Feel/Crash

Part 1: Goodbye
I had heard through the highly efficient gossip grapevine that is the main mode of communication amongst the foreign ex pat community in the widely sprawling but sparsely populated country of Botswana that my new friend had decided to leave. She hadn’t been here altogether too long, but I had looked forward to having another friend in the delta. I text her to see if it was true. When she confirmed her departure I asked if I could stop by and say goodbye.

In addition to knowing I was going to miss her, and wanting to see her off, in some weird way I also felt it my duty, having recently been promoted to the ranks of those who have been in country over a year to check in with her before she left. It’s a big decision to make, as we go through a lot and take a long time to get here in the first place. There was no thought that crossed my mind about trying to talk her out of it, it wasn’t about that. I trusted that she had thought about the decision from all angles, as I said, it’s a huge decision. My main concern was that she was at peace, and that it hadn’t been one particular incident that had pushed her towards leaving.

When you observe the trajectory of the Peace Corps cycle of emotions from arrival in country to departure, you notice that much of our time in this experience is spent feeling vulnerable and or depressed. Incidents that might be sort of a big deal or even a small deal on their own are constantly being coupled with various other discomforts and inconveniences, cultural miscommunications and various other emotional maladies that can make everything feel like a BIG DEAL. Occasionally smallish things, or things that you will adjust to or have the potential to change over time push you over the edge, and to everything you can just feel like saying “F*ck IT!!! I can promise you that every single person in every Peace Corps post in the world has experienced this particular sentiment, and sometimes you need to speak with one of the people who can understand the sentiment to get past it and keep going.

I wanted to provide the ear of someone who would be one of the last people she would encounter who would “get it.” Once she steps off that plane in the States, there will be very few if any people that understand much of anything of what she has just left. When she came here she came alone and when she gets back, she returns alone as well.

I arrived at her place, both the first and last time I would see her space, and it was all packed up (full disclosure: I just had a total Christmas in July. My new friend was incredibly generous in her departure. I may have just received the only non-stick frying pan in the Okavango delta.). We sat and chatted. She was indeed at peace, and very comfortable with her decision, and I had to agree that her reasons were nothing short of solid. It hadn’t been an impulsive decision or one certain thing. She felt it was time for her to go and in that I supported her.

Seronga being where it is (quite near the edge of the end of the Earth, which I believe is officially located in Gudigwa) I haven’t had too much exposure to those who have arrived recently. Peace Corps in Botswana is such that each year a cohort leaves and a new one arrives. So we’re all either the newbies or the old school. With this position of honor comes a certain amount of jadedness and increased cynicism amongst some of us that we try to be somewhat gentle in our exposure to the new class so as not to age them unduly before their time.

It’s a constant mini-circle of life. In May I got used to the idea that the people I’ve come to look to for many things were leaving, and that suddenly I would become the one who would be called on to help the fresh arrivals in any way I could to get through the hardest part of Peace Corps, the first few months in their new villages. I tried to remember what I would have wanted and what I felt I needed when I was in their position, and still try to consider them whenever I learn something new or gain a new resource. Although Peace Corps is a hugely individual endeavor it’s also essential that we work together and try to help each other out when we can, be it through helping each other make contacts and access resources or by just being there to listen and support each other.

Dudu (in Gumare) and I have long agreed that we aren’t the type of people with personalities that would get along or be friends in the States, with that being said I would be pretty fricken lost without her. It’s these sort of relationships based in proximity and circumstance and sharing similar geography and conditions that lead to the sort of odd affections we develop through this experience. An opportunity I was now going to miss out on with my new friend as she was leaving.

I wasn’t in any way mad or disappointed in her, as I said I understood her reasons. Through the conversation we had I noticed many things that struck me. In some ways it’s incredibly weird to see so much of the person I used to be in the new class, and see so much of those who have recently left in myself. Things I have come to have patience with or at least tolerate with the understanding that they are not changing any time soon, or that there’s ways of keeping oneself from being exposed to these upsetting things. You come to a point where you don’t think of it as ignoring or overlooking shocking or upsetting things but rather keeping your own sanity by not dwelling on them. Some of the comments she made and things she was displeased with about the culture or the country that I would have formerly agreed with wholeheartedly, I found that somewhere between here and there just came to accept or at least understand the reasons why things are the way they are.

