Preview of the Malaria Campaign

Sunday, July 18, 2010

We checked out of the hotel this morning and we will be staying at Tommie's house tonight. Today, we will just be preparing for the Malaria Campaign, helping Tommie sort out the last minute details.

Tomorrow morning we will be leaving to begin the Malaria Campaign, the main purpose of our trip here. So far, this has been a great vacation, but tomorrow we will begin the actually work. We will not have access to any computers and can't update this blog, so we wanted to give a short overview of what we will be doing on each day. We won't be back in Gaborone until the next Monday, July 26.

Monday, July 19--We will meet the students at the school at 6:00 AM and will board the bus. The bus ride will take 12 hours to get to the Chobe District in northeastern Botswana. When we arrive, we will be camping in tents the first 2 nights. We bought the ingredients to make S'mores for the students. We couldn't find graham crackers, but we found a thin tea biscuit that seems suitable.

Tuesday, July 20--We will travel with the students to Livingston, Zambia, to see Victoria Falls. We will have a little time for sight-seeing and souvenir shopping, and maybe to see the Zimbabwe side of the falls.

Wednesday, July 21--We will travel to Parakarungu via 4x4 trucks to go to the village where we will deliver the toys and mosquito nets. On the first day, we will just get ourselves settled, and we may possibly take a boat cruise through the Okavango Delta to see some wildlife. While we are here, we will be sleeping in the local school building.

Thursday, July 22--We will begin by going the village chief's house to announce our arrival, and we will deliver toys to the village children. This is how we will let the villagers know we are here and that they should attend a village meeting the next morning. None of the villagers speak English, so we will be paired with some locals who speak the local dialect of Tsetswana.

Friday, July 23--The day will start with a Kgotla village meeting with the chief and all the villagers. After this meeting, we will begin going house to house to deliver and install the mosquito nets. Our plan is to give one net for every 2 people in a household. The goal is for each person to deliver 55 nets, 500 nets total. That evening we will travel back to Kasane, where we were Monday and Tuesday nights.

Saturday/Sunday--The students and Tommie will take the bus back to Gaborone, but Tommie arranged for us to stay with his brother in Livingstone, Zambia. This way we will have more time to see the sights in Zambia and Zimbabwe. We want to ride elephants and take the zip line at Victoria Falls. We also want to see a cultural show and dinner in Zimbabwe. It is great that Tommie's brother is willing to host us and drive us around.

Monday, July 26--we will take a bus from Zambia back to Gaborone. For the next few nights we will stay with Tommie's family. We have a few events planned for this week, and Tommie says we are welcome to stay as long as we want. We will probably stay until August 2 or 3, when we will fly from Gaborone to Cape Town, South Africa, for our last few nights.

Don't expect any emails any time soon. We might not even have electricity while we are in the north.