The Final Countdown

In about 44 hours, I will be flying across the Atlantic towards summertime in the southern hemisphere. Am I nervous? Yes, but probably not much more than when I left for Brown 2.5 years ago. Am I excited? Definitely! Am I perplexed by the randomness of my packing list? Of course. A sample, by the numbers:

• 1 mosquito net
• 1 2-person tent
• 6 oz. of Purell
• 3 foam footballs (for kids in my homestay families)
• 10 oz. of Play-Dough (also for gifts)
• 94 malaria pills
• 6 GB of memory cards
• 5 shirts
• 2 pairs of shorts
• 12 pairs of underwear
• 24 batteries
• 1 iPod with 4 GB of music

3 bags, about 70 pounds... is that too much?? How do you prepare for life in a country where the average GDP per capita is 1.5 times my college-student summer salary? What should I really be taking with me? (Rhetorical! No more suggestions; I am not adding a single thing to those bags.)

Next time I write, it will be from Africa... sala sentle!

One Week

Seven days to go, and I should probably be packing. But because you're all so curious, I'll answer your questions instead.

- Where are you going? Botswana, a country in southern Africa.

- Is that near Kenya? No, it's quite far away. And just so you don't worry too much, Botswana has often been praised as one of the only African nations to have done everything right politically and economically.

- How do you get there? On an 18 hour flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa, with a brief stop in Dakar, Senegal. Then a one hour flight from Johannesburg to Gaborone.

- What are you doing there? It's an environmental studies program. We take some classes and go camping and carry out a month-long independent study project. My project will probably be some comparative analysis of environmental education in Botswana versus the U.S.

- What language do they speak? British English and Setswana. No, I don't know Setswana. Yes, I will have to learn.

- Where will you stay? All over the place! We travel from the capital city Gaborone to rural villages to excursions in the national parks. I'll have three different homestays while I'm there.

- Did you need a lot of immunizations? Rabies and typhoid, plus malaria pills to take with me.

- Will you have email? Sometimes. Definitely in Gaborone, but obviously not when I'm camping in a tent on excursion. Send me lots of messages, though! I'll respond when I can.

- Will you bring me back a monkey? Nope. No lions either. Immigration officials wouldn't let me.

Welcome to the Dark Side?

I used to think technology had no place in my life. That was, of course, before Facebook organized my social calendar, before all my essays were inscribed in Word, and before Google provided weather forecasts (next Tuesday, it will be 87 degrees in Gaborone). Somehow, though, I’ve managed to become a member of the techno-generation.

...Which, I’ve decided, is not a bad thing. Without easy access to email and with super expensive international phone rates and an impossible 8 hour time difference, keeping you all updated might be slightly complicated. Hence, my blog.

Will this work? *shrug* No guarantees. If I give up on it, you’ll know either by the emails in your inbox or, going back to my pre-technology instincts, by the old-fashioned snail mail on your doorstep.