As I sat nodding about and agreeing with some of the things she expressed indignation with that I have long come to accept as normal, I began to wonder: When did I stop feeling? When did these things that would normally upset me and rile me up cease to even cause a blip in my radar? Was this the emotional direction life in Botswana was taking me? Towards being so constantly immersed in conditions and instances of distress, and grief, circumstances of injustice and hopelessness that I would become emotionally exhausted by it all and begin to check out emotionally? That human suffering would be so part and parcel with daily life that I didn’t care anymore? Was I numb?

I had wondered the same thing on a few separate occasions in recent weeks when I’d felt my eyeballs begin to twitch. It would start when I was extremely frustrated, frustration happens daily in Seronga and it barely fazes me any more, but these were instances where no less than 10 things had suddenly derailed and I was at a loss for which direction to even move into next. My eyeballs would twitch and burn as I sat somberly away from people, a preemptive move I’ve found myself making without even realizing it, in order to keep from flipping out on people who have no contribution to or responsibility for my frustration but might otherwise find themselves in my path. More and more often lately I’ve found myself sitting, staring off into space, waiting for the dull rage to subside.

I realized later that the eye twitching is what usually happens before I cry, what used to be my last resort as a way to react to my frustration or other angsty situation I find myself in. I noted with slight disinterest that I don’t even bother crying anymore, as I’ve learned it does no good. Instead I send out a few choicely worded text messages to friends here whom I know can relate, and wait for the anger and ire to subside, the only joy I get coming from how entertaining or succinct I can be with my venom.

I wonder at this new phase, if it can be interpreted as growth or regression? Am I becoming more zen or just permanently pissed off? Do I even notice any more? I know I feel when I’m happy, because it seems the slightest things make me nearly euphoric which tends to be expressed through big smiles and dancing about, and yes, usually some text messages. When I’m happy I feel really happy. I appreciate and just love my life. I feel lucky and blessed for the opportunities and adventures I’ve had here. I feel any sacrifice I may have made to live this experience for two years has more than been rewarded. Much of the rest of the time I spend in a fugue of either frustration or avoidance of aforementioned frustration. Because if I can’t feasibly DO something about the situation that is irritating me, is there any point in feeling that irritation? If I ignore it, will it go away? Choose your battles?

Part 2: Crash
I revisited these ideas later that night. I left with a hug and well wishes when my friend Colin collected me from her house. I had invited her out for one last night of Botswana fun but she deferred with too much packing to finish. Fair enough. Colin and I went to pursue one of the main (only?) forms of entertainment in the area, heading out to the bar. For a few different reasons I wasn’t drinking that night, but as I have long maintained, I can have as much fun at a good party as the average bear whether I’m drinking or not. It was a long night; I saw a lot of friends, had a great time and was more than ready to go home by the end of the night without the alcohol that often fuels the sort of stubbornness that is what successfully keeps the party going in my system.

In the parking lot many of the revelers were a bit too drunk to be driving, which is a constant danger of being on the road in Sub Saharan Africa (the deadliest place for road accidents in the world). Colin and I got in the car and waited while the cars ahead of us did spin outs and screwed around on the dirt parking lot ahead of us. The squealing tires and flying dirt set the stage for stupid driving, and we just continued to wait back until all of the cars had gotten on their way. We didn’t want to be near any of them on the road as we made our way home.

When the noise and lights of a majority of the cars that were ahead of us were gone, we slowly pulled out behind a guy with a girl on the back of his bike. Outside this particular bar there is a curb along the dirt that breaks in one very small, very specific place so that cars can enter the gate without having to go over this curb. It’s hard to see in the day and nearly impossible at night, so for the most part cars just come across the dirt wherever they can.

