the long road in

I took a mini pilgrimage to Lehututu, a final good by before I leae Botswana. We were taken to site--the three of the new PCVs placed in the Hukuntsi area. Three girls and their two years worth of possessions and a puppy crammed into the back of a pickup truck.

I remember driving down the 5 kilometer road for the first time. Seeing the expansive salt pan that seemed to go on forever.

I think it was the longest 5 kilometers I have ever traveled.

We came before the rains. Before green and the yellow flowers that erupt everywhere. Before the cows get fat and baby goats play.

I grew to love the ride in, my house was in the center of the village just a short walk away from the bus stop. Every time on my way in I would look for my little yellow house with colored curtains. And smile because I was home. 

This time in--it was no different, except it wasn’t my little yellow house with colorful curtains. And the rain had come.

Nuances of brown

On September 14, 2012 after landing in Botswana a mere 30-some hours earlier I journey from Gaborone to Kanye.

I still remember the looking out the bus window and feeling a myriad of emotions wash over me. Depression. Excitement. Dread. Joy. Nerves.

I remember looking out in the brown scraggly bush of a landscape wondering how I would ever grow to love a place that was brown.

Telling myself to love the brown. See the beauty in your new home.

Three years later almost to the date, I made the same journey from Gaborone to Kanye...

It isn’t just brown. Greyish-brown, green-brown, bone-brown, sandy-brown. There are so many nuances in such a simple color.

There are so many nuances in this simple thing I call my life.

I have grown to love Botswana and all its brown. There is something rich in all the brown. In all the scraggly bushes, the people, dried up stream beds, hard packed sand in the east and the deep red sand of the Kalahari. When I depart, I hope that the nuances of brown stay with me and over time more shades appear.