Wednesday, April 7, 2010








So a few things first, like the bigger news. I will be starting a new project soon which i am really excited about. it is a pilot project Peace Corps is doing on behavior change, they are testing it/starting with my intake, but only the Health volunteers that meet the criteria. While applying you must pick you topic of research, mine is gender! you know how i love equality and feminism! Well we will be having a workshop in May, my proposal was picked, and i will get to start making survay's and collecting data! I couldn't believe i would get this excited about these things but after many great semesters, with wonderful professors, (THANKS Dr. White & Dr. Schlicting!) I get to do what i love and majored in! I can tell you that there will be much more to come on this! Also a HUGE package came right before i left for Easter holiday from the 3rd graders at Elm Elementary School! They made glitter pens as fundraiser to buy kids at my basic school supplies and recess equipment! They wrote letters and I know that this is the start to a great international friendship! Thank you so much for all your hard work Mrs. Douglas!
Now for the bad news; I have had a great loss, in a moment of feministic euphoria, i decided to cut off the rest of my hair. I was hoping for a white Rihanna, what I got was Peter Pan. Feeling a bit silly. Oh well hair grows. Just got to get back to my village now where there are no mirrors, so i won't be haunted anymore.
I have been out of my village for what feels like forever, due to visitors at my site, a weekend trip to some near by waterfalls, (See picture above different views, as well as an action shot walking down the mountain to the falls) and my Easter holiday in Gaborone Botswana. All of which have been more that amazing and fun. I am going to steal an excerpt from my travel buddies blog, i feel he wrote it well and it will save me a bit of time, seeing that it is very early in the morning and i have to leave to get a Peace Corp ride back up to site soon! I hope all is well with everyone! Loves, Eliz

"strolled to the main bus station downtown at around 6 and waited for a mini bus to load up to the hitching point towards livingstone, about an hour and a half later. 30 minutes after getting off the bus, got a lift from some South Africans we thought were heading to Livingstone, but found out later at our first pit stop that they were bound for South Africa via Gaborone. Score.

They were awesome and while being in a covered truck bed is never ideal, it was fast and friendly. We stopped in Livingstone at Victoria Falls and went in to the park and saw the massive flow of the Zambezi and the falls, which are nearly at their peak, as the rainy season is winding up. So we did that pretty quick with the Father and Son we were traveling with (the third person was The Father’s sister and is a Zambian resident). From there it was a quick shoot to the border where we took a ferry accross the Zambezi. Kazungula is a cool place because it’s where the Chobe River and Zambezi meet, as well as being a shared border for Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia.

Botswana’s landscape was just amazing, and to my surprise, a lot different than Zambia’s—and especially drastically different than my provence in Zambia. Much flatter, more arid, shorter grasses, scarcer ‘towns’ and, most importantly, way more wildlife. On the way down we saw elephants, girraffees (sp?), zebra-but which might have been something else since they were farther off, baboons. Amazing to think we stopped maybe 40 yards away from an elephant that probably could have manhandled us if it wanted to.

Wound up getting in to Gaborone around 5a the following day and getting to the lodge early. Passed out until lunch time and just hung out. Spent the 3 day weekend in Gaborone and it was nice. It’s a much more developed place from a western standpoint-primarily from their diamond mines and cattle success, but this isn’t that type of post.

Did a lot in Gaborone and enjoyed it thoroughly- hiked Kgale Hill, went on a game drive (spotted hyenas, wharthogs, impala, kudu, wildebeast), checked out the damn and consequently crashed a Greek Orthodox Easter party, ate plenty of amazingly good beef and got my fill of drinks. All in all it was a well spent long weekend in a city I never knew existed and really deserves the title of “Africa For Begginers”-there are similarities of course with life in Zambia, but it’s amazing how westernized and modern it seemed—more cars, nicer cars, a lot of development, great infrastructure.

Monday we left Gaborone and decided to try to make it to the border and had even more crazy fun with that trip. Long, complicated story short: a guy went roughly 400km out of his way to hang out with us and drop us at the border and we wound up staying at the Chobe Safari Lodge at the border for the government rate and there’s a chance it was the nicest place I’ve ever been in my entire life. Amazing kudu stew for dinner with pap (botswana’s version of Zambia’s staple nshima—now I can say I had their best) and some other goodies. Huge 2 room chalet and awesome breakfast buffet this morning before we hit the road and wound up where the start of this entry takes place."

. . . And if you want to be free, be Free. Things I do, and think about.