Day 10

July 4
Happy Fourth of July! Today had a very interesting start. I woke up this morning and went to the bathroom, and the toilet didn't flush. I then went to turn on the sink, and that didn't turn on either. It was at that point that my mother decided to tell me that the water had shut off in the village. Apparently, this kind of thing happens often. There was no running water anywhere in the village. Luckily, my family had store tanks of water in a shed outside. We scooped buckets of water and carried them inside for everything. Bathroom, hand washing, bathing, dish washing, tea. Everything. We weren't sure how long the lack of water would last. We were told that it was once out for 3 days. Thankfully, the water came back on right around lunchtime.
Despite the brief lack of water, today was a great day! In the morning, we met the chief and the three headmen of the village. They explained to us the history of the village and the process they use to select the chief and the headmen. They use a hereditary system for the chief and headmen. The jobs remain in the respective families. A fun fact about Mogobane: the village was originally supposed to be named Mogajane, meaning "near a river." However, due to a typo, the village was registered as Mogobane, and the name stuck.

I guess the bar didn't know the name changed....

 After our meeting, we had a short Setswana lesson before lunch. After lunch, we started our community service project! Finally! We went to the secondary school and started to work at making piles of sand. We are building benches and tables of concrete and cement, so we need sand as one of our cement ingredients. We had speakers, so we started playing music and dancing around while digging. It was a lot of fun!
We also got a nice surprise after our service project. The group leaders got us biscuits, chocolate, and marshmallows, so we made s'mores for Independence Day. I had so much fun, and I really appreciate that gesture by the group leaders. Several of my friends felt homesick today, and this campfire really got our minds off of home. I wonder how the fireworks looked over the East River. I'm sure they were beautiful. What a day!

Setting up our 4th of July campfire!