And we thought it was over..

Term concluded on the 27th with a long drive down from Bana Ba Metsi to Maun, from there it is the responsibility of the boys' social workers and parents to collect the boys and take them to where they will stay for the six weeks of their summer holidays.

All went fine except for two boys whose social workers hadn't been able to make it in time. Not that this is a problem, things like this seem to happen in Botswana all the time and you just get on with things. It meant that the two boys would stay with us overnight before being collected the next morning by the social worker. This seemed like only a small problem especially as both of the boys were ones that we got on with and trusted, or so we thought.

There was only limited accomodation so the boys slept in the same room as us over night, while me and Tim were asleep one of the boys went into my wallet and stole 700 pula. When I realised this I was gutted to say the least. I do not think the theft was personal, just opportunistic. Maybe I should have expected it but it doesn't make it any less annoying. 

We managed to recover 600 pula after the boy confessed, but his confession lead us to find out that the other boy had also taken money and is suspected to be part of a much bigger incident which I cannot disclose. The incident lead for the police to be called and the only reason they were spared from spending the night in a jail cell was due to the fact that they are minors. Punishment will wait until school resumes next year.

Now that the troubles are over, me and Tim have 6 weeks of travel to look forward to. We refuse to let this incident bring us down, on Sunday we will leave for Botswana's capital Gabarone, before heading on to South Africa. We will spend a week in Joburg before travelling down to the coast via Swaziland. Once at Durban we will travel down the coast of S/A in time to spend christmas and new years in Cape Town. On the 3rd of Janurary we will take a bus from Cape Town to Windhoek, Namibia before crossing the border back to Botswana in time for the start of term. Shark diving, Bungee jumping, surfing, and snorkling are all on the cards. 

Whether I will blog or not is yet to be decided as I will be leaving my tablet in Botswana. I will post videos and photos on Insta and Facebook, follow if you wish @alexdobson_ ✌️

Orphans day party

Every year at Bana Ba Metsi, during the third term, a christmas party is held for a group of orphans on our side of the river. It is a day where they are invited in to the school to simply have fun and not worry about anything else.

The day started with morning prayers and marimba music, it was obvious that the orphans were still unsure as to what to expect, but they soon relaxed as cake and juice was handed out. The orphans were then divided into small groups before being sent to different activities around the school.

The activities consisted of 6 stations; football, arts and crafts, swimming (which was led by me), a three legged race, face painting and television. In england watching TV for 20 minutes would be considered a standard practise, however for the orphans it turned out to be a real privilege.

After the activities were over, the orphans were then taken to the school recreation hall for an address by the school head master, and the local Kogsi (village chief). Although, in reality the address was just a distraction so that we would have time to dress Justus, the german volunteer, as Santa so that he could hand out presents. We had managed to borrow a cattle slay from the local village so that we could tow him in on the back of the Hilux. It was a good laugh, and the kids were certainly pleased.

The day was concluded with food for all the orphans, students and staff at Bana Ba Metsi. The food included Beef, Chicken, Pig, Goat, Rice, Salad and drinks. A much welcomed change to the usual diet. All in all it was a good day and the kids certainly left happy and full.

Exam week

I find it crazy when I think about it and realise I've been in Botswana for 3 months already, time is flying. I suppose that's the nature of it when your wrapped up in the Bana Ba Metsi schedule, everything is always full on, and the end of term was no different.

Two weeks before the end of term it was exam week, every student sat an exam in each subject, and each exam was divised by the teachers. Which included me and Tim, it can be quite challenging to create an exam which targets all pupils and caters for their individual ability as it varies so greatly. It seemed that the most happy medium was if 90% of the exam was made up of multiple choice questions and would cater for the lower ability students. Then the remaining 10% of the exam would be aimed at the smarter students and therefore be slightly more challenging. Once the exams were finished it was time for marking, which is fairly easy when 90% of the exam is multiple choice and 90% of the class can't answer the harder questions anyway. The class average turned out to be a D, only four boys managed to push to a C and above.

