I gave them all for this project.
The beer bottle mosaic begins.
Pictures to follow… Soon… ish.
In the early days of the long road from vision to the reality of starting this project I had explained the concept to some of the Ngambao junior secondary school art students in Seronga (who really show an amazing amount of creativity and talent despite being raised in a relatively low access and resource poor area) trying to find simple English and Setswana words to embody the themes I hoped the project could convey. I told them I wanted to communicate the message that what the youth of Seronga have inherited are the shattered bottles and broken lives caused by alcoholism and HIV, but that as the next generation they are going to use what they’ve been given to create something beautiful and spread a new message, while outlining the relationship between drinking alcohol and impaired decision making that leads to the transmission of HIV. It’s a bit…. Obscure.
Needless to say there were lots of big hand gestures and much stuttering from me and lots of blank looks from them. I put it to the heavens and hoped for the best. A few weeks later (which was now a few months back) one of the students, GB (he has a crazy long Sets name and luckily enough for me goes by GB) found me at my usual spot at the school, which I’ve come to refer to as my office as it has a few virus ridden computers, air conditioning and electricity (sometimes) and when the gods smile, superslow internet. It also happens to be pretty centrally located at the school and I can keep an eye on what’s going on in the courtyard.
“Lorato?” he somewhat shyly called from the door (this was back in the day when although everyone was constantly calling my name as though it were going out of style they rarely had anything constructive to say, it appears they just wanted my attention). “Eeera?” I called back with a smile (loose translation, “Yeah?”).
“I have made this picture for your wall project.” He thrust the paper at me. I looked at it and a smile slowly crept across my face. It was a circle with a huge bottle in the middle, dividing the circle in half. It was wrapped in the AIDS awareness ribbon with the word “No” in bold across the bottom of the circle. On each side of the bottle curving along the circle and looking as though they were pressing their hands into the bottle were a man figure on one side and a woman figure on the other, both of their heads bowed as though in some sort of prayer. It was simple and symbolic, and would work perfectly for the materials and space and message we would be working with.
It was one of those moments in life that I’ve come to have faith will occur despite whatever odds are against me. It’s the frustrating (to other people) line I rely on when I can’t express or accurately describe something I want, and so I say “I’ll know it when I see it.” I saw this picture and I knew. Sometimes you just have to trust that someone else can know exactly what you’re trying to say and can create the exact vision you can’t describe yourself. And this kid could.
My eyes filled with tears and the kid looked alarmed (public crying-doesn’t happen here) and I shook my head and grabbed him in a one armed hug as we looked at the picture together. “It’s perfect. Thanks GB. This is going to be awesome.” I gave him a squeeze and let him go, and he smiled at me, shook his head and walked out the door. I kept that paper in a folder with me at nearly all times for the next few months. I would take it out and look at it whenever I was frustrated with the slowness with which the project was going forward. I pulled it out at meetings and dinners and bars and on buses to describe to people what I was doing in Seronga. They would nod and smile vacantly or occasionally comment “what a nice little art project” but I never cared because this thing was my baby. I felt a rather ferocious sense of protectiveness about it, as well as a blind faith that it would actually get created.
It was a Saturday morning a few months later and not atypically, things were not going according to plan (the irony inherent in the frequency with which the phrase “make a plan” passes both mine and many of the people I know in the delta’s lips will never be lost on me. It is relatively impossible to “make a plan” that is carried through to completion in its original incarnation). Today was the day we were finally going to put glass to wall and officially start the most exciting part of the long awaited mosaic project. I won’t detail all the nodding and smiling and paperwork bureaucracy it took to get this point (it was similar in terms of permissions and supply requisitions to the mural project) so as not to drive you all as crazy as it made me, but the idea has been over a year in the making (in my little brain at least). In the States it could have been done in maybe a few weeks or a month. Even in other places in Bots it might not have taken this long. There were lots of times I thought perhaps in my crazy brain is where the project would stay. But I kept slowly chasing this dream and last weekend I got to see it begin to truly become a reality.
I had discussed the plan for the day with Mpho (his name means “gift”) the advisor for the HIV club who was proving more supportive of the project these days than Jonny the art teacher, who had been my original partner in crime (it seems my loyalties can be quite negotiable when it comes to actually carrying one of these projects out) a few days before. I had found most of the bottles we would need by now [a feat that included wandering around the teacher’s housing as they partied and struggling to negotiate with the teachers for their brown bottles- a rare (the bottle store in Seronga rarely carries alcohol in brown bottles –so they were imported from somewhere overseas-ie across the river in Shakawe or something) as well as a hot commodity as they can be turned in for cash- as they finished them, a process which of course included them getting increasingly drunker and more difficult to understand-and negotiate with, as well as a few small dumpster diving expeditions and a few wine bottles contributed from my own personal use-what can I say? I’m dedicated. Mpho may indeed be more dedicated, his yard was the one where we collected all the bottles and thus now looked like a Shebeen-small local bar that serves traditional homebrew].
So I showed up and no one was around. It appeared the first task of the day would be to complete the scavenger hunt required to discover who was currently in possession of all the necessary keys to unlock the various rooms which held the supplies [It surprises me how much emphasis is placed on locking things up and protecting them- from what I’m not sure, theft? vandalism? only to have teachers frequently give any random student they happen to see the keys to deliver to any other random teacher, who indeed may or may not be where they are supposed to be. One amazing thing I’ve found in this village is that you can just call out to any child, give them anything from a folder of important papers to a fistful of cash, tell them to run an errand of any sort and they will do it (and come back with your change). I even gave a teacher 100.00 pula to buy 7.50 pula worth of paraffin. Then I left that school, went to another school and an hour or so later some random child approached me with my 100 pula and a message in broken English that “sorry there was no paraffin at the shop.”]
Two hours post scheduled start time we busted the first bottle. One of the most difficult aspects of this particular project was explaining the concept of a mosaic to people who had never seen one, and then inform them that we would be smashing glass with teenaged children and then try to convince them that I wasn’t crazy or homicidal. I had obtained both gloves and safety goggles for as many as 15 kids but of course the goggles were now nowhere to be found and so I just prayed to the “glass breaking around children” gods that no one took a shard in the eye, because as capable and competent as my coworkers at the clinic are, I don’t know that they have the tools to painlessly extract glass from eyes. (I’m happy to report that as of this writing we’ve had no eye related glass accidents, although knock on wood, cause they’re going to continue working on it next weekend when I’m on my way to Gabs for training.)
As is common for these sorts of projects at the beginning very few kids showed up, but being at the prime location (these poor kids even have to come to school on Saturday mornings for study) at the junior secondary we soon had lots of kids involved. I usually try to play supporting role in these projects, letting the kids do most of the work and the problem solving so that they can truly feel as though it’s something they’ve created themselves. I think my part mostly consisted of working through the background work with the other adults to get permission, funding and supplies. Although I couldn’t resist sticking on a few pieces of glass, a task for which I was rewarded with a tiny slice into my left index finger (thus I’ve even given blood for this project ;-)
So I stood back in the sun, away from the wall so I could see it becoming reality from a distance. As I was trying to become invisible so I could take out my camera and snap some candid pictures, I was struck by a little teary pride. GB, the boy who had created the design was now carefully sticking brown glass to the brown people he had envisioned for his project. He was working with other kids who had primed the spot on which he later sketched his drawing a few weeks back. Some of the boys were even doing the “girl’s work” of cleaning and scrapping the labels off of the bottles (yeah, that was my mandate too, gender neutrality in art project tasks aka: Lorato in Seronga, breaking down one antiquated sexual stereotype at a time…Those boys also swept and cleaned up after the project, I’m happy to report, although they tried to call a group of girls over to do it for them…)
At the clinic on Monday I gave a short report in the morning meeting that the glass project had begun. It turns out that some of the people at the clinic had seen it, thought it was cool and were now complaining and asking why I hadn’t done that project at the clinic instead of the mural. I didn’t have the heart or patience to remind them of the uproar they had made when I had introduced the idea of painting a mural on the wall.
Later when I was speaking to my friend Aniki I joked with her about just that. “Ah! Lorato!” she exclaimed. It seems people can’t actually say much of anything to me without beginning this way, by grunting and exclaiming my name in an almost indignantly sounding manner, no matter what the tone of the statement that happens to follow it.
“We can see now how well your projects are going. We may not have been willing to listen to you at first but now we can see. And even though we didn’t support you at first you never gave up and now we can see. You kept going. And people will see these projects for many years and they will say “Ah! That is Lorato’s project and she loved us and she made that painting and that glass project there because she loved us. And even though we didn’t believe her she didn’t give up. We can learn from you.” Aniki crossed her arms across her chest and gave an authoritative nod, as though she now considered me properly chastised.
And I smiled at her and shook my head. For once I didn’t try to side step taking credit and spout one of my usual mantras that “these projects are about showing people that if they want to have something beautiful to look at they can make it/ they don’t need lots of money from some white people to make it (the money is all from within Botswana through the district multisectoral AIDS committee-which is a long and convoluted process by which money that probably came from the States in some form is distributed through plans made by the local districts, but I digress)/and if they want to make a project they have to work hard/ and look what the children of Seronga can create aren’t they wonderful?” I just let the pride wash over me, and I felt very happy. I did make these projects because I love them, and I want them to have beautiful things, and because I believe that they can do anything they want. I’m proud that some people here get the message of working hard and creating for themselves that I am trying to send. And I feel fulfilled and honored that somehow I managed to take this idea from in my head, inspired by my disgust and frustration with the broken bottles under children’s bare feet to create something beautiful and lasting. It was so worth it. All of it.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Secret Life of Bees... Revealed!
One of my projects which has proven to provide me with the greatest amount of joy in Seronga has been my girl’s book club. The idea came when I was reading a copy of The Secret Life of Bees and thought about how much I would like to share it with girls here. I had had the idea in mind for a book club in which we would read The Diary of Anne Frank, but the copies were taking a little while to get here (but have now been delivered into my hot little hands thanks again Mrs. Payne and Rob!!!) so I decided to start with the three copies I had managed to snag that had been floating around in this country of the Secret Life Of Bees.
I got the blessing of the guidance and counseling advisor at the school and placed a notice up on the school bulletin board outlining my expectations. I attended a school assembly (which began at half six in the morning!!! Uhgh) to recruit girls to form the group. In the end I have always had more girls sign up than actually attend, but I’ve got about 5 who are consistent. We are midway through the book and with help from home I have been able to show them pictures of the iconic American events and products outlined in the book and have got a copy of the movie ready to watch at our end of the book celebration I’m planning.
The book club ends up being a hard sell to try to link in with what is supposed to be my main focus, HIV/AIDS, but I find that helping these girls read and discuss many of the topics raised in the book (in English no less!) has been really rewarding. The book has several relevant themes that cross cultures (racism, interracial/teenage dating, being an orphan, female empowerment and business ownership, ect) and it is very cool to be able to remind them that the book it set in 1964, which is two years before Botswana got its independence. It was the year that the Civil Rights Amendment was signed in the United States, giving black people the right to vote and now we have a black president. Race is still a pretty big issue in Botswana, and to be able to make such a powerful connection to a countries ability to change in such a short period is amazing.
I genuinely feel that as they practice reading and answering critical thinking questions, each girl comes out of her shell in a small way. They are very supportive of each other, helping each other along over difficult words, and are more willing to ask questions and share their opinions. As time goes on each girl is willing to read out loud for a longer period of time, and they’ve also become more comfortable when I ask them to act out a certain part to better envision how it plays out. Slowly but surely they are realizing that they have a forum from which to ask questions about their own culture as well as mine, and to discuss issues they find important. We recently read through a part in which the main character, a 14 year old white girl (which happens to be the age of most of the girls in the club) falls in love with a black boy. It was so cool to discuss love and dating with these girls, and to be able to help them think through aspects of dating within their culture that they may or may not agree with, and to discuss how to resist pressure from boys.
It has been a joy to try to bring the book alive for these girls who are so hungry for information and new experiences. Through some stroke of luck or serendipity, I found out that the councilor’s widow keeps bees. About a month ago I arranged for her to give the girls a short lesson and demonstration about how beekeeping works. The girls got to suit up in full beekeeping apparel and use the smokers and feed the bees. Anne gave them all some honey to sample and bar of beeswax soap. It was so cool to take them on the sort of field trip that was the highlight of being in school for me, being able to get out of the classroom and experience things, and it was a huge departure from the type of rote learning they experience in their own classrooms.
Last week I added journaling as a component of the book club. I give them questions about the book and their feelings about it and opinions. I've found the girls will "speak" more freely if you will on paper. I've recently found that I've got two aspiring female doctors and that one of them plans on curing AIDS. I am awed at the goals of these girls from this place so far away from.... everything. And so proud to be able to work with them.
I got the blessing of the guidance and counseling advisor at the school and placed a notice up on the school bulletin board outlining my expectations. I attended a school assembly (which began at half six in the morning!!! Uhgh) to recruit girls to form the group. In the end I have always had more girls sign up than actually attend, but I’ve got about 5 who are consistent. We are midway through the book and with help from home I have been able to show them pictures of the iconic American events and products outlined in the book and have got a copy of the movie ready to watch at our end of the book celebration I’m planning.
The book club ends up being a hard sell to try to link in with what is supposed to be my main focus, HIV/AIDS, but I find that helping these girls read and discuss many of the topics raised in the book (in English no less!) has been really rewarding. The book has several relevant themes that cross cultures (racism, interracial/teenage dating, being an orphan, female empowerment and business ownership, ect) and it is very cool to be able to remind them that the book it set in 1964, which is two years before Botswana got its independence. It was the year that the Civil Rights Amendment was signed in the United States, giving black people the right to vote and now we have a black president. Race is still a pretty big issue in Botswana, and to be able to make such a powerful connection to a countries ability to change in such a short period is amazing.
I genuinely feel that as they practice reading and answering critical thinking questions, each girl comes out of her shell in a small way. They are very supportive of each other, helping each other along over difficult words, and are more willing to ask questions and share their opinions. As time goes on each girl is willing to read out loud for a longer period of time, and they’ve also become more comfortable when I ask them to act out a certain part to better envision how it plays out. Slowly but surely they are realizing that they have a forum from which to ask questions about their own culture as well as mine, and to discuss issues they find important. We recently read through a part in which the main character, a 14 year old white girl (which happens to be the age of most of the girls in the club) falls in love with a black boy. It was so cool to discuss love and dating with these girls, and to be able to help them think through aspects of dating within their culture that they may or may not agree with, and to discuss how to resist pressure from boys.
It has been a joy to try to bring the book alive for these girls who are so hungry for information and new experiences. Through some stroke of luck or serendipity, I found out that the councilor’s widow keeps bees. About a month ago I arranged for her to give the girls a short lesson and demonstration about how beekeeping works. The girls got to suit up in full beekeeping apparel and use the smokers and feed the bees. Anne gave them all some honey to sample and bar of beeswax soap. It was so cool to take them on the sort of field trip that was the highlight of being in school for me, being able to get out of the classroom and experience things, and it was a huge departure from the type of rote learning they experience in their own classrooms.
Last week I added journaling as a component of the book club. I give them questions about the book and their feelings about it and opinions. I've found the girls will "speak" more freely if you will on paper. I've recently found that I've got two aspiring female doctors and that one of them plans on curing AIDS. I am awed at the goals of these girls from this place so far away from.... everything. And so proud to be able to work with them.
Successful in Seronga!!!!
After a past few months that rivaled my first two months at site for melancholy, hopelessness, irritation and plain old homesickness and angst, waiting it out has been the right answer yet again. I’ve got some projects that have made me feel a little bit of success, and also have the arrival of several visitors in the next year to look forward to.
Home Improvements…
In the past few months there have been great improvements to the hut (and surrounding areas) in Seronga. As follows:
The doctor is in. He has finally been moved into his accommodation at the police, and is fully relocated to Seronga. We now have ARV’s available to patients on a more regular basis, so now they don’t have to travel to Shakawe after their three month initiation period. Hopefully this will help less people default on their ARV’s. As both ambulance boats are still in the shop (along with the post boat since Jan of this year) the nurses are still having to get up at 4 in the morning to meet patients who have traveled from God knows where in the bush in the dark to get to the clinic to have their blood drawn. Everyone in Seronga is bumbling around at these insane hours because as the boats are in the shop, the road ambulances have to drive all the way around the delta- up through Shakawe and back down to Gumare, a journey that can take anywhere from 3.5 hours (best) to 7 or 8 (my worst nightmare days) one way. They have to leave by about 6 or 6:30 in order to get to Gumare in time to turn around and get back before the last ferry at 6:30. (It’s winter here now, so it gets dark earlier, which means there is less light by which to navigate crossing that dark, deep, churning, strongly flowing and cold water - which is just unsafe at night. Two words: Nvuvu/Kubu (Hippo) and Kwena (Crocodile) yup, you wouldn’t be wanting to cross that bad boy at night either). It used to be a bit more negotiable with the ferry operators and easier to convince them to go across just one more time, but not so much any more…
So in addition to the ngaka (Dr.) being able to dispense ARV’s, he can also deal with a bit more serious diagnosis and trauma. People also take his word more seriously than that of the head nurse, which is sort of dumb, but will help the patients in the long run. He is able to make more authoritative diagnosis and recommendation for the treatment of patients who have to be referred out of Seronga.
