More Home Life.

We thought you would appreciate more pictures of the kids.

First, after eating PB&J for lunch (the J comes in a can), Trey does a little reading before heading off to nap. He pages through 'his books' until he falls asleep. He calls this book, his "tree book" for the trees on the cover. He has now moved on to fairy tales (one of Hope's books).

During Trey's naps, Hope and Eden look for things to do. On the day this photo was taken, they wanted to build a fort fit for hibernating. The two and three layers were meant to make it pitch black (for effective hibernation). Hope decided it was too hot to hibernate. This past week, both girls have spent most of their time with the 7 puppies next door.

Eden is next to one of our new Aloe Vera plants that we planted in our backyard (they call them all 'gardens' here). They are both doing fine.

School starts Tuesday for the girls. They both can't wait.

Please take care.

Road Trip!

This weekend we ventured outside of the city for the first time. We set out for Khama Rhino Sanctuary (KRS) in Serowe, a 3 1/2 hour drive from Gaborone. We rented a chalet for Friday night, and then went on a 6:00 a.m. game drive Saturday morning. We had been warned by the Embassy about driving outside the city after dark. This is because people here are poorly trained to drive. This is especially problematic on the weekends, because drinking and driving is very common, and most especially on the last weekend of the month, because the last Friday of the month is payday. We set out early to avoid this situation, but let's just say it did not go well. Our 3 1/2 hour drive turned into an almost 6 hour drive, and so we found ourselves breaking all three Embassy guidelines - driving outside of the city after dark, on the weekend - the last weekend of the month. AND, we did not know where we were going. Ted and I were - well - tense, and the kids were crammed into the back seat of the Corolla, antagonizing each other for something to do. (Eden wants me to add here that Ted and I were arguing like this: Turn the light on! No, turn the light off! No, turn the light on! and so forth). So, after what was quite possibly the most unpleasant family drive we have ever had, we arrived successfully at KRS. I think we are (now) all in agreement that it was worth it.

KRS is a fantastic place. It was established in 1989 to reintroduce white rhinos to Botswana. They started with about 4, and now have 36, so the breeding is very successful. They also now have 3 black rhinos, which are much more endangered. They have 4300 hectares of land, and have many other animal species as well. The rhinos have veterinary care and protection, while Mother Nature is left in charge of the rest of the animal species.

Eden wants to point out that our game drive ranger was a woman - the first woman ranger we have had. She is very happy about this. We saw 7 or 8 rhino, one of which we all agreed was as big as an elephant - just this massive creature that ran right in front of our jeep. The rest seemed to be more "normal" rhino size. We saw several other interesting animals: giraffe, zebra, gemsbok (a.k.a. oryx), eland (the biggest antelope in Southern Africa, and something Ted ate for dinner when we were in MalaMala), steenbok, springbok, kudu, wildebeest, duiker. Eden got to see the kudu very close up, as it wandered into a clearing near the restaurant while we were eating breakfast. She walked with one of the employees up close to take some pictures. Below is a sampling of the photos Ted took.

These are 3 juvenile male white rhinos (with a fourth one right behind the one in the middle). This was a group that we were able to get quite close to, and they let us watch them for several minutes before they went on their way.

Black rhinos are much more rare, and they have only 3 in park; we did not find them.

More rhino pictures....

We saw probably a dozen zebra. The birds in the background are either guinea fowl or crested francolins.

One of two giraffes we saw. (Carla - this one is for you and Nicholas)

A wildebeest. We drove through a whole herd of them. Not a mad stampeding herd like on Lion King though; they were just kinda' standing around watching us.

A sad footnote. A big area of the park was scorched - the ranger said the fire had just occurred within the past week. She said that the fire was started by a lady who was cutting brush at the side of the road - not in the park itself (people here are hired by the government to do this job, and they do it by hand with this little sithe-like instrument). I am not clear why she started the fire, but it got out of hand and swept through a big chunk of sanctuary land. (The only animals killed were some steenbok.) The woman was arrested, and was facing two years in prison. She committed suicide instead.