This wasn’t what happened that night.

The driver of the bike pulled out of the gate wobbling back and forth a bit, his balance thrown off as he was searching for the break in the curb. As he drove out towards the road he was directly in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, also searching for the break in the curb, but deterred from that by the presence of the bike in the way. The oncoming vehicle swerved (a bit unnecessarily from what I could see from my front row vantage point) and overcorrected, and proceeded to roll three or four times. In excruciatingly slow motion.

The noise was horrifying. The screeching of tires was brief, but the sound of the metal impact on the ground burst forth again and again. The dust that was kicked up and floated in the jarring lights of the headlamps of the car as it rolled.

I began repeating Colin’s name like a question, the fear pulsing through my veins and making his name the only logical thing to ask, as though I expected him to answer that no, we hadn’t actually just seen that. He made a move to get away from the scene but from somewhere else I heard my voice say hesitantly, and then more insistently, “No. We can’t”. He grunted at me and jumped out of the car. I could see people running from in front of me towards the now mangled SUV, which was behind me. They flashed in front of the windscreen like a movie.

Now I was alone, which felt more frightening than anything so I got out of the car and followed the guy who had been riding the bike, his passenger and Colin towards the scene. Through the glow of the headlights, in the hazy smoke of dust and broken glass in the road laid the silhouette of a person. As I got closer I realized it wasn’t a silhouette, it was an actual figure, and it took me a minute to realize that indeed this person might be dead. It was my turn to pause. Colin had recovered from his initial shock and was now attending to the man in the road, asking him questions to determine his identity and injuries.

He had been the passenger in the SUV, and he had been thrown from the vehicle, the driver suffered minor injuries. He had just been getting a lift from this bar to the next, and thus no one really knew who he was. Suddenly there was an influx of drunk people on the scene, they were everywhere. For the most part we all knew each other as most of the white people know the other white people in this country. Most of them were drunk, and a majority of them panicking and talking too loudly, or even screaming. Their voices echoed in my head and I shook it to try to get them out. Colin somehow corralled them and put them somewhere, while other people that, while drunk, were also functioning took over.

In the white ex pat community in Maun it seems people exist almost on their own planet. They are the ones who own or run the lodges and tourism and hunting industries, they are the children of missionaries and other do-gooders, they are the foreign pilots, and they are the “founders” who 20 years ago realized all the lucrative business that could be made in the delta. The common law of going through “procedure” in Botswana and waiting for things forever often don’t apply to them. They have set up their world so that they aren’t too incredibly bothered or influenced by the constraints of life for the other local people. They’ve created their own universe to contain whatever it is they want, and they operate by their own rules. The whites had the vehicle moved to the side of the road, the victim on the way to the hospital and nearly everyone who had witnessed or been a part of the crash gone from the scene before the local police even got there. I remember thinking somewhere in my brain that it might indeed be possible to get away with a murder if you were white and in Maun. The thought made me shudder. I recently heard someone refer to NG11, 12 and 13 (which are the numbers assigned to Seronga and the surrounding areas) as the last frontier. If this is true, then Maun is certainly the Wild West.

Someone called a paramedic, who had likely also just left the bar, and he arrived and assessed the man’s injuries. He called for a blanket, it was night, it was cold and the guy on the ground was at risk of shock. I wordlessly handed over my sweater, and walked over to the fence where all the local Batswana were standing silently observing the wreckage from their front yards.

From somewhere in the depths of my brain came the Setswana words for “give me a blanket,” and I was given one, which I then put on the man on the ground, my sweater was now underneath him protecting his back from the broken glass. I stood there, gazing at the man groaning in pain, a large gash across his face, a stream of blood trailing through his long ginger hair and onto a river on the pavement. Colin was still talking to people around there, sorting things out, and I suddenly realized I was shivering, left only in a tank top.

