"Different" - Wednesday 14 May

13:22, 14 May 08

It was bound to happen.

"You're so…different!" the girls at my lunch table exclaimed. "Not that it's a bad thing…," they quickly recovered.

Everyone was speaking in Setswana, and I had asked whether people learn English or Setswana first. I learned that pretty much everyone's parents are bilingual, and so everyone grows up speaking both. Some students, however, speak only English, even though they are Batswana. I said that I wished my parents knew two languages, so that I could've learned them both.

"So you only know English?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Well, that's because you're American."

I quickly mentioned my pretty good Spanish, and said, "That's why I sometimes really don't like America."

I'm going out shopping with a staff member (I'm trying not to use names to protect myself and others) who I met at Deerfield when the marimba band came, to buy some things I forgot or couldn't pack…soap, a blanket, a sim card for the cell phone the school is letting me borrow. I have to exchange my US dollars into pula – the rate is roughly 6 pula to $1.

The electricity keeps blacking out. Botswana gets all of their electricity from South Africa, and the company that supplies them doesn't have enough power to supply all of Botswana and South Africa. So they do "rotating blackouts" where different communities get blackouts on unpredictable times but on certain days. Last night, Tuesday, the lights suddenly went off before dinner. I was a bit disconcerted but after all the melodramatic screaming died down, I was able to sleep for a few hours before my roommate got back. It was so hard to be social when I was so exhausted! Then the electricity went out again this morning – while I was in the shower, of course – and still hasn't come back, at least in my room.

I'm hoping that the girls can tolerate me despite my being "different" (all the girls can't believe that I don't have my ears pierced) and hopefully some will even become my friends. It was a bit of a tough first day but at least socially, lunch was awesome (there was even a nice vegetarian option!), and I'm excited to see a bit of Gaborone with this staff member.