I’ve got quite a bit of free time during my days and evenings here, which is something I was not expecting. The three books I brought with me have been read and re-read. But thankfully, I found a personal library with books that wanted to come back to my home with me. Eleven books with varying subjects should keep me satisfied for a while. I’m a multi-book-at-a-time reader, and even in Africa, that holds true. Currently, I’m working through The Journals of Jim Elliot, edited by Elisabeth Elliot; With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray; and The Eye of the Elephant, by Mark and Delia Owens.

I just read a few pages out of The Eye of the Elephant before sitting down to write a post. Mark and Delia have just found themselves at the Luangwa River in Zambia. It’s one of the wildest rivers to run through Africa, and their story is incredibly exciting. To be honest with you, I don’t like doing things if there is a chance that I am going to get hurt. But reading this book gets my need for an adventure going and I want to be driving a Land Cruiser through bushes, sand rifts, and all the while carrying everything I need with me. Right there in the truck. Livin’ like a gypsy. Yes, it is exiting. But we all can’t be researchers of animal behaviors. I will leave that type of gypsy work to Mark and Delia.

The end of the month is the best time, I have found, to “immerse” in the culture of Lobatse. At the end of every month is pay time, and everyone comes out to basically spend all of his or her money all in one day. And not only was it the end of the month, it was a Saturday, too! The people I have been living and working with wanted to head to town to get a fat cake [African doughnut] and a meat pie. But, being that it was pay week and Saturday, both the fat cake and the meat pie were no longer available. So we thought about trying the OK FOODS on the hill. Lemme tell ya something. The natives here don’t get “personal space.” I’m making a blanket statement, I know, but it’s true. There is a Setswana word for “excuse me, sorry, pardon me,” but I’ve never heard it expressed to me when I’ve had a close-encounter with a Motswana. It’s really not that bad, and I don’t want you to think that I’m being touched every time I head to the grocery store. That’s not it at all. But the Saturday in town was a neat experience and it’ll happen again before my summer and their winter ends.

Classes are scheduled to end on July 17. Mr. Robert asked if we [the team] would be willing to spend a week in a village called Kang. It’s about four hours from here, and they have thatched huts! When I first arrived in Botswana and learned about the ministry that had been started in Kang, my heart was immediately drawn to that place and has since longed to spend time there. I am praying that the Lord works it out for us to go. It would be a neat experience, and a ministry experience that I’ve never had before.

I have recently picked up a new hobby since I’ve been in Lobatse. And the hobby is chess. I didn’t know how to play the game before I came, but Rhett Warner [a nine year old MK] taught me. I’ve played five times and won three. Beginners luck? Doubt it.

I’m going to make a cup of hot tea before class. Sala sentle!

“She would make her eyes see more today than they ever did before.”

            —Julia Mood Peterkin