If i'm honest I find it suprising that the class average was a D, having taught the standard 5's for the last three months it became increasingly obvious that the majority boys had little to no capability of reading English. This factor makes it almost impossible to teach topics in Science such as photosynthesis, it seems in order to make real progress we must go right back to basics to have an impact on the boys education.

We the volunteers have mulled this thought over for the last month and decided to make a proposition to the staff, we asked if, at the start of the upcoming term, if it would be possible to alter the timetable so that we could split the new standard 5's into four small groups, each lead by a volunteer, and for only 1:30-2:00 hours a day focus souly on basic English reading, writing and mathematics. It will be a lot of work but we hope to see a marked improvement, I shall keep you posted on how it pans out.

Rugby tour!

There are three main sports at Bana Ba Metsi; football, volleyball and table tennis. Each of us volunteers has the responsibility of coaching one sport, I am the coach of football, Paul and Justus (German vols) are the coaches of volleyball and table tennis. As all three sports have been taken care of, there was an opening in the framework left for Tim. 7 weeks ago he started teaching the boys how to play Rugby, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. The sessions started with only four boys playing touch together, but since has doubled in numbers and they have gone from knowing nothing of the game to being able to play a well structured game of touch (Slight exaggeration).

Tim managed to contact a juniour rugby coach in Maun and organised a game, which is actually why I'm here now. We, the volunteers and 8 boys loaded into the three tonne truck, drove to Maun, our first school trip! One of the lovely things about this project is the freedom to go as and when the ocassions arise. Not like England where you have to fill out hundreds of forms, just straight up common sense is all that is required. 

We were also lucky enough to play in Maun stadium! The boys won their first game but lost the second, it has been a great learning curve for them and they have thorougly enjoyed the experience.

(BBM left, Maun Pups right)

The whole trip has been a success except for one incident, one of the boys ran away in Maun. He was in our company, we were responsible for him. Tim had made him the captain, and we had trusted him to be a leader to the boys. Its been a bit of a learning curve for us, it seems we cant give these boys an inch because they take a mile. It was a huge shame as the rest of the boys have been good as gold, as usual its the minority that lets everyone down. I hope this doesnt hinder future trips. But anyway, rant over.

We have also all been given our residence permits, which means we may stay for the year! Thank god.

Until the next time ✌️

My project in pictures

03/11/2014

This blog post will be somewhat of a guided tour around my project at Bana Ba Metsi, I hope it will give you an idea as to where I live and work everyday but also a slight comprehension as to how rural this Project is. 

For starters, I'd like to show you the drive we must take from the ferry in order to arrive at BBM, all I can say is that it is a very straight dirt track, right down into the middle of no where. 

Along this track there are some larger villages such as Ngarage, but mainly dotted along the 100 or so kilometer stretch are mudhuts and plots of land, the owners of these houses live mainly through substance farming of goats and cattle. 

After this long trek down the very straight road you finally find yourself at the turning to Bana Ba Metsi,

Some may ask what the need is for this project to be so rural, why cant it be situated near a major town? The answer is that Bana Ba Metsi aims to take delinquant and disadvantaged kids away from the distractions in their lives that had them in that situation in the first place, whether it be drugs, homelessness or a broken home. It would be very difficult to rehabilitate these young boys if they were still surrounded by these factors. BBM is a safe haven for these kids, while term is in progress they do not have to worry about their safety, where they will sleep and when they will get their next meal.

Moving along on our whistle stop tour we have finally arrived at BBM, outside the school there is a rather nice murial which was built and painted by the staff and students over the previous years.

As you will see in the coming photos, there is alot of art work on the buildings at Bana Ba Metsi, it gives the school alot of character. All of the building's were decorated by students.

