To Give is to Receive.....

A story of pseudo micro-finance (?), flying the coop, and cherry chocolate m&m’s.


In the end there are lots of things I should probably be ashamed about, but my shame has been gone a long time in this life through the looking glass. Now that I’ve said that, I’m forced to admit I don’t know exactly how it began, how we met, which is the part I should probably be embarrassed about. I should have been paying more attention. But as is common with us humans, we don’t pay attention to the signs and helpers that come into our life to guide us and teach us until they nearly smack us on the head, or shake some sense into us. Typical, know-it-all, stubborn, overly theoretically educated white chick. That would be me.

It must have been one of those moments numbering in the millions, which while initially passing through my life and consciousness in a shocking or disruptive manner, feeling constantly three clicks to the left of normal, have now become ordinary in this village far from home. In retrospect it should feel more significant, or perhaps I just wish it did, so I could claim I saw it coming from the start in my ever alert state of Zen. In the end, which happens to be the present, I only know what it has come to, which is one of the magic experiences that are the reason I decided to come here, the ones I hedged my bets on, and the ones that fulfill my dreams. But enough flowery reminiscence from me, as she wouldn’t stand for it, or she might, as she’s very polite, but she’d likely stand with her arms crossed over her chest, waiting for the obligatory meal to be served. So on with the show.

In my memory her story begins as she enters my life-stage right-as one of several dozen women who asked me for a “piece job” when I arrived in Seronga.

(A piece job is a small, generally one time only cash job. Prior to coming to Seronga I always associated piece jobs with day workers- migrants or refugees. Never did I imagine that there were places in which the local residents of a community survived and tried to squeak out a living this way. Although the community here is quite tight knit, and families are expected to take care of each other, it’s hard to imagine having to try to get by or even get ahead by hoping someone who is likely equally poor has some laundry or something to do to earn money. And although I had an idea that poverty might be slightly contributing to HIV, I certainly didn’t foresee living in a community within one of the wealthiest countries in Africa where this was the main method of employment for local women who are unmarried with children. While government handouts in this country can be too numerous to count, they do little in terms of helping a person actually get ahead, or building a life on. But I digress.)

Now when I came to Seronga I was certainly as green as they come, by Peace Corps or anyone’s standards, wary and distrustful after all the bs they feed you in pre service training, traditionally a mishmash mindfuck of kum-bah-yah “be one with the village” yoda speak and the endless safety and security briefings that admonish us to Mitigate, Eliminate, Deviate, Elevate or some such always-be-on-your-guard danger speak acronyms (sorry Thuso). Although I generally feel as though I’ve come a little ways in differentiating my head from my ass in this country, more often are the times when I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

So as I’ve said, I cannot remember the conditions under which we met. But the one thing I can always remember, and the thing that makes me grin when I think of her, is her smile. This woman has got a million watt high beam coming from her face when she turns up the corners of her mouth, which occurs often to nearly always. Cracked lips and a slight overbite are barely visible in the shadow of the light coming from her eyes.

Months before I could consistently remember her name I could identify her by her smile, and by the fearless way she would greet me in English. This was usually followed by a quick stream of words thrown together which I would only sometimes be able to catch the meaning of. Her enthusiasm and her smile would cause me to stop the endless and mindless pantomime of nodding and smiling that I was used to performing amongst toothless old women who were usually begging me for two pula for Chibuku (traditional beer, I tried some recently, it tasted to me like a sip of a flat wine-beer solution that has been left out overnight after a party and warmed to just above room temperature) to really try to hear what she was trying to communicate to me.

The first time she asked me for a job she was given my standard (and at the time, truly earnest) response of “If I give you a job now, what will you do in two years when I am gone?” or “If I give you a job, what will I do for all the other women in the village who also want to buy their babies new clothes?”

In my stupid American arrogance I truly believed that all they ever saw me as was a white meal ticket, someone to throw money at this village as a beauty queen tosses candy from the Cadillac float in the small town parade, smiling and dutiful in her trumped up role posing as something special. She smiled serenely at me and nodded graciously in response to my now obvious stupidity and went back to waiting in the endless line at the clinic.

Of course, as these things have a way of happening, I soon found myself asking her for something. In the floundering searching of my first few months at site (Or wait, that hasn’t completely ended yet, has it? Hmmm) I spent a lot of time asking people at the clinic and my counterpart what I should do in the village. My counterpart was always good for suggesting projects he had very little intention of doing anything more than serving as my translator.