(In a previous incident the head nurse recommended that a patient be transferred at least to Maun as she suspected Gumare did not have sufficient resources to properly care for the patient. Because the protocol involves transferring a patient to Gumare first, the patient was airlifted out of Seronga to Gumare, where the patient lapsed into a coma, then the patient was transferred to Maun, and then onto Francistown when even Maun didn’t have sufficient resources to help the patient. It makes me shudder to consider not only the trauma the patient undoubtedly suffered through all that transport to places with insufficient resources but also the cost of the plane –someone paid for the following legs of airflights: Maun to Seronga, Seronga to Gumare, Gumare to Maun, again Maun to Gumare, Gumare to Maun, then Maun to Francistown and back. Not cheap for the government. I haven’t heard the outcome of this one.)
Although the ngaka is still on the road at least 2 days a week dispensing drugs to the other ARV clinics this side of the delta, it’s a helluva lot better to have him there more regularly. His arrival has caused the head nurse to rejoice (and say that she can now put in for a transfer- for which she is nearly due) and has greatly improved the availability of treatment for patients.
The Mural at the clinic. Is finished! I’ve noticed that community participation can often be hard to muster for these projects in Botswana, but I was determined to call in favors and even beg and plead if I had to. I am proud to announce that I didn’t lift a brush for this project. My job was all in the background legwork. For me it was more important to help empower the kids to design the words and carry the project from priming and sketching to completion.
One might argue that the idea of Peace Corps is to work along side of host country partners, but I find that it sent a powerful message to the kids when I got out the paints and brushes and said “go for it”. They looked at me incredulously, like isn’t she going to tell us what to do? I just tipped me chin at the wall and reminded them that they’re the artists and walked away. The adults at the clinic looked at me like I was crazy as well, but it proved an amazing time to teach a lesson in empowerment, that people will rise to a task put in front of them if you let them. It turned out beautifully, if not what I had originally envisioned. I’ve heard through various members of the community that the nurses and staff at the clinic are very proud of the mural, and I found it has been valuable in terms of people in the village see something tangible that they attribute to me, even though I continuously give credit to the children and the art teacher, and remind them that I only got the supplies.
Which had been a rather pain in the ass. I had started the background work back in December, and by the beginning of April the paint cans were ready to be busted open. I wrote no less than three versions of the same letter asking for permission to paint on the clinic which was faxed, hand delivered, and misplaced no less than 5 times. I made weekly calls and personal follow ups, and made a trip to Gabs and Maun that didn’t even end up with the supplies I wanted. My vision was changed several times as I had to convince the clinic staff to buy into the idea as well as try to get them to come up with a theme, which ended up being a play on the Bacon quote that was up not only at my high school, but also here at the Junior Secondary school (like a Jr. High or middle school back in the states). The mural proclaims “Knowledge is Power, Know Your Status”- in both English and Setswana, and the phrase O E Cheke which means get tested and happens to be this year’s theme from one of the major NGO’s that funds HIV projects.
My original vision was to get acrylics and have the art teacher design a proper mural with pictures rather than words on the side of the building, but I ended up with house paint and a smaller space on the front of the building. I’m not giving up on the actual picture mural idea, but the next big space that will fall prey to my attack will hopefully be the two walls on the corner of the main area in the town on the jail of the kgotla. It will probably take me the rest of my time here to get supplies and permission to carry out the design the art teacher has begun with the kids (he’s using aspects of the Sistine Chapel for inspiration-how incredibly cool is that!!!!) but if I can get it accomplished that would be one of the crowning achievements of my service. Wish me luck.
I’ve also recently heard that the teacher I’ve been working with these art projects on (who when we met used to come to work drunk a good portion of the days I saw him, but nonetheless is an amazing artist and really helps the kids become better artists as well by demanding a lot of them) has been working with some of the kids he described as “not so dumb” to have them write essays about what “knowledge is power” means to them. He’s offered a prize of 200p of his own money to encourage them. I had nothing to do with this, but am amazed at both his generosity and his willingness to go above and beyond the project to really get the kids thinking and expressing themselves. I’m very proud of him.
Other Art Projects!
Working with some of the teachers at the primary I have come up with a committee to work with the kids to use the remaining house paint (nothing gets wasted on my watch in Seronga!) to create a world map mural on the wall of the primary school. So far we’ve primed the spot with white, the map has arrived and been gridded (THANKS MOM!) and we will start painting this week. It’s going to be amazing to literally show the kids the world!
Along with that my long awaited project of creating a mosaic at the junior secondary has begun. I have been collecting different colors of glass for months in preparation for this and the area is primed and the sketch has been done. I realized a bit too late that brown glass can be collected and turned in for cash as they recycle the bottles and thus brown bottles were going to be a little harder to come by, but after several dumpster diving slash appeals to the village drinking crowds, I think we’ll have enough. (Everything you need to in Seronga is available if you ask enough people-see village chicken).
I was of course getting a little emotional as the artist, GB (he’s got a crazy long Setswana name and luckily goes by the nickname GB) sketched his design on the wall. I kept exclaiming how happy I was for him and he, being a typical teenager, rolled his eyes and called me crazy. But the wall is there, it’s sketched, and we’ll start breaking bottles this week. Pictures to follow!
Warmish Shower! I think when one is in the Peace Corps and adaptability becomes the only way in which to keep going, it has some deep effects on your personality. In some ways I’ve learned to either just put up with a lot of shit, or adapt. Once the decision is made to adapt, the idea of trying to work of improve something can occasionally be absurd. It becomes difficult to envision or hope for something better, no matter how easy it may be to accomplish.
This is how I had begun to feel about my bathing situation. When there is water in the village (an event that is occurring incredibly more frequently as a result of the old water guy-who is responsible for finding the fuel and transport to get to Teekae (about 15-20 kilometers outside of Seronga) being replaced by someone who apparently takes his job more seriously, or at least that’s what I’m hoping as it’s been a lot more consistent lately) I’ve taken to just heating up a kettle on the stove, mixing it with some cold from the tap, and splash or bucket bathing. It’s not optimal, but over the course of a year, I’ve come to accept it and even excel at it. You would be amazed how the girl who used to draw an entire Jacuzzi style bathtub full of hot steaming water every night for an at least 15 minute soak has come to be able to bathe completely with less than half a bucket of water. (And I feel pretty clean). So with acceptance came complacency in this case.
Until the Aussies came (see “Hostess with the Mostess”). They rigged up a series of black pipes found in Simon’s back yard to flow from my faucet out of my bathroom window, onto the roof next door, back onto my tub and to be plugged with a cork at about knee level (this set-up has recently been improved again by another visitor, a former Peace Corps who hung the pipe from the ceiling so it’s more like a proper shower. Amazing! You still have to use it in the middle of the day in order for it to be properly warm (forget trying to have a warm shower after an evening run) but is has also helped make me clothes seem cleaner when I do my laundry with slightly warmer water. Since the water is unfiltered as it comes in the house, heating it up in a plastic hose can tend to make it smell… interesting. At the end of the day (or really, make that the middle) it’s warmer and it’s wet. I’m happy.
Pack your bags!
My mom, Paul and Karly have booked their tickets to visit! They got an amazing deal on the flight and they arrive right in Maun. I’m already going nuts planning their upcoming adventure which will include the bush, the delta, Kasane and CAPE TOWN!!!! More on that but I am sooooo pumped!
It’s Electric?
Power is sort of, allegedly, kindof, maybe coming to Seronga. There’s all sorts of toxic smelling poles that the children have a great time playing on barefoot (and just make me cringe at the idea that as they climb on them they are inhaling those fumes but there’s no chasing them off, I’ve tried.) Word on the street, or really, the dirt road, is that they will be up and running by July. Righhhht.
Home Improvements…
In the past few months there have been great improvements to the hut (and surrounding areas) in Seronga. As follows:
The doctor is in. He has finally been moved into his accommodation at the police, and is fully relocated to Seronga. We now have ARV’s available to patients on a more regular basis, so now they don’t have to travel to Shakawe after their three month initiation period. Hopefully this will help less people default on their ARV’s. As both ambulance boats are still in the shop (along with the post boat since Jan of this year) the nurses are still having to get up at 4 in the morning to meet patients who have traveled from God knows where in the bush in the dark to get to the clinic to have their blood drawn. Everyone in Seronga is bumbling around at these insane hours because as the boats are in the shop, the road ambulances have to drive all the way around the delta- up through Shakawe and back down to Gumare, a journey that can take anywhere from 3.5 hours (best) to 7 or 8 (my worst nightmare days) one way. They have to leave by about 6 or 6:30 in order to get to Gumare in time to turn around and get back before the last ferry at 6:30. (It’s winter here now, so it gets dark earlier, which means there is less light by which to navigate crossing that dark, deep, churning, strongly flowing and cold water - which is just unsafe at night. Two words: Nvuvu/Kubu (Hippo) and Kwena (Crocodile) yup, you wouldn’t be wanting to cross that bad boy at night either). It used to be a bit more negotiable with the ferry operators and easier to convince them to go across just one more time, but not so much any more…
So in addition to the ngaka (Dr.) being able to dispense ARV’s, he can also deal with a bit more serious diagnosis and trauma. People also take his word more seriously than that of the head nurse, which is sort of dumb, but will help the patients in the long run. He is able to make more authoritative diagnosis and recommendation for the treatment of patients who have to be referred out of Seronga.
(In a previous incident the head nurse recommended that a patient be transferred at least to Maun as she suspected Gumare did not have sufficient resources to properly care for the patient. Because the protocol involves transferring a patient to Gumare first, the patient was airlifted out of Seronga to Gumare, where the patient lapsed into a coma, then the patient was transferred to Maun, and then onto Francistown when even Maun didn’t have sufficient resources to help the patient. It makes me shudder to consider not only the trauma the patient undoubtedly suffered through all that transport to places with insufficient resources but also the cost of the plane –someone paid for the following legs of airflights: Maun to Seronga, Seronga to Gumare, Gumare to Maun, again Maun to Gumare, Gumare to Maun, then Maun to Francistown and back. Not cheap for the government. I haven’t heard the outcome of this one.)
Although the ngaka is still on the road at least 2 days a week dispensing drugs to the other ARV clinics this side of the delta, it’s a helluva lot better to have him there more regularly. His arrival has caused the head nurse to rejoice (and say that she can now put in for a transfer- for which she is nearly due) and has greatly improved the availability of treatment for patients.
The Mural at the clinic. Is finished! I’ve noticed that community participation can often be hard to muster for these projects in Botswana, but I was determined to call in favors and even beg and plead if I had to. I am proud to announce that I didn’t lift a brush for this project. My job was all in the background legwork. For me it was more important to help empower the kids to design the words and carry the project from priming and sketching to completion.
One might argue that the idea of Peace Corps is to work along side of host country partners, but I find that it sent a powerful message to the kids when I got out the paints and brushes and said “go for it”. They looked at me incredulously, like isn’t she going to tell us what to do? I just tipped me chin at the wall and reminded them that they’re the artists and walked away. The adults at the clinic looked at me like I was crazy as well, but it proved an amazing time to teach a lesson in empowerment, that people will rise to a task put in front of them if you let them. It turned out beautifully, if not what I had originally envisioned. I’ve heard through various members of the community that the nurses and staff at the clinic are very proud of the mural, and I found it has been valuable in terms of people in the village see something tangible that they attribute to me, even though I continuously give credit to the children and the art teacher, and remind them that I only got the supplies.
Which had been a rather pain in the ass. I had started the background work back in December, and by the beginning of April the paint cans were ready to be busted open. I wrote no less than three versions of the same letter asking for permission to paint on the clinic which was faxed, hand delivered, and misplaced no less than 5 times. I made weekly calls and personal follow ups, and made a trip to Gabs and Maun that didn’t even end up with the supplies I wanted. My vision was changed several times as I had to convince the clinic staff to buy into the idea as well as try to get them to come up with a theme, which ended up being a play on the Bacon quote that was up not only at my high school, but also here at the Junior Secondary school (like a Jr. High or middle school back in the states). The mural proclaims “Knowledge is Power, Know Your Status”- in both English and Setswana, and the phrase O E Cheke which means get tested and happens to be this year’s theme from one of the major NGO’s that funds HIV projects.
My original vision was to get acrylics and have the art teacher design a proper mural with pictures rather than words on the side of the building, but I ended up with house paint and a smaller space on the front of the building. I’m not giving up on the actual picture mural idea, but the next big space that will fall prey to my attack will hopefully be the two walls on the corner of the main area in the town on the jail of the kgotla. It will probably take me the rest of my time here to get supplies and permission to carry out the design the art teacher has begun with the kids (he’s using aspects of the Sistine Chapel for inspiration-how incredibly cool is that!!!!) but if I can get it accomplished that would be one of the crowning achievements of my service. Wish me luck.
I’ve also recently heard that the teacher I’ve been working with these art projects on (who when we met used to come to work drunk a good portion of the days I saw him, but nonetheless is an amazing artist and really helps the kids become better artists as well by demanding a lot of them) has been working with some of the kids he described as “not so dumb” to have them write essays about what “knowledge is power” means to them. He’s offered a prize of 200p of his own money to encourage them. I had nothing to do with this, but am amazed at both his generosity and his willingness to go above and beyond the project to really get the kids thinking and expressing themselves. I’m very proud of him.
Other Art Projects!
Working with some of the teachers at the primary I have come up with a committee to work with the kids to use the remaining house paint (nothing gets wasted on my watch in Seronga!) to create a world map mural on the wall of the primary school. So far we’ve primed the spot with white, the map has arrived and been gridded (THANKS MOM!) and we will start painting this week. It’s going to be amazing to literally show the kids the world!
Along with that my long awaited project of creating a mosaic at the junior secondary has begun. I have been collecting different colors of glass for months in preparation for this and the area is primed and the sketch has been done. I realized a bit too late that brown glass can be collected and turned in for cash as they recycle the bottles and thus brown bottles were going to be a little harder to come by, but after several dumpster diving slash appeals to the village drinking crowds, I think we’ll have enough. (Everything you need to in Seronga is available if you ask enough people-see village chicken).
I was of course getting a little emotional as the artist, GB (he’s got a crazy long Setswana name and luckily goes by the nickname GB) sketched his design on the wall. I kept exclaiming how happy I was for him and he, being a typical teenager, rolled his eyes and called me crazy. But the wall is there, it’s sketched, and we’ll start breaking bottles this week. Pictures to follow!
Warmish Shower! I think when one is in the Peace Corps and adaptability becomes the only way in which to keep going, it has some deep effects on your personality. In some ways I’ve learned to either just put up with a lot of shit, or adapt. Once the decision is made to adapt, the idea of trying to work of improve something can occasionally be absurd. It becomes difficult to envision or hope for something better, no matter how easy it may be to accomplish.
This is how I had begun to feel about my bathing situation. When there is water in the village (an event that is occurring incredibly more frequently as a result of the old water guy-who is responsible for finding the fuel and transport to get to Teekae (about 15-20 kilometers outside of Seronga) being replaced by someone who apparently takes his job more seriously, or at least that’s what I’m hoping as it’s been a lot more consistent lately) I’ve taken to just heating up a kettle on the stove, mixing it with some cold from the tap, and splash or bucket bathing. It’s not optimal, but over the course of a year, I’ve come to accept it and even excel at it. You would be amazed how the girl who used to draw an entire Jacuzzi style bathtub full of hot steaming water every night for an at least 15 minute soak has come to be able to bathe completely with less than half a bucket of water. (And I feel pretty clean). So with acceptance came complacency in this case.
Until the Aussies came (see “Hostess with the Mostess”). They rigged up a series of black pipes found in Simon’s back yard to flow from my faucet out of my bathroom window, onto the roof next door, back onto my tub and to be plugged with a cork at about knee level (this set-up has recently been improved again by another visitor, a former Peace Corps who hung the pipe from the ceiling so it’s more like a proper shower. Amazing! You still have to use it in the middle of the day in order for it to be properly warm (forget trying to have a warm shower after an evening run) but is has also helped make me clothes seem cleaner when I do my laundry with slightly warmer water. Since the water is unfiltered as it comes in the house, heating it up in a plastic hose can tend to make it smell… interesting. At the end of the day (or really, make that the middle) it’s warmer and it’s wet. I’m happy.
Pack your bags!
My mom, Paul and Karly have booked their tickets to visit! They got an amazing deal on the flight and they arrive right in Maun. I’m already going nuts planning their upcoming adventure which will include the bush, the delta, Kasane and CAPE TOWN!!!! More on that but I am sooooo pumped!
It’s Electric?
Power is sort of, allegedly, kindof, maybe coming to Seronga. There’s all sorts of toxic smelling poles that the children have a great time playing on barefoot (and just make me cringe at the idea that as they climb on them they are inhaling those fumes but there’s no chasing them off, I’ve tried.) Word on the street, or really, the dirt road, is that they will be up and running by July. Righhhht.
