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 , ✌️