Holiday tomorrow!

So, tomorrow is Sir Seretse Khama Day, the first president of Botswana and one of the famed "3 Chiefs" that went to Britain to dissuade them from making a colony out of Botswana along with South Africa. So I have off work! We had been planning on visiting the Kgosi's cattle ranch about 2.5 hrs from Molepolole on Saturday, but now we are going to go tomorrow. We are leaving at 5am, and the Kgosi said that I should be ready to milk! That should be interesting...

Today was exhausting at work. It started with a meeting with Angelina, during which we discussed how things were going so far at the library and at home. She and Max seemed pleased with the work done so far, and both are happy that the children's section is looking a bit more chipper with some of the projects I've been having the kids work on. The kids seem to really like the Moncure "letter" books, so I thought it might be a good idea to print out papers with the alphabet letters on them so they could draw things that start with the letter, and then I could put them up as a banner in the children's section. Yesterday we got all the way to "R" so we just have a couple left to go. I think they really like seeing their work displayed in the library and helps them feel ownership of the space.

Then, we came in on the tail end of a staff bible study. I guess they have a pastor come to the library every couple of weeks to read parts of the bible and have a short discussion. So, that's strange coming from the U.S., where religion is strictly prohibited at work! Then, the pastor asked that I lead the closing prayer! It was really hard and I did not know what to say, but I said what I could think of off the top of my head. When I was done Max said to me, "I will teach you how to pray." Mmm...not sure how I feel about that...hopefully that's the last time I'll have to lead a prayer.

After that we went to the Anne Stine Center with Lebogang which turned out to be a rather challenging experience. It is a center for children with developmental disabilities, and the children that go there are on a wide spectrum of mental capacities, so it was hard to interact with all of them together, as they were each on very levels of mental capacities. Lebogang read a story in Setswana, and then we played with some toys we had brought with us. They were all incredible eager to play with the toys and us! Immediately upon entering I had children in my arms. They were very interested in my glasses, so I had to keep a close eye out for hands reaching towards them.

I'll be looking forward to a day off and the visit to the cattle ranch!