Preliminary Details

We had a half a day of training today, so I have a little bit of extra time to spend with the free wi-fi at the lodge- which means you get an extra blog entry! Yesterday and today we had training with our counterparts. Counterparts are the people we will be working the most closely with at our sites. They may be our supervisors or coworkers, or even just people we partner with on projects. Once we've been at site for a while, we may have multiple counterparts depending on our projects, but for now, we each have one associated with our official work sites. I will be working at Madiba Clinic in Mahalapye, which is a youth based clinic (very exciting!), and my counterpart is one of the nurses there. She also works with the PMTCT (prevention of mother to child transmission) program as a trainer. She has never worked with a Peace Corps volunteer before, but I think that she understands what volunteers are supposed to do, and I'm very happy to be working with her. I told her about my training and my interests, and she thinks we'll be able to do a lot of good work.
I have also learned more about my house- or perhaps I should say houses! Right now I have two potential houses. One is the house a Peace Corps volunteer has just moved out of. It's on a family compound, and it has electricity and indoor running water, a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom, and it's fully furnished. However, it is a little far from the clinic I'll be working in, and the previous volunteer did have a break-in (she wasn't home when it happened, and security has been improved since then, so I'd still be comfortable with the situation), so my counterpart has also found another potential house with all the same amenities, but closer to my clinic. Peace Corps hasn't approved this new house yet, so for site visit this week, I'll be staying at the first house, but I'll get to see both, and it sounds like as long as Peace Corps approves both, I'll be able to choose which I prefer. Either way, I can't wait to have my own house again!
One more thing. My counterpart gave me my new address, so from here on out, please don't send things to the Peace Corps office in Gaborone- they won't appreciate it. Please send any mail to:
Melissa Berger
Madiba Clinic
Private Bag 2
Mahalapye, Botswana
Please make sure it has my name on it, and you may want to add Peace Corps in parentheses to make sure it gets to me. Packages are always welcome, but you may want to be careful about what you write about the contents- I have to pay customs on everything I receive here.