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) ✌️