One of these ideas was to form a PMTCT support group. My smiling friend was the first on the list. I soon learned that she was HIV positive with 5 children. I’m not going to lie, my immediate thought upon hearing this was to judge her, and to wonder how she could possibly convince anyone to practice safe sex when at 29, with 5 children, it didn’t seem to be her forte. As I got to know her, and eventually became comfortable enough to ask about the fathers to her children, she plainly informed me of the circumstances of every child’s conception. Each story included a man who had promised to love her, and support her, and marry her if she had his children. Of the two different men who fathered these children, none kept his promise, and the father of her infant has just become engaged to a woman in Maun. He continues to string her along.

Now if there’s anything I can relate to and feel empathy for it’s a good “But I thought he was a good guy” story. Her unfortunate history with men has lead my friend to the conclusion that she must no longer pray to God send her a man who would love her, but each day makes the heartbreaking plea that God close her heart off from any man who might even try. Her sole concern now if providing for her children, and she emphatically (and repeatedly) informs me that with her HIV status, having another baby ever is completely and totally out of the question, as she must remain healthy to provide for the ones she already has. I emphatically (and repeatedly) ask myself if I would be so strong, if I could maintain a million watt smile in the face of such adversity.

So after several failed attempts at getting a PMTCT support group started, I got involved with the men’s sector event. I put myself in charge of the HIV health quiz, and needed someone with a strong confident knowledge of HIV and AIDS who would not only correct and educate the men who were answering the questions of the quiz but also to ensure that the younger school girls I had also recruited for the task were doing so as well. She immediately offered her services, and was always on time for the preparation sessions I had arranged. She did beautifully at the event, and even came to give the quiz to the many women waiting at the clinic in the morning several times while I was away.

We came to be close acquaintances, as close as two people from such very different life backgrounds and cultures (and an extremely limited overlap of linguistic understanding) can be. I learned that she lived very near me, and I would sometimes stop by her house, which was more immaculate than should be expected for a woman with five children.
On these occasions she would always offer me some of the precious meat that I knew would likely barely be enough to feed her children, and which I always managed to find a way to politely refuse. She was always offering to make me any handicraft she could think of, and telling me it would be free, “for friends”. I also tried to politely refuse this idea, thinking a woman with so little should be selling her wares in order to feed her children. She couldn’t possibly be able to afford to waste the time and effort on me, for no money.

On one of these visits she told me she wanted to add to her impressive portfolio of certificates of completion (she was already doing non-formal education in the village teaching the elderly to properly count money and sign their names, and had her own brown wooden phallus with which to demonstrate the proper way to put on condoms as a peer counselor) by creating a free range chicken coop (which seems to be an oxymoron, but what do I know about these things?). She knew that there was a woman in one of the Etshas (there are several villages called Etsha-with-a-number on the other side of the delta, as it seems that when people move out of the originally named settlements to farm and raise cattle eventually small villages grow. In order to keep track of where people were living they began adding numbers after the main village’s name –as in how many kilometers from Etsha. Apparently there is 1 through 13. On my side they have Dungu 1, 2 and 3 as well as a few Xaus. And there’s today’s little known fact, courtesy of Cliff Clavin….) who knows how to do it, and her brother could help her build it, but she would have to find the money.

In this village, where self reliance and motivation are less than common, I am always chomping at the bit and pretty much falling over myself to help anyone who seems even a little motivated. At this moment I was torn between my own need to “help” and also being very cautious about appearing to be the great white cash cow. Regardless I tentatively asked how much money she would need to get her project off the ground.

“Sixty pula” she responded.

Although this is about ten pula more than I think I am allotted for my needs for a day, it ends up being less than ten American dollars. After all the girrrl power and “if you educate a girl, and give her a goat…..” articles, email forwards and utube viral videos that inevitably make me cry I knew I was gonna figure this one out. I imagined it would have to be done in such a way that wasn’t compromising my own principle of teaching a chick to fish rather than taking her to Red Lobster or whatever. I couldn’t stomach just giving her the money, as I felt that if I did it once, all of a sudden everyone would show up on my door step, wanting money.

It was getting close to the time (oh let’s be honest, it was frighteningly long overdue) for my sheets to be washed, a task I hate worse than anything (pause for all you fine folks at home to imagine hand washing your queen sized sheets in your bathtub, rinsing them in a smaller bucket, wringing them out and carrying them across your floor and the sand yard to hang them on the line all the while inevitably dropping one of the corners in the sand and having to start nearly over again. Finished. Yeah. 2 years, people). 25 pula is the going rate for this type of work in these parts so I quickly struck a deal with her for her to do my laundry twice for 30 pula each time. Then she could buy the materials and I would help her construct her chicken coop. Whether this project would actually happen or not always remains to be seen, but these are the times when one must just have faith.

