Gaborone, Botswana: Reception and weekend
Another weekend upon us. Am I the only one blogging? That either means that I have no life which gives me time to write, or I like journaling and don’t mind or I’m getting credit for this so I’d better do it or a simple explanation is that I love writing and sharing my experiences and all of the above too.
Today I finished the outline for the workshop that I’ll be doing next week. I think all the catering students as well as the instructors will be attending the first series. Some of the graduates who are still unemployed heard about the workshop and want to attend too but the space is limited (we only have 6 computers in the lab) so we may have to run the series again but maybe one of the instructors will facilitate it and I can observe. This way, when I’m gone, they can still provide this necessary skill to the students.
Priya and I worked on the layout of the webpage and I think by next Wednesday we should have it in place. I’ll do some work on it this weekend – mostly formatting and editing. Now all we need is for someone to provide some funding to get it up and running. I feel somewhat at a disadvantage because I don’t know the businesses and organizations that could provide some of that so it’s going to be a slow process. I’ll have to do some networking within the WUSC community.
This afternoon I attended a reception for the thirty seven Botswana students who will be going to Canada to attend university. They will be at several universities in Canada including Western and Eastern Canada (Toronto too). They all looked so young and a little scared. I’m sure they’ll have a great experience and WUSC is doing the orientation in Botswana as well as Canada and will be overseeing their studies while they are at university. I met Baagi and his wife Tata who studied in Canada. Tata works for a Canadian company who sells tracking devices (her cell phone has a GPS). I am getting technologically savvy even though I don’t have internet or a land line at home. I was talking to Baagi about the courses at Sedibeng and he knows a lot of people so I asked him to assist me with some contact information for hotels or restaurants where the graduates can find employment. We arranged a meeting for Monday and I’ll ask Mitho to attend as well since she has more background information on the centre and would be the best person the continue the networking when I’m gone.
After the reception, we went to Lisa’s house. It was her birthday and I’m not sure I’m supposed to say how old she is so I’m not but she looks much younger than her birthday years. I met some other people and I wish I could say I remembered all the names. I’ve met so many people in the last three weeks that it’s hard for me to keep everyone’s name straight. One of the girls I met wanted to know if anyone knew a seamstress because she needs some clothes fixed. I said that Sedibeng had some unemployed fashion design graduates who would be glad for the work. The day turned out quite productive.
I got home about 10pm and thought about doing some work on the website but that thought vanished as soon as removed my shoes and coat. I’ll leave that till tomorrow.
