our brands (they have skippy peanut butter but, alas, only the chunky kind). They also have Tim Tams! There’s this sauce here called Peri-Peri sauce that we’ve all become addicted to. You use it on chicken and things. Its spicy and tangy and delicious. It was first brought here by a chain restaurant called Nando’s, which claims that the sauce is Portuguese. Either way, its wildly popular here and Peri-Peri chicken is the best culinary surprise of the trip so far.

At lunch time one of my favorite things about main mall is that my meal never costs me more than the equivalent of about $2.50. One of my favorite things to get are pies, which are kind of like British meat pies but much better. They have meat, vegetables, and sauce within a croissant like bread. They have a chicken per-peri one which is my fave. However they have a lot of different other ones, like vegetable curry which is really good too.

I also surprisingly like some of the traditional food I’ve tried. I actually really like pap, which is pounded cornmeal or maize, its basically fufu. That’s like a staple here and looks like potatoes or grits. It has like no taste and a lot of Americans don’t like the consistency but I like it. They also make very good chicken here and they have this pounded/shredded beef that’s absolutely amazing. They also gook beans really well too. But they also eat different parts of the animal I wouldn’t normally go for. Tripe (cow intestines and colon) is a delicacy here and they love it. But when I’ve seen it before it’s always been white. Here Carol told me they just take it, boil it, and add some salt. The product is green, which is a little off putting and I have yet to work up the nerve to try it. They also like eating pigs/cows feet, hearts, and liver. Hearts and liver I’ve both seen before, but I’m not a very big fan.

Fruit on the other hand is great here, especially the juice. Its all pure juice with no sugar added and its 100 times better than any juice in the states. They also have good tea called Bush tea that's red and amazing :)

Ga Kibuye Setswana

After only being here for a week, the one thing I wish most is that I spoke Setswana. When people asked me before I left what language they spoke in Botswana I said English, which is technically true. Botswana was formerly the British colony of Bechuanaland. Thus, the language that was imposed on the population was English. Its technically the official language, along with the native language of Setswana. It’s taught in all the schools, all the university classes are taught in it, most signs are in it, and all government business is done in it.

Regardless of that, almost none of the Batswana speak it to each other or unless they have to. They would much rather speak in Setswana, which is completely understandable because its their language. All the people at work, even in the government, speak Setswana to each other, and tend to be much more soft spoken when they have to speak in English. When Dr. Moffatt’s secretary was taking us around to meet all the support staff, she said it’ll be easier if I do the introductions in my own language. Its what they grow up hearing and I think its also a point of cultural pride. Like a wise random cab driver in Philly once told me, language is culture. It makes sense that in Africa you would speak African language. It makes me feel bad that the world system is such that everyone has to speak English for education and commerce, even though that’s just the hard truth. I feel like there’s a perception of American arrogance that we can’t speak the Setswana language even though we’re in Botswana, as if we don’t respect their culture and we expect them to change to accommodate us.

That being said, Setswana is an extremely beautiful but difficult language to try to learn. There are sounds in it that I have never had to attempt to pronounce before and its quite challenging. The grammar is also very hard to. For example they use a lot of prefixes. Like bo- means “land of”, mo is a singular person, and ba- is people. So Botswana is “Land of the Tswana people”, a Motswana is a singular person from Botswana, and Batswana would be the equivalent of saying the collective word Americans.

I’m going to get Carol to teach me more Setswana so I can get better at it!

Work work work!

Some of you asked me what I was doing here, and to be honest I didn't entirely know until I got here. I knew I was working for the Ministry of Health, but that was pretty much it.

After my first week of work, here's an update of what I'm actually doing here.

I work for the Ministry of Health for Dr. Moffatt, who heads the Office of the Health Inspectorate. No, this is not like the health inspectors who fail Penn dining halls. This department reviews all the hospitals and health programs in the country so it can make recommendations about what is working and not working, what needs more manpower/equipment, and conducts inspections/audits of hospitals and programs to make sure they're being as effective as they can be. I'm really really excited and this is an incredible opportunity to learn about global health from the inside. One of the basic take-aways for me from HSOC classes has been that the biggest challenge for "global health" is strengthening the health systems of developing countries, which will be sustainable in the long run, rather than just relying on aid and other projects that might be well intentioned but not as effective. Stengthening the health system of Botswana is the mission of the office I work in, so this is going to be a great learning experience.

