Day 2: Welcome to Gaborone

(author's note: I am writing this entry at 5:58 AM my time. Why? Well, because my body still has no concept for what time it really is (mostly due to jetlag and a 6-hour time difference) and therefore I went to bed at 10:30 PM my time))

The first day in Gaborone was a complete blur of activity. We woke up at 6 AM to catch our 8:30 flight from Johannesburg and on the drive over to the airport I finally realized that you drive on the left-hand side of the road and therefore the wheel was on the right-hand side of the car and all of a sudden I was fascinated and disoriented and confused all rolled up into one. From that point on I suddenly noticed how simply changing what side of the road you drive on changes everything. All of a sudden, the down elevator is on the left-hand side and naturally people walk on the left-hand side because it seems intuitive for them having driven on the left-hand side their entire lives. This leads to conflict though when I instinctively walked on the right-hand side and am forced to dodge people until I realize why I'm always in the way. The airport mall in Johannesburg did not give away that you were in Africa (except for the fact that there were some really cool stores with overpriced African artwork and soccer jerseys) and I have never seen a Ferrari store before. The other thing was security in South Africa at the airport was surprisingly lax, I didn't have to take off my shoes, they didn't need anything, including my laptop, in a separate container and I was through line in less than a minute.

The flight to Gaborone was 45 minutes, a piece of cake after the 15-hour jaunt the night/day before and when we landed and got off the plane (down a flight of steps onto the ground outside, so weird!) we went through customs where we had to fill out a form saying whether or not we were feeling any symptoms of the flu because we came from a "swine-flu risk area" and the last thing the people in Botswana need is another epidemic ravaging their country. It was just really unsettling to have to admit to whether I had a long list of very ambiguous symptoms like overtiredness. The whole time I was thinking about Ellis Island during the early waves of immigration and how even today the US runs strict health checks on immigrants because we have this notion that we are a predominantly healthy country, but swine flu (like other overly-hyped diseases) has turned everything upside-down. In general, its amazing how much people, in general, try to control the flow of bacteria in a society that is so globalized and so transient. It almost seems like a lost cause because even with quarantines, if you miss one person the chain starts all over again. That's the problem here in Botswana: there is such a stigma against people with AIDS that they hide the disease and don't receive treatment. This only spurs the spread of the disease both in the individual because they aren't getting help and in society because no one knows who has the disease. I don't really know how to combat that except with massive reforms to the social norms and educational institutions in place here and the reality of that happening is difficult to imagine.

I traded my $150 for 973 and some-odd pula, which seems like a ridiculous amount of money, but I guess the pula is pretty strong because that is nowhere near as extreme as the 47 rupee per dollar exchange rate in India (as Jamie pointed out to me). Still, I feel awkward spending 100 of anything on something even if that really only translates to like $15 because it just seems wrong in my head. I guess it's another adjustment I'll have to make. The land in Gaborone is more like I expected, with wide stretches of dirt and low-lying trees and grasses as far as the eye can see. It's amusing to see our guides (Karabo and Thato) pick us up in sweaters and jeans and talk about how unusually hot it is on a 70-degree day (or 21 degrees Celsius, another thing I need to get used to along with the metric system).

The rest of the day consisted of getting settled, listing all the problems with our room (the broken light in the shower room was my biggest concern, otherwise everything else seemed kind of trivial in the big scheme of things, I mean I am in Africa after all), walking 15 minutes to the store and watching futbol with Batswana who are a routy bunch when it comes to futbol. It reminded me a lot of watching football with my friends and really gave me a sense of how big futbol here really is. Well it is time for me to start my day, but expect more entries soon.