And the Flood Came.... 2009
From sometime around March/April 2009
It was a record setting year for floods, not only in my home state of Minnesota (or did North Dakota get credit for the flooding this year?) but also in the Okavango delta. It seems that this year the waters this side reached the second highest since the 1960’s. Whereas in Minnesota there may have been huge efforts at sandbagging and people’s houses may have flooded, the Eastern side of the delta saw people being relocated to tent communities and roads rendered impassable. And by roads I guess I mean road, as in the nameless dirt path that we travel back and forth on as our only escape from Seronga. Or I guess there’s always planes…. If there’s tourists…
The floodwaters seemed to peak in tandem with my foul period of discontent. As the extremely quickly flowing currents breached the banks of the river, flooded out the roads and made the ferry a somewhat dangerous option, it essentially stranded us on what sort of began to feel like an island in Seronga. As I’ve said, in Seronga we certainly didn’t have it as bad here as they did in other places, in Xakao many people had to be relocated from their homes into government or UNICEF or UN tents, and in Gudikwa people couldn’t get through the water to the clinic.
Months later the flood is still effecting us as the clinic has had to call in help in the form of helicopters and boats from the BDF and the government to administer to patients that are out of reach as we try to give every child that is under five a dose of vitamin A as part of a nation wide Vitamin A Campaign. The combination of the force of the current on the two outboard engines which run each of the two ferries at Mohembo that we must use to cross the river from this side (about 100kms up the road to the north only to turn around and head back south to get anywhere of note other than Namibia) as well as the increased traffic due to the electric company’s attempt to wire this side of the delta (think big heavy reels of cables, huge poles, many tools and huge trucks) have basically decommissioned three of the four engines. I’ve witnessed the ferry floating away down the river as one of the engines failed and the strong current caused it to drift past the waiting crowd as many people standing there yelled to the people that were drifting down the river on it (and I laughed and filmed). After about thirty minutes the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) boats came rushing out to rescue the people and an hour after that the boat managed to slowly make it’s way back up the river which made for a memorable (although not personal recording breaking) wait of just under four hours to cross the river on the ferry. (My personal record is 5 hours, and I’ve heard of people waiting 6. A friend from Maun recently drove the 350k journey from Maun to Shakawe only to find neither ferry working, with no one able to give her any information as to when one would be working again. She turned around and headed back down to Maun. With my groceries. That ended up being a long week….) For some reason someone cut down the last remaining trees that were on the East side of the delta at the ferry, which can make for some long, hot days of waiting next to cool deep water that you can’t swim in for the current and the monster crocs that are rumored to live near there as well as the hippos that can usually be seen on the far banks.
Our own clinic boats have been in the shop for 7 months for what has been called service and the boat driver at the clinic angrily tells me is routine maintenance that would take him two days at the most to complete, but it is the government’s policy that the service be done by those who get the tender (which from my understanding has to do with who will say that they will give the lowest price for something regardless of quality of service or timelines. This seems to be the case with whomever from Maun has won the tender to deliver gas cylinders as well. That guy has been promising to deliver the gas that I use to power my fridge and stove to cook for nearly three weeks. Luckily I’ve got friends in low places and have been able to beg a spare off someone in the interim, but that is astoundingly poor service.
The water was pervasive and encroaching, and it added to my foul mood by making me feel claustrophobic and desperate. Although I couldn’t see the difference unless I drove over the road to Shakawe, where the ferry may or may not have been able to cross, I felt the waters were drowning me. But then it could have just been my mood.
I had been in this country nearly a year and what precisely did I have to show for it? One men’s sector event, a painting, a mosaic project that will likely never start and a bunch of kids who know how to scream my name whenever they see me pass on the road. What seems like a ton of half started projects that I was really excited about but never went anywhere because when people had come to me saying “Lorato, we want to work with you on a project,” they meant, “Lorato, we want you to bring us some money from America, and no we have no plan or really any desire to actually put forth effort to get organized to make this project work, but once the money is here we can do all that hard work, not before to actually get the money. Can’t you wave your magic American wand? And no we really don’t want to listen to your suggestions because although you are American and white which means that you surely must have access to this money, or can’t you just ask some other rich Americans for the money, you are still a young girl and should not expect to tell your elders what to do, or god forbid to suggest what they are doing wrong.”
I still lose my patience (often). I haven’t been miraculously transformed into some sort of Mother Theresa figure of calm understanding amongst the village I live in. Although I love them I sometimes hate them. I am regularly frustrated with an alarming number of things that people around me just seem to accept as “normal”. At least once a month I need to get out of the bush to stay sane, which I think I initially considered to be weakness or a lack of toughness but am very slowly beginning to accept as just a smart policy. Add to that I miss my family and friends and it will be at least a year until I see many of them again and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life type constant rumination and throw in a seemingly sent by God to push me over the edge style flood (or perhaps I’m just a bit histrionic) and you have a perfect storm of a mid service crisis. It seems that through all this I’ve stuck to my mantra, go hard or go home, even in my emotional breakdowns.
I have to admit that however much I was strongly disliking the flood (read: hating) it was completely amazing to see all that water. (Which I find myself saying, as we do in MN wahd-deR, which confuses the shit out of the local people, and I’ve taken to try to pronounce it as they do, wah-tah, which they laugh at. Oh well.) From the sky I flew from Seronga to Shakawe and could finally see that all the clumps of trees Simon called islands during the dry season truly were. All the places that just months before we had taken Simon’s truck joy riding across were now covered in a sparkling blue gown. Up until a large cow was killed by a croc this side the children would dart across the road in Mohembo and dance and play naked in the water that had previously covered the road but had now begun to recede. They splashed around and were happy. It was enough to make even my foul mood abate, at least for a while.
As the flood reached Seronga and passed, it took with it the tension and rage that seemed to be boiling to some terrible peak inside my soul. Things were still frustrating, and I was still feeling lonely and isolated, but it was less so now. The waters came, they asserted their force and their strength and then they slowly left. They washed away all the dirt and emotional shittiness that had built up within me like a slow release pressure valve. And as is its tendency, the flood will come again next year, but for now the water is fine.
It was a record setting year for floods, not only in my home state of Minnesota (or did North Dakota get credit for the flooding this year?) but also in the Okavango delta. It seems that this year the waters this side reached the second highest since the 1960’s. Whereas in Minnesota there may have been huge efforts at sandbagging and people’s houses may have flooded, the Eastern side of the delta saw people being relocated to tent communities and roads rendered impassable. And by roads I guess I mean road, as in the nameless dirt path that we travel back and forth on as our only escape from Seronga. Or I guess there’s always planes…. If there’s tourists…
The floodwaters seemed to peak in tandem with my foul period of discontent. As the extremely quickly flowing currents breached the banks of the river, flooded out the roads and made the ferry a somewhat dangerous option, it essentially stranded us on what sort of began to feel like an island in Seronga. As I’ve said, in Seronga we certainly didn’t have it as bad here as they did in other places, in Xakao many people had to be relocated from their homes into government or UNICEF or UN tents, and in Gudikwa people couldn’t get through the water to the clinic.
Months later the flood is still effecting us as the clinic has had to call in help in the form of helicopters and boats from the BDF and the government to administer to patients that are out of reach as we try to give every child that is under five a dose of vitamin A as part of a nation wide Vitamin A Campaign. The combination of the force of the current on the two outboard engines which run each of the two ferries at Mohembo that we must use to cross the river from this side (about 100kms up the road to the north only to turn around and head back south to get anywhere of note other than Namibia) as well as the increased traffic due to the electric company’s attempt to wire this side of the delta (think big heavy reels of cables, huge poles, many tools and huge trucks) have basically decommissioned three of the four engines. I’ve witnessed the ferry floating away down the river as one of the engines failed and the strong current caused it to drift past the waiting crowd as many people standing there yelled to the people that were drifting down the river on it (and I laughed and filmed). After about thirty minutes the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) boats came rushing out to rescue the people and an hour after that the boat managed to slowly make it’s way back up the river which made for a memorable (although not personal recording breaking) wait of just under four hours to cross the river on the ferry. (My personal record is 5 hours, and I’ve heard of people waiting 6. A friend from Maun recently drove the 350k journey from Maun to Shakawe only to find neither ferry working, with no one able to give her any information as to when one would be working again. She turned around and headed back down to Maun. With my groceries. That ended up being a long week….) For some reason someone cut down the last remaining trees that were on the East side of the delta at the ferry, which can make for some long, hot days of waiting next to cool deep water that you can’t swim in for the current and the monster crocs that are rumored to live near there as well as the hippos that can usually be seen on the far banks.
Our own clinic boats have been in the shop for 7 months for what has been called service and the boat driver at the clinic angrily tells me is routine maintenance that would take him two days at the most to complete, but it is the government’s policy that the service be done by those who get the tender (which from my understanding has to do with who will say that they will give the lowest price for something regardless of quality of service or timelines. This seems to be the case with whomever from Maun has won the tender to deliver gas cylinders as well. That guy has been promising to deliver the gas that I use to power my fridge and stove to cook for nearly three weeks. Luckily I’ve got friends in low places and have been able to beg a spare off someone in the interim, but that is astoundingly poor service.
The water was pervasive and encroaching, and it added to my foul mood by making me feel claustrophobic and desperate. Although I couldn’t see the difference unless I drove over the road to Shakawe, where the ferry may or may not have been able to cross, I felt the waters were drowning me. But then it could have just been my mood.
I had been in this country nearly a year and what precisely did I have to show for it? One men’s sector event, a painting, a mosaic project that will likely never start and a bunch of kids who know how to scream my name whenever they see me pass on the road. What seems like a ton of half started projects that I was really excited about but never went anywhere because when people had come to me saying “Lorato, we want to work with you on a project,” they meant, “Lorato, we want you to bring us some money from America, and no we have no plan or really any desire to actually put forth effort to get organized to make this project work, but once the money is here we can do all that hard work, not before to actually get the money. Can’t you wave your magic American wand? And no we really don’t want to listen to your suggestions because although you are American and white which means that you surely must have access to this money, or can’t you just ask some other rich Americans for the money, you are still a young girl and should not expect to tell your elders what to do, or god forbid to suggest what they are doing wrong.”
I still lose my patience (often). I haven’t been miraculously transformed into some sort of Mother Theresa figure of calm understanding amongst the village I live in. Although I love them I sometimes hate them. I am regularly frustrated with an alarming number of things that people around me just seem to accept as “normal”. At least once a month I need to get out of the bush to stay sane, which I think I initially considered to be weakness or a lack of toughness but am very slowly beginning to accept as just a smart policy. Add to that I miss my family and friends and it will be at least a year until I see many of them again and I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life type constant rumination and throw in a seemingly sent by God to push me over the edge style flood (or perhaps I’m just a bit histrionic) and you have a perfect storm of a mid service crisis. It seems that through all this I’ve stuck to my mantra, go hard or go home, even in my emotional breakdowns.
I have to admit that however much I was strongly disliking the flood (read: hating) it was completely amazing to see all that water. (Which I find myself saying, as we do in MN wahd-deR, which confuses the shit out of the local people, and I’ve taken to try to pronounce it as they do, wah-tah, which they laugh at. Oh well.) From the sky I flew from Seronga to Shakawe and could finally see that all the clumps of trees Simon called islands during the dry season truly were. All the places that just months before we had taken Simon’s truck joy riding across were now covered in a sparkling blue gown. Up until a large cow was killed by a croc this side the children would dart across the road in Mohembo and dance and play naked in the water that had previously covered the road but had now begun to recede. They splashed around and were happy. It was enough to make even my foul mood abate, at least for a while.
As the flood reached Seronga and passed, it took with it the tension and rage that seemed to be boiling to some terrible peak inside my soul. Things were still frustrating, and I was still feeling lonely and isolated, but it was less so now. The waters came, they asserted their force and their strength and then they slowly left. They washed away all the dirt and emotional shittiness that had built up within me like a slow release pressure valve. And as is its tendency, the flood will come again next year, but for now the water is fine.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Ruminate, deviate, palpitate, eliminate?
I know that it’s all simply homesickness, this longing for the place or times when the grass is or was (or perhaps just seemed) greener (or perhaps it's that there was grass? And not just sand?). Melancholy and loneliness are so easy to find here, living in the conditions that so easily foster missing and reminiscing. After all, here more than any other time or place I’ve experienced on Earth I am made aware on a more regular basis of the concept that it is just me and my mind, (strangely it seems these can occasionally separate into two independent beings) and that one can be a powerful one to distract.
There is a helluva lot of time here to think. To think, rethink, analyze, and reanalyze, to decide, to waver, to ruminate and to dwell. Occasionally home and all that we’ve left there can become a shining beacon of a heaven which we yearn to visit not because we want to actually be there right now but because all that’s there manages to represent an escape from our own minds. B even text me recently that at least when we get home we won’t have as much time to THINK. I’ve found I can while away hours and better parts of days fantasizing about home and the people I’ve left back there, writing and rereading letters and when it’s available searching the internet for the pictures and stories of those I love and miss. I think as with anything it can often represent an escape from what’s in front of us, of what’s here. It can definitely become an obsession. As with every fixation, though at first memories can be pleasant I find they can soon become longing, building up and toppling the house of cards in which I sometimes live. When I’m for some other reason vulnerable this reminiscence can become a big problem that can seductively lead me down a road to depression. So I’ve found I’ve had to force myself to try to forget some of you on occasion, to put you out of my mind for times in order to go about my day.
Because the reality is that I’m here, you all are not, what once was will never be completely as it was again, and although that’s ok, and even good, it’s hard to swallow. It can be hard to let go. To let you go, to let me go, to let everything that was live in the place it should be, the past. Certainly this is the order events of every day of every life, living the particular choice I’ve made just happens to offer a unique vantage point from which to view the progression of time and space. That and of course all the damn thinking.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the point of all this thinking and remembering, and having fallen short of reaching that lofty goal I’ve settled for attempting to describe it. These next two entries are about some of what this crazy brain of mine gets up to.
Post Script: The time right around reaching the year mark was pretty tough for me and most of these particular rantings were written during that time. I’ve been waiting until I was a bit more in the clear to actually post them, so as not to make anybody panic. But this darkness has been a part of my experience and in the interest of being honest to my experience, I’m including it. Read on.
There is a helluva lot of time here to think. To think, rethink, analyze, and reanalyze, to decide, to waver, to ruminate and to dwell. Occasionally home and all that we’ve left there can become a shining beacon of a heaven which we yearn to visit not because we want to actually be there right now but because all that’s there manages to represent an escape from our own minds. B even text me recently that at least when we get home we won’t have as much time to THINK. I’ve found I can while away hours and better parts of days fantasizing about home and the people I’ve left back there, writing and rereading letters and when it’s available searching the internet for the pictures and stories of those I love and miss. I think as with anything it can often represent an escape from what’s in front of us, of what’s here. It can definitely become an obsession. As with every fixation, though at first memories can be pleasant I find they can soon become longing, building up and toppling the house of cards in which I sometimes live. When I’m for some other reason vulnerable this reminiscence can become a big problem that can seductively lead me down a road to depression. So I’ve found I’ve had to force myself to try to forget some of you on occasion, to put you out of my mind for times in order to go about my day.
Because the reality is that I’m here, you all are not, what once was will never be completely as it was again, and although that’s ok, and even good, it’s hard to swallow. It can be hard to let go. To let you go, to let me go, to let everything that was live in the place it should be, the past. Certainly this is the order events of every day of every life, living the particular choice I’ve made just happens to offer a unique vantage point from which to view the progression of time and space. That and of course all the damn thinking.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the point of all this thinking and remembering, and having fallen short of reaching that lofty goal I’ve settled for attempting to describe it. These next two entries are about some of what this crazy brain of mine gets up to.
Post Script: The time right around reaching the year mark was pretty tough for me and most of these particular rantings were written during that time. I’ve been waiting until I was a bit more in the clear to actually post them, so as not to make anybody panic. But this darkness has been a part of my experience and in the interest of being honest to my experience, I’m including it. Read on.
The Arsonist
Sometimes memories come, so vividly and sharply it pains me. They are like sparks that start a fire that I find myself stoking; sometimes casually and halfheartedly, bemused and only slightly interested. Sometimes the memory presents itself and I dive headfirst down the rabbit hole to follow it. I cling to it, searching the Kalahari Desert of my mind for kindling, blowing on the hazy smoke filled trenches of my brain with the intensity of the bellows of hell to keep it burning. I pour gasoline on the thing and inevitably, the intensity builds to a point where this fire has become out of control. I find myself lost in a bushfire of uncontrollable nostalgia.
I try to stop the thing, to escape the heat, to extinguish the flames but it’s too late. I’ve done it again and now I have to categorically burn each and every recollection I can find, occasionally throwing in plastic and all sorts of stuff that’s not real to fuel this mess. I must keep the fire going until it burns itself out, the toxic smoke of the untruths I’m attributing to you choking me and yet necessary. I burn a wide swath around the places that burn hottest, hoping that if I indulge this one, just this once, it’ll go away forever, or at least long enough to let me heal from these latest burns a bit.
