One Week

    My, how time flies. It feels like just yesterday I was getting off the plane with Kristen and being introduced to Botswana. As much as I am looking forward to coming home, each day a part of me gets more sad to leave! I did the dirty deed and pulled out my suitcase yesterday because I finally decided I needed to start making sure everything would fit to go back! I am sorting through things, figuring out what needs to come home, what can be left, what can be given away and what needs to be returned to the lovely people who lent me things for my house! Won’t bore you with the details, but the past couple weeks have been quite busy as I try to have my ‘lasts’ and say goodbyes in Kasane! Will try to hit a few highlights:

      Carrie and I (and sometimes Ketso) have been leading a Sunday afternoon ‘Teen Time’ with some youth from the church. A couple weeks ago we planned a grand finale party with lots of fun games and snacks. All the kids (including us) had a blast! This has been such a rewarding time that we get to spend with these teens to offer a safe environment for them to learn about God and how it relates to their lives. They are all such awesome kids it has been so great getting to know them!

Me, Maria, and Lipa

Morning in the park and goodbye Maria!! : ( Sad day as we said bye to our amazing veterinarian!! She is heading to Namibia then possibly SA to continue her career and gain more experience. The lab isn’t quite the same without her!

The 'slaves' taking a break! Jon, Octavius, me, Carrie, and Luke

    Trish and Carrie’s Birthday weekend at Muchenje! Trish, otherwise known as Mommy Trish, hosted a huge 60^th birthday bash at a new campground they are building as a retreat-type place for missionary families. It is not quite finished, but it was a great place for a party! Us kids were dubbed the ‘slaves’ and helped to cook dinner and had a blast singing around the campfire (3-4! 3-4! Projecttt!!) and camping along the river. Such a wonderful party and beautiful camping spot!

 On Sunday Carrie had planned a mini-olypmics day of games! Above is by far my favorite photo from the event – Octavius focusing very hard on catching the marshmallow after he catapulted it off the plate using the broom. We had lots of fun competitions such as sliding a cookie from your forehead into your mouth, flying a kite attached to a hat on your head, moving cotton balls using Vaseline on your nose, sorting Smarties candy, and a three-legged obstacle course!

Brave little Onalenna held the python almost the entire time!

May 1^st Holiday Conservation Club Fundraiser. One of my visions for my last few months with the club was to hold an Environmental Fair at the schools that would be open to the whole community and would involve many of the conservation organizations in the area. I found out, though, that there would be a similar event being hosted by the entire district sometime later this year, so decided to scrap that idea and change to a smaller-focused event in front of Spar, the local grocery store on Labour Day Holiday. I had the children make home-made play dough during club the previous week and we were going to sell it as a fundraiser (it uses cream of tartar, which comes from a Baobab tree!) and they had made posters earlier in the year about various wildlife and trees, and we were going to bring some snakes from the center down to do some snake education. While things didn’t go exactly as planned (do they ever?), I would say the event was a huge success! I had a TON of kids show up, most ended up running around with the bags of play dough trying to sell it to people (think half of it ended up in their pockets, but we still made more than 200 pula in donations!) and others hung around the snakes. The snakes were a HUGE hit, especially among the kids. A few even became the ‘handlers’ and were teaching the other people about them! Towards the end a reporter showed up from the Daily Newspaper and took some photos so hopefully the clubs will be featured in there soon!!

Knock Knock! Anyone home? One of the mongooses stops by my house to ask for some cheese, please!

     On a different note, I can check something else off my list! Last night was my first rat/mouse in the house. I have been expecting it from the day I moved in but have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of rodents so far. However, last night there was such a commotion on my roof it woke me up, then I laid awake for a couple hours listening to this horrendous scratching/nibbling coming from the loft above my bathroom that I thought could only be the neighborhood genet digging to China through my ceiling. I did the only logical thing and put my earplugs in and turned on the light, trying to trick it in to thinking it was daytime. Only after having a quite interesting dream during which a friendly wombat-looking creature had gotten into my home through an open window and settled into the loft, did I wake up to a mouse crawling across my arm. I think I found the culprit. Quite a brave one, too. Needless to say I will be taking a box trap home to catch him tonight and bring him to the center tomorrow. Poor thing had no idea what he was getting himself into when he came into my house….. he will soon be snake food!