I walked back to the car and got in and waited for Colin to finish his heroic duties, as there was nothing left for me to do once they loaded the injured man into the makeshift ambulance on the way to the hospital. I sat there in the car, still cold, but mostly numb.

Part 3: The aftermath?

The accident had scared me, but fear was quickly replaced by going into the “deal with it” (also known as “make a plan”) mode that has become the mainstay of my way of life here. Cars wreck. The phone network is out. Malaria. No petrol for the generator. Ferries break. The food is gone. HIV. Water goes out. Children are hungry. Elephants trample. TB. Animals are beaten. People die. Moving on.

People with resources deal with these conditions by imposing the strength of their will and the power of their money into attempts they can make at controlling the nature and conditions of life here. People without resources must trudge along, allocating their meager resources in an attempt to manage misery, while hope, ambition and inspiration are slowly leeched from their spirits. They get by however they can.

I’ve noticed this side we don’t often react to these things emotionally, even though that may have been our human instinct once upon a time. In the bush in Botswana, we make a plan, we deal with the situation at hand so as to move forward with whatever activity we were interrupted from to deal with this newfound inconvenience. A life threatening car crash falls into the same realm as running out of petrol, a minor annoyance to be “sorted out”. And on to the next party. Never mind the blood in the road.

Keep going.

And this is the way it must be. Because eventually it will be dark, and then there are animals, it will be cold, it will be too hot, the petrol will finish, the gas will finish, the ferry can’t go over the river in the dark, both ferries are broken, the rain will come, the rain will finish, there’s a flood, there’s a drought, the children are hungry, people come-people go, the pump is broken, the water is gone, the road is washed out, the generator is broken, the parts, keys, food, materials are too far, the electricity might be coming, the power is gone. Some of these things we can control or prevent. Others we cannot. Any of these conditions can be dangerous or at least highly inconveniencing, and we must thus be prepared to mitigate or ward off the repercussions, and of course make a new plan. There is little control and virtually no predictability. Each move one makes must be weighed against any number of conditions and factors which just cannot be predicted and we thus exist in a state of constant preparation for events and conditions for which we can never reliably plan.

It may not appear so, but we’re quite busy.

It seems that amongst all the time I seem to have found in my life in Botswana the minutes allocated for feeling have grown small. Although sometimes it seems like all I do is feel and ruminate about and pay enormous amounts of time to my feelings, in some ways it seems they’ve also become compartmentalized. Things to be reacted to and dealt with and put away rather than… Felt. The time to feel has been downgraded in priority, things to promote more important (“survival?”) tasks fill the time that might have formerly been used to sort out feelings. Finding and preparing food, fetching or boiling water, securing or waiting for transport to get the above or internet, or airtime, communicating with those not immediately present, cleaning my body or clothing or space, tasks formerly predictable and easy and commandable now time consuming and elusive for all planning purposes.

Emotions have become like most household chores, something to deal with in order of importance. Laundry and dishes, priorities, they must be dealt with when there is water, whether I’m in the mood or not, because who knows how long the water will last or when it will come again. I’ll really figure out how I feel later, when I’ve figured out how I’m getting to location a, b or c, and most of the while in planning (a futile exercise) spent being frustrated, such a constant state as to mask any other minor sub category. Emotions are summoned forth over surprising things, (a tiny child carrying his sibling on his back, a herd of half naked children running towards me, a co-worker giving me a piece of his fish, another reading something he really wants to understand and asking me questions) but more likely I don’t react to things I perhaps should have an emotional reaction to (All five of your children are starving?/ Another of your siblings has died?/ You have HIV? I’m sorry?) The emotions remain in the queue until they demand expression, which can come either from an explosion of some sort of emotional outburst (not extremely culturally common here) or more likely by pushing them deeper. We avoid and do something else to “deal” with the festering emotions.

We drink. We have sex. We sleep. We space out. We want to feel, or we want not to feel, we want relief from our lives. We want to feel good, or at least not feel bad.

When you think about how aspects of the above can reliably contribute to HIV, it puts the epidemic in a whole new light, doesn’t it?

