Personal Body Guards

It's the end of another crazy, hilarious, perfect week here and I still cannot believe how fast this time is flying. This week was good, I spent a few days in the classroom, which I am loving more and more each time I'm there. I'm loving getting to know my kids more and more, and also talking to my teacher during the downtime (which there is a ton of in my classroom!). There are a few kids in the class that are total spitfires, and a few really really great students, so it really reminds me of home in those ways! In the classroom, I usually teach the math and science lessons, and grade their work and then help grade and assign English work for the day. Tiny, the spunkiest one of them all, is always telling me that I should teach Setswana to them, and I think she just wants me to look really dumb in front of the class! I am definitely getting some big ol' arm muscles from all of the writing on the board that I'm doing! They only have about one or two textbooks for each class, and so most of what their notes are I have to write up on the board so that they can have it to study for or learn from later. I've taken a few pictures of my classroom, and Les took some of her's, but every time I get my camera out it's a pretty big distraction so I'm trying to limit that to a minimum!

My time at The Tlamelo Project has really been great this week too. More time in the kitchen, but even more so I am starting to really enjoy the kids and their emerging personalities that we are getting to know so well. They are starting to know and recognize us and get all of our names, and it's so cool to show up and have them all yell hello to you. I have a few that I am really enjoying getting to know, one of them is Bareng, she is a 12-year-old who is so incredibly smart and is such a sweet, quiet spirited, caring girl...I've told everyone already that I'm bringing her home. She told me yesterday that now I can be her mother...so I think that a mother needs to bring her daughter home, right? : ) I just love talking to these girls and listening to them talk about their lives, their schools and their families, I would love to visit them at their homes some time. Bareng really wants to come visit me at the University here because she hopes to attend here when she is older, and so I am going to try to figure out how to work that out, because I would love to do something like that for her. In addition to that, my group has been talking about how cool it would be to figure out something or some day trip sort of thing to get some of these kids from Tlamelo out doing something fun and exciting. They don't really do field trips because there isn't much funding, and we thought it would be so cool if we could take them out to Mokolodi (the game reserve we visited a few weeks ago) for a safari...I'm not sure if it'd work out, but stay posted for that!

Today we all attended a football (soccer) game that the boys from our school (Naledi Education Centre) were playing in, and although I had to leave before the game actually started, it was a great experience. These kids don't have a coach, and I'm not sure from where they got their uniforms, but they just were having such a great time playing and having a team of their own. It's boys aged 13-19 or so, and it's so neat to watch them all together. I guess after Leslie and I left they repeatedly asked Jack to be their coach, and we all think he should take on the job for the remainder of the summer! : )
As Leslie and I were leaving to go to the train station to inquire about tickets, the boys were practicing before their game started and they stopped us before we got off the field. They were SO concerned with Leslie and I walking out with just the two of us. They checked Leslie's bag and said she may be okay because there were no valuables in her bag, but then they looked in mine and saw my camera and money and decided amongst themselves that we would not be safe walking to the Combi stop on our own. It was so incredibly sweet, these guys were so concerned, and Les and I saw no problem because the stop was pretty close but apparently, as they kept telling us, "there are many thiefs around here, you two girls cannot walk by yourself!" They told us they would get some other boys who weren't warming up to walk us to the Combi stop, and ran off. Les and I are trying not to crack up at this point because we think it is so so sweet and cute, but sure enough, they come back with three boys in tow (one only about 8, another about 14, and another 13 or 14 year old) and they take their job SO seriously, grabbing both Leslie and I's hands and leading us to the Combi stop. The whole walk, they keep talking about how they need to be our police and protect us, and Les and I are grinning ear to ear. Once we get to the Combi stop, they hail the Combi for us, and then hold our hands until we step on there, watch us to our seats, and tell the driver we need to go to the station. We are rolling in laughter and flattery as we get on, and everyone already on the Combi is laughing and smiling too. It was a perfect, hilarious, wonderfully typical Botswana scene.

We've gotten all of our travel plans figured out, and we all are SO excited for what is coming up. Next week we head to the Okavango Delta, which is an overnight train ride and a bus ride away from Gaborone, and we couldn't be more excited for being there. We're staying at Audi Camp (click here) and have a Mokoro (hollowed out canoe things...) trip planned and a horseback day trip also to see all of the wildlife in the area. I'll post more about those plans and the trips later- I always try to keep these blogs kind of brief and they always end up being about fifty thousand pages long so again I apologize...