Weekend Update

So, we had a good weekend. On Saturday morning, we got up and went to the Main Mall, which is downtown. This is a much more "African" experience than going to the Riverwalk Mall near our house. The Riverwalk feels much more Western, while the Main Mall is an outdoor mall with a long corridor where people sell there wares on the sidewalk, and then lined with interesting shops, including the Botswana Book Centre, and to Ted's delight, the Gaborone Hardware Store. There were also several purely African places to eat. However, I must admit, we lunched at ... KFC. I think it was good for all of us to eat somewhere that felt familiar, if nothing else. It was the first time Eden has been able to find mashed potatoes anywhere here, which was a high point.

We then went way out to the north part of town to Botswanacraft, a store that sells primarily locally or regionally made and traditional items, including pottery, baskets, textiles, and much more. The girls each got a stuffed animal, Trey picked out a handmade paper book, Ted got books on the trees of southern Africa and historical buildings of Botswana, and I got a neat little leather purse. We also got some marula candy (yummy!) which is made from marula fruit - something only found in southern Africa. (You can also get a liquour made from it called Amarula, which is quite good, eh Scott?)

Later in the afternoon, the girls and I went to my friend Kanana's house, so they could play with her kids. Liam is 7 and Khutlo is 4. Eden and Liam have become good friends, they play together very nicely. Hope is a bit more shy around Khutlo, but they did watch Mulan 2 together, and by the end of the afternoon Hope seemed to have had a good time.

This morning we went to church for the first time. Most of the churches have 2 services each Sunday, one in English and one in Setswana. We thought we were attending the English service at a UCC church, but it seemed like most of it was in Setswana, other than the more formal parts. It was 1 hour and 45 minutes long, with about 40 minutes of that being the sermon! However, all in all it was very lovely and we actually enjoyed it. The music was particularly lovely. With no piano, organ, or anything, people here are able to easily break into 2 or 3 part harmony that is just amazing to listen to. To my kids delight, one of the hymns was "Jesus Loves Me", which I sing to them often, but had never actually heard it sung in church before.

After church we went to this place called Sanitas for lunch. It is a teagarden in the middle of a nursery and garden store. It is all outdoors, under some big lovely trees, with a giant treehouse/playset for the kids, and several decorative fountains going - just a lovely place. We will definitely be going back.

After lunch when we came back here, the girls were playing a game in the living room and Eden complained that we did not have a vacuum for the rug. I suggested she could take it outside and beat it if it was dirty, and she said "Um, no thanks.". Aaahhh, I have my kids back :-)

A note to readers: Ted is now telling me that since I have posted this, he is concerned that no one is going to scroll down to read his posting below about the trip to the game reserve, so please make sure you read his post so his feelings are not hurt...

Gaborone Game Reserve (Park)

Ted: The kids and I spent several hours at the Gaborone Game Reserve (GGR) on Tuesday, August 19th. We were greatly surprised at the variety, number and quality of the animals we saw there. We saw several species for the first time. First some background: Gaborone was selected as the capital city for Botswana in the mid 1960s when they gained their independence from the British. At the time, Gaborone was barely a town. They pretty much started from scratch to build a capital, parks included. The GGR was sited along the Notwane River in 1978. It is very small by any Africa game preserve/reserve standards - only 5 square kilometers or 1250 acres - but it is on the edge of town and 15 minutes from our flat. Their goal was to provide a place were local folks could see animals native to the area. From their brochure, "A large number of people from Gaborone, both adults and school children, never see wildlife in its natural habitat". It is open every day, cheap (about $5 for all of us) and we get to use our own Toyota Corrolla as our safari vehicle.

We were there for about 3 hours but ran out of battery on my camera after the first 30 minutes. It is just one large fenced area with roads, a couple of picnic areas and the vacant Visitor Center (picture above). We drove up and down, across the roadways all looking in different directions going, "oh, look there. oo, over there... ohmygosh, look at that one". During our entire time (during the day on a weekday) we saw no more than a total of 5 other vehicles - otherwise, just us lost in the wild. For those in Fort Wayne, it was an super-sized African Velt at the Zoo, except in your own car. The most common animals we saw were Impala, Warthogs and Vervet monkeys. Lots of Kudu and Ostrich.