Village Chicken

“What do you want for dinner, babe?” he asks.

I pause, his increasingly liberal use of that particular endearment, which falls from his mouth as naturally as water, jarring me a bit. It brings back a few too many memories I’m not in the mood to recount, but I shake it off. I have a gorgeous shirtless man in a sarong, in my hut, asking me what I want for dinner. As in he’s going to cook for me, again.

This is becoming quite the set up. I live my village life, he lives his vacation life and we meet in the middle for dinner, which he prepares as we have a glass of wine and discuss the intricacies of our days and our lives. I have no idea how he pulls these dinners together, what with food and planning meals being one of my less than strong points, but whatever he cooks is amazing, even through we eat it cross legged on my floor. It encompasses so much of what I’ve missed so desperately since being here that I often find myself in a delirium of happiness. It’s a time when life is exceptionally beautiful.

He’s got his hand on the refrigerator door, which his extreme eco consciousness will not allow him to open until I’ve responded. He’s also like that with water, hyper vigilant of how much trickles by as he uses it, in a pretty extreme contrast to my habit of listening to the sound of my toilet running or sink dripping as a comforting symphony. Needless to say there are a few things about the current arrangement that would eventually have to be ironed out, but I remind myself that it is temporary, which seems to make nothing matter too much.

I look up from my position on the floor of my hut, where I am making a sad attempt at painting a village scene with watercolors, an exercise that appears to be the extent of my inspired attempts at creativity. I raise my eyebrow incredulously in answer. He knows what’s in there better than I do, hell he put most of the food there.

“I dunno.” I finally answer. “That’s your arena, remember? Whereas mine is generally cleaning and…movie selection?” I looking around as though to search for some other task that falls within my realm of expertise but just shrug and smile. “But so long as there’s red wine to go with it, I’m sure I don’t care.” How we came to be in this pseudo relationship so quickly is beyond me. But I miss the feeling, and despite the temporary nature of this one, I let myself fall into its familiar comfort.

He smiles, ruffling my hair. “Why don’t we go into the village and have someone kill and clean us a chicken, and I’ll roast it over the fire I’ve been using to cook the beans outside. I noticed there’s lots of firewood around since they’ve been cutting space for the electricity.”

“Sure” I said. In my mind I was thinking this shouldn’t be too difficult, there’s always chickens running around, roaming as free as the livestock that threaten the safety of any road journey in a car in this country. “Village chicken. Good idea.”

My usual source of chicken generally tends to be when Bana Ba Metsi (the school for naughty boys up the road about 55 kms) puts their “chicken for sale” sign up when I happen to be driving by the school with someone who is willing to stop. Or when I get it from Maun (boneless, skinless, and heavenly) or best yet, from Nandos or Barcellos in Maun. They cook it up for me with peri peri sauce. But in Seronga, the chicken selection is… Limited. It’s a bit of a delicacy, despite all the little bastards crowing all night and waking me up in the morning.

So we set out. I was lucky enough to remember the verb for “to buy” and was able to impress him with my Setswana skills, except for the fact that “chicken” and “grandma” sound very similar in Setswana. I quickly found several people confused as to why I wanted to buy their grandmother. They became even more alarmed when they thought I not only wanted them to sell me their grandmother, but I wanted them to kill and clean her first. I had a few younger drunk guys who looked like they may have been willing, depending on how much Chibuku they would be able to purchase with the proceeds of the transaction.

Once I sorted out the chicken/grandma misunderstanding we had slightly less confusion, but still no bird. I went into all of the yards whose occupants I greet every morning on the way to the clinic but no one had any chickens to sell. The Zambian was confused; he had never been in an African village in any of the many countries he where he had lived where he hadn’t been able to quickly and cheaply procure a village chicken.

After about a half hour he began to make a plan B for dinner, but at this point I was on a mission. Like the homicidal apple trees from “The Wizard Of Oz,” there was no way, under any circumstances that I was willing to admit that Seronga was anything less than what it ought to be, and certainly not that it was lacking in any of the quintessential qualities of an “African village”. My little village was just as African and contained just as many village chickens as any other, if not more so. We WOULD have roast chicken for dinner.

