Photo by John Potenberg.
By Addison Spitzer, UVM
The people of Botswana are fun to be around. In the month that we have been in Botswana, the local people are very friendly and love to share whatever they have whether it is food or knowledge. In town, people will always wave and smile when you wave to them. They love to gather around, talk, and laugh. We would often stop on the road and say hi to strangers and talk about what they saw that day or how things were.
Not only are the people friendly, they are also innovators and create various things such as furniture, jewelry, and small trinkets out of everyday items. When we were at Bonty’s learning about Batswana culture, we sat on chairs made out of old tires and played a game using a board and bottle caps. They sold jewelry made out of thin strips of paper and animal trinkets out of wire. It never ceases to amaze me about the infinite possibilities they can explore with common items.
Bonty’s common area with tire chairs in the background and Caroline and Lori playing a board game using bottle caps. Photo by Addison Spitzer.
During the Botswana Independence Day, we were in the Khwai village and were instructed to eat with our hands! While some of us stuck with our trusty utensils, a few of us used our hands and ate traditional food with the locals. We had pap (traditional polenta), beans in chakalaka (spicy beans), beet salad, and a choice of beef or chicken. We saw the entire village gather around to celebrate their 51st year of independence. We then moved into a school playground to dance with the locals while listening to modern Botswana music. We danced with everyone!
While in the bush our escort guides from NG 18 (Amos) and NG19 (Bob and Mapula) not only taught us many things about wildlife, but also showed us compassion and shared whatever they had with us. Escort guides are local people from each community that join us in the field to help look for wildlife and learn how to conduct herbivore monitoring. My experiences with Amos, Bob, and Mapula showed that they were constantly smiling, laughing, and loved immersing themselves in nature. They often had many interesting stories of their experiences with the wildlife and always made us laugh. Their keen eyes often picked up on animals and plants missed by our untrained eyes.
Escort guide Amos, Addison, and Sam posing for a picture in front of the Baobab tree. Photo by Samara Müller.
We recently joined up with the Khwai community to do a camp clean up day. The seven students and our trip leaders teamed up with seven local members of the Khwai community to pick up trash from various campsites in Mogothlo campgrounds. It was great working with the community to help make the campsites cleaner and more natural. After the cleanup we gathered around to socialize with cold cups of soda and a big meal.
One of the biggest things Round River focuses on is with the different communities we work with, so we decided to host a few computer training sessions with the local people of Mababe and Sankuyo to help them create a CV/Resume to save them time by not having to handwrite them and to get more computer experience. We had a lot of fun working with the people from the villages and after we finished the CV/Resumes we all enjoyed some chips, cheese puffs, and water.
We also attended the kindergarden graduation of Sixteen’s son, Alex. It was great to hear the guest speaker motivate the students and parents to continue learning. It’s great to see Botswana trying to inspire the younger generation at such a young age!
The people of Botswana are a loving and social group of people who love spending time with their friends and family. We have already learned so much from the escort guides and I’m excited to learn more from them in the next two months!