On my first day, Dr. Moffatt gave us a list of some of the projects we're going to be working on while we're here. The first one is kind of tedious work involving excel spreadsheets, but still has been very eye opening for me. We've been reorganizing the Asset Register, which is basically a MASSIVE excel file of all the equipment in all the hospitals in the whole country, to calculate and tabulate which hospitals need equipment repaired or replaced and how much it will cost. Its devastating to see the disparities in equipment between hospitals like Princess Marina, which is the main hospital in Gaborone where the PennMed students work, and some of the smaller district and primary hospitals. I also don't think one appreciates just how much and how extremely expensive it is to build and run a hospital until everything required is in from of you in a huge table.

We finished that project today, so we'll be getting a new one on Monday, which I'm pumped about. Some of the other things I hear I'll be working on are:

• Working with the death registry because Dr. Moffatt is working on building the country's first hospice and he's doing a study trying to find out where people die in Botswana and if its really where they want to die or if it just circumstance.
• Working with him on a project about TB non-compliance. I really want to work on this project because of the disproportionate amount of brain space I devoted to TB at the end of the semester. Flashback to Paul Farmer/ my group's HSOC 10 project. I'd be again working with the death registry to see how many of the people who have stopped coming for treatment have died and how many have just stopped showing up, in which case they need to be found.
• Going on some hospital inspections and helping the department with some of the reports and assessments

I love work. Its so cool to work in Government Enclave, which is in the center of Gabs. It feels like working in DC because Parliament/ALL the government offices are there and the buildings are beautiful. People at work have been really nice too. They're a bit reserved at first, but I think people are starting to get used to seeing me in the halls, since I stick out a lot. Dr. Moffatt is a really nice and very soft spoken guy. He's actually white but his family has been in Botswana/Zimbabwe for generations. I'll also be working for his deputy, who is an extremely smart woman who used to work in pharmaceutical research. She actually helped work on a drug that's used to help people with Autism when she did her graduate work in the US, which was cool to hear.

Anyway, my first week was great and I can't wait for Monday!

Mall Adventures

We've spent most of the weekend getting acclimated and getting all the supplies we need for our apartments/grocery shopping. The term mall here is used for any big collection of stores, but there are two major malls in Gaborone that look straight out of the US. One is called RiverWalk and the other is Game City. They are just like American malls and have all the same brands and are really really nice. RiverWalk has two great grocery stores where we've done our food shopping. No lie, they're better than Fresh Grocer. We also went to Game to get kitchenware, etc. Game is the South African version of Wal Mart. It even smells like Wal Mart.

Its really interesting to see the divide in income here, which is really apparent at the malls. Game City and RiverWalk are both relatively expensive and extremely Westernized. Yesterday I was talking to Carol, our student guide, who took me into a store that sold American brands like Guess. A Guess sweater was about P500, which is about $30 give or take. While that may not be over the top for us, it is an outrageous amount of money in Botswana.

The Main Mall is much more local in atmosphere and a lot more inexpensive. While there are stores, there are also stalls on the street which sell local food and handmade things. Its a really cool place. Some of the stalls selling cd's blare the traditional music they're selling and you feel like you have a soundtrack when you're walking down the street. It's pretty awesome!

Plane Adventures and First Impressions

My summer got started at 11:15 Wednesday morning when I took off from JFK on a 15 HOUR flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. The flight was long, but South African Airways is awesome. I was seated next to a nice guy wearing an All Blacks jersey, so we talked about New Zealand. I couldn't sleep very well, so I watched a ton of movies including some South African movies which was an experience.

I was flying with another intern on our program and caught the connecting flight to Gaborone in the Johannesburg airport. It was on a small propeller plane but it was only an hour flight and had a beautiful view of South Africa.

I arrived in the Sir Seretse Khama airport in Gaborone, which is smaller than Bradley International and almost completely empty. It took all of 10 minutes to go through customs and grab our bags and then we went outside and met the people from the Botswana-UPenn Partnership that came to pick us up. One of them was the student guide, Carol, who is amazing. She gave us our local cell phones to use and took us to the bank to take out some cash.

Money Matters
The currency here is pula, which is hands down the coolest currency I've seen so far. Pula means "rain" in the Setswana language, which goes to show how important it is in this desert country. Its pretty colors (purple, red, blue, green) and has beautiful pictures of zebras and Batswana (people from Botswana) on it. The conversion rate is about 7 pula to 1 dollar, which was very useful to figure out.

Dorms at UB
We got to the graduate student dorms at University of Botswana where the interns are living for the summer. The campus is nice and pretty big. There are two suites, each with 6 single bedrooms, a living room/kitchen/and bathroom. Its a really nice dorm! The shower beats most of the showers I've taken at Penn. I love my bed, which is really soft and doesn't seem to have any metal springs in it. That first day, after I brief trip to the mall, I got back to the room and slept for about 16 hours, so the bed is great!