#10 April / May / June

Hello again everyone! The big One-Oh, blog post number ten! I have written down that my last post was 3/20/25. Goodness. It’s been well over three months since then. Nowadays I do have more to tell you about, as I am finally starting to come out of the lull that came after I got adjusted here in my village. That being said, I’ll be a little more active in writing these posts; lets all hope for one every two months.

The old website expired after a year, so I moved over to this new one. That’s part of the reason why it’s taken me a month and half just to write this. Everything is the same, just a different layout. There might be some different pictures, I didn’t copy them over exactly, so go have a looksie at some of the new ones.

As per usual, my work update is first, which I am actually excited about this time! Several things have happened in the last few months. In March I told y’all we were planning a big event at the middle school that was going to be similar to an elementary school field day plus health talks and screenings. To no one’s surprise, our momentum and then the event itself withered away without a whimper. Numerous problems—some staffing, some physical resource—hampered our efforts and ultimately ended the project. But I rebounded! After trying for a few months the social worker and I finally got our Teenage Mother Support group (Safe Haven Support Group) off the ground. We have had several meetings with anywhere from five to 15 teenage mothers. The sessions we had largely focused on getting organized and coming up with ideas for empowering the young women. Peace-Corps-Botswana-wise, this is exactly what they are looking for: an activity that is targeting the youth to build life skills and teach healthy living. Nick-wise, it lets me spend more guilt-free time at the Craft Shop because I feel like I am actually doing my job.

The other big update is exactly that: I am spending six days a week—weekday afternoons and all day Saturday—at the Seronga Craft Shop. It took me a while to fully learn this, but I finally have a good explanation as to what role the craft shop plays: SCS is the middle man between independent crafters (usually old women weaving beautiful baskets in their spare time) and people who will buy the crafts. The two big customers of the crafts are the safari lodges in the Okavango Delta and wholesalers who operate out of Maun, the safari town in northern Botswana. While the craft shop, and my village, are very close to a lot of the lodges, transportation and communication between the largely European and American visited lodges and local people is low. Beyond talking to guides and lodge staff who work in the camps, you could live your entire life here without ever going to or even seeing pictures of the camps. Some of the fancier ones cost around $4000 per person, per night. $4000 is a pretty decent yearly salary for anyone living in this part of Botswana, but only a few dozen kilometers away people are shelling out that much for one night.

I have really gotten close with the owner and her husband. I split my time, every other day, helping with administrative work and helping to produce some of the wooden crafts; Tsalano, the owner, does all the admin work while Kenny, her husband, does all the in-house woodworking. Just this morning I woke up early to go and be at the shop when the Member of Parliament (think US House Representative) Mr. Disho came for a brief visit. The craft shop is finally, seven years into it’s existence, becoming self-sustaining and is struggling to meet the demand. More money is coming in and customers are placing larger orders, which is fantastic from an admin side but hellish from a craft perspective.

The most common things we (Kenny and I) make are spoons, bowls, keychains, and display boxes. All the crafts we make are Mukwa wood (Widely known as Kiaat, see this link for more info: Kiaat Wood). I find the wood beautiful, and it makes some excellent crafts. Kenny goes out into the bush with a truck to find the Mukwa trees the elephants have damaged or eaten from, uses his chainsaw, and brings back huge logs of it. I’ll put some photos on here so you all can see what type of things we are making.

I just got hooked up to their Facebook and Instagram, which is absolutely hilarious! This is the second time now I have held some type of social media position at a company. For those of you who don’t know, I don’t have any personal social media accounts or online presence besides this blog. You can see why helping with Facebook posts cracks me up. On Facebook you can find us at “Seronga Elephant Aware Craft SHOP” and on Instagram at “serongacraftshop.”

I’ll try to cut myself off there. Clearly, I could go on for a while about this shop and Kenny and Tsalano. With all that is Peace Corps, being wanted and valued at a place is really nice, and keeps me excited to come back every day.

A few weeks ago we had the very exciting Supply Chain Management training that I mentioned in the last post. While I wasn’t completely correct in my predictions, the subject matter did prove to be rather...dull. We had two fantastic facilitators who were very passionate about their work, but still, learning about stock cards, emergency order points, and the six rights behind pharmaceuticals really cannot be that interesting. I sat next to John, and while we both tried to pay attention, we really just goofed off the entire time. Before you conjure up images of me passing notes around, writing love poems, doodling superman comics, throwing paper airplanes, and drinking so much water that I had to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, I would like it to be noted that both John and I got over 90% on our final exam. So in a way it was a win for scientists, really, because we proved that one brain cell shared between two doofuses can still pass muster!

Otherwise the training was very nice; new volunteers joined our cohort, we all got to catch up, and I got to have a fried egg breakfast sandwich every day (it was actually three). I dropped off some products for the craft shop, got to swim in the pool, had an Okavango Gin g&t, and got lost in the bush on an adventure with john. I am still picking the burrs out of my clothes three weeks later, and my stomach is still recovering from laughing so hard.

In late April my family came to visit; we had a fantastic two weeks together, full of typical long family dinners, hikes, pivoting, and reading (we are the Bayley family, after all). After they left, I was joined by two of my Peace Corps Botswana friends, John and Jasmine, for another week before heading home. Similarly, we had a great week messing around, eating too much food, and walking on the beach.

As much as I, your local bat un-enthusiast, wish I didn’t have to provide another bat update, here I am. There is no solution in sight. Bats have stopped their nighttime terror campaigns down into my house, but they have upped their scrabbling, chirping, and shitting down my walls. Even worse, after the men came and “took care of them” last time, they have all moved to live above my bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. In slightly positive yet embarrassing news, I have now seen other bats and realized that the ones in my ceiling are very small. Yes, I did cower in fear when the big ones swooped overhead. No, it does not help that Tony, my little brother, calls me Batman now.

I had another flying-thing-in-my-room incident last night, believe it or not. Before I could totally freak out at a series of suspicious thumps coming from the kitchen, a massive (and I mean Massive) grasshopper like thing flew into my room. Displaying what some are saying was truly heroic bravery, I grabbed the broom and managed to hit the savage beast out of the air as it flew towards me. So, basically saved the day and the whole village. Nick one, harmless grasshopper zero.

Books! Oh my goodness I am so back. After the long slump of January and February, I have been off to the races again with reading. Notable reads were Demon Copperhead and The Book Thief, among several others. I am really loving great writing recently, with less of my usual emphasis on fantasy as the preferred mode of delivery. On vacation I picked up a few Ursula K. Le Guin books, which are already fulfilling this need. Add in all the New Yorkers that my family brought, and it looks like it will be a good winter of reading here.

Speaking of winter, it is COLD here. Growing up in Minnesota the winters were harsh, but goodness at least we had insulated houses. I’m sitting at my table right now wearing two pairs of socks, sweatpants, three layers on top, and my winter hat. Getting into bed has never been easier and getting out of bed is downright ridiculous now.

Last week, after numerous tries, I finally convinced the Post Office staff to let me into my supervisor’s P.O. Box that she had lost the key for. I got a letter from my Mom complete with a hopeful note about the election (postmarked early November), and two letters from my friends. Even though I am in almost constant communication with friends and family from back home, receiving these letters elicited a powerful wave of emotions within me. I was near tears reading about mundane little things from my friends lives, and had to lie down for a while to recuperate afterward. I know it sounds silly, and I was thinking the same thing at the time, but I was really laid low. I have been thinking about friendship and family a lot recently, both in lieu of this experience, and during a nice birthday celebration here. Part of the reason, in fact, for the massive delay in sending out this blog post is that I simply have not been able to find the words to correctly express my feelings on the topic. But alas, I can’t let four months go without posting one of these, so I guess I’ll just have to take my best effort.

I am someone who finds joy in the little things. This has come about, in part, because of my Peace Corps experience and the need to have some positivity in every day. Recently, I have been admiring the sunsets, some beautiful birds that live near the craft shop (Lilac Breasted Rollers, for you birders out there), the beauty of a healthy fully functioning body (no runny nose! Take a second to appreciate that!), and more. Because I am so focused on the little material, or non-human things, I am impacted immensely by the little things that others do for me, such as writing a letter, or bringing me a small gift on my birthday. I love these little things because not only do I have the actual item / gesture, such as the letter, but I also have the knowledge that this person was thinking about me and went out of their way to prepare something nice for me. In a way, I don’t treasure the item as much as I treasure that thought, and eventually the item becomes a talisman for the care that my friend has for me.

Enough of the ooey gooey. I’ve been putting in a lot of hours at the craft shop recently, including tonight when, after a four hour long battle with the printer, I got home at 7:45. Yay. Final topic I have written down to tackle is movies. June has been the Month of Movies here, especially after I started using Showmax (huge shoutout to my friend and fellow volunteer Kalif). I watched 24 movies in June, which is probably the most I have ever seen in a month. In other movie news, I loved going through the recent NYT Top 100 movies of the 21^st century list. I’ve only seen a 1/3 of them, which really surprised me. There are a lot of foreign films, and I am excited to start crack a lackin at watching some of the ones I haven’t seen. My favorite movie I have watched in 2025 is still A Real Pain. Closely followed by the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but as far a films go, A Real Pain is running away with the title.

Well. That’s about all I have for you from here. Nothing else too crazy going on. Except! A big canoe race this weekend that is being hosted in my village. Super exciting, I can’t wait to go. Ok, now truly I think that is it.

I hope everyone back home and all over the world has a wonderful and bat free day today. Keep looking for those little positive things in this dark world! Sending my love to you all.

Nick