Some of you may have noted that it has been quite a while since I've made a blog post--perhaps four or five weeks. To be honest, it has to do with running into a rough patch here. It is well known that the one-year mark of Peace Corps service is a time when many people start feeling a bit low and frustrated and virtually all volunteers have significant ups and downs; it is simply part of the process. I actually thought (or perhaps hoped) that I might be immune since the first year sailed by quickly without real difficulty. No such luck, however. Starting about a month ago, things have been tough.
There are multiple reasons -- I really had overworked myself in May, with a stretch of five weeks without a single day off including weekends. I had not had a vacation day since February. One of the major projects that I was involved in, the District Research Project had been going for nine months and I simply felt that there was no cooperation on the part of the other 9 members. It felt like carrying a sack uphill with nine people dragging their feet. I then lost my memory stick, which had all of my documents, pictures, and other items on it. It's hard to say, whether it was really lost or “found” by someone and just "not returned”. In any case, I was fortunate to have saved the majority of files on the computer itself, so I didn't lose them permanently, but many things had to be reconstituted or redone including the 16 page Newsletter for the District.
Another overriding factor was the weather—it has been freaking cold! I don’t normally pay too much attention to the temperature, but it is much different when the inside of your house is the same as the outside and it is 35 degrees. It feels like you are cold when you go to bed, cold when you sleep, cold when you get up and cold when you eat.
Thank goodness things are taking a positive turn.
We attended our MST (one of the multitude of Peace Corps acronyms) for Mid Service Training. It was really delightful to see our whole class together. It is a wonderfully cohesive and supportive group and some of the folks I had not seen since last September. I presented a session on Stress and Stress Management that seemed to be needed and well received. We stayed in the Big 5 lodge which reprised our initial arrival in Botswana 16 months ago. It reminded me how much has happened in that time, and how experience is a terrific companion.
I resigned the “Principle Investigator” role for the research project and turned it over to Motswana colleagues who are government employees. They are paid to do this project!
This past weekend, 16 of us gather in Kanye for “Christmas in July”. One of our group, Mish, is very creative with decorations and even made a 3-dimensional fireplace at which Maureen is warming her hands. (See below). We had soup from scratch, Christmas cookies galore and home-made pretzels. We all sang carols and even knew all the words by heart.
When I got back to the office, I had a readjustment meeting with my Motswana counterpart/boss. As it has always been with me, she was understanding and open to working out some changes. We came to some excellent improvements that will make work a lot more pleasant for me—including moving my desk into another room so I did not have to be the office secretary, receptionist and phone answerer-- trying to answer all the partially unintelligible phone conversations as well as trying to concentrate on my other work. I am also taking several half days out of the office to work in a quiet spot so I can do some writing—more on that in a future post.
All in all, I feel much refreshed and ready to tackle the remaining 11 months.
Next post, look for a new edition of the Khronicle.
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