Ola O'Dell in Botswana

(This last spring, Bethel's Ola O'Dell, in her mid-70s and a schoolteacher by training, went on her second Peace Corps assignment. Her first was in Sierra Leone, Africa, in 1987-89. This time, she's in the Republic of Botswana. The following is a letter from her.) 

I am now a Peace Corps Volunteer in a village of less that 7,000 people. For the most part, we are restricted to our villages for the first three months of our assignment before we are allowed to travel because we are supposed to become part of the villages where we live, which would not be the case if we were to leave every weekend.

I guess you would call it a medium-size village. I have electricity, water in the yard, and a home of three rooms that are not connected to each other, so I have to go out each time I want to go to another room. The walls and floors are unpainted concrete, but I do get to paint them. I have a gas stove with at least two burners that work, a small refrigerator, two small storage cupboards (that I bought myself), a kitchen table, and a large garbage can for storing water.

In my bedroom, I have two twin beds, a dresser, a nightstand and a wardrobe. In the living room I have a couch, one chair with cushions to match and a nice dining table with four chairs, and a bookcase that I bought myself along with a night stand. The school where I work furnished the rest. 

I live on the compound of one of the teachers. She has a nice big house and yard. She said I could get a dog, but I am going to wait until I finish two weeks of further training after our re-contact in September with the Peace Corps Office in Gaborone. We're supposed to go back there after our first three months in the field to assess our projects and to let the Peace Corps know if we want to stay or are ready to go home.

So far, I haven't done anything noteworthy. I am getting to know the village and the people. I have met the head of one of the primary schools and I visited another primary school where I will be working. Right now, I spend my weekdays at the secondary school, shadowing the teachers, typing tests, grading papers, and doing other chores.

I am learning to cook Botswanan foods. I have had my landlady over for dinner twice. I made spaghetti the first time, but she let me know that she preferred traditional food, so I made traditional food the next time. I like it. They have a dish made with dried beans and something they call "samp," which is cracked white corn. When it's cooked, it looks and tastes like hominy. They mix the beans and cracked corn and cook it for hours. I made that, and also spinach. They cut up the spinach very fine, and fry it in lots of oil. I cut it, then steamed it, then I sauteed some onion and apple in olive oil, then added it to the spinach. My landlady liked it and ate it.

I also made the beets the way they like them. After boiling the beets, they grate them, as we do when we make slaw from cabbage, and serve them cold. I finished off the meal with butternut squash. I don't like to cook meat, so I probably won't eat it often. I will get my protein some other way. I would say that the main staples here are dried beans, rice, samp, and maize meal. Maize meal is like cream-of-wheat except it is corn. To cook it, you fill a big pot with water, bring it to a boil and add the meal slowly as you stir. You keep stirring until it gets really thick, then you serve it with a little bit of thick soup made of potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and a bit of packaged soup mix to give it the flavor of meat.

Botswana is not what most of us think of when we think about Africa. The capital, Gaborone, is as modern as any big city in America. There are several large cities in Botswana and lots of average size towns and medium to smaller villages. Most of the area has more businesses than we have in Bethel.

There are not many wild animals in the area where I'm living, but there are two animal reserves nearby. When we get off restriction, I will be able to visit them. We do have lots of donkey, goats, sheep and cattle roaming the streets, yards and fields. They have the right-of-way even in the big cities. I saw some just on the outskirts as I came in to Gaborone.

Right now, it's winter here and it gets quite cold. The houses in the smaller towns and villages don't have heat, so at times everyone wears a coat, hat, and gloves in the houses and in the offices. The school does not have heat, so everyone sits around bundled up, or stands out in the sun.

The thing that I like most is the sky. The sunrises and sunsets are spectacular. The stars and Milky Way are not to be believed, and the moon never seems to leave the sky.

I hope to hear for some of you soon. My address is: Ola O'Dell, Mphuthe JSS Private Bag 002, Letlhakeng (via Molepolole), Bostswana, Africa.

____________