Out came the stubborn streak, in addition to the cell phone. I started making calls to supplement my impromptu village tour. Many people told me to head out to “the lands,” or to try this person or that one, but none of these leads proved fruitful. I began asking after (and chasing) the chickens running around through the road, but when I asked, no one could sell me THAT chicken as it seems they weren’t the owner.

“What if I just killed this chicken right here?” I began to ask.

The old ladies laugh at my exaggerated pantomime, not even bothering to call my bluff.

Finally, about 45 minutes after the mission began my phone trilled with a number I don’t recognize. It’s the lady who owns the tuck shop where I buy my cell phone airtime when I’m between trips to Maun. She wants me to come to her shop in ten minutes and she’ll take me to the place where I can get the chicken. I smile triumphantly at the Zambian.
We collected some firewood from the trees that had been chopped down to make way for the electricity and walked towards the tuck shop.

I later heard that some of my female friends in the village-who had exhibited an acutely strange combination of thrilled joy for me that I was seen publicly with a man, and jealousy that I was seen publicly with a white man, were utterly scandalized when they witnessed us walking down the road, with the Zambian carrying the bulk of the firewood while I carried the dead cleaned chicken in a plastic bag at arm’s length.

“Lorato.” They chided me the next day in hushed tones, looking around to make certain no one else was listening as they recounted the details of my scandal. “Why did you let that man carry your firewood? That is a woman’s work! Now he is not going to think you are a good woman and he’s not going to want to marry you! You better hope he will have sex with you and you will get pregnant so at least he knows you can make babies.” They advised me earnestly. There have been few greater joys here in my time in Seronga than when I told them that not only did he carry the firewood but he cooked the chicken, and that, sorry girls, I had no intention of marrying him, or even trying to get him to marry me. They were mortified. I was ecstatic.

We arrived at the tuck shop where a gaggle of teenaged girls from the junior secondary school had gathered to buy flavored ice, sold in plastic sandwich baggies and a common staple of the children of Seronga’s diet. The tuck shop owner had decided that rather than close down the shop herself these girls would take us to the place to get the chicken. As they were teenage girls, there was no end to the giggling and nudging each other as they looked back at the Zambian and I. He reached out as though to take my hand and I slapped his away, but any hope I had of the village not assuming he was my boyfriend was futile anyways so I just shook my head and smirked at him.

We finally arrived at the house where one of the girls announced our intention of buying a chicken to the ancient woman seated on the ground cutting up a massive bloody carp (called bauble fish here, but still with just as many whiskers as a typical American catfish). She gestured as though to offer some of the fish for us to buy as well and I shook my head and turned away from the bleeding mound, more certain than ever that I would indeed pay whatever they asked for them to clean in addition to killing our chicken.

It was time for the show. A few of the girls began to chase the chickens around the yard, their embarrassment of their rural way of life when witnessed by two Americans overruled by their fear and respect for the punishment that might be inflected by the old woman on the ground if they did not successfully catch and kill this chicken, thus earning the old women money for traditional beer. One of the girls finally caught the chicken by the neck and thrust it triumphantly at us. I looked at the Zambian questioningly, having no idea in my pretty little head about what constitutes the ideal qualities of a village chicken.

“It’s all going to be tough anyways, this is Village Chicken,” He shrugged, describing it as though it were a name brand. “It doesn’t matter.”

I nodded at the girl to hand the chicken off to what might be either her mother or grandmother, who then made as though she was going to break its neck right there until I quickly covered my ears and shut my eyes. She laughed at my gory murder movie reaction and walked through the fence to the courtyard near the house from which I promptly heard a sickening last cluck and a snap. Seconds later she emerged with the dead chicken, its lifeless head now a handle by which to carry the bird. I shuddered and asked one of the teenaged girls to ask her to clean it. