Ask and Thou Shall Receive, Best is West

The day arrived when we received site announcements. This day that will reveal the burning question that everyone has been itching to know of where we’ll be assigned and the place we can call ours for the next 2 years.

So what was rumored in the past was that site announcements involved an interesting puzzle, consumption of a cookie, and a map revealing our site. To our shock, it was strikingly the exact same.

The staff had us all line up and take a piece of paper with a number. This number was the order of which we went up the stage, to find a balloon with the color of our sector (mine was red for CHT) then pop the balloon to find another piece of paper with a clue/riddle of our town name, which led to a cookie with our order number, then matching the number on our riddle slips with the number on the map marked by our sector-colored string.

*Drum roll*

I got assigned to Hukuntsi. A lovely town, southwest of Molepolole, and North of the Khalagadi North Game Reserve. It has an estimated population of 1,400 villagers. Also, I will be replacing the Bots 15 volunteer Corinne* and had a lovely and extensive information sheet on what to expect and her role as a volunteer at the DHMT (District Health Management Team) that she was placed with. She was also a volunteer that I was fortunate enough to see and encounter while at PST in Gabarone at Ave Maria Pastoral Center.

How do we get assigned to our sites? Well it’s a process beyond me, but from what we’ve been told on numerous occasion is that our background experience, resume, qualifications, interviews with our program managers, and outlined preferences get us to this point of our next phase in PST. Interesting enough, I had told OT (my program manager) that I wanted to be placed West and preferably not North. I don’t know what it was, but in my heart I wanted to be placed far away from the well-known and popular cities, and really serve in a rural part of Botswana. I imagined the West as somewhere in the wild and untouched part of development and civilization, which is totally naïve and I would later discover during site visit that there seems to be wifi and a shopping centre in my town. 

Regardless, I'm hopeful to explore my Wild West. Prayers and thoughts always welcomed and appreciated ya'll. Be kind to one another.