Driving
1. They drive on the left side of the road here
2. They never use A/C in their cars, and the temperatures have been above 90 every day since I've been here. You can see in the picture below that the knob is switched to off.
3. When a car is being passed on the highway, they drive on to the shoulder to allow the car to pass them. They will do this even when there are cars in the opposing lane. This happens multiple times each way on my drives to and from Sbrana daily, and I caught a pretty good picture of it today.
Umbrellas
The women use umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun
Food
The food is actually not much different, but they eat a lot more meat, and they eat a lot of cornmeal, which they call pap. I've eaten Indian food, Thai food, pizza, and lebanese food for dinner, but I have a traditional Batswana meal every day for lunch, so I've eaten my fair share of pap. Yesterday at lunch, the manager convinced me to eat a Mophane worm, which is a delicacy in the northern region of Botswana. Here's my face while I ate it.
Money
It's probably not a surprise that things are a lot less expensive here. I realize it most in people's attitudes toward money and spending. I wanted to put my hair in braids, so I asked my housekeeper Doris where to buy hair, and she offered to take me to the store where she buys her hair. She said that it was pretty close but we could take a combi, which is a shared public transportation van.
Me: How about we take a cab?
Doris: The combi is only 7 pula (70 cents)
Me: I'll pay for the cab
Doris: But it's 40 pula! ($4)
Me: It's too hot, let's take a cab
Doris: No, it's 7 pula, we'll take the combi
How do you explain to someone who is folding your underwear that the 40 pula she works hard for means nothing to you? So that's how I ended up on a packed combi on a 96 degree day
When we were buying the hair, there was a woman who offered to braid my hair in her home, but I opted to go to the salon.
On the way home from the salon, I stopped to buy a sheen spray and vaseline for my scalp. When I picked the bottle of spray from the aisle, a woman who worked there looked at me and told me "that costs 28 pula ($2.80)" and her point was that it was too expensive. Then I went to check out at the register, and the cashier looked at me and said "you know that is 28 pula."
When I returned home, Doris asked me how much I paid.
Me: 250 pula (proud of myself)
Doris: (shakes her head) the woman at the store was going to braid your hair for 130 pula!
It's cliche, but being here really reminds me of how fortunate I am. I will have to write more about this at a later date.
The finished product
Xoxo,
Adrienne
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