And the winner is....

So this morning we showed up at training at 9am for site placement announcement, and were seated in 56 chairs with numbers attached to them. The numbers dictated the order in which we would learn our fates. Mine was 15, but as we started with number 56, I had a while to wait. Once our numbers were up, we walked up to the front where we were given an envelope with a quote to read out loud and a number that corresponded to a site on the map of Botswana. I watched while people reacted with varying degrees of surprise, joy, and perplexity, all the while fixating on the sticky tack on my number card in nervous anticipation. Finally it was my turn. I opened the envelope, and matched my numbers, and learned that for the next two years I'll be living in....Mahalapye!
It's hard to describe how I feel about my placement. While I wasn't exactly jumping for joy, I am very happy with my site. Of course, I did want something a bit more rural (Mahalapye is big), and being a little further north would have been nice. It's not an exotic assignment like the Delta or the Kalahari, and I don't think it will be anything like what I pictured when I applied for Peace Corps. However, there are some definite upsides. Mahalapye is big, but it's certainly not a city, so I'll have opportunities to work on agriculture as a secondary project, which is something I'm very excited about. The location, while not exotic, is a good jumping off point to almost anywhere in the country, and I'll only be a couple hours away from both Gaborone and Francistown. Since I shadowed in the Francistown area, I'm already a little attached to it, and a lot of very cool people got placed in that area, so I think I may be visiting fairly frequently. I do have other volunteers that will also be in my village, an older couple that I get along really well with. I'm told that my house is in a nice area on the outskirts of the town, and that it's pretty new, with an indoor toilet (!!!!) and tile floors, but the clinic that I'll be working with is in a less developed area, and I'll have to take a couple combis to get there. When it comes to my actual work assignment, I couldn't be more thrilled. I'll be working in a youth based clinic (a relatively new idea here, but a good one), with opportunities to work with ARV adherence and youth groups. They've never had a Peace Corps volunteer before, so it'll be a new experience for all of us. The clinic is also only where I'm based- once I get to site I'll be doing a community needs analysis, and I may find projects to work on outside the clinic, too. I may get in touch with one of the schools to do some work there, and there's also a prison that I could be working with. We'll see what happens. Next week we only have training on Monday and Tuesday, and then from Wednesday til Sunday we'll be out visiting our sites, meeting our counterparts, and staying in our new houses. After site visits, we do come back to Moleps for a couple more weeks of training, but from here on out, everything will be more geared directly to learning how to do needs analysis and project development. It's getting real!!
After site announcements, we had a braai (barbeque) at one of the staff houses, where we grilled and ate burgers, drank “other beverages” (in the words of training director), danced, and generally let off some steam. I don't remember whose idea the braai was, was but it was sheer genius, exactly what we needed, especially after site placement. It was nice to be real people for once, relaxed and not worrying about breaking cultural norms. Someone said near the beginning of training that PST is intensely stressful not because anything we're asked to do is particularly difficult, but because you have to be on all the time. We have Setswana classes and tech training all day, and then we go home to our host families where we continue to learn culture and language until we go to bed. We occasionally escape to the lodge, but even there we have to be careful not to say or do anything that would make Peace Corps or the United States look bad, because while we are here in Botswana, we are representing both at all times. I think I'm making it sound terrible, which isn't really accurate- we do have fun at training sometimes, and I really like my host family- I'm just trying to get across why having a day like today was so appreciated. I feel like I got to talk to people I hadn't gotten to talk to much yet, and I think we all had fun planning our holidays and parties at people's various sites. I hope the people in Maun and Kasane and the Tuli Block mean it when they say they want visitors, because I think they won't have much of a choice!
Ok, it is now waaaaaayyyy past my bedtime, and I supposed to be going to church early in the morning. I'll update again if I find out any more important details about my site or if anything exciting happens, but otherwise, expect the next post after my site visit. Also, if anyone was planning on sending any packages or letters soon, either mail them immediately or hold onto them until I get my address at my actual site. Mail takes about 2 weeks to get here, not counting any time it gets held up at the embassy or the Peace Corps office, and I won't be in Moleps for too much longer!