On occasion the fire gets too hot and I sweat and I panic, I go a bit mad, I scramble to desperately try to create new memories. I try to make and have and do so much that whatever is left behind from before pales in comparison. In some ways it works, I succeed. Between here and there is no comparison. I am here and I wouldn’t change that. But to long for you, all of you, and home and what I left, to miss such silly things as to be hard to describe to those who live them every day, it’s difficult. To honestly describe yearning for pavement and streetlights and salads and bubble baths just becomes really strange. It’s difficult for me to believe I’m not crazy.
Sometimes I try to deny the reality of it all completely. I try to recreate the memories, or replace them with new ones, to make it all seem uglier so it’s not so painful. I try to make you into someone that would have been easy to leave, to forget, to let go of. Someone who’s not who you are. I try to create new memories; or to mold them out of clay or carve them out of wood or shape them out of metal, but they look garish and ridiculous next to the crystal clear recollections that hold the emotional bouquet of who I remember you to be. All of these new pieces melt away in the heat, and the flowers, which should wither and die in the flames, remain as fresh and when they first bloomed. There are times when I’m strong and can withstand the flames. There are times when I cannot. It comes down to a choice, because I can’t keep all these memories of you and still continue to become me. If I keep living this way, with memories of you starting these massive fires in my mind I will be left with nothing, having burned everything in my path, the charred remains of who I could have become all that remains. And I won’t do it.
I walk these coals, they have become familiar. They burn into the scars deep within me, searing not just my flesh but my bones, which feel as bleached and brittle and white as the bones of the elephant we found last week, dead for many years, and just as unable to hold up the person who must walk this Earth each day. And yet I do, and I can and I learn. I’ve danced before these particular flames before. I do it, I know it hurts, and yet I burn, I burn. I begin to relish the pain a bit, scratching at the blisters, watching them ooze and hoping this is the last case of arson, and knowing it’s not. The fire burns hotter and hotter, threatening to engulf me, and yet I know it never will. Not completely.
So I try, again and again, to put out the candle.
I try to stop the thing, to escape the heat, to extinguish the flames but it’s too late. I’ve done it again and now I have to categorically burn each and every recollection I can find, occasionally throwing in plastic and all sorts of stuff that’s not real to fuel this mess. I must keep the fire going until it burns itself out, the toxic smoke of the untruths I’m attributing to you choking me and yet necessary. I burn a wide swath around the places that burn hottest, hoping that if I indulge this one, just this once, it’ll go away forever, or at least long enough to let me heal from these latest burns a bit.
On occasion the fire gets too hot and I sweat and I panic, I go a bit mad, I scramble to desperately try to create new memories. I try to make and have and do so much that whatever is left behind from before pales in comparison. In some ways it works, I succeed. Between here and there is no comparison. I am here and I wouldn’t change that. But to long for you, all of you, and home and what I left, to miss such silly things as to be hard to describe to those who live them every day, it’s difficult. To honestly describe yearning for pavement and streetlights and salads and bubble baths just becomes really strange. It’s difficult for me to believe I’m not crazy.
Sometimes I try to deny the reality of it all completely. I try to recreate the memories, or replace them with new ones, to make it all seem uglier so it’s not so painful. I try to make you into someone that would have been easy to leave, to forget, to let go of. Someone who’s not who you are. I try to create new memories; or to mold them out of clay or carve them out of wood or shape them out of metal, but they look garish and ridiculous next to the crystal clear recollections that hold the emotional bouquet of who I remember you to be. All of these new pieces melt away in the heat, and the flowers, which should wither and die in the flames, remain as fresh and when they first bloomed. There are times when I’m strong and can withstand the flames. There are times when I cannot. It comes down to a choice, because I can’t keep all these memories of you and still continue to become me. If I keep living this way, with memories of you starting these massive fires in my mind I will be left with nothing, having burned everything in my path, the charred remains of who I could have become all that remains. And I won’t do it.
I walk these coals, they have become familiar. They burn into the scars deep within me, searing not just my flesh but my bones, which feel as bleached and brittle and white as the bones of the elephant we found last week, dead for many years, and just as unable to hold up the person who must walk this Earth each day. And yet I do, and I can and I learn. I’ve danced before these particular flames before. I do it, I know it hurts, and yet I burn, I burn. I begin to relish the pain a bit, scratching at the blisters, watching them ooze and hoping this is the last case of arson, and knowing it’s not. The fire burns hotter and hotter, threatening to engulf me, and yet I know it never will. Not completely.
So I try, again and again, to put out the candle.
Let You Go....
It could be any one of you, those I have known; some of you parade through my mind with the kind of demanding insistence uncharacteristic of you in real life while others of you visit with alarming irregularity, leaving my grasping and clinging for any morsel of our bond I can recall. I find myself audibly gasping in surprise as some wayward memory bursts into the forefront of my mind, much the way the word one might have been racking ones mind for a few weeks back will present itself too pointlessly and gracelessly late to be of any use, but is so winsome and shiny and appealing that one wants to shout it out from rooftops.
This memory has hijacked my attention, I’m suddenly miles away from whatever was happening at present, leaving the person I’m probably trying to have a conversation with (likely at least partly in another language which is another part of the brain that is constantly muddled entirely) irritated or confused. I look around me for someone to share it with, someone to laugh at the inside joke but there’s no one inside this joke with me, which leaves even me outside in the cold.
The bright shiny memory is followed by a hallow feeling of sadness that pushes the joy of the reminiscence back into the depths from whence it came, leaving me feeling alone and confused and filled with a longing for something unnamable and suddenly vague. It comes and goes so suddenly that I begin to doubt that the memories are even real, maybe it never even happened. Perhaps I never knew you and we never did that and that place doesn’t exist. There’s very little in the differences between this world I now inhabit and the one I thought I knew to effectively confirm or deny. My former life takes on a dream like quality.
The sad memories, of those with whom I’ve lost touch since I’ve been here, or whom I might not see again (for whichever reason) or places which no longer exist hold a particular poignancy. They rub up against the sharp corners of my mind where my will has stepped in to protect me from their innocent poison, for truly indulging them, for reliving them starts off a chain reaction which can only lead to dark places. These bittersweet memories are like soft velvety cushions, and I find myself falling into their soft luxury where the initial promise of comfort fades away and leaves me in pain on a bed of nails.
So I let you go, one by one, after the other, some of you slip away during the night, some of you must be pushed out the door, but I can’t do it any more. I can’t spend my time wondering what it is with you, and for you, I must just settle for the idea that maybe someday we’ll meet again. It’s too difficult to continue on being stretched across these oceans and continents. I must try to be just where I am, and not spend so much time where you are, at least in my head.
But I assure you it pains me physically; I can feel you stripped away as flesh from my bones, each one being torn away categorically and seemingly without reason. My logical mind tells me that you can stay, and rest comfortably in my soul while the irrational, emotional part pushes you out the door. It’s hard to give in this metaphorical grey spot, the place with and without you. There can be no more “I wonder what she’s doing,” or “I wish he could see this”. I have to hold you each in your place in my heart, and hug and kiss the image of you that lives in my soul and put you back on the deep dark shelf in the depths of my mind. And I have to forget about you for now.
I have to let you go.
This memory has hijacked my attention, I’m suddenly miles away from whatever was happening at present, leaving the person I’m probably trying to have a conversation with (likely at least partly in another language which is another part of the brain that is constantly muddled entirely) irritated or confused. I look around me for someone to share it with, someone to laugh at the inside joke but there’s no one inside this joke with me, which leaves even me outside in the cold.
The bright shiny memory is followed by a hallow feeling of sadness that pushes the joy of the reminiscence back into the depths from whence it came, leaving me feeling alone and confused and filled with a longing for something unnamable and suddenly vague. It comes and goes so suddenly that I begin to doubt that the memories are even real, maybe it never even happened. Perhaps I never knew you and we never did that and that place doesn’t exist. There’s very little in the differences between this world I now inhabit and the one I thought I knew to effectively confirm or deny. My former life takes on a dream like quality.
The sad memories, of those with whom I’ve lost touch since I’ve been here, or whom I might not see again (for whichever reason) or places which no longer exist hold a particular poignancy. They rub up against the sharp corners of my mind where my will has stepped in to protect me from their innocent poison, for truly indulging them, for reliving them starts off a chain reaction which can only lead to dark places. These bittersweet memories are like soft velvety cushions, and I find myself falling into their soft luxury where the initial promise of comfort fades away and leaves me in pain on a bed of nails.
So I let you go, one by one, after the other, some of you slip away during the night, some of you must be pushed out the door, but I can’t do it any more. I can’t spend my time wondering what it is with you, and for you, I must just settle for the idea that maybe someday we’ll meet again. It’s too difficult to continue on being stretched across these oceans and continents. I must try to be just where I am, and not spend so much time where you are, at least in my head.
But I assure you it pains me physically; I can feel you stripped away as flesh from my bones, each one being torn away categorically and seemingly without reason. My logical mind tells me that you can stay, and rest comfortably in my soul while the irrational, emotional part pushes you out the door. It’s hard to give in this metaphorical grey spot, the place with and without you. There can be no more “I wonder what she’s doing,” or “I wish he could see this”. I have to hold you each in your place in my heart, and hug and kiss the image of you that lives in my soul and put you back on the deep dark shelf in the depths of my mind. And I have to forget about you for now.
I have to let you go.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Water is Life...
Back about a year ago, when I was living with my host family in what I now think of as the large and bustling village of Molepolole, I was describing my life and bucket bathing to my sister back home in the states. When I got to the part in the bucket bathing description in which I mentioned having to lift the basin I’d just squat bathed over and dump it back into the bucket in which I’d hauled the water into the house back outside to dump it back into the yard, I remember exclaiming, “I would so rather have indoor plumbing than electricity.” Although my arms came to be amazing during that period of my life, the statement still stands.
My sister sounded a bit incredulous about this, (“How will you watch movies on your laptop without electricity?”) and I can’t wait until she gets to experience life in Seronga (My mom, Karly and Paul are coming in October!!!!). I have been lucky enough in my placement in Seronga to have indeed gotten water and even a little electricity. I have a solar panel that I can use to charge everything in my house during the day and then selectively watch a movie or have music at night. I have water coming into my house for a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub with a pseudo solar shower.
I have all this luxury… When there is sun. Luckily Botswana gets something like 300+ days of sun in the year. It’s those few overcast ones that begin to make life difficult.
Strangely enough, if it is overcast or worse yet raining in the village I won’t have water. How can having rain, which seems like free water from the heavens mean you won’t have water, you ask.
I realize it doesn’t seem to make sense. As with most things here it’s a bit of a convoluted story.
In Seronga, all of our water comes from a pump house, located between 15-20 kilometers outside Seronga near the settlement of Teekae. The water is pumped into great big holding tanks high above the villages. There are standpipes and taps throughout the village through which to access the water. The holding tanks are rarely cleaned, which leads to an interesting smell or crazy spider webby sort of slime or sediment in the water depending on the season and temperature. You get used to it.
I’ve realized, much to my recent houseguest’s (who had been a PCV in Kenya) dismay, that I when there is water I will leave it running a while after I need to just to hear that it is there. When the water is out I will leave the tap open just so I can hear the occasional hissing that means the water might be on its way. I keep buckets and jugs full of water at all times. I rejoice in the sound of my toilet running. To say I’ve developed a bit of an obsession with water is an understatement.
So in Seronga, there is one man whose job it is to make sure the pump has oil and fuel (which he apparently sometimes spills down the pump hole, causing my water to have a beautiful oily shimmer) in order to make sure the holding tanks are full. This man does not have a vehicle. So he relies on calling all the government offices in the village to find out when someone is going out that way, or who has enough petrol to take him to Teekae. With his cell phone.
Now what can cell phones possibly have to do with sunshine and water? Or the price of rice in China?
Wait for it.
In Seronga we have two cell phone companies that we can use. The older of the two, and the one most people in Seronga use, is Mascom. It’s been here longer and is slightly cheaper than its more newly introduced competitor, Orange. (I have noticed lately that more people have begun to get Orange Sim cards as well, which they switch out on an unpredictably based schedule with their Mascom sim card, using the same phone. So you never know which number people will have in their phone and have to waste money trying to text or call both numbers in order to get a hold of someone. Charming.) Orange (which I have because it can text the states, and is more reliable in Seronga) is set up to operate their cell tower off the police generator, which is nearly always working. Mascom came to Seronga a while back, and put up their tower powered by a solar panel and battery, which is getting a bit old. This means that people using Mascom can expect that they won’t have service after about 10 at night or before 10 in the morning, the times during which the solar battery is dead.
When is the other time a solar battery might be dead- you wonder. Yup that’s right, when it’s overcast. So anywhere between a few hours and a day of when it becomes overcast I can generally expect we’ll lose water. It seems a bit difficult for the pump guy to actually have to walk between the government agencies (and in his defense they are a bit sprawled out from end to end-not a lot in Seronga is centrally located). Or if it’s the end of the month (payday) and the pump guy is too busy partying to remember to get out to fuel the pump.
Seronga is not unique in this water problem by any means. In other villages in Botswana the water comes from centralized treatment plants or pump stations. In the delta, in villages “that side” (the western shore of the delta) also have their water coming to them from centralized treatment plants, or sometimes piped directly from the river. The villages to the south western end tend to be a quite a ways from the actual river, or even the floodplain. They would not have the luxury of being able to walk to the delta to fetch water. Places like the Etshas and Gumare have problems when the flood comes because it can flood out the pumping stations. They have problems when the flood recedes because elephants, the brilliant creatures that they are, can somehow find where the water pipes are under the ground and smash them in order to get the water out without having to travel any further into the delta. As the river always seems to be flooding or receding, (thus the nature of the word “delta” or the nickname of the place as “the swamps”) these villages are nearly constantly in a problem with water.
The village of Seronga is lucky because most of the inhabitants live within a somewhat reasonable distance of the floodplain or even the river, which has water all year round. They can fetch water and carry it on a bucket on their head for everything they need in a day.
(Pause to let you think about fetching a hauling all the water you’d need for a day-drinking, bathing, cleaning, cooking- a kilometer or so uphill from the river to your house, on your head. Now add your children and spouse into that picture. Then remember that you must be boiling the water that you and everyone in the family plan to drink over an open fire to sanitize- as many people and cattle bathe in, wash clothes in, and use the delta as a toilet. You have to find and haul the firewood as well. Add HIV to the mix, attacking your body and ARV’s making you occasionally nauseous, sick or weak. Do you have livestock or a garden that needs to be watered to provide food at the very least and a bit of side income- or sometimes the only income into your household? Ladies and gentlemen this is the burden of an African woman, and it’s how some of them live their lives every day. I’ve got it bloody easy.)
For those of us that are even luckier, there’s a thing called a Jo-Jo. In reality, despite these crazy water conditions I usually still do have water; I just have to haul it from across the yard. It’s a pain in the ass. (I still thank my lucky stars for this as I know many PCV’s even in this country who don’t have indoor plumbing, a Jo-Jo or both) A Jo-Jo is a big green water tank with holes in the top to be filled with either rain water from gutters (which can get gross because of all the leaves that also fall into gutters, as well as bugs and spiders that get into the tanks) or a hose when the water is working. When there’s no water coming through the standpipes, this option becomes a helluva lot more appealing. As I boil and filter all of my drinking water anyways, this isn’t the end of the world. Many of the government houses in most of the villages have Jo-Jos, and quite frankly, the villagers have lived with this problem their entire lives, and have taught me tricks too numerous to count of how to deal with not having water.
I admit that this situation is light years ahead of many of the water situations in African nations, and again, that I’ve got it easy by many village standards. As I write this, the water is out again, the sun is bright as ever (which is lucky because my solar battery is powering my laptop in my hut as I write) for reasons mysterious to me. I guess it’s part of the magic and mystery of Africa that try as I might, I will never fully understand it. Which can be a beautiful thing. And if I had a glass of water, I’d drink to that;-)
Post Script: by the time I'm posting this entry it's been several days straight without water. I've heard that the pump itself is broken and that the repairmen went back to Gumare. I don't even know what that means. I find my mood is so dependent on water. Have a tall cold clean glass from your tap for me, no matter how gross you think that is and thank your lucky stars for it.
My sister sounded a bit incredulous about this, (“How will you watch movies on your laptop without electricity?”) and I can’t wait until she gets to experience life in Seronga (My mom, Karly and Paul are coming in October!!!!). I have been lucky enough in my placement in Seronga to have indeed gotten water and even a little electricity. I have a solar panel that I can use to charge everything in my house during the day and then selectively watch a movie or have music at night. I have water coming into my house for a sink, a toilet, and a bathtub with a pseudo solar shower.
I have all this luxury… When there is sun. Luckily Botswana gets something like 300+ days of sun in the year. It’s those few overcast ones that begin to make life difficult.
Strangely enough, if it is overcast or worse yet raining in the village I won’t have water. How can having rain, which seems like free water from the heavens mean you won’t have water, you ask.
I realize it doesn’t seem to make sense. As with most things here it’s a bit of a convoluted story.
In Seronga, all of our water comes from a pump house, located between 15-20 kilometers outside Seronga near the settlement of Teekae. The water is pumped into great big holding tanks high above the villages. There are standpipes and taps throughout the village through which to access the water. The holding tanks are rarely cleaned, which leads to an interesting smell or crazy spider webby sort of slime or sediment in the water depending on the season and temperature. You get used to it.
