By teniolab
March 4-11th. The week that everyone was dreading/looking forward to. March 4-11th was the week that the Community Public Health students would get the chance to observe rural medical practices in a nearby village named Kanye (which is in fact, West of Gaborone).
I spoke with some local students in my classes, and they would laugh at the fact that I called "Kanye" a village. Little did I know, there is a KFC, Nando's, Chicken Licken, and many more mainstream shops in Kanye. Even though the program had deemed Kanye as a "village", others would call it semi-urban.
I was excited about the homestay aspect of the village trip. I was on the fence about doing either a dorm or a homestay for my semester abroad. The Kanye homestay allowed me to experience the best of both worlds given that I had chosen to live in the dorms. I really enjoyed my experience and my Kanye family. They were so welcoming and ready to share their lives with me. My homestay experience and life as a Kanye local would not have been the same without them.
Kanye is mainly made up of multi-generational houses. Gaborone is expensive to live in. Parents would either commute to Gabs from Kanye or they would simply have their mothers help raise their kids in Kanye while they lived in Gabs. In my family (in relation to me), there was my mother and father, my sister and niece. My sister and niece were born and raised in Kanye. My sister actually grew up in the house across the street from their current house.
Situated in my Kwatleng ward home was my retired mother. In her spare time, she coordinates plans to refurbish the house as well as rent out various refurbished houses in the neighborhood to her friends. My father is a pastor at a church close-by. In his free time, he works at their "lands" yielding maize, and cauliflower. My sister works in a retail store at the older mall in Kanye. My other siblings were settled in Gaborone, Australia, and in the US. Lastly, my niece attends an "English-Medium" school where she takes both a Setswana and English language class as well as swims at the school pool twice a week. After a long morning at the clinic, it was always refreshing to come home to learn about Botswana from the two very different perspectives.
One of the most special moments was getting to see how magwinya ("fat cake") was made. One day, my niece came back from school with the intense desire to eat a magwinya. Before you knew it, we were all in the kitchen frying up some yeast. Bonding sessions like that just emphasize the importance of cultural immersion in studying abroad. When deciding on living arrangements (if you are given a choice), it is all about the level of immersion you want. I get my cultural immersion from the other dorm and UB students. To learn more, I have to actively put myself out there and ask questions, which is great for my personality. In a homestay, you don't really have to make an effort to be immersed in the culture. In that one week only, I was taken to a local Kgotla meeting, a wedding, and to my grandmother's house. At the end of the day, it is all about learning. Learning not only about the culture of your host country but also about yourself.
Thank you "Kanye Homestay Visit" for allowing me to see a glimpse of the homestay lifestyle!
