my photos, finally!

Hey everyone!
I know I have been totally deliquent in not posting photos, but I have finally got some up them up on the web! So check out my pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/claregupta. Go see and I promise I'll put more up!

reasons to celebrate

Along with turning 23, I have another reason to celebrate today--I am officially a resident of Botswana! After 3 and half months of waiting for my application to be processed (5 months if you count the application I sent in from the States, which they had declared invalid), I arrived back in town this morning to find a letter waiting for me telling me I could go to the Immigration office and pick up my residence permit. Miraculously, there was no line at the office (last time I waited about an hour), and they just handed it right over--amazing! But don't worry, it only lasts until July 31st, at which point I must willingly come home or else be deported. So you can still expect me back in the States in August...:-)
As birthdays go, its been a good one so far--thank you everyone for the cards and presents; it was so nice to arrive home after three long days in the field and find a bundle of cards and gifts with my name on them! I'll be thinking of past birthdays spent with you all as I celebrate my 23rd out on the town here in Maun this evening!

being 23

Things I learned about Poloko (my translator) on our most recent field trip last week: he has been dating his girlfriend for 7 years (!), his name means salvation, his father is really sick and at the local clinic in Maun, and he calls meercats "mickey mouse". The first three I learned one evening at our campsite, as we sat in the back of the bakkie, eating our supper of tinned veggie biryani and feeling small as the nightly show of darkness and light above us unfolded. Its funny how even with a person whose life you cannot imagine to me more different from yours, you can still find common ground. Poloko goes to sleep every night in a village where there is no electricity, no stores apart from a tuck shop that sells some basic dry goods--really only a scattering of small huts with thatched roofs that fit usually a mattress, table and not much else. And I am from...well you know where I am from. But we are both 23 (well, me almost), ambitious, and trying to figure out how exactly in this big wide world to get to the place we want to be. Some things are universal I guess, like growing up, which I think is a nice thing to be reminded of, sometimes.