"I de smell home"

In my lessons from Nigerians Suleiman and Mustaffa on West African Pidgeon English, I learned the phrase "smell home" the other day. The idea is that, when in your travels you are nearing the time of your return home, you can "smell home" more and more each day.

Last night I actually did get to smell home, in a way. Some of my friends got placed in the Graduate Village flats as their living quarters for the semester due to the lack of available rooms in Vegas. These flats are for adults, and come fully equipped with stove, range, sink, cupboards, and an assortment of pots, pans, random dishes, and oddball silverware from the years of tenants. After spying a large bag of beets in the grocery store for about P10 ($1.55), and a decently-priced container of feta cheese, I decided that I had a craving for one of my favorite foods: beet pizza. So last night my craving was satisfied. I went to 417-A1 and boiled beets, Grady and Caitlin made super-basic pizza crusts, and I oiled 'em up and covered 'em with beet slices and crumbled feta. After cooking them in the oven, I pulled them out, doused them in honey, and we made attempts at cutting them for serving.

People were pretty skeptical at first, but by the end, everyone who tried it liked it. Beet pizza was a hit with my American friends, as well as my Nigerian friends, and I would consider the evening a success. On a random note, Suleiman decided to include me in the acknowledgements of his dissertation and had me spell out my name for his manuscript last night. Cool!

Anyway. The smell of cooked beets really brought me home last night, and with exactly 30 more days to go here, I de smell home more day for day.

Ventures in foreign medicine

This week I came down with a cold - or what people here call "flu". Not "the flu", just "flu". I have flu. You can blame it on the fan, you can blame it on the cooler weather, you can blame it on spending too much time with Amon or any of the other numerous choir members who has it right now, but regardless of how I got it, I have it and now have to deal with it.

If you've ever looked in the pharmaceutical aisle in a foreign country before, you'll know what I mean when I say it's overwhelming. Even the ones in the U.S. can be overwhelming at times. But just think: a whole aisle of pharmaceuticals, but you aren't familiar with any of them at all! That's why I chose to go to Choppies to look for something instead of one of the big grocery stores: less selection means less labels to read before I figure out what I'm looking for.

After about ten minutes of pondering over labels and boxes, I ended up settling for Vicks Acta Pluss Cough Syrup with its "Triple Action Relief" that "soothes throat", "fights dry cough", and "relieves chesty cough". Pretty sure I have all three of those in various degrees. The price was right: 100mL for about P26, or roughly $4. Okay, so it was pricey, but isn't that always the case? I took it home, opened it up, and filled the lid (I don't actually know how much the 10mL dose is, but I'm guessing the lid was probably 5mL), and connected my taste buds with some of the most terrible-tasting gobbledy-gook I have ever put on them in my entire life. Needless to say, I didn't bother taking another capful. I'm not one for taking full dosages anyway. But at least it did feel really good going down. However...

I should have bought the 50mL bottle.

Rapping it up!

My time here in Bots is really coming to a close. With less than 40 days left before my departure, only 3 more weeks of school, and then 2 weeks of exams, things are really starting to fly by. But I am determined to embrace the moment as much as possible to soak in every last bit of life here before I leave.

Take last night, for example. After choir I ate supper with some fellow choristers, then walked back to Vegas with them. We were standing around outside, and before you knew it, Amon was laying down beats and we were all taking turns rapping. This went on for about an hour, in English and Setswana, and was quite fun. I surprised everyone because (and this is a little known trivia fact about me, but now it's going viral, so I guess you'll all know!) I am actually a pretty decent rapper, especially for a white chick, and threw down some awesome rhymes last night. To the point where Amon and Condra told me I need to start writing these things down. Needless to say, I earned my rapping stripes last night.

Last night also marked the end of my political party-hopping here at UB. I have made it an activity of mine to make an appearance at every political rally here on campus for every party. It's been a blast. I learned a lot about the student culture, and I connected with a lot of neat people. But voting went down yesterday (and yes, I voted, a mixed ticket - lots of fun) and the results came out. I didn't stay up for the results, since the campus was pretty stocked with drunks already at 10 o'clock and I didn't think it smart to go out by myself and see what would happen when everyone found out who won. There should be a memo out sometime today with the official results, but judging from the singing I heard when I woke up this morning, and the green shirts I see walking around outside, I'm pretty sure that BNF-BCP coalition took the cake.

Not much else to say for this weekend. I'll be in a choir concert tomorrow that's a pretty big deal, and that's about it. Nothing too exciting planned. A couple of my friends went to Swaziland this morning and will be out hiking and camping for the weekend. I'm a little bit jealous, but I actually really enjoy hanging around campus with my local friends and doing crazy things like random throw-down, bilingual rap sessions.

~Botshelo