Zinzi!

So Jon and I were walking outside of his dorm and we saw this teeny tiny kitten. We gave it a little water and were walking away, but I just couldn’t leave it, so I scooped her up and brought her to Jon’s room. Upstairs we inspected her, and she has a little bit of a goopy eye, and was absolutely covered in green paint. Other than that she seemed ok. She is tiny tiny and has nothing to her. If you rub your finger down her side you can feel every one of the tiny ribs. We have since decided to keep her and named her Zinzi! It’s the same name as Nelson Mandela’s daughter. Anyways Zinzi now has quite a comfortable home as Jon’s roommate went back home, so the whole half of the room is covered in pillows, blankets, and boxes for her to sleep in and play on. We were able to find cat food, and litter at the grocery store and she took to both really quickly.
We decided we want to take Zinzi home with us. It seems pretty easy (knock on wood) to do so. Since we decided that we just can’t give her up, today we took her to the local vet for a check-up and to get some medicine for her goopy eyes. She had two shots, which she did not like one bit, and we also got some eye drops, and some de-worming pills just in case she has kitten worms. Otherwise she’s perfect! She’s no more than three weeks old, and just about two pounds, little bundle of gray and green fur. We’re still working on getting the paint off, the vet said we may just have to wait for the fur to grow out and cut it off as best we can.. so I’ve slowly been working on removing it.
When we first found Zinzi she was really quiet and shy, and I think very hungry. Now that she’s been inside for a while she’s getting used to us and her domain. She’s become very playful, and likes to sleep with Jon, or pounce on you if you aren’t paying attention. Jon will put up pictures of her soon!

Nothing too much has happened recently! I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing? Next week I have tests in three classes, and a presentation and a paper due in another! It’s going to be a hectic week! Unfortunately I’m also involved in a very large group project that is taking up much more time than necessary. Oh well! Funny thing is my special education lecturer is going on maternity leave after next Monday. A substitute lecturer is scheduled to take over our class, in April. This leaves the majority of March without a lecturer for my class. It’ll be interesting how this plays out!

The other night the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night, and absolutely no one left their rooms or even peeked out to see what was going on. After about fifteen minutes a security officer with his hands in his pockets ambled over and turned it off. Well he actually struggled and turned it on and off a few times over the next fifteen minutes, but eventually managed to turn it off. This same thing happened in the business building last night, and no one got up to leave, one student went and shut the door to the room we were in to block out the noise.

Another student who also lives in Vegas who always hangs by the door to Jon’s dorm (I spend most of my free time in Jon’s room with Zinzi) was arrested very early the other morning for smoking pot. Most of the security out here is a hired company called Miami Security and they wear green uniforms. They are most likely to be found smoking pot also. Unfortunately somehow this guy got caught by the more official blue uniformed security and was carted away to jail at 6 am. He was in jail two days and when he came back we asked did you have to pay a fine? And he actually didn’t have to go to court, or pay a fine. What happened was he went to jail, and they whipped him, and let him go. They actually whipped him! It’s really crazy that that was his punishment, but interesting to know… do not smoke pot in Botswana.

Today we were able to get fridges to help assuage the hunger that comes with eating white rice twice a day every day. It’s fabulous to be able to keep water and other things in the room! When we were asking for a taxi to take us back to UB, the taxi driver told me it would be 50 pula, which is ridiculous… waaayy too much. I proceeded to get into a fight with this cab driver who was extremely rude. He assumed cause I’m white I’d just pay, or that I wouldn’t know, and when you call them on charging too much (it’s a standard rate here) they get all huffy puffy. Later on in the day though Jon and I were walking back from Riverwalk and a gentleman riding in a taxi had the taxi pull over and pick us up and he paid for our ride to UB. He was really nice, and him and the taxi driver were hilarious together. So that made up for the earlier grumpy taxi-man.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned Riverwalk before, but here there are a few main commercial areas nearby. The two closest we can walk to, Riverwalk, and Main Mall. There is also African Mall near Main Mall, but we don’t go very often. Mainly we stick to Riverwalk, as it’s about 1..5 miles away, and has some shops, a bookstore, restaurants, and a movie theatre. This is the only real thing to do around here…. And everything there closes at 7 weekdays, or like 4:30 on the weekend. It’s a pain if you want to do something at night. Main Mall is mostly outdoors, and they have a lot of stalls selling things for both tourists and locals, so it’s cool to see. There is also Game City, which holds the other movie theatre, which switches movies back and forth with Riverwalk, and they have more stores. There are some restaurants as well, but I prefer the ones at Riverwalk. One perk of Game City is the store Game. It’s something like a Wal-Mart, it has everything and it’s not expensive. Unfortunately Game City is the only one we can’t walk to, but we still go every so often and check it out.

As I’m typing Zinzi is perched on my shoulder like a little parrot watching me type. Her eye drops have worked wonders and I got almost all of the paint off of her. The last few days she has really started showing some personality and become a real kitten… she’s VERY playful, and bats around the toys we’ve made her (they don’t really sell any animal toys here). The only drawback is she’ll pounce on you in the middle of the night, which can be a startling way to wake up.



P.S. .... it seems the most common question people ask when talking with me is "have you met many celebrities?" .... they always get disappointed when I tell them not too many celebrities hang out in New Hampshire.