I’ve realized, much to my recent houseguest’s (who had been a PCV in Kenya) dismay, that I when there is water I will leave it running a while after I need to just to hear that it is there. When the water is out I will leave the tap open just so I can hear the occasional hissing that means the water might be on its way. I keep buckets and jugs full of water at all times. I rejoice in the sound of my toilet running. To say I’ve developed a bit of an obsession with water is an understatement.
So in Seronga, there is one man whose job it is to make sure the pump has oil and fuel (which he apparently sometimes spills down the pump hole, causing my water to have a beautiful oily shimmer) in order to make sure the holding tanks are full. This man does not have a vehicle. So he relies on calling all the government offices in the village to find out when someone is going out that way, or who has enough petrol to take him to Teekae. With his cell phone.
Now what can cell phones possibly have to do with sunshine and water? Or the price of rice in China?
Wait for it.
In Seronga we have two cell phone companies that we can use. The older of the two, and the one most people in Seronga use, is Mascom. It’s been here longer and is slightly cheaper than its more newly introduced competitor, Orange. (I have noticed lately that more people have begun to get Orange Sim cards as well, which they switch out on an unpredictably based schedule with their Mascom sim card, using the same phone. So you never know which number people will have in their phone and have to waste money trying to text or call both numbers in order to get a hold of someone. Charming.) Orange (which I have because it can text the states, and is more reliable in Seronga) is set up to operate their cell tower off the police generator, which is nearly always working. Mascom came to Seronga a while back, and put up their tower powered by a solar panel and battery, which is getting a bit old. This means that people using Mascom can expect that they won’t have service after about 10 at night or before 10 in the morning, the times during which the solar battery is dead.
When is the other time a solar battery might be dead- you wonder. Yup that’s right, when it’s overcast. So anywhere between a few hours and a day of when it becomes overcast I can generally expect we’ll lose water. It seems a bit difficult for the pump guy to actually have to walk between the government agencies (and in his defense they are a bit sprawled out from end to end-not a lot in Seronga is centrally located). Or if it’s the end of the month (payday) and the pump guy is too busy partying to remember to get out to fuel the pump.
Seronga is not unique in this water problem by any means. In other villages in Botswana the water comes from centralized treatment plants or pump stations. In the delta, in villages “that side” (the western shore of the delta) also have their water coming to them from centralized treatment plants, or sometimes piped directly from the river. The villages to the south western end tend to be a quite a ways from the actual river, or even the floodplain. They would not have the luxury of being able to walk to the delta to fetch water. Places like the Etshas and Gumare have problems when the flood comes because it can flood out the pumping stations. They have problems when the flood recedes because elephants, the brilliant creatures that they are, can somehow find where the water pipes are under the ground and smash them in order to get the water out without having to travel any further into the delta. As the river always seems to be flooding or receding, (thus the nature of the word “delta” or the nickname of the place as “the swamps”) these villages are nearly constantly in a problem with water.
The village of Seronga is lucky because most of the inhabitants live within a somewhat reasonable distance of the floodplain or even the river, which has water all year round. They can fetch water and carry it on a bucket on their head for everything they need in a day.
(Pause to let you think about fetching a hauling all the water you’d need for a day-drinking, bathing, cleaning, cooking- a kilometer or so uphill from the river to your house, on your head. Now add your children and spouse into that picture. Then remember that you must be boiling the water that you and everyone in the family plan to drink over an open fire to sanitize- as many people and cattle bathe in, wash clothes in, and use the delta as a toilet. You have to find and haul the firewood as well. Add HIV to the mix, attacking your body and ARV’s making you occasionally nauseous, sick or weak. Do you have livestock or a garden that needs to be watered to provide food at the very least and a bit of side income- or sometimes the only income into your household? Ladies and gentlemen this is the burden of an African woman, and it’s how some of them live their lives every day. I’ve got it bloody easy.)
For those of us that are even luckier, there’s a thing called a Jo-Jo. In reality, despite these crazy water conditions I usually still do have water; I just have to haul it from across the yard. It’s a pain in the ass. (I still thank my lucky stars for this as I know many PCV’s even in this country who don’t have indoor plumbing, a Jo-Jo or both) A Jo-Jo is a big green water tank with holes in the top to be filled with either rain water from gutters (which can get gross because of all the leaves that also fall into gutters, as well as bugs and spiders that get into the tanks) or a hose when the water is working. When there’s no water coming through the standpipes, this option becomes a helluva lot more appealing. As I boil and filter all of my drinking water anyways, this isn’t the end of the world. Many of the government houses in most of the villages have Jo-Jos, and quite frankly, the villagers have lived with this problem their entire lives, and have taught me tricks too numerous to count of how to deal with not having water.
I admit that this situation is light years ahead of many of the water situations in African nations, and again, that I’ve got it easy by many village standards. As I write this, the water is out again, the sun is bright as ever (which is lucky because my solar battery is powering my laptop in my hut as I write) for reasons mysterious to me. I guess it’s part of the magic and mystery of Africa that try as I might, I will never fully understand it. Which can be a beautiful thing. And if I had a glass of water, I’d drink to that;-)
Post Script: by the time I'm posting this entry it's been several days straight without water. I've heard that the pump itself is broken and that the repairmen went back to Gumare. I don't even know what that means. I find my mood is so dependent on water. Have a tall cold clean glass from your tap for me, no matter how gross you think that is and thank your lucky stars for it.
Mice are not Nice....
A new and interesting twist on the same old murder.....
Like so many starlets at the academy awards who tearfully promise themselves they wouldn’t cry, I swore I wouldn’t write about killing mice again. I thought I had covered the whole genre, from trapping to poison to blunt object traumas to the head. I was certain that there was nothing left to say. And generally there wasn’t. Until of course last night.
I was sitting on my bed in a benedryl induced haze, waiting for the drugs to completely put me to sleep. I had been sick with some terrific stomach bug that had left me weak and tired, but as I had laid around for several hours already that day I was finding it tough to sleep despite being tired, so had taken the benedryl to knock me out. I was writing letters home which will inevitably arrive after the event I’m meaning to write about when I heard some soft tapping coming from near my door. I thought perhaps it was the little boy who lived on my compound coming to greet me. I had heard that he had come home earlier, and despite us not speaking any common language, we’ve become buddies.
I shouted a greeting at the door three times to no response. Finally I hauled myself off my bed and opened the door. What greeted me on the other side was not a smiling little boy but a mouse crawling up the inside of the netting I’d wrapped through my burglar door to prevent mosquitoes in the warmer seasons. I pushed open the door and he was dangling like Tom Cruise in one of the “Mission Impossible” films. I grabbed the dustpan from the floor and flicked him off the door into the night. Little did I know that would set the tone for the night…
Around eleven thirty I woke up in from a deep sleep in a big confusion. I heard splashing around in my bathtub. At first I thought perhaps the cork had come out of the piping I’ve been using to shower and the sound I was hearing was the water rushing out into the pipe into the bathtub. Upon closer inspection I saw a dark something in the corner of the tub. I had left a small amount of water in the bottom to rinse some of the laundry I had soaking in the morning as the water has been out. I didn’t remember leaving anything in the tub and as soon as I turned around to grab my headlamp the splashing began again and I had a strong suspicion as to the nature of the intruder.
When I shone the light in the tub it was indeed a mouse, attempting to climb out of my bathtub. A quick survey of the situation determined that he had probably come in through the slightly open window climbing in through a hole in the netting that surrounded the piping. Strangely enough this was not the first mouse I’d seen in a bathtub, the other one was in Maun at Anna’s house. She being a vegetarian and an animal lover that mouse was trapped and released. As I am not a vegetarian or an extreme animal lover, this mouse would not be experiencing the same fate.
I thought that the fact that I had not taken any drastic measures to disturb whichever animals were living in my ceiling making noise and waking me up all the time had been an appropriate enough attempt at hospitality. When I mentioned the intruders to my landlady she suggested that perhaps it was the mice that fly (bats) that had gotten up there and she would look for the hole which they were using to get in and block it. As there are holes all over I very much doubted the success that this mission would bring. She then asked if I had any poison to kill the mice in her house. I told her that I had something better and lent her one of my traps, secretly smug in my current lack of a mouse problem, due to what I considered good management techniques: read two traps and a shitload of poison.
KARMA. (sing-songy voice)
Once I got the headlamp out I was able to catch the little bastard between a shallow wash basin and a deep bowl, using his inability to properly swim to my advantage. I took my improvised trap out in the yard to make a plan. Every time I heard him scramble I yelped a little bit as well. I knew at that moment that bashing him wasn’t going to be an option, as last time that had ended badly. I had been nauseous and generally sick a majority of the week and wasn’t in the mood to lose what little might have remained in my stomach over yet another gory murder in my front yard.
Suddenly the bit of water in the bottom of the basin gave me an idea. Drowning! I’m not certain it was the recent studying I’ve been doing for the GRE about angles and geometry or if it was a drug induced hallucination of some sort. But I quickly decided drowning would be the most effective form of capital punishment. I grabbed a brick to place on top of the upturned bowl and ran for a bucket and the outside standpipe.
I opened the tap only to hear an unsatisfying hiss. No water. Well this would make drowning a more difficult option, but yet not impossible. There was also a bucket full of water in the bathroom, waiting for morning that I would usually use to wash my face. I was going to have to wander around with a dirty face in the morning but it seems knowing this mouse would be dead was worth it. I grabbed the water and went back to where my captive was held.
I carefully poured the water into the basin. Nothing. The water couldn’t get up in the bowl because of the air inside. I still cannot imagine what inspired me to attempt to defy the laws of physics or gravity or whatever scientific truth means that I had effectively created a little submarine bubble for this little bastard but that is exactly what happened. I tried a few times to tip the whole production to get the water up inside the bowl but my hands weren’t big enough to grasp the basin and hold down the bowl. The mouse would escape and swim around desperately, and I would squeal, and it was generally bad. So now I had a trapped mouse, a basin full of mouse shit water, and a brick on top. Prior experience told me crying wasn’t a helpful option in this scenario.
My benedryl addled mind could do no more. I was worried about leaving the whole production either too close to the house as he would inevitably try his little breaking and entering scheme again, or too far into the yard as I have a highly curious four year old little boy who is currently staying on the compound and had visions up him upending the thing and the mouse escaping in the morning. In my drug induced stupor of a brain the idiot mouse clearly had rabies as it was crazy enough to repeatedly try to enter my house (somewhere in my mind the exact diagnosis and suggested rehabilitative treatment was crawling it’s way out from the depths of my criminology and psychology degrees as I’m cross referencing my time at a law firm for the statues on capital punishment that I’d already sentenced this monster to.) and was going to attack the child before I got up and how would I live with that? It seems these bloody things are bent on making me lose sleep whether they’re dead or alive!
So I did something slightly crazy.
I went into my house and grabbed a pen and a post it.
I wrote on the note:
“Please kill the mouse”
And drew a sort of stick figure mouse drawing on it.
I have absolutely no idea whom I was appealing to, as the little boy likely cannot read Setswana much less English. I began to laugh hysterically and exhaustedly in my yard in the moonlight. Perhaps some Tokaloshi or an bilingual African spirit would take care of the job.
I woke the next day and looked at the whole set up in my yard and knew I couldn’t deal with that just then. When I came home from work the girl on my compound upended the whole mess and the mouse was indeed expired.
It just struck me that perhaps it was hypothermia. Eish.
Like so many starlets at the academy awards who tearfully promise themselves they wouldn’t cry, I swore I wouldn’t write about killing mice again. I thought I had covered the whole genre, from trapping to poison to blunt object traumas to the head. I was certain that there was nothing left to say. And generally there wasn’t. Until of course last night.
I was sitting on my bed in a benedryl induced haze, waiting for the drugs to completely put me to sleep. I had been sick with some terrific stomach bug that had left me weak and tired, but as I had laid around for several hours already that day I was finding it tough to sleep despite being tired, so had taken the benedryl to knock me out. I was writing letters home which will inevitably arrive after the event I’m meaning to write about when I heard some soft tapping coming from near my door. I thought perhaps it was the little boy who lived on my compound coming to greet me. I had heard that he had come home earlier, and despite us not speaking any common language, we’ve become buddies.
I shouted a greeting at the door three times to no response. Finally I hauled myself off my bed and opened the door. What greeted me on the other side was not a smiling little boy but a mouse crawling up the inside of the netting I’d wrapped through my burglar door to prevent mosquitoes in the warmer seasons. I pushed open the door and he was dangling like Tom Cruise in one of the “Mission Impossible” films. I grabbed the dustpan from the floor and flicked him off the door into the night. Little did I know that would set the tone for the night…
Around eleven thirty I woke up in from a deep sleep in a big confusion. I heard splashing around in my bathtub. At first I thought perhaps the cork had come out of the piping I’ve been using to shower and the sound I was hearing was the water rushing out into the pipe into the bathtub. Upon closer inspection I saw a dark something in the corner of the tub. I had left a small amount of water in the bottom to rinse some of the laundry I had soaking in the morning as the water has been out. I didn’t remember leaving anything in the tub and as soon as I turned around to grab my headlamp the splashing began again and I had a strong suspicion as to the nature of the intruder.
When I shone the light in the tub it was indeed a mouse, attempting to climb out of my bathtub. A quick survey of the situation determined that he had probably come in through the slightly open window climbing in through a hole in the netting that surrounded the piping. Strangely enough this was not the first mouse I’d seen in a bathtub, the other one was in Maun at Anna’s house. She being a vegetarian and an animal lover that mouse was trapped and released. As I am not a vegetarian or an extreme animal lover, this mouse would not be experiencing the same fate.
I thought that the fact that I had not taken any drastic measures to disturb whichever animals were living in my ceiling making noise and waking me up all the time had been an appropriate enough attempt at hospitality. When I mentioned the intruders to my landlady she suggested that perhaps it was the mice that fly (bats) that had gotten up there and she would look for the hole which they were using to get in and block it. As there are holes all over I very much doubted the success that this mission would bring. She then asked if I had any poison to kill the mice in her house. I told her that I had something better and lent her one of my traps, secretly smug in my current lack of a mouse problem, due to what I considered good management techniques: read two traps and a shitload of poison.
KARMA. (sing-songy voice)
Once I got the headlamp out I was able to catch the little bastard between a shallow wash basin and a deep bowl, using his inability to properly swim to my advantage. I took my improvised trap out in the yard to make a plan. Every time I heard him scramble I yelped a little bit as well. I knew at that moment that bashing him wasn’t going to be an option, as last time that had ended badly. I had been nauseous and generally sick a majority of the week and wasn’t in the mood to lose what little might have remained in my stomach over yet another gory murder in my front yard.
Suddenly the bit of water in the bottom of the basin gave me an idea. Drowning! I’m not certain it was the recent studying I’ve been doing for the GRE about angles and geometry or if it was a drug induced hallucination of some sort. But I quickly decided drowning would be the most effective form of capital punishment. I grabbed a brick to place on top of the upturned bowl and ran for a bucket and the outside standpipe.
I opened the tap only to hear an unsatisfying hiss. No water. Well this would make drowning a more difficult option, but yet not impossible. There was also a bucket full of water in the bathroom, waiting for morning that I would usually use to wash my face. I was going to have to wander around with a dirty face in the morning but it seems knowing this mouse would be dead was worth it. I grabbed the water and went back to where my captive was held.
I carefully poured the water into the basin. Nothing. The water couldn’t get up in the bowl because of the air inside. I still cannot imagine what inspired me to attempt to defy the laws of physics or gravity or whatever scientific truth means that I had effectively created a little submarine bubble for this little bastard but that is exactly what happened. I tried a few times to tip the whole production to get the water up inside the bowl but my hands weren’t big enough to grasp the basin and hold down the bowl. The mouse would escape and swim around desperately, and I would squeal, and it was generally bad. So now I had a trapped mouse, a basin full of mouse shit water, and a brick on top. Prior experience told me crying wasn’t a helpful option in this scenario.
My benedryl addled mind could do no more. I was worried about leaving the whole production either too close to the house as he would inevitably try his little breaking and entering scheme again, or too far into the yard as I have a highly curious four year old little boy who is currently staying on the compound and had visions up him upending the thing and the mouse escaping in the morning. In my drug induced stupor of a brain the idiot mouse clearly had rabies as it was crazy enough to repeatedly try to enter my house (somewhere in my mind the exact diagnosis and suggested rehabilitative treatment was crawling it’s way out from the depths of my criminology and psychology degrees as I’m cross referencing my time at a law firm for the statues on capital punishment that I’d already sentenced this monster to.) and was going to attack the child before I got up and how would I live with that? It seems these bloody things are bent on making me lose sleep whether they’re dead or alive!
So I did something slightly crazy.
I went into my house and grabbed a pen and a post it.
I wrote on the note:
“Please kill the mouse”
And drew a sort of stick figure mouse drawing on it.
I have absolutely no idea whom I was appealing to, as the little boy likely cannot read Setswana much less English. I began to laugh hysterically and exhaustedly in my yard in the moonlight. Perhaps some Tokaloshi or an bilingual African spirit would take care of the job.
I woke the next day and looked at the whole set up in my yard and knew I couldn’t deal with that just then. When I came home from work the girl on my compound upended the whole mess and the mouse was indeed expired.
