Language Week in Kasane I: Setswana and Exploring

The Peace Corps facilitates trainings throughout our service for continuing education.  One offering is the language week.  You can get together with up to 5 of your friends anywhere in the country and learn Setswana for a week.  PC pays for an LCF (Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator) to join you.

In the beginning of July, Patrick, Amanda, Octavius, Shelley, Christina and I spent the week together in Kasane.  We learned a lot of Setswana, especially more everyday phrases that we hadn't known before.  We also were able to explore Kasane and see a bunch of animals (which get their own blog post).  Kasane is at the northeastern tip of Botswana, right near Zambia, Namibia and Zimbabwe.  Victoria Falls is right over the border.  It is gorgeous and a big destination in Botswana for tourism.  Needless to say, it was a great week.

Tonic, our fearless LCF

The first day in Kasane, we decided to walk around a bit and get to know the place.  This attractive building is the Botswana Centre for Human Rights (with Patrick and Shelley).

One cannot explore Kasane without at least taking a look at the lodges and seeing where most of the tourists stay (we all stayed in Octavius's house for the most part).  I took this photo of two tourists with their HUGE cameras because they were rude to us.  Two separate groups of tourists yelled at us in a two-hour span.  These tourists pushed us out of the way because they wanted to take an important photograph of a bird.  We didn't become friends with them, surprise surprise.

Octavius, with warthogs in the background (yes, like Pumbaa in "Lion King")

We played many games to facilitate language learning.  Here, we are just playing Apples to Apples.  But we also played Bananagrams in Setswana which was a lot of fun.  Left to Right: Patrick, Shelley, Christina and Amanda

Then we had a hair cutting session.  This happens at most Peace Corps get-togethers

I braided Shelley's and my hair...why not?

Amanda and Octavius were our cooks extraordinaire.  Over the course of the week, we made snickerdoodles, cinnamon buns, cheeseburgers and other amazing food that Octavius made every morning.