Christmas Potpourri

School is out for the summer holidays (BTW it's summer here) and people are gearing up for the festive season. The normal bumper to bumper traffic from 0645-0745 and 1630-1830 has been replaced by bumper to bumper lines leading into the retail establishments of the 'big city' (Gaborone). I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my sister and mom who will spend Christmas with me here in Africa!

This first picture is of a painted fabric table runner (that I am using as a decorative hanging) that was gifted to me by the women in my Bible study. Isn't it beautiful?



Here is a picture of the post-office where I receive my mail.



These are the birds that are enjoying a lay-over on their journey north in our pool. This is not a natural migration. One of my housemates has a delivery service and he recently has been doing business with poultry farmers... or something like that. Let's just say I haven't been spending much time in or near the pool recently.



This is the Christmas tree at my house!

The fruits of the Spirit

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23 New Living Translation)

A wise person once advised me to be very cautious about praying, "God, please produce the fruit of the Spirit within me." This person suggested that I may not really WANT God to teach me, for example, patience.

I thought this was very sage advice, but I have prayed this prayer anyway... and God is definitely teaching me patience. He has evidently selected a few individuals and circumstances to be my primary lessons, but on the whole, I can say that living and working in Botswana has been somewhat of an immersion program in this area. You may have heard of language immersion programs where you go live in, say, South America and learn Spanish, but you likely have not heard of a patience immersion program. That is what I am enrolled in- a patience immersion program. I am learning to wait on the Lord- as well as my fellow man.

Thankfully, this immersion program is also helping me develop the other fruits of the Spirit- love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. May God bless each of us with opportunities to develop each of these fruits.

Bokamoso Private Hospital

Last week I visited the Labor, Delivery, Recovery & Postpartum (LDRP) unit at Bokamoso Private Hospital (not as a patient, don't worry). I met one of the nurses who works on the unit through a friend at church and she generously offered to show me the unit. I had read about the hospital in the newspaper because it is apparently a very ambitious venture for Botswana and it has had its share of financial and technological challenges. Let me just say, that I was impressed.

As you can see from the pictures, the patient rooms are beautiful and well-equipped. I had read in the newspaper that the hospital was 'the first paper-less hospital in Botswana.' However, it sounded like the integration of technology has been difficult and this 'paper-less-ness' isn't quite true.

Regardless, Bokamoso is a beautiful facility and the nurses I met seemed very professional and dedicated to their work.

Mochudi Clinic

Here are two pictures of the Botswana Harvard Partnership clinic on the campus of the Deborah Retief Memorial Hospital in Mochudi. We use the clinic to see patients who are participating in any one of several research projects. Obviously, I cannot take pictures of the important work with patients and participants that goes on at the clinic. But, hopefully you can get an idea of where we work.

Mail call, mail call!

Sending and receiving mail is a funny thing here in Botswana- or at least it seems so to me. Botswana Post, the official national postal service, does not provide home delivery. So, if you want to have a place to receive mail, you either rent a postal box or depend on your place of work to receive your mail at a corporate postal bag (pictured above).

I receive mail at the postal bag that my office has. This bag has to be picked up at a post office that is quite a ways off the beaten path of Gaborone Central. The Botswana-Harvard drivers only retrieve it a couple times per week. Our bag is apparently only for envelopes. If a package has arrived addressed to me, the bag will contain a slip that can be redeemed for the package. However, we don't find out that there is a package slip until the bag has been unlocked and opened-- back at the office. This means that the package won't be picked up until the NEXT time a driver goes to the post office, which can add days to the amount of time it takes to receive a package.

On average, it has taken letters 10 days to get here from the USA and packages 30 days. I mailed my Christmas cards on Monday, so hopefully they will arrive soon. If you are interested in stamps of Botswana, I posted some pictures under an entry called "Botswana Philatelic Society" in August.

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day 2010.

The national annual events to commemorate World AIDS Day in Botswana rotate around the country and this year they are taking place in Palapye (a long way from Gaborone). The theme for this year highlights universal access to care and human rights. Botswana has a lot to celebrate this year. The country has made tremendous progress from the early years of the HIV/ AIDS scourge. However, they have a ways to go in order to achieve their vision of zero new infections by 2016 (which is also their 50th anniversary of independence).

Please check out this article from The Independent. It highlights the Mochudi Prevention Project!

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/plan-to-treat-supercarriers-offers-new-hope-2148091.html

image downloaded from google images