It just struck me that perhaps it was hypothermia. Eish.
Push.....
Frustration, education, motivation, creation….
It had been an “I hate Botswana” type of morning. As I’ve said, I’m no Susie Sunshine pants, and these times occur. It’s my reality on occasion. I had been at the clinic, and had sat through a meeting in which the doctor (call me simple, call me crazy, call me whatever, everyone else does… but I tend to hold someone who is a doctor up to slightly higher standards, for better of for worse) had complained that there was no “motivation” (read money, t-shirts, food, ect) involved with participation in the upcoming vitamin A campaign.
As soon as the words left his lips the other local staff also began to complain. Perhaps it was the fact that it was Friday morning and it had been a long week, or perhaps I had just reached the end of some rope. Whatever my personal “motivation”, I found myself wondering quite loudly, “I’m confused as to why people want more money for completing tasks that are in their job description, during hours they are already being paid to work?” Wrong statement, as all the staff chimed in with variations of the phrase “Lorato… You’re trying to kill us with too much work.” In reality all the vitamin A campaign meant was that the staff would have less time in the afternoon to sit around in the waiting room and shoot the breeze. For one or maybe two weeks. When I tried to talk to one nurse privately about it later, he actually said very seriously “Lorato, that time in the afternoon is for us to rest.”
Granted, when there are patients the nurses are generally working very hard. There is no concept of appointments for the most part in African medical clinics. Everyone just shows up in the morning and waits until it is their turn. The afternoons are generally quiet, which makes sense in the heat of the day, especially in summertime, unless there is a woman in labor or an emergency. On Mondays the nurses have incredibly long days and get up at the crack of dawn to collect blood, and when patients have to go to the other side the auxiliary staff can spend a great deal of time on the road (for which they are paid overtime). I can see and understand all this.
Most days, however, I stop by there in the afternoon and the staff is just sitting around. I can do this about one day a week, and enjoy it sometimes as it can be a good opportunity to chat with the staff and learn more about the different cultures that I live amongst. More than about one or two days in a week, however, and then I begin to lose my mind, so I’ve begun to spend a lot less time at the clinic. I go in the morning and usually leave for the police or school or mortuary. I’ve found that since I’ve changed my schedule to include being out in the village more it has made me more visible and accepted in the community. More people approach me and bounce ideas off me, and many more go out of their way to greet me even in other villages, which continues to astound my fellow PC friends.
But there’s a little tiny American piece of me that seems to be unwilling to die that believes in order to have something better you must work hard for it and earn it. This sometimes involves sacrifice. It can be tough to work amongst people whom are generally making a few times what I am making monthly and listen to them complain about what they feel entitled to. Especially knowing how much better off they generally are than most of the patients in the village they serve.
I have learned in Seronga that there are some times when I just need to walk away. On this particular day I packed a few thousand pills into individual dosage envelopes and informed the staff I would be going to the school. I had planned to meet with one of the teachers who had proposed marriage to me last week at the ferry (which I denied but suggested we could work on a project together if he could be a professional about it as a consolation… this is how I meet many of the people I collaborate with, unfortunately) to plan how to undertake creating a world map mural on the wall of the primary school.
The teachers at the primary had long been complaining that I only work with the junior secondary school, which they decided was because there is generated electricity there. In reality it is because the older children tend to speak a bit more English, but I agreed, it probably was unfair. So I began to try to think of possible projects to do at the primary school. I’ve learned that if I ask people here what they want to do, they tend to respond “whatever you want to do, Lorato.” I realized I have to be the one that comes up with some suggestions and then let them pick. When I was at the hardware store with a map one day and discovered that some of the women working there didn’t know how to find Botswana on the map that there might be a big, raging need for a map of the world to be displayed somewhere prominently in order to educate the whole village. It’s another pipe dream that this will actually make an impact, but I’ve found in the Peace Corps you gotta live on pipe dreams or you’ll starve. Or go crazy. Whichever.
So I went to the primary school to check my friend France. Despite attempting to slip in unnoticed and not disturb the class in session, my arrival was heralded as though the president himself had made a surprise visit. France, the teacher, who had been sitting at his desk playing with his phone, jumped up and greeted me, introducing me to the students and nearly bowing to me in his excitement. The children appeared to be discussing the day’s topic amongst themselves, and many who recognized me from the village began to whisper to each other more excitedly. I quickly gave up any thought I had had of observing quietly and decided to check how the students were doing with the days lesson.
The topic appeared to be multiplying decimals. As I wandered around the room checking the students work I noticed many, many hash marks on papers and numerous children counting their fingers under their breath. These children were standard fives, which is somewhere between an American 3rd and 5th grader, but many of them were older than typical 5th graders, as it seems that children often start school later in the villages. When a child begins school often depends on if they have any older siblings or family they can stay with in the village as their parents will likely spend a great deal of time away from the village during the year at the cattle post, or lands where they keep their animals and crops. It also depends on if and when the parents can get the money together to pay for school fees. I think sometimes children just eventually reach an age where they can stay in the village and manage to get themselves to and from school ok by themselves. As I checked their work it seemed very few of them knew their multiplication tables. I was horrified, but unfortunately not surprised.
The emphasis on education is increasing on this side of the delta, but there are many barriers to education being effective. School is supposed to be taught in English, which is many of the children’s 2nd, 3rd or even 4th language. Most of the educational materials are in English or Setswana, the country’s two national languages. In a village where many of the parents have a form three (between 8th and 10th grade) or even standard 7 (elementary school) education and their mother tongue may be Sheyai, Simbugushu, or one of the Sesarwa languages, which they may or may not know how to read or write, it’s difficult to expect them to emphasize the importance of education. If the parents haven’t passed away from HIV.
Beating is also common in schools, mostly at the older level, but I believe it also happens at the primary school. I have engaged in many long, exhaustive and completely useless conversations with the staff of the junior secondary school about whether beating is an effective form of discipline. I’ve beseeched them to be more creative in their discipline regimen, and given the teachers suggestions, to no avail. I’d like to be able to say that I had some effect on this practice and somehow knew how to stop it completely or even reduce it but I can’t.
I am ashamed to say that there are days when hearing the sound of the freshly stripped stick whizzing through the air towards some child’s rear end has been more than I can handle and I have to walk away. I’ve had to leave meetings because I can’t stand to hear the children’s cries (“Lorato-they are pretending. They are not hurting. They will be laughing in a minute. You don’t understand our culture. You think we are abusing them but they are very naughty”). I haven’t yet decided if it’s worse to hear the children being beaten or to bear to see the look in their eyes as they come from the room where it happened only to see me walking away. Children are beaten with a switch for coming late, for sniffing glue, for not speaking English amongst other offences. I find it hard to say unequivocally that for as much as I enjoy school and learning that I would want to attend school in Seronga.
These are just some of the things that have become a part of my life here that are hard to effectively describe when people ask questions about life here, or make statements like, “Well it’s Peace Corps, didn’t you expect it to be difficult?” Yeah, I did, but not in these ways.
So back at the primary school, I learned on my visit on this particular day that there are over 700 children at the Seronga primary school. From standard 1-7, there are about 100 children each level. And there is sometimes only 1 or 2 teachers for an entire grade level. Seronga, being far from everything, has proven in every government sector (police, clinic, schools, ect) to be a very difficult place to assign people. And the people that are assigned here are generally pissed off about being here (“Lorato- it’s boring here. How can you stand it here? There are no shops and nothing to do. And it’s far from everything, there’s no electricity and these people are backwards. Eish this place is terrible.”) which doesn’t lend to creating a particularly effective work environment.
So without enough teachers the head teacher told me that they have resorted to splitting the classes in two or three groups and then the teacher will rotate amongst the rooms. The children sit by themselves in between waiting for a teacher. This means that some children have gone entire terms without a teacher and are thus missing many basic skills. Someone somewhere in government has decided to introduce teaching schemes (which from what I can understand about what the teacher tells me sounds like some nightmarish developing world version of “no child left behind.” Except that in this version nearly every child is left behind.) The teacher is given the set of topics for the semester and must cover all of them on a certain schedule. Whether the children have the background knowledge and skills to understand the topics or not.
I briefly spoke to France about this, and his complaint was that the children themselves are just slow, or stupid, or inherently ignorant. He claimed to not have had this experience when he taught children “that side” (which is essentially anywhere that’s not here).
Which is where the lightning struck for me.
Anyone can talk shit about their village, or any other village and God knows I often do. It’s one of the most difficult challenges I’ve found with living in Seronga. To go from one situation that’s irritating or frustrating for one reason and stumble across another that’s alarming for another reason altogether can start to feel impossible. It seems an endless cycle of shittiness. Sometimes it seems as though there are altogether too many tragedies, injustices, and unfortunate conditions happening in one small village to know which one to throw my energy at to try to fix. I’ve called Seronga “the place that God forgot” only partly jokingly. It’s a place that’s very, very easy to lose hope in and I have lost my hope, my faith and myself in several times.
And yet I still find myself here.
Because even though God may have forgotten Seronga, it doesn’t mean that I have.
Somehow in all the craziness and heartache and joy and tragedy of this place it became my place. Seronga challenged me and tested me and pissed me off and somewhere along the way made me fall in love with it. All the things that make me want to run screaming from it are the things that make me know I have to keep fighting for it.
The point of the descriptions above is not just to complain about my life here. It’s an attempt to describe the conditions here not just for myself but to give the situation and the setting of the story for all of those who live it. It’s easy to think of this place in a very surface level “why the hell can’t they get their shit together and deal with this HIV thing” sort of way. I know I’m guilty of it. The picture I’m trying to paint for you is a circular portrait of how I’ve come to understand and deal with my own frustrations about the deeper issues in Seronga.
When I get pissed off and frustrated, I generally find someone who is more pissed off and frustrated than I am, and then try to talk them out of it a bit. It’s a bit ridiculous, but I’ve found it works.
I think any Peace Corps volunteer in any country at some point has to come up with certain strategies to deal with things that at the end of the day are just so very different from home. Like many places in Botswana, Seronga has characteristics that make it frustrating, not just for me as an American, or as an outsider, (but those are personal factors of me that add to my own frustration of the place) but also to those who have ever known anything different, or “better” and this includes other professional Batswana who work here who aren’t from here. Where I am lucky is that I have discovered I am not alone in my frustration. There are actually people living here who are even more pissed off and frustrated than I myself am.
Whether it’s my own uncanny sense of timing or some crazy instance of serendipity, it seems I find these people just when I need to.
Speaking with France something sprung in me when he told me those children were stupid. The fire within me was relit from the embers of disappointment and the faint glow of disillusion with a spark of indignation.
For as often as I might, in a moment of weakness, speculate the same thing about the villagers in my own head, for someone else to say it was blasphemy. These children were from my village, which in African tradition makes them mine. I know for a fact there are many bright children in that room, whether they be book smart or village smart or what. And I know even more that I believe in them.
As France is a man who claimed to want to marry me I decided that I had a quite a bit of leeway in terms of what I could get away with saying to him so I laid into him a bit. I argued that if he indeed were to go back and teach the students at the level they are at instead of trying to go along with the syllabus and teaching them things that were ahead of math concepts they had ever reached, he might find more success. If the children were failing perhaps it was his inability as a teacher and not the children’s inabilities as students that was falling short of the mark. If he tried some new things, or different methods, or went off the beaten government mandated path of teaching he might have better results.
Now generally the tone of the culture here tends to be quite docile and accepting, with a focus on keeping the peace at all costs. Arguments or heated discussions are an exception, they’re very rare, and have a few possible outcomes. It generally either freaks a person out or they’re intrigued by it. Women in particular tend to be relatively subservient here as well, at least in public. (In reality they’re running many aspects of the home, the community and the government… Just under the radar.) My behavior right now was throwing my colleague (or former potential suitor-although in my defense, I tend to give men an extensive list of reasons why they would never want me for a wife almost before they finish the last breath of their proposal of marriage) for a bit of a loop, but luckily my buddy France tended to be in the former group and was open to my somewhat forceful suggestion.
We briefly discussed how we could approach the day’s lesson differently, and he agreed to follow my lead, and we would reteach the day’s lesson in tandem, with him taking over once we got started. With the children I modeled a more gentle approach, working around the room rather than sitting at the desk and getting down near each child’s level. I showed them a different way of multiplying by grouping the numbers without the hash marks, and gave them more time to think through the answer, no matter how long it may take. I watched as not only the children’s confidence but France’s enthusiasm increased. By the end there were still a few children counting on their fingers and using hash marks, but the classroom overall expressed a ton more enthusiasm about the idea of memorizing the multiplication tables by next week. I agreed to come and help him for the rest of the term on selected days if he agreed to try new things (and to not beat the children). I’ve taken to quizzing the children that I recognize when I see them in the village on any number of random multiplication tables, and they have also begun to quiz me, although I think they think I’m some sort of magician when I can answer them immediately without thinking (God bless the American education system.)
In the end in Seronga, we’re all in this together. Sometimes the only way of pulling myself out of a shitty mood and reigniting my own hope is to try to do it for someone else. It was by pushing France to be a better teacher, to expect more from himself and believe more in his students that I managed to pull myself out of my frustration. I’m not going to change everything here, and maybe nothing will change, but perhaps if I keep wearing at the things that bother me instead of letting them wear on me, something good will come. I guess I must just focus on trying to create a moment or two of joy and hope amongst the misery and irritation and will be enough. Perhaps all it can take is a little push.
It had been an “I hate Botswana” type of morning. As I’ve said, I’m no Susie Sunshine pants, and these times occur. It’s my reality on occasion. I had been at the clinic, and had sat through a meeting in which the doctor (call me simple, call me crazy, call me whatever, everyone else does… but I tend to hold someone who is a doctor up to slightly higher standards, for better of for worse) had complained that there was no “motivation” (read money, t-shirts, food, ect) involved with participation in the upcoming vitamin A campaign.
As soon as the words left his lips the other local staff also began to complain. Perhaps it was the fact that it was Friday morning and it had been a long week, or perhaps I had just reached the end of some rope. Whatever my personal “motivation”, I found myself wondering quite loudly, “I’m confused as to why people want more money for completing tasks that are in their job description, during hours they are already being paid to work?” Wrong statement, as all the staff chimed in with variations of the phrase “Lorato… You’re trying to kill us with too much work.” In reality all the vitamin A campaign meant was that the staff would have less time in the afternoon to sit around in the waiting room and shoot the breeze. For one or maybe two weeks. When I tried to talk to one nurse privately about it later, he actually said very seriously “Lorato, that time in the afternoon is for us to rest.”
Granted, when there are patients the nurses are generally working very hard. There is no concept of appointments for the most part in African medical clinics. Everyone just shows up in the morning and waits until it is their turn. The afternoons are generally quiet, which makes sense in the heat of the day, especially in summertime, unless there is a woman in labor or an emergency. On Mondays the nurses have incredibly long days and get up at the crack of dawn to collect blood, and when patients have to go to the other side the auxiliary staff can spend a great deal of time on the road (for which they are paid overtime). I can see and understand all this.
Most days, however, I stop by there in the afternoon and the staff is just sitting around. I can do this about one day a week, and enjoy it sometimes as it can be a good opportunity to chat with the staff and learn more about the different cultures that I live amongst. More than about one or two days in a week, however, and then I begin to lose my mind, so I’ve begun to spend a lot less time at the clinic. I go in the morning and usually leave for the police or school or mortuary. I’ve found that since I’ve changed my schedule to include being out in the village more it has made me more visible and accepted in the community. More people approach me and bounce ideas off me, and many more go out of their way to greet me even in other villages, which continues to astound my fellow PC friends.
But there’s a little tiny American piece of me that seems to be unwilling to die that believes in order to have something better you must work hard for it and earn it. This sometimes involves sacrifice. It can be tough to work amongst people whom are generally making a few times what I am making monthly and listen to them complain about what they feel entitled to. Especially knowing how much better off they generally are than most of the patients in the village they serve.
I have learned in Seronga that there are some times when I just need to walk away. On this particular day I packed a few thousand pills into individual dosage envelopes and informed the staff I would be going to the school. I had planned to meet with one of the teachers who had proposed marriage to me last week at the ferry (which I denied but suggested we could work on a project together if he could be a professional about it as a consolation… this is how I meet many of the people I collaborate with, unfortunately) to plan how to undertake creating a world map mural on the wall of the primary school.
The teachers at the primary had long been complaining that I only work with the junior secondary school, which they decided was because there is generated electricity there. In reality it is because the older children tend to speak a bit more English, but I agreed, it probably was unfair. So I began to try to think of possible projects to do at the primary school. I’ve learned that if I ask people here what they want to do, they tend to respond “whatever you want to do, Lorato.” I realized I have to be the one that comes up with some suggestions and then let them pick. When I was at the hardware store with a map one day and discovered that some of the women working there didn’t know how to find Botswana on the map that there might be a big, raging need for a map of the world to be displayed somewhere prominently in order to educate the whole village. It’s another pipe dream that this will actually make an impact, but I’ve found in the Peace Corps you gotta live on pipe dreams or you’ll starve. Or go crazy. Whichever.
