I arrived! I flew into Gaborone around 3pm on Sunday (8am central time). We are staying at a motel for a few days, everyone is very nice and the food is great. Last night I tried what they call pop, a staple i believe is cornmeal. Something I will be eating a lot of the next few weeks. We had our first day of orientation today, learned so much in just a day. We also received our detailed itinerary for the trip. Some of the highlights...safari, camping trip, visit a traditional healer, go to the SOS orphanage and help out. overall I'll be in class about two days, have two days of full clinical work, then have discussions/trips/free times on fridays. On Wednesday I will be meeting my home stay family and getting settled in. Tomorrow I am learning how to ride the combis (big white vans that will take me to school) and I am also getting a cell phone so I can contact local people and set up meetings!
today we had great conversations about race, gender, color, colonial history, safety, ect. One really interesting thing I learned is that Botswana was not a colony but a British prececorate. Britain "dumped" Botswana because it was one of the poorest places in Africa and there was nothing the British wanted from them. However after independence Botswana discovered diamonds. Botswana was able to form a nation on their own and without abusing their natural resources have become a very stable country economically and politically. Like many other Southern African countries, Botswana is composed of many ethnic groups, which I am excited to learn more about.
It is important to understand that Africa is just the continent. It is made up of 54 different states with over a 1000 ethnic groups. I have already seen a contrast in culture between the little I saw in South Africa to here in Botswana. Every country is unique and has so much history to learn about!
On our program we are also covering so many different public health issues, I am excited to try to explain bits and pieces to you!
Sorry this post is a bit chaotic, many thoughts and not a lot of time, just headed out to dinner.
No comments:
Post a Comment