The Vervets let us get pretty close with our vehicle. They went on with their day picking bugs from trees and caring for their young. The monkeys were sometimes no more than 5 feet outside our car window. Toward the end of our visit we stopped at a picnic area to stretch. After a couple of moments, a family of Vervets piled out of a nearby tree and began moving toward us. They just kept walking toward us (I think they are used to picnickers tossing them food), the male first followed by the females and tailed by the babies. After I realized they were as tall as Trey (and Trey has no fear) we decided to get back in the car. It ended with us running and giggling/dropping the keys, screams of, "Daddy, daddy, they're still coming" and slamming doors all around.



Some of our firsts included the rare Hyrax (below, left of the water well. They are the only living mammal related to the elephant),





Zebra, Wildebeast (below photo, but very far away), and Thessape (a long-horned type of antelope).



We saw a monitor lizard and all kind of birds.


The Warthogs were sometimes alarming. The park has no predators, so they grow big. One, I swear, was as big as a small pony. Several mom warthogs with 2-3 young. Eden and Hope thought they were pretty cute at that age.


We plan to go back soon and often, next times with fully charged camera and more apples and toys for Trey. We will likely eat our food in the car...

Of Birthdays and Sadness

Birthdays: Trey Thomas Nitza turned 3 yesterday - just don't tell him that. Some of you will remember the phase he went through in which he completely rejected the idea of the letter "W", and screamed "no, M!" every time someone got to the letter W while saying or singing the alphabet... Well, this is similar. He accepted that it was his birthday, and seemed to enjoy himself and his party. However, when anyone mentions that he is 3 now, he yells "No, I am 2!" with the same intensity he did about the whole W versus M thing.

Nevertheless, we had a nice day. The girls were VERY excited about his birthday, moreso than he was. I think this just gave them something new to focus on. We invited the little girl Harley that we met at the hotel over for a little party, which the kids were also all very excited about. Harley and her parents are staying at the Sun Hotel while her dad is filming the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which is based on the book series by the same name. If you have not read them, they are by Alexander McCall Smith and are set in Botswana. All the settings in the books are real places, and the books give a neat look at the culture here. The TV series will appear on HBO.

Back to the party... Trey and I made cupcakes (cooking with me has become one of his favorite things - he will tell you that he can cook hamburgers, rice and broccoli with cheese). The girls decorated the front gate with clothespins to look like streamers. When Harley arrived we had cupcakes and ice cream, presents, and then the kids and Harley played outside. We got him gifts that we were able to find around here: a ball, a book, a Noah's Ark set, a little kitchen set, and a couple scary wrestler action figures which, sadly, have become his favorites. We then went and got some pizza for dinner, and he played with his various toys for the rest of the day.
I am back to being unable to get pictures to upload this evening despite my success earlier today, so stay tuned for birthday pictures in a future post.

Sadness: The newness is wearing off, and I think it is starting to drag us all down a bit. At various times in various ways we are all missing the people and comforts of home. The girls are talking more about missing specific people. When Trey sees them get sad, he immediately says either "I miss Angie" (sorry Scott, I know he misses you, too), or "I miss Grandma and PoPo and Tulip". After we were able to talk to Scott's family tonight, Eden got very tearful, she misses Lyra so much. After I put her to bed this evening I saw she was still up, so I went up there to find that she was basically making a shrine to Lyra - a pile of all the things she brought with her that she knows Lyra loves. Sigh...

The kids have made a few friends - Harley, mentioned above, plus the son and daughter of my new friend Kanana, (who is the sister of my department chair here). Kanana lives quite close to us, and her kids go to Westwood also; I think they will really be able to enjoy each other. Kanana was raised here, but has spent the past several years in the Phillipines, so her kids are away from their home as well. School starting will be very good for all of them. I am trying to think of things for the girls to do during the day to keep them busy, but as I said, the newness is wearing off and you can only beat the dust out of the rugs so many times a day before it loses its excitement...

