This week marked the 6th week of training and the date I had been anxiously waiting for since I got to Botswana - site announcements. We all gathered into a large room that had a large map of Botswana at the front. There were dots where all the sites were but no names. I could feel the nervous energy of 56 eager trainees. I even began to get nervous and sweat. As it turns out, I was the third trainee to go up to the front to reveal my site. I walked to the front, grabbed my envelope and then looked to the map. Francistown! I couldn't believe it. It is the place I shadowed and really enjoyed (I heard that as a general rule, volunteers are not typically placed near the site they shadow in).
I am working with an NGO (Non Governmental Organization) called Light and Courage. Light and Courage focuses on providing care and support to people living with HIV/Aids (PLWHA). I am excited to learn more about the organization and begin to start work.
Overall, I feel like my placement is perfect. I wanted to live in a bigger site and I fell in love with Francistown when I shadowed a current volunteer. I also wanted to do work directly with PLWHA and to work on HIV prevention. My NGO will be a great fit for this as well.
Since my last update,we had a cultural day where we went to see some ancient rock paintings and saw a traditional village. the rock painting were very faint but were quite interesting. they were drawn by people living in the area over 2,000 years ago. I climbed above the rock paintings and found a small overlook. After living on flat land for 5 weeks it was nice to get a good view. Be sure to look at my pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/danielholman/Botswana#
In less serious news, most of the guys in my training group decided to have a mustache growing contest. This is the picture from the final judging day. Overall, I think we looked pretty ridiculous but we had fun doing it and got a lot of interesting comments from our trainers.
