Hello Gaborone

Hello from Gaborone, Botswana!

After a few long days of travel, all the global navigators have arrived! We are staying at Mokolodi Nature Reserve during our time in Gaborone. The crew has given everyone a warm welcome upon arrival. After taking a moment to settle into the dorms the students had an initial orientation done by some of the center staff. Ruby, the high school program assistant, led us through the outline of our 3 weeks here, and we met Obuile Dusani, our professor!

Dusani introduced the curriculum of our program and overview of Mokolodi. Mokolodi, outside of being our home base, is a non-profit game reserve that focuses on the environment. They do a lot of work here educating anyone and everyone they can about the importance of local environmental issues and conservation. Post orientation Dusani brought us on our first game drive of the trip! We saw a variety of animals including but not limited to: Giraffes, a family of Warthogs, Kudu, Impala, Zebra, Cheata, Ostrich and a white Rhino! It was an incredible experience, and an incredible way to kick off our program.

On Monday the students finished up their orientation and got to know the local CIEE college volunteers: Kush, Tusu, and Oabile. The three of them helped to teach us all some local games that they have grown up playing. We learned Suna Baby, a dodge ball like game played with a hand sized ball. Mmele, the best way to describe it is a combination of chess, connect 4 and tik-tac-toe. And Morabaraba, which is similar to Mancala but a battle against another. I can definitely say that these 3 games were a hit with all the students and will be played regularly during our free time at Mokolodi. I am hopeful that the students bring these games home with them to teach their friends and family, I know I am!

Overall it has been an eventful and fun few first days as we settle into our home away from home.