So I went to the primary school to check my friend France. Despite attempting to slip in unnoticed and not disturb the class in session, my arrival was heralded as though the president himself had made a surprise visit. France, the teacher, who had been sitting at his desk playing with his phone, jumped up and greeted me, introducing me to the students and nearly bowing to me in his excitement. The children appeared to be discussing the day’s topic amongst themselves, and many who recognized me from the village began to whisper to each other more excitedly. I quickly gave up any thought I had had of observing quietly and decided to check how the students were doing with the days lesson.
The topic appeared to be multiplying decimals. As I wandered around the room checking the students work I noticed many, many hash marks on papers and numerous children counting their fingers under their breath. These children were standard fives, which is somewhere between an American 3rd and 5th grader, but many of them were older than typical 5th graders, as it seems that children often start school later in the villages. When a child begins school often depends on if they have any older siblings or family they can stay with in the village as their parents will likely spend a great deal of time away from the village during the year at the cattle post, or lands where they keep their animals and crops. It also depends on if and when the parents can get the money together to pay for school fees. I think sometimes children just eventually reach an age where they can stay in the village and manage to get themselves to and from school ok by themselves. As I checked their work it seemed very few of them knew their multiplication tables. I was horrified, but unfortunately not surprised.
The emphasis on education is increasing on this side of the delta, but there are many barriers to education being effective. School is supposed to be taught in English, which is many of the children’s 2nd, 3rd or even 4th language. Most of the educational materials are in English or Setswana, the country’s two national languages. In a village where many of the parents have a form three (between 8th and 10th grade) or even standard 7 (elementary school) education and their mother tongue may be Sheyai, Simbugushu, or one of the Sesarwa languages, which they may or may not know how to read or write, it’s difficult to expect them to emphasize the importance of education. If the parents haven’t passed away from HIV.
Beating is also common in schools, mostly at the older level, but I believe it also happens at the primary school. I have engaged in many long, exhaustive and completely useless conversations with the staff of the junior secondary school about whether beating is an effective form of discipline. I’ve beseeched them to be more creative in their discipline regimen, and given the teachers suggestions, to no avail. I’d like to be able to say that I had some effect on this practice and somehow knew how to stop it completely or even reduce it but I can’t.
I am ashamed to say that there are days when hearing the sound of the freshly stripped stick whizzing through the air towards some child’s rear end has been more than I can handle and I have to walk away. I’ve had to leave meetings because I can’t stand to hear the children’s cries (“Lorato-they are pretending. They are not hurting. They will be laughing in a minute. You don’t understand our culture. You think we are abusing them but they are very naughty”). I haven’t yet decided if it’s worse to hear the children being beaten or to bear to see the look in their eyes as they come from the room where it happened only to see me walking away. Children are beaten with a switch for coming late, for sniffing glue, for not speaking English amongst other offences. I find it hard to say unequivocally that for as much as I enjoy school and learning that I would want to attend school in Seronga.
These are just some of the things that have become a part of my life here that are hard to effectively describe when people ask questions about life here, or make statements like, “Well it’s Peace Corps, didn’t you expect it to be difficult?” Yeah, I did, but not in these ways.
So back at the primary school, I learned on my visit on this particular day that there are over 700 children at the Seronga primary school. From standard 1-7, there are about 100 children each level. And there is sometimes only 1 or 2 teachers for an entire grade level. Seronga, being far from everything, has proven in every government sector (police, clinic, schools, ect) to be a very difficult place to assign people. And the people that are assigned here are generally pissed off about being here (“Lorato- it’s boring here. How can you stand it here? There are no shops and nothing to do. And it’s far from everything, there’s no electricity and these people are backwards. Eish this place is terrible.”) which doesn’t lend to creating a particularly effective work environment.
So without enough teachers the head teacher told me that they have resorted to splitting the classes in two or three groups and then the teacher will rotate amongst the rooms. The children sit by themselves in between waiting for a teacher. This means that some children have gone entire terms without a teacher and are thus missing many basic skills. Someone somewhere in government has decided to introduce teaching schemes (which from what I can understand about what the teacher tells me sounds like some nightmarish developing world version of “no child left behind.” Except that in this version nearly every child is left behind.) The teacher is given the set of topics for the semester and must cover all of them on a certain schedule. Whether the children have the background knowledge and skills to understand the topics or not.
I briefly spoke to France about this, and his complaint was that the children themselves are just slow, or stupid, or inherently ignorant. He claimed to not have had this experience when he taught children “that side” (which is essentially anywhere that’s not here).
Which is where the lightning struck for me.
Anyone can talk shit about their village, or any other village and God knows I often do. It’s one of the most difficult challenges I’ve found with living in Seronga. To go from one situation that’s irritating or frustrating for one reason and stumble across another that’s alarming for another reason altogether can start to feel impossible. It seems an endless cycle of shittiness. Sometimes it seems as though there are altogether too many tragedies, injustices, and unfortunate conditions happening in one small village to know which one to throw my energy at to try to fix. I’ve called Seronga “the place that God forgot” only partly jokingly. It’s a place that’s very, very easy to lose hope in and I have lost my hope, my faith and myself in several times.
And yet I still find myself here.
Because even though God may have forgotten Seronga, it doesn’t mean that I have.
Somehow in all the craziness and heartache and joy and tragedy of this place it became my place. Seronga challenged me and tested me and pissed me off and somewhere along the way made me fall in love with it. All the things that make me want to run screaming from it are the things that make me know I have to keep fighting for it.
The point of the descriptions above is not just to complain about my life here. It’s an attempt to describe the conditions here not just for myself but to give the situation and the setting of the story for all of those who live it. It’s easy to think of this place in a very surface level “why the hell can’t they get their shit together and deal with this HIV thing” sort of way. I know I’m guilty of it. The picture I’m trying to paint for you is a circular portrait of how I’ve come to understand and deal with my own frustrations about the deeper issues in Seronga.
When I get pissed off and frustrated, I generally find someone who is more pissed off and frustrated than I am, and then try to talk them out of it a bit. It’s a bit ridiculous, but I’ve found it works.
I think any Peace Corps volunteer in any country at some point has to come up with certain strategies to deal with things that at the end of the day are just so very different from home. Like many places in Botswana, Seronga has characteristics that make it frustrating, not just for me as an American, or as an outsider, (but those are personal factors of me that add to my own frustration of the place) but also to those who have ever known anything different, or “better” and this includes other professional Batswana who work here who aren’t from here. Where I am lucky is that I have discovered I am not alone in my frustration. There are actually people living here who are even more pissed off and frustrated than I myself am.
Whether it’s my own uncanny sense of timing or some crazy instance of serendipity, it seems I find these people just when I need to.
Speaking with France something sprung in me when he told me those children were stupid. The fire within me was relit from the embers of disappointment and the faint glow of disillusion with a spark of indignation.
For as often as I might, in a moment of weakness, speculate the same thing about the villagers in my own head, for someone else to say it was blasphemy. These children were from my village, which in African tradition makes them mine. I know for a fact there are many bright children in that room, whether they be book smart or village smart or what. And I know even more that I believe in them.
As France is a man who claimed to want to marry me I decided that I had a quite a bit of leeway in terms of what I could get away with saying to him so I laid into him a bit. I argued that if he indeed were to go back and teach the students at the level they are at instead of trying to go along with the syllabus and teaching them things that were ahead of math concepts they had ever reached, he might find more success. If the children were failing perhaps it was his inability as a teacher and not the children’s inabilities as students that was falling short of the mark. If he tried some new things, or different methods, or went off the beaten government mandated path of teaching he might have better results.
Now generally the tone of the culture here tends to be quite docile and accepting, with a focus on keeping the peace at all costs. Arguments or heated discussions are an exception, they’re very rare, and have a few possible outcomes. It generally either freaks a person out or they’re intrigued by it. Women in particular tend to be relatively subservient here as well, at least in public. (In reality they’re running many aspects of the home, the community and the government… Just under the radar.) My behavior right now was throwing my colleague (or former potential suitor-although in my defense, I tend to give men an extensive list of reasons why they would never want me for a wife almost before they finish the last breath of their proposal of marriage) for a bit of a loop, but luckily my buddy France tended to be in the former group and was open to my somewhat forceful suggestion.
We briefly discussed how we could approach the day’s lesson differently, and he agreed to follow my lead, and we would reteach the day’s lesson in tandem, with him taking over once we got started. With the children I modeled a more gentle approach, working around the room rather than sitting at the desk and getting down near each child’s level. I showed them a different way of multiplying by grouping the numbers without the hash marks, and gave them more time to think through the answer, no matter how long it may take. I watched as not only the children’s confidence but France’s enthusiasm increased. By the end there were still a few children counting on their fingers and using hash marks, but the classroom overall expressed a ton more enthusiasm about the idea of memorizing the multiplication tables by next week. I agreed to come and help him for the rest of the term on selected days if he agreed to try new things (and to not beat the children). I’ve taken to quizzing the children that I recognize when I see them in the village on any number of random multiplication tables, and they have also begun to quiz me, although I think they think I’m some sort of magician when I can answer them immediately without thinking (God bless the American education system.)
In the end in Seronga, we’re all in this together. Sometimes the only way of pulling myself out of a shitty mood and reigniting my own hope is to try to do it for someone else. It was by pushing France to be a better teacher, to expect more from himself and believe more in his students that I managed to pull myself out of my frustration. I’m not going to change everything here, and maybe nothing will change, but perhaps if I keep wearing at the things that bother me instead of letting them wear on me, something good will come. I guess I must just focus on trying to create a moment or two of joy and hope amongst the misery and irritation and will be enough. Perhaps all it can take is a little push.
Hostess with the Mostess?
In which my time as Seronga’s social chair and bed and breakfast continues…
Over the course of my time in Seronga I’ve come to host more than a few strangers in my yard or house. They come to me in very strange ways, through a friend of an acquaintance, a friend of a stranger, through the blog, whatever. On one occasion some Americans were hitching down in the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) tank and it stopped as they saw me out on my run and figured that as “a white” I would probably know what to do with some “other whites”. So the fact that these two Aussies and one American had been given my name and phone number by not one but two people in the course of their travels didn’t surprise me in the least.
I learned they were coming when my friend Drew from Bana Ba Metsi called out of the blue one Wednesday evening. I was in the middle of my girls book club, but as is policy in Botswana, left the girls reading as I went to take the call. After we had spent a precious few (expensive) phone call minutes going through not only the requisite Batswana pleasantries but also Drew’s mandatory British greeting exchange, we got to the point of his call. He mentioned that he was giving some backpackers a lift on the other side of the river and they were headed my way, and rather than allow him to waste more of his cell phone minutes beating around his British bush I interjected, “Sure they can stay here.” It certainly wasn’t the first time I had invited complete strangers to camp out at my house. I have come to see it as part of my karmic duty to help my fellow seekers in any way that I can. It always breaks up the monotony for me, and I usually get at the very least interesting company and conversation out of the deal. In the past I’ve also had a guest that sewed my mosquito netting onto my burglar door so that I can sleep with the door opened (and locked!).
I went about completing my book group meeting and went for my run not having any idea if (or when) they might end up showing up at my place in the evening. I was splashing around in my (mostly cold) bucket bath when one of the villagers called asking where they should drop the makgowa (white people-plural) that wanted to see me. I threw on some clothes and met them at the main road, as although I now have the new landmark of electricity poles (the rumor is that Seronga will be electrified by generators at least as of July, and we might be on the actual grid before Christmas. I’ll believe it when I see the light-yup that’s a lame joke. I need these visitors to keep me sane probably much more than they need a place to crash.) and can say that I live exactly 15 poles from the second, smaller, brown “welcome to Seronga village” sign across the road down the right, this new information does nobody any good in the dark.
So two Australians and an American walk into my yard (yeah this would make the start of a great joke had there been a bar in Seronga-it’s closed- that they could’ve walked into, the story might have been funnier, but it’s pretty good as it is.). They pitched their tents in the dark and I introduced them to the various amenities available to them at the casa de Lorato, including a stove on which to cook (yeah I usually burn out on cooking for more people than just myself-and really when it’s just me I eat a shocking variety of things cold out of the fridge- what would you do without a microwave- after about one meal. Hey I know I’m not a great cook and so if someone else likes doing it more power to em!) and my luxurious mostly cold water splash bathing situation. The three of them were very cool, and by the end of the night I was inviting them to stay as long as they wanted and Liam was giving me some music and movies. I warned them that the next morning I had to head to Gumare super early and left them with one of my famous hand-drawn maps of Seronga. They were going to check out the Poler’s Trust to maybe try to take a Mokoro trip (the dugout canoe looking boats which are poled like gondolas in Venice through the reeded canals of the delta by a local guy). They hadn’t decided if they were going to stay at my place the next night.
There were still two tents in my yard when I got home from a hellish and brief trip to Gumare late the next evening. My new houseguests (yard guests?) hadn’t gone on a Mokoro trip when they discovered the price to be nearly double what it said in the lonely planet and had been enjoying staying in an actual village. Looked like they were here for a while. Game on.
Throughout the next few days the boys built me a solar shower that works great when used in the middle of the day (but also helps store a decent amount of water in a pipe to use when the water goes out). Les and I enjoyed being able to hang out with another American chick who loves travel, and we did pedicures and discussed the elements of making a place feel like home. She also taught me the finer points of packing light (She is incredible and incredibly ruthless when it comes to packing. She rips pages out of books to make them lighter and managed to find a United States Military Government issue Vietnam era can opener. It’s a tiny wonder. The girl carries about 14 kgs and has done amazing things with her passport, and will easily meet her goal of traveling to 50 countries before she reaches 30. She’s a new personal hero.) Liam taught me about photography, introduced me to new music and “Flight of the Conchords” and gave me a copy of the movie (how fitting) Australia! Gavin… Well Gavin, along with being really instrumental in the creation of the solar shower, taught me the value of emergency vodka, and relaxing as an essential way of life and the benefits of early retirement (although 25 might be a touch young for that…)
They were in Seronga for a few days, and I did manage to at least get them a boat ride on the delta for free (I consider it my personal duty to serve as the American Ambassador to Seronga. Sure I’m self appointed and there’s no other American to oppose me but whatever-some privileges come with isolation…. What is that quote about absolute power….?;-) it corrupts absolutely… right. Well. So even though I failed to get them a flight over the delta- which in some ways wasn’t my fault as the plane that was in that day had had many of it’s seats taken out as it had brought a coffin in for a funeral. Bloody legality of needing a seat and seatbelt to fly in a plane!) as well as an evening and several hours in Simon’s sparkling company.
By their last night in Seronga I had also found some Israelis in the village who were making a fatal error of trying to hitch out of Seronga at around 4PM. Knowing they wouldn’t make it to the ferry even if they did manage to find a lift, I offered them to camp in my yard. They politely declined but sure enough an hour later one of the villagers lead them up to my gate. I figured the more the merrier. 6 people ended up being a bit of a squeeze on the limitations on one room in terms of cooking and bathing, but luckily these people were backpackers and we could all handle it. I learned to say the essential phrase (“improve my hut”) that I think has become a condition of people visiting me in Seronga in Hebrew which is good.
By this time the Aussies and American had begun to feel like family, and I squeezed them all into the hut for the night so they wouldn’t have to re-pitch their tents in the sand and could get an early start in the morning. I’m happy to report Gavin adhered to the bed conditions which were “you can sleep in my bed if you keep your hands to yourself.” We were close, but not THAT close. Liam and Les reported being very comfortable on my paupasan mat on the floor.
I was sad to see them go the next morning. I waited out by the roadside with them for Simon and they said if I wanted to skip out on the whole Peace Corps bit I was welcome to join them traveling, they had discussed it and decided I’d make a good fourth, which was an honor. I realized that although I enjoy traveling, I’m probably not that hardcore, and do better with a homebase in an area from which to travel for short periods like weekends, rather than say years (as they were doing. As I’ve said, hard core). As they say, there’s no place like home, which somewhere between here and there I’ve realized Seronga has begun to be.
We said our goodbyes and Simon picked them up to take them up to Shakawe. He also got them a lift for free to the Namibian border, and even stopped to let them grab their beloved rubix cube, which they had accidentally left with Drew from Bana Ba Metsi (cue the Aussies are thieves jokes that really didn’t work as Drew is the British one… but whatever.) who had then buried it in the sand in a plastic baggie for them (and that, my friends, is what you call making a plan!). My hut felt empty with only me there, but I knew that these weren’t the first, and certainly wouldn’t be the last houseguests. I’ll just have to figure out what the next home improvement I can challenge the next ones with will be. ;-0
And Liam, thanks for posting those amazing photos on facebook! I've gotten lots of compliments!!! I hope you guys are still having fun and that your travels are going well, and safely!
Over the course of my time in Seronga I’ve come to host more than a few strangers in my yard or house. They come to me in very strange ways, through a friend of an acquaintance, a friend of a stranger, through the blog, whatever. On one occasion some Americans were hitching down in the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) tank and it stopped as they saw me out on my run and figured that as “a white” I would probably know what to do with some “other whites”. So the fact that these two Aussies and one American had been given my name and phone number by not one but two people in the course of their travels didn’t surprise me in the least.
