I Hate Roosters

When you think of a rooster, you might imagine one perched on a fence post, waiting in the predawn hours to crow as the sun rises to welcome a new day. What a fairy tale that is. Roosters don't just crow as the sun rises. They can crow at any hour, even in the middle of the night, and some roosters crow all day. 

During training when I lived with a host family, it took me a while to get used to sleeping with all of the animal noises. There were barking dogs and braying donkeys, but the worst by far, were the roosters. Their piercing cries woke me up at night and reaffirmed my love of eating chicken. 

When I moved to my site, there was a rooster that lived in one of the houses next door. It crowed at all hours and I seriously considered killing it. Very early in the morning, it would perch itself on a wall and belt out its annoying cry. I looked for items to throw at it and even briefly considered getting a slingshot. Mercifully, the rooster disappeared one day (hopefully into someone's cooking pot) and I was able to peacefully sleep again. 

In my new neighborhood, I constantly see chickens and roosters but I never heard them at night. Then, my neighbor across the street  bought a rooster. He struts around the yard and likes to start crowing around 4am. I asked my neighbor if they were planning on eating the rooster at some point, but he just shook his head and said they were hoping to start breeding chickens. that rooster is there to stay. 

The rooster is something I am just going to get used to but if he ever crosses into my yard, he will be in big trouble.  

Botswana's First Gold Medal

Botswana may not be a major player on the international sports stage, but the people here are quite passionate about athletics nonetheless.

Since the country's independence in 1966, Botswana has never won a gold medal in the Olympics or the World Championships. That changed very quickly (49.56 seconds actually) this past week when Botswana sprinter Amantle Montsho won the Gold Medal in the women's 400-meters at the World Championships in South Korea.

Besides being a world champion sprinter, she was also the first woman to represent Botswana in the Olympics, when she went to the 2004 games.

Before the event, the secretary general of the Botswana Athletic Association said, "We have diamonds. We have beef. We said we wanted gold."

Now they have all three.

Botswana Housing and Population Census

For the better part of the month of August, the Government of Botswana conducted a census survey. The last one they conducted was in 2001 and many people here are interested to see if the country will exceed 2,000,000 total residents.

A census taker came by my house around 7:00pm on a Friday night carrying a rather large pad of paper. We sit down in my living room to fill it out.

It was fairly straightforward but there were some interesting questions and categories. A few highlights:

-Asking what appliances were in my house. (Not many)

-Asking how many cows, goats, donkeys and chickens I owned. (None)

-Asking if I owned a boat, car, bike, or donkey cart. (No, no, no, and no)

I think the census taker was fairly surprised at my responses. A goal of the census, besides recording population, is to take a measure of the relative wealth of residents to accurately gauge poverty. I live a very comfortable life here but according to his metrics, I am poor because of my lack of animals and material possessions.

I also found it interesting that the census form does not have an area to fill in the respondent's race. I didn't ask the census taker about it, but later researched it some. Apparently, the Botswana census has never recorded anyone's race. I am sure there is an explanation for this, but I was unable to find one. My guess is that it was either seen as unimportant information or it was an intentional effort to prevent race or tribe from becoming an issue like it has in so many other nearby countries.

The whole survey took about 15 minutes and mostly involved me saying "no" to questions about possessions. I gave the census guy some food to eat and a cup of water and then he left. I have now been counted in two censuses in as many years.