Just to give you some sort of orientation of the following photos here is a map of the school which was drawn by one of the previous volunteers;

Starting at the entrance to BBM you drive straight out onto the recreational football pitch which the boys use in their free time

To the right of these you will also find a volleyball pitch and recreational room which contains weights, table tennis and marimbas

Rec room;

Moving on through the school you find yourself at the new kitchen, storeroom and the boys dorms;

Storeroom;

Elephant dorm, there are also two other dorms which are lion and crocodile but elephant is the most well decorated. (Plus this poor internet connection can only handle so many pictures)

To the rear of the dorms you will find the school libary, computer room and classrooms;

Computer room; The computers were donated by an American charity, and in all honesty and superior to the ones my secondary school had back in England. Truly an amazing gift to BBM the only sad part being that we have no access to the internet!

The classrooms and staff room;

On the left is standard 5 classroom, to the right is standard 7 and behind the building there is another class room connected to the building for standard 6. In the middle is the staffroom, here are pictures of a classroom (they are all the same) and the staff room.

Heading through into the middle of the school grounds you will find the garden, swimming pool and TV tent.

The Garden is not only a source of food for the school but a tool for education, the boys learn about agriculture and work in the garden during manual. They are rewarded with the vegetables that grow here such as maize, tomatoes, cabbage and peppers.

(The pool isnt normally this dirty, we ran out of chlorine which is not something we can buy from our non-existent local super market, no more swimming until a trip to Maun is organised!)

TV tent, no other school on our side of the river has access to a TV, not one with a freeview box anway (WIN)

Moving towards the rear of the school you will find the slaughter house, accomodation for the German volunteers and the work shop.

The slaughter house is used at the beggining of each term for the chickens we buy. They arrive at the school as chicks, the boys raise them and feed them, then when they are big enough we kill them for food. Some animal lovers my find this thought upsetting. But believe me, when your only eating samp, pap, soft porridge and bread all week you become detached pretty quickly.

I decided to include the German volunteers accomodation because of the view from their balcony, just to give you an idea of how remote we are. I apologise for the weather conditions, its normally 100x more bright and beautiful however the rains are coming and my oppourtunitys for photo shoots during the week are limited.

The view faces to the west, which means we have a glorious view of the sunset everynight at 6:30. As you can see however there is nothing but bush and the okavango river for miles all around.

The workshop and brickyard, (all of the bricks used for the buildings at BBM are made by staff and students)

Moving on toward the end of the tour and to the rear of the workshop you will find the chicken coups (layer hens and those for slaughter), a building project and our home.

The vast majority of the buildings at BBM are built by staff with the help of students, external help is only used for two specialist jobs, thatching and electrics.

And finally, and most important of all... The project trust volunteers home (Built by previous volunteers);

Also our shower facilitys, they are located outside and only supply cold water. Of all the home comforts I miss, a nice hot shower is without a doubt top of the list.

Bana Ba Metsi was originally set up in 2001 by an ex-peace corp volunteer, Steve Harpt. The school started as just a peace of land and only offered building skills to 12 students. But in recent years has flourished into what you can see in the pictures above, housing 56 boys andI feel incredibly lucky to be part of this project.

This brings me to the end of the tour, as you can see in some of the pictures it is wet from rain. Much less frequent than England of course but theres no such thing as a light drizzle here, when it rains it poors.

Future posts will include the orphans day party and the end of term which is on november the 27th, after that I will be off travelling for six weeks and I'm still not sure how much of that I will post on here. 

Anyways, until the next time ✌️

Today I ate elephant

04/11/2014

The title may come as a shock to many, and if you are sensitive to this topic maybe this post isnt for you. 

Elephants are of course a protected species, however Botswana has the highest elephant population in the world. The law goes that if human life is freatend you may shoot an elephant in defense. Which is exactly what happened, we do get alot of elephants trekking through the local area. However yesterday one happened to come far to close to be deamed safe, right through the middle of the local village. The cheif of the village took a shoot gun and and killed the elephant with a single shot.

Once an elephant has been shot the police are called to come and make sure the animal is dead, and that it was shot for good reason. Then a wildlife officer must come and remove the tusks to prevent people shooting elephants for money or material gain. Once these boxes are ticked the elephant is butchered for two reasons, one obviously being food, but secondly because it deters scavaging animals coming into the village such as hiennas which would create more of a problem.