We Finally Got Some Pictures Uploaded!!

We have tried since we got here to upload pictures and this is the first time it has worked. Ted tinkered with the router, which seems to have sped things up a bit. Plus we are trying it on Sunday afternoon, when perhaps the volume of "traffic" is slow. It is still taking about 10 minutes per picture, so we are going to have to pace ourselves. But, here are a few to get us started. From top to bottom:

1) Ted standing in our front courtyard area by the front door. He is feeling proud of himself for having rinsed some clothes by hand and hung them to dry. Sadly, that little sink has a huge leak, so our cleaning lady, Catha Bigboy, washes most of our laundry by hand in the bathtub.

2) Trey examining the new landscaping in the back yard. Ted and the kids put in the whole rocked area around the trees.

3) The kids working on the backyard landscaping. They got the plants from Mokolodi (same place as our first game drive), which has a nursery that specializes in sustainable, native, drought-resistant plants. The girls have had fun discovering the joys of aloe straight from the plant.

Plot 4715-26, The Village, Gaborone

This is our neighborhood.

From the bottom right-hand corner of the picture, proceed up (north) to the first left. On the right hand side, it is the first building, third door (west end of the building). If we knew Google Earth better, we would fly you in - but for now you may be able to see the Lat-Long in the bottom left hand corner.

We have a couple of trees in the front yard (south side), a couple in the back (north side). There is a passage along the west end of the building to get back and forth. The white item on our roof is not a chimney but a solar assisted hot water heater. In the desert, you see these all over the place.

The building in the top right of the picture is 'Choppies' our main grocery store. Just a short walk away. Just enough to survive, but we can't find trash bags or spaghette sauce yet. There is a bigger store at the nearby mall for the bigger shopping needs.

Right out our front door (southwest corner of the intersection you turned at to get to our flat) is the Thapapong Visual Arts Center. It seems to be an artistic co-op of some sort. Several small buildings with sculpture, welding, chain-saw, stone-chipping artisans. In the main building, are several small galleries with mostly oil and some other media hanging pieces. Also on this plot is a semi-trailer turned internet cafe (with no coffee). For P15, you can surf for an hour.

Out our back door (north) is a telecommunications station. Within the last year, a cell tower has been installed. The base is 5 feet from the back of our back yard fence.

A couple of blocks from the upper left-hand corner of the picture is the edge of the University of Botswana campus.

Some New Experiences

We have done and tried several new things since we have been here. Here is a sampling of my experiences.

1. Driving on the opposite side of the road. So far, this has been easier than expected. The first few days I continually chanted "keep myself in the middle" the entire time I was driving, and it has worked. My brain seems to have been able to make the shift. However, retraining my brain to look the opposite way when crossing the street has not been as easy. I simply can not get it. This may be what gets me killed.

2. Going to a U.S. Embassy. I had to go for my required security briefing. Of course, when one goes to an Embassy, which is completely locked down and heavily guarded with a combination of Marines, BDF (Botswana Defense Force), and private security guards, if one expects to get inside, one should have some I.D. For those of you who know me at all, this may come as no shock at all... but I go there with no I.D. whatsoever - expecting just to be let in because I had an appointment, I guess. Not surprisingly, this did not go well. After many questions and much fuss and embarrassment, Naomi, the publice affairs officer responsible for Fulbrights (and my new favorite person) managed to pull several strings and they allowed me in, but not without me being scolded sternly by all the different security types listed above.

3. Having a security briefing. This was interesting, not so much for the info I got, but for the process. They have a security officer who is in charge of keeping the Ambassador advised of security issues. This guy was nice enough, but sort of a tough guy as you would imagine. They rotate them around from country to country every 3 years, so that they do not stay in one place to long and "go native". This seems counter-intuitive to me. If you really want to understand the security issues in a country, I would think you would really want to develop relationships with people on the ground. Knowing people well and how they think would seem to me to give you the best info. If you are locked down inside a fortress and shuffled around every few years, I am not sure how you ever develop such relationships. Ok, I am going to stop there on this one, as I feel a long and unnecessary rant about all the other foreign policy screw-ups we have made in the past 8 years coming on...