She showed up each time I asked her to come, sweating in my oven of a bathroom as she laundered and graciously accepting whatever food I mustered up for her (usually a thick starchy sort of something- Batswana tradition, filled with vegetables-my tradition, and with me always making a point to promote the health benefits of vegetables for those on ARV’s. She smiled politely. I usually stuffed a few more carrots or something in her pockets as she left as well, but my big point of pride is that she’s since expanded her formerly exclusively corn producing garden to produce tomatoes and eggplant.)

She earned her 60 pula. I heard nothing about the chicken coop, and relegated myself to the idea that at least I had put some food on the table for a while. I decided that was still good, and even a success, for a woman with five kids to get a little respite from the worry of how to feed them every day.

Time, as it tends to do, moved on until one day I was at the clinic. I was absentmindedly studying my little manuals for the several languages I am attempted to massacre (or wait, I’m supposed to be SPEAKING them, right?) half listening to my coworkers shooting the shit, when I suddenly heard a soft sob. I looked up to find her there, frantically copying the details for a new job posting down from the clinic wall. I’m not sure what shocked me more, that she wasn’t smiling or that she was crying.

One of my male co-workers began to taunt her and grab her arm. (WHY is this always an appropriate response from men here? They seem to think that no matter what a woman’s demeanor is, whether it is tears or irritation or a refusal for sex, their answer seems to be to tease them and grab arms. There have been weeks here where I myself have gotten bruises on my arms from wrenching them away from overzealous, stupid men who are grabbing my arms to get my attention as they profess their love for me or something equally annoying. I’m going to plead the fifth as to which parts of their bodies end up bruised, but the men in my village are slowly learning to address me by speaking to me only, without grabbing my arms. I’m trying to expand this to be an expectation for all the women they interact with, but baby steps I suppose). I jumped up and grabbed his arm, glared at my coworker until he laid off, and guided her to a quiet corner to ask her privately what had happened. Through her tears and crying she lost most of her English, and she sort of told me a convoluted story about her grandparents taking her to the kgotla (tribal court) and making a slew of accusations, some of them centered on her HIV+ status.

I could barely begin to understand the story when she had to leave, as she had three of her five children with her, but I promised to check her after work. I gave my co-worker a brief and tersely worded (and inevitably immediately forgotten) review of the lesson on sensitivity I have been giving him for quite some time. He smiled and said that he wanted to marry me. I made every attempt not to backhand him, and abandoned this exercise in futility to attempt to focus on my friend.

What on Earth could I do for her? How can I help her with this problem I had little hope of beginning to understand? Frustrated and not able to accept the answer that kept coming of “nothing”, I quickly looked through the package I had just received for something to give her (why is it that Americans always need to give something to someone to make them feel better? I guess this is what you do when you don’t have the words- in English or any other language). I found some cherry chocolate m&m’s (what a crazy novelty!) and left the clinic early to walk to her house.

I gave the standard “ko-ko” (when there are no doors, much less doorbells, in a place one learns to improvise in announcing one’s arrival) as I entered her yard. She had the smallest of her children strapped on her back, and quickly yanked a small chair out from under the next youngest for me. I smiled apologetically at the stunned child in the dirt and sat down.

I offered her the m&m’s, (which are clearly the appropriate answer and method of soothing whichever predicament I had failed to understand earlier) which she immediately distributed amongst her children, not even bothering to pop one in her mouth as she disappeared into the house, singing my name, as people here have a tendency to do when they have nothing else to say. (Lo-Rah-toe….I’ve asked people at the clinic and in the village why they do this and get a whole range of answers, but the one I choose to believe is my favorite- “because we LOVE you!” –also in a sing song voice.) She returned to the courtyard a moment later, the huge smile on her face completely betraying the tears that had been flowing freely less than an hour before. In her hands was a traditional woven basket (Incidentally, sale price? Probably around 60 pula). She proudly handed it to me.

“It my first try. It not perfect. I made for you, because we are friends.”

Yup. Tears. I tried to hold them back. There are enough occasions of sorrow around these parts that they don’t waste tears on joy or any other emotions. And I didn’t have the words to explain. I just nodded and grinned, and thanked her profusely. Later, as I left her gate, I turned my face to the sky and let the tears fall. I whispered “Thank you” to the heavens and anyone else paying attention as the tears burned rivers onto my face.

I walked by her house the other day, shouting “ko-ko” from the gate. Over in the corner was a mesh structure, covered in old blankets. The chicken coop was finished, ready to house the new birds that would lay eggs and provide income. So the crazy white bird from America did nothing to save or solve or throw money at this woman’s problems. She figured out a way to do it herself. I’ve got a lot to learn…..