We took all of the boys from BBM to the village to see the elephant up close, but also so they could see it butchered and observe the anatomy of another animal. We were also kindly allowed to take meat for the school and for us volunteers. Hundreds of people turned up to take meat from the elephant, the meat could easily feed a village everyday for weeks. I must also comment that elephant is actually quite pleasent, it tastes a lot like beef except more tender and abit more salty. We also tried the tounge, some things are best left untouched.

I do hope this isnt a regular occurence, we can often here them crashing through the bush at night towards the river, although they usually tend to steer clear of human inhabitted areas. This was definetly not a story I ever thought I'd right when I came to Botswana.

Duty week

10/10/2014

Once a term for each member of staff at Bana Ba Metsi there is a duty week, this week was my turn. Duty involves generally making sure everything runs smoothly through the school day, such as leading the morning and afternoon assemblys, supervising the distribution of food at meal times and supervising study on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Sounded simple enough to me before I started. The meetings are fine, the biggest struggle is meal times. The boys constantly try to get one over on you and take more food than they are allowed. Not that I really blame them, the food they recieve is pretty minimal. The only consequence of this is that there will no longer be enough food for everyone else. Which in turn means I have many people annoyed at me for not doing my job properly, sink or swim. 

Duty week in all honesty is pretty painless, just tiring. One of those things where you are glad when it is  over. However I wont be glad when this week is over, this week has also been the examination period for the standard 7's. If they pass (fingers crossed) then they will be able to move onto further education. Which is great when considering their situation when they arrived at BBM. The downer is that tomorrow they will be leaving. Although we have not been here long, we the volunteers have really  enjoyed getting to know them, they have been good to us and helped us control the younger boys when they have stepped out of line. They will be missed by all at Bana Ba Metsi.

To celebrate the end of exams we held a party for the standard 7's, this involved a prize giving in the morning for academic and sporting achievement. which was broken up with entertainment from the marimba band, who are amazing, and Tim on his tiny guitar (who was pretty good too). 

The rest of the day was filled with good food, drinks and music. A nice send off for the boys, we wish them good luck.

Independence day

30/09/2014

48 years to the day since we the British gave Botswana back to its people. At the time it was a sparsly populated country with a poor economic structure. However since independence it has flourished through its trade in diamonds and cattle. Also with the help of the currently elected political party it has become one of the most stable countries in Africa. A lot of the money made through trade industry has been re-invested into the countries infrastructure, which, when thought of in comparrison to other nearby African countries, it shows in an abundance. 

For the people of Botswana independence day means a public holiday. This meant for us that there were no lessons to teach, however, instead we held an independance day competition, members from each standard (5, 6, 7) were chosen to compete in each catagory and the winner from each catagory will be taken on a camping trip where they will enjoy good food and games. The catagories included English spelling, English reading, Setswana spelling, Setswana reading and Maths. We, the volunteers, were the judges and the boys had a lot of fun competing.

After the competition we enjoyed some great food which was prepared by the boys, followed by a boat trip on the okavango river with the younger boys in the afternoon;

The boys enjoyed the restful day and we enjoyed spending time with them, we are still slowly building a relationship of trust and respect with the boys and, as this happens, we are slowly starting to get to know the real them and where they have come from. Many of the boys here have not had the best start in life and a few have never even attented any kind of formal education before they came to BBM. I feel I have almost been ignorant towards this as on the face of it you would not really be able to distinguish between them and other boys I have met of the same age.

On a side note, I'm wondering if readers of my blog would be so kind as to give me some feedback. Let me know what you do and dont like and what you would like to hear more or less of.

More content to follow in due course, ✌️

One month in..