4. Riding a Combi. These are like little mini-busses that look like they should hold about 6 people, but carry about 12-15 at any given time. They are everywhere, and there are several routes they run, but there are no published maps of such routes - you just kinda' figure it out. I took one downtown to the Embassy because I was pretty sure they were not going to just let me pull up into their parking lot (of course, while thinking through this, the whole I.D. issue never came up for me...). I got advice about which combi to get on, so I went for it. For 3 pula (less than 50 cents) you can ride them as far as you want to. They are quite crowded as I mentioned, and if you are in back and need to get out, everybody in front of you has to get out to let you get out, everyone climbs back in, and the route continues. As an uninformed outsider, this all seemed superchaotic and scary, but I must say it was just the opposite. Quite orderly and cooperative actually. The most unorderly thing that happened was when I got back on one to come home from the briefing, a woman carrying a live chicken got in with me. The chicken never made a sound, and nobody else seemed to pay any attention, so I just went with it. Flexibility and open-mindedness are the name of the game for survival around here.

In other news, Ted has registered for a class that will be taught by another Fulbright who is a civil engineering professor. After a couple of weeks of full-time-daddyhood, I think this will be very good for him.

Ups and Downs

We have had some interesting experiences this week. On the downside, Eden had some problems she wants to talk about:

When we were riding in our car, a guy driving a combi made some absurd gestures at me. Then, when we were at Chickin' Lickin" (kinda like McDonald's), Hope and I were sitting at a table while Dad was in line. This guy sat down at our table and started talking to us and smirking. We immediately got up and went over to Dad. Then when we were all sitting down, the guy kept bumping the back of my seat. Then, when I was outside climbing on our cement wall, a guy walked into our yard. I jumped off the wall and ran into our kitchen with Mom and Hope. He was actually asking for money. Since these things happened I have been scared when we go out.

On the upside, Eden says:

We went to Mokolodi Game Reserve on Sunday. It was not as fun as Mala Mala in South Africa (from our trip in 2006) but it was good. The predators are kept in a separate enclosure. The hyenas are there because they were rescued from a farm when a farmer was about to shoot them. They will be released and relocated in a few months. The cheetahs were rescued from a farm after a farmer shot their mother. They will be there for life because they do not know how to hunt. We saw their three elephants who are being trained for elephant-back safari rides. We also saw lots of ostriches, kudu, impala, and warthogs. Halfway through the tour drive they let us out to stretch our legs and I went exploring down by the pond. It was really exciting because there were lots of slippery rocks to climb on. The money from Mokolodi goes to teach local kids about animals so that they grow up loving them (I did not need to be taughtto love them!).

Another awesome thing I noticed is that a lot of the restaurants have jungle gyms for kids to play on while we are waiting on our food. The restaurant at Mokolodi had a jungle gym that was falling apart. The swings were only half hanging and the handles were all wiggly. But, it was actually fun because it was more dangerous!

When we were driving to Mokolodi we saw baboons and termite mounds along the road.

That is all for now. We created links to Mokolodi and Mala Mala if you want to check them out.

Westwood International School

For whatever reason, I can not get this site to support a link to Westwood. However, you can check out their website at the following address. Clicking on the link below probably won't work, but if you type the address into your browser, you should get it.

http://www.westwoodis.com/

Stuff is Happening

After a long week of snail's pace movement on almost everything, we are finally getting somewhere:

1) School: And the winner is... Westwood International School - by a nose. We were very impressed with Thornhill. It was a beautiful school with all kinds of neat activities. Hope liked the younger kids' playground, and Eden liked that the Thornhill swim coach is currently coaching the Botswana swim team at the Olympics. We also liked that it had a pretty balanced ratio of local kids to international kids.