I learned they were coming when my friend Drew from Bana Ba Metsi called out of the blue one Wednesday evening. I was in the middle of my girls book club, but as is policy in Botswana, left the girls reading as I went to take the call. After we had spent a precious few (expensive) phone call minutes going through not only the requisite Batswana pleasantries but also Drew’s mandatory British greeting exchange, we got to the point of his call. He mentioned that he was giving some backpackers a lift on the other side of the river and they were headed my way, and rather than allow him to waste more of his cell phone minutes beating around his British bush I interjected, “Sure they can stay here.” It certainly wasn’t the first time I had invited complete strangers to camp out at my house. I have come to see it as part of my karmic duty to help my fellow seekers in any way that I can. It always breaks up the monotony for me, and I usually get at the very least interesting company and conversation out of the deal. In the past I’ve also had a guest that sewed my mosquito netting onto my burglar door so that I can sleep with the door opened (and locked!).
I went about completing my book group meeting and went for my run not having any idea if (or when) they might end up showing up at my place in the evening. I was splashing around in my (mostly cold) bucket bath when one of the villagers called asking where they should drop the makgowa (white people-plural) that wanted to see me. I threw on some clothes and met them at the main road, as although I now have the new landmark of electricity poles (the rumor is that Seronga will be electrified by generators at least as of July, and we might be on the actual grid before Christmas. I’ll believe it when I see the light-yup that’s a lame joke. I need these visitors to keep me sane probably much more than they need a place to crash.) and can say that I live exactly 15 poles from the second, smaller, brown “welcome to Seronga village” sign across the road down the right, this new information does nobody any good in the dark.
So two Australians and an American walk into my yard (yeah this would make the start of a great joke had there been a bar in Seronga-it’s closed- that they could’ve walked into, the story might have been funnier, but it’s pretty good as it is.). They pitched their tents in the dark and I introduced them to the various amenities available to them at the casa de Lorato, including a stove on which to cook (yeah I usually burn out on cooking for more people than just myself-and really when it’s just me I eat a shocking variety of things cold out of the fridge- what would you do without a microwave- after about one meal. Hey I know I’m not a great cook and so if someone else likes doing it more power to em!) and my luxurious mostly cold water splash bathing situation. The three of them were very cool, and by the end of the night I was inviting them to stay as long as they wanted and Liam was giving me some music and movies. I warned them that the next morning I had to head to Gumare super early and left them with one of my famous hand-drawn maps of Seronga. They were going to check out the Poler’s Trust to maybe try to take a Mokoro trip (the dugout canoe looking boats which are poled like gondolas in Venice through the reeded canals of the delta by a local guy). They hadn’t decided if they were going to stay at my place the next night.
There were still two tents in my yard when I got home from a hellish and brief trip to Gumare late the next evening. My new houseguests (yard guests?) hadn’t gone on a Mokoro trip when they discovered the price to be nearly double what it said in the lonely planet and had been enjoying staying in an actual village. Looked like they were here for a while. Game on.
Throughout the next few days the boys built me a solar shower that works great when used in the middle of the day (but also helps store a decent amount of water in a pipe to use when the water goes out). Les and I enjoyed being able to hang out with another American chick who loves travel, and we did pedicures and discussed the elements of making a place feel like home. She also taught me the finer points of packing light (She is incredible and incredibly ruthless when it comes to packing. She rips pages out of books to make them lighter and managed to find a United States Military Government issue Vietnam era can opener. It’s a tiny wonder. The girl carries about 14 kgs and has done amazing things with her passport, and will easily meet her goal of traveling to 50 countries before she reaches 30. She’s a new personal hero.) Liam taught me about photography, introduced me to new music and “Flight of the Conchords” and gave me a copy of the movie (how fitting) Australia! Gavin… Well Gavin, along with being really instrumental in the creation of the solar shower, taught me the value of emergency vodka, and relaxing as an essential way of life and the benefits of early retirement (although 25 might be a touch young for that…)
They were in Seronga for a few days, and I did manage to at least get them a boat ride on the delta for free (I consider it my personal duty to serve as the American Ambassador to Seronga. Sure I’m self appointed and there’s no other American to oppose me but whatever-some privileges come with isolation…. What is that quote about absolute power….?;-) it corrupts absolutely… right. Well. So even though I failed to get them a flight over the delta- which in some ways wasn’t my fault as the plane that was in that day had had many of it’s seats taken out as it had brought a coffin in for a funeral. Bloody legality of needing a seat and seatbelt to fly in a plane!) as well as an evening and several hours in Simon’s sparkling company.
By their last night in Seronga I had also found some Israelis in the village who were making a fatal error of trying to hitch out of Seronga at around 4PM. Knowing they wouldn’t make it to the ferry even if they did manage to find a lift, I offered them to camp in my yard. They politely declined but sure enough an hour later one of the villagers lead them up to my gate. I figured the more the merrier. 6 people ended up being a bit of a squeeze on the limitations on one room in terms of cooking and bathing, but luckily these people were backpackers and we could all handle it. I learned to say the essential phrase (“improve my hut”) that I think has become a condition of people visiting me in Seronga in Hebrew which is good.
By this time the Aussies and American had begun to feel like family, and I squeezed them all into the hut for the night so they wouldn’t have to re-pitch their tents in the sand and could get an early start in the morning. I’m happy to report Gavin adhered to the bed conditions which were “you can sleep in my bed if you keep your hands to yourself.” We were close, but not THAT close. Liam and Les reported being very comfortable on my paupasan mat on the floor.
I was sad to see them go the next morning. I waited out by the roadside with them for Simon and they said if I wanted to skip out on the whole Peace Corps bit I was welcome to join them traveling, they had discussed it and decided I’d make a good fourth, which was an honor. I realized that although I enjoy traveling, I’m probably not that hardcore, and do better with a homebase in an area from which to travel for short periods like weekends, rather than say years (as they were doing. As I’ve said, hard core). As they say, there’s no place like home, which somewhere between here and there I’ve realized Seronga has begun to be.
We said our goodbyes and Simon picked them up to take them up to Shakawe. He also got them a lift for free to the Namibian border, and even stopped to let them grab their beloved rubix cube, which they had accidentally left with Drew from Bana Ba Metsi (cue the Aussies are thieves jokes that really didn’t work as Drew is the British one… but whatever.) who had then buried it in the sand in a plastic baggie for them (and that, my friends, is what you call making a plan!). My hut felt empty with only me there, but I knew that these weren’t the first, and certainly wouldn’t be the last houseguests. I’ll just have to figure out what the next home improvement I can challenge the next ones with will be. ;-0
And Liam, thanks for posting those amazing photos on facebook! I've gotten lots of compliments!!! I hope you guys are still having fun and that your travels are going well, and safely!
Upgrade: A mostly warn shower!
Over the time I’ve lived in Seronga I’ve gotten used to some things. One of them is my bathing situation. I’m getting to be an expert bucket bather, and I only usually find myself in tears over my desire for a hot shower or bath or really any amount of hot water to be touching my whole body simultaneously after about a month in Seronga. I’m used to it. But it could, admittedly be better.
Enter the Aussies.
(Sorry guys. I’m usually better at coming up with genius nicknames but I’m failing here. You’re left for the eternity of the blog as the Aussies. Hope you don’t mind.)
Although my new house guests were incredibly flexible and undemanding and seemed to fit comfortably right in (perhaps the outback is another terms for bush ;-) in my luxury accommodations they decided at some point in the first day that there was room for capacity to be built in Seronga, namely in my hut. On the second evening we were chatting and I realized the time, temperature and amount of water I would have to heat on the stove and excused myself for my evening splash bath.
And genius suddenly struck my houseguests.
Liam mentioned that he and Gavin had decided they thought they would be building me a solar shower. In their wanderings around the village that day they had come upon the hardware store in their attempts to locate the bottle shop (they’re in the same complex of buildings).They had been at the hardware store and discovered that the humble offerings in Seronga appeared to just about have the supplies to create such a thing. I remained cautiously optimistic.
So the next day we go to the hardware store. I soon found myself haggling with the staff because from the time we were quoted prices for piping in the morning until the time we showed up ready to buy in the afternoon the prices had mysteriously doubled. I was ready to give up. It’s continuously disheartening to me when I find that people I interact with every day can so effortlessly attempt to screw me over with no shame or apology. There was some story about them misquoting the price to me in the am, despite me taking someone outside to show them the exact piping I wanted, as well as confirming the price several times. It was time to call in the big dogs. Or rather big dog.
As with most things in Seronga, this project could definitely come off without Simon, but was made both simpler and more complicated, as well as infinitely more entertaining by his presence.
So in the middle of these near to tears negotiations with the women I check in on nearly daily, Simon shows up. He’s flustered and muttering about a plane coming this side and transport. It seems as more white people move to this side of the delta the responsibilities of the white people already living here are increased based on the fact that life in Seronga is in fact, as Simon himself says, “simpler, but not easier.” Meaning that yes, the village life is lovely in its generally calm and quiet serenity, but this is a direct trade off for the increased difficulty of getting simple (and yet occasionally essential to one’s little piece of sanity on this island) provisions, such as cheese, affordable cement, petrol to run generators, fresh fruit, ect, ect. It seems Simon has become the director of transport, import/export and general movements in Seronga, a title he enjoys marginally, and bitches about constantly.
So Simon’s in a bit of a state. As he takes in my state, he shakes his head at the ladies, declares the whole thing highway robbery and decides we’re going to see what we can do to find the supplies we need in Seronga’s other supplier of general goods, Simon’s own yard. The guys and I load into the back of the pickup and we’re off.
Within about 30 seconds the four of us are tramping through the bushiest, likely most snake and creature filled area of Simon’s yard in search of piping. When we find it, near his sewage tank, it’s filled with a foul smelling liquid that once may have been water, but isn’t currently very promising in terms of something I want to stand my body under in an attempt to get clean. But at this point it’s free, it’s there, and beggars can’t be choosers. We attempt to rinse it out and begin the search for fittings. It’s altogether a more difficult, involved scenario than I had imagined, which reminded me why although Simon had growled something about the simplicity of completing this very task a few months back, I had yet to attempt to undertake it. In this instance, with all this testosterone flowing and all those present needing to prove themselves and complete the task, I decided to just sit back and watch. And wait for the fireworks.
I’ve recently noticed that Simon can get a little funny when I bring friends around. I noticed this is especially true when they’re guys. It’s like everyone, regardless of the circumstances, might be a potential suitor, and thus everyone is put up to some crazy Simon test. Very few past muster upon the later analysis. Thank God no one that comes to the bush is trying to actually date me or we might have a problem on our hands.
So through the process of these two guys attempting to make my life a bit more pleasant Simon sort of put them a bit through the wringer. Whenever one of them had a suggestion or idea Simon was ready to inform them why it wouldn’t work. When one of them starting using a tool to do something it was either the wrong technique, or too slow or he just looked on shaking his head. Like the lone male in the elephant herd he was waiting for one of the guys to earn his respect by showing him up, and when it didn’t happen they were both dismissed, in Simon’s mind at least, as a threat. It was the scene I’d always watched on TV when the guy picks the girl up for the prom and the father stands threateningly and broodingly in the corner. To me it was slightly hilarious, and I tried to explain the concept of the prom scenario to the guys, but being Aussies, they didn’t quite get it. There’s some crazy animal stuff going on in the bush.
So eventually we got all the necessary pieces in order to put together the shower. Les and I started on our pedicures as I figured my role would be mainly a consultative one as necessary. It ended up that I have a huge loop of black piping running in and out of my window and up onto the roof of the building next door.
Within another hour I had damn hot water running in through a pipe positioned in my window. It was actually too hot to properly stand under but gave me a good three or four warm weekend baths before it got to cold for the winter. A subsequent houseguest has managed to rig it from the ceiling and my short self can mange to stand right under it and actually proper shower. I mean there’s conditions, I have to shower while there is still plenty of sunlight to keep the water warm. The water has to be working in Seronga in order for it to work. There are a few pressure issues. Now that its winter it’s too cold to use it unless it’s the middle of the day and it seems I’ve found myself incredibly busy during the day these days. But generally it’s a big improvement. Upgrade!
Enter the Aussies.
(Sorry guys. I’m usually better at coming up with genius nicknames but I’m failing here. You’re left for the eternity of the blog as the Aussies. Hope you don’t mind.)
Although my new house guests were incredibly flexible and undemanding and seemed to fit comfortably right in (perhaps the outback is another terms for bush ;-) in my luxury accommodations they decided at some point in the first day that there was room for capacity to be built in Seronga, namely in my hut. On the second evening we were chatting and I realized the time, temperature and amount of water I would have to heat on the stove and excused myself for my evening splash bath.
And genius suddenly struck my houseguests.
Liam mentioned that he and Gavin had decided they thought they would be building me a solar shower. In their wanderings around the village that day they had come upon the hardware store in their attempts to locate the bottle shop (they’re in the same complex of buildings).They had been at the hardware store and discovered that the humble offerings in Seronga appeared to just about have the supplies to create such a thing. I remained cautiously optimistic.
So the next day we go to the hardware store. I soon found myself haggling with the staff because from the time we were quoted prices for piping in the morning until the time we showed up ready to buy in the afternoon the prices had mysteriously doubled. I was ready to give up. It’s continuously disheartening to me when I find that people I interact with every day can so effortlessly attempt to screw me over with no shame or apology. There was some story about them misquoting the price to me in the am, despite me taking someone outside to show them the exact piping I wanted, as well as confirming the price several times. It was time to call in the big dogs. Or rather big dog.
As with most things in Seronga, this project could definitely come off without Simon, but was made both simpler and more complicated, as well as infinitely more entertaining by his presence.
So in the middle of these near to tears negotiations with the women I check in on nearly daily, Simon shows up. He’s flustered and muttering about a plane coming this side and transport. It seems as more white people move to this side of the delta the responsibilities of the white people already living here are increased based on the fact that life in Seronga is in fact, as Simon himself says, “simpler, but not easier.” Meaning that yes, the village life is lovely in its generally calm and quiet serenity, but this is a direct trade off for the increased difficulty of getting simple (and yet occasionally essential to one’s little piece of sanity on this island) provisions, such as cheese, affordable cement, petrol to run generators, fresh fruit, ect, ect. It seems Simon has become the director of transport, import/export and general movements in Seronga, a title he enjoys marginally, and bitches about constantly.
So Simon’s in a bit of a state. As he takes in my state, he shakes his head at the ladies, declares the whole thing highway robbery and decides we’re going to see what we can do to find the supplies we need in Seronga’s other supplier of general goods, Simon’s own yard. The guys and I load into the back of the pickup and we’re off.
Within about 30 seconds the four of us are tramping through the bushiest, likely most snake and creature filled area of Simon’s yard in search of piping. When we find it, near his sewage tank, it’s filled with a foul smelling liquid that once may have been water, but isn’t currently very promising in terms of something I want to stand my body under in an attempt to get clean. But at this point it’s free, it’s there, and beggars can’t be choosers. We attempt to rinse it out and begin the search for fittings. It’s altogether a more difficult, involved scenario than I had imagined, which reminded me why although Simon had growled something about the simplicity of completing this very task a few months back, I had yet to attempt to undertake it. In this instance, with all this testosterone flowing and all those present needing to prove themselves and complete the task, I decided to just sit back and watch. And wait for the fireworks.
I’ve recently noticed that Simon can get a little funny when I bring friends around. I noticed this is especially true when they’re guys. It’s like everyone, regardless of the circumstances, might be a potential suitor, and thus everyone is put up to some crazy Simon test. Very few past muster upon the later analysis. Thank God no one that comes to the bush is trying to actually date me or we might have a problem on our hands.
So through the process of these two guys attempting to make my life a bit more pleasant Simon sort of put them a bit through the wringer. Whenever one of them had a suggestion or idea Simon was ready to inform them why it wouldn’t work. When one of them starting using a tool to do something it was either the wrong technique, or too slow or he just looked on shaking his head. Like the lone male in the elephant herd he was waiting for one of the guys to earn his respect by showing him up, and when it didn’t happen they were both dismissed, in Simon’s mind at least, as a threat. It was the scene I’d always watched on TV when the guy picks the girl up for the prom and the father stands threateningly and broodingly in the corner. To me it was slightly hilarious, and I tried to explain the concept of the prom scenario to the guys, but being Aussies, they didn’t quite get it. There’s some crazy animal stuff going on in the bush.
So eventually we got all the necessary pieces in order to put together the shower. Les and I started on our pedicures as I figured my role would be mainly a consultative one as necessary. It ended up that I have a huge loop of black piping running in and out of my window and up onto the roof of the building next door.
Within another hour I had damn hot water running in through a pipe positioned in my window. It was actually too hot to properly stand under but gave me a good three or four warm weekend baths before it got to cold for the winter. A subsequent houseguest has managed to rig it from the ceiling and my short self can mange to stand right under it and actually proper shower. I mean there’s conditions, I have to shower while there is still plenty of sunlight to keep the water warm. The water has to be working in Seronga in order for it to work. There are a few pressure issues. Now that its winter it’s too cold to use it unless it’s the middle of the day and it seems I’ve found myself incredibly busy during the day these days. But generally it’s a big improvement. Upgrade!
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