27/09/2014

As of today I have officially been in Botswana for one month, if I didnt have access to a calendar I dont think I'd believe it.The time has flown past in a haze of activity, most of which we have thoroughly enjoyed. As the time goes on we are slowly falling into the routine of BBM, teaching in the mornings, manual in the afternoon, with an mixture of sporting activitys inbetween. For those interested I have attached a photo of the classroom timetable and menu;

Its also slowly starting to heat up, which has its positives and negatives. The negatives being that its nearly 40 degrees and I'm ginger. The positives being how the plants are starting to come to life and that I'm treated to views like this every time I drive from the school;

(Unfortunetly now that I have wifi to post this I actually yet had time to take a picture of the view, if im driving its because of work and not play! Picture to come soon)

If you have been following my blog posts you'll already know most of what I have been doing, however I can now also tell you that I am friends with a model. While we we're at a bar in Maun on our rest days one of the German volunteers got talking to a girl currently trying to kickstart her fashion business by hosting a cat walk event this weekend. She thought it would be a great idea to 'add some colour' (direct quote) to her show as in Botswana, pale skin looks "exotic". With a little peer pressure from the staff at BBM (but not as much as you'd think) Our German friend agreed to participate, pictures to follow...

Jokes aside, and there have been a lot, it turns out that this was a great chance to do some publicity work for the school. Part of the deal was that Bana Ba Metsi's very own celebrity gets to give a quick speech to the spectators at the event about our Project, it seems everyone is a winner. 

Until the next time , ✌️

Teaching

Eish, writing this post I feel I owe an apology to all the teachers that I gave a hard time to during secondary school. Alot of work goes into planning a good lesson so it can become quickly frustrating when the boys are either disinterested or are to busy messing around to do the work. But I would be lying if I said I didnt expect the first months to be a challenge. The boys are testing us to see where the line is and they are quickly finding it.

Classroom managment asside I do genuienly enjoy teaching, I teach 6 lessons a week in science whilst Tim teaches maths. Neither of us will claim to be fully qualified teachers, but we do our best. We are only teaching at a very basic level. The hardest part is trying to get the boys to understand the English as many of them only really speak Setswana.

Teaching at Bana Ba Metsi only lasts from 8 until 12, short hours. The setup at Bana Ba Metsi is very different to the majority of other schools in Botswana. There is not so much a huge expectation on grades, but rather on rehabilitation to allow the boys who often come from very troubled pasts to be able to find work when they leave or (hopefully) move onto secondary school. 

Outside of the classroom we are quickly bonding with the boys, we seem to be the happy medium between classmates and teachers. They can talk to us like friends which they simply cant with the teachers but also they can look up to us as role models (we hope). 

Twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have sports, the boys have the choice of Rugby, Volleyball, Table tennis, Chess, Football or art. I have somehow managed to blag my way into the role of football coach, call me Sir Alex. This mainly involves picking teams and organising matches, so far the boys seem to coach themselves. So nothing I can't handle...

As of the 13th we are in Maun for our 2 day rest, so il keep you posted. 

Also, as promised, pictures of our digs; 

First Day's of Term

By the time your reading this we will actually be a full month into term, however the first two days were so eventful I couldnt help but write about them. 

In order to get to Bana Ba Metsi we must drive north from Maun for 6 hours along a very poor stretch of road, before crossing the river and travelling about 40k back south to Bana Ba Metsi. Adding into the equation one three ton truck full of luggage (which me and Tim drove) and one 5 ton truck filled with 50 or so restless students. As bad as it may sound it was actually fairly enjoyable. By the time we arrived at Bana Ba Metsi there was little to do other then eat and sleep.

We woke up early in order the next day in order to get breakfast, I may not be so quick next time as The soft porridge (made from maze) is not the nicest of meals, and thats being kind. But beggars can't be choosers and foods food. We we're formally welcomed to the school at assembly before the whole school was given its list of duties. The first day of term is a cleaning day, the boys clean the dorms, classrooms, TV area, de-weed the gardens and collect any litter left lying around. Surprisingly, the list of cleaning which was supposed to take 3 hours only took around 30 minutes, so the majority of the day was spent playing football.

Many of the Boys are very sporty, which is a fantastic way of bonding and getting to know the boys, football knows no language barriers. It seems easier to gain their trust and respect by running around all day kicking a football then failing to converse with them in Setswana. Im sure for the first couple of months I will be working hard to gain their respect but I know in time this will come. 