However... Westwood is equally as lovely, and also has two swimming pools and strong swimming program (minus the Olympic coach). It does not have as high a ratio of local kids, but it has students from 46 countries (!), and the biggest draw was the IB (International Baccaulareate) curriculum that extends from High School all the way down to Reception (kindergarten). International schools all over the world follow this curriculum; I added a link for the IB organization below so you can check it out. That put Westwood over the top for us (Amy and Ted). For Eden, I think it was that the teacher she met reminded her of her beloved 4th grade teacher Mrs. D., and Hope decided that the Westwood playground was even better than that at Thornhill.

School will start on September 9th. It goes from 7:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., mostly due to the heat. There are then lots of optional after school activities each day. Hope will do the 3rd term of kindergarten and then start Year 1 in January. Eden will do the 3rd term of 5th grade and then start Year 6 in January. This is jumping ahead a bit, but this is where Thornhill also would have placed them based on the assessments they completed there, so we are comfortable with it. Ted and I both still want to ensure that the kids have lots of interaction with local kids as well, so will look for some weekend activities or programs to ensure that this happens.

2) Work: I have a class to teach, with a time and a place and everything. The class is EFH 648: Counseling Across the Lifespan. It is basically like it sounds - it will cover development during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and then discuss the counseling needs and appropriate interventions for each stage. I have taught similar content, but not in this form, so there will be some prep work. It will be Thursday evenings from 5:00 - 8:00 - which is basically the schedule I am used to. As for the HIV/AIDS center, my first project is to undertake an evaluation of the current prevention and intervention programming on campus. They want to know how effective it is, how students perceive it, and what other services students are looking for. Should be a good project.

3) Housing: We are in our flat!! It is not the fanciest place, but it feels good to have a home. We are all enjoying it, and finding it refreshing to be in a place with less stuff and living a simpler life, if at least for a while. Example: Today Eden hung up the throw rugs on the clothesline and beat them with a broom to clean them. She had a blast. We also have a back yard and a front courtyard that Ted and the girls have taken on as their first big projects. We will post some before & after pictures for you.

I haven't mentioned much about Trey yet... He seems to be having the hardest time adjusting to the time and the lifestyle changes, but he seems to be eating and sleeping better since we have been in the flat. He has developed quite an attitude. He will approach the girls and then hit them or pull their hair, and then walk away, talking in this scary Darth Vader voice, saying "I just hurt Hope and Eden!" and grin. It is a bit disturbing. However, as I said, he seems to be coming back around. We have gotten several recommendations for good preschools, which we will look into next. I fear if he doesn't get some socialization soon, we could be in for a long year...

That is about it for now. We will post some pics of the house and such as soon as I figure out how.

Editorial note: In the interest of avoiding blogosphere plaguerism, I should say that all the cool little gadgets I am adding, like the time counter and the weather girl are ideas I copied directly from my dear friend Carla's blog. I will post a link to her blog below so you can see the original..

Week 1: We Are Here

We have arrived, or as Eden says "We are walking on African dirt". We are staying in the Gaborone Sun Hotel while our "flat" is being painted and repaired.
Here are some of the girls' observations so far:

We found a lizard with a blue head and yellow and black polka-dotted body and tail. It was on the tree outside our hotel room balcony. It was doing a mating dance with a couple of females.
There are also very small lizards that are very fast. We saw a couple of bulls on the road, and some other cows, goats and chickens beside the roads as well.

Our hotel room is cramped with all of our stuff. Thankfully, we have two rooms and we should only be here a few more days. The hotel pool is f-f-f-freezing, and there is a log playground with a big blow-up dinosaur slide that we played on. We went on a nighttime hike through the hotel grounds with Dad. It was s-s-s-spooky.

There are three choices for international schools for us to attend. There are Thornhill, Northside, and Westwood. We drove by them today and our favorite so far is Thornhill.
We have appointments at the schools this week for assessments. Then we will choose. We go to Thornhill tomorrow.

You can check out all three schools using the links below. Let us know what you think.