In the afternoons we take on manual work, today we were sent to collect firewood. Me, Tim and a teacher rounded up a half dozen boys and took the truck a few kilometres into the bush. It became clear very quickly that we were both amateurs at picking decent wood, however it dosent take Einstein to use and axe. 

At the start of each term it is somewhat the norm to slaughter a goat, as it is fairly cheap in the long run and provides alot of good meat. Me and Tim headed over to our colleagues house to firstly kill, then butcher the goat. Coming from my uber comfortable life back in Stevenage I have never killed nor witnessed first hand the death of the meat I consume. Little did I know that we did not have the simple task of killing it straight away as we'd have to catch it first, the goat had broken free from its rope and was making a break for it! We ran around like fools trying to catch this goat in a fairly small garden, before the goat decided he'd take his chances on the school football pitch. Luckily the boys were on hand to round it up for us. The goat knew he was in for it, so was less then happy to be dragged back to his post. For my over sensitive friends, the goat did not suffer, and tasted delicious. 

I have so much more to write about but I do not wish to bore you all to death, I shall save the rest for future posts. Im still in shock that this is only my first week, it has been so eventful and I have a year left ..

Until the next time 

Heading to Project

This Friday we left Maun to travel to our Project, Bana Ba Metsi. It was a very long drive, along a very straight road which seemed endless at times. In many places the quality of road was quite poor, I thought we had bad  potholes in the UK, I now cant figure out what i was complaining about! But still, it added to the experience and kept us on our toes throughout the 8 hour drive to Shakawe.

When we finally arrived at Shakawe we stopped at a local shop to load on meat and other foods onto the truck before we headed to the ferry to cross the river. However there turned out to be a small hole in our plans, the ferry had broken down.

This meant we were unable to cross that night and head to our Project, only a minor calamity. Fortunetly our Project director, Peter, had friends in the local area and we managed to stay at theres for the night. Another spectacular sunset followed, and we are told they will only get better as summer rolls around.

One thing I cant forget to mention is the sky at night, I've never seen anything like it before in my life. The milky way is appropriately named, it is genuinely as if someone has poured a splash of milk across the sky. If only I had a decent enough camera to pick it up. 

The next morning we set off to the ferry which had thankfully been fixed, from there it was only another 40 k to our Project which me and Tim spent sat out on the back of the truck.

After yet more bumpy road and plenty of sun we arrived at Bana Ba Metsi, there is everything there you could need to run an effective school of this kind, classrooms, a rec room, kitchen/ diner, decent accomodation, swimming pool, a football pitch for down time and so on. I think I will fit in well here and I'm excited to start working with boys when term starts next Tuesday. 

We are currently back in Maun after a long drive last night, it is very dangerous to drive at night as many of the animals such as cattle gather on the warm tarmac after sun down. It is increddibly difficult to spot them but when needs must..

I'm not sure when I will be able to post next as I will have no Internet at Bana Ba Metsi, but I will publicise when I do.

So until the next time, Baroko (To say this you need to be able to roll your R's or you will be laughed at!) 

This blog is a personal blog written by Alex Howard-Dobson and does not express the veiws of Project Trust. I give permission for any of the content used in the blog to be shared.

Thoughts on arrival

So after a very long time in transet from heathrow to Joburg, Joburg to Gabarone & Gabarone to Maun we are finally here. Its still a very surreal experience and I still cant quite comprehend that I will be here for a year. Stepping off the plane in maun the heat hit us like a punch in the face, 35 degrees and this is only the start! Its only going to go up from here.

We spent our first night in a local backpackers called 'The Old Bridge'. A very beautiful place, right on the water, admire the view;

For our first day in botswana we spent are time collecting supplys for the school, tomorrow we head to shkawee and onto our project, I'm overly excited to throw myself into the Project and help in anyway I can. It is doughtful whether I will post again in the coming weeks but I'll try keep this as updated as possible. 

Until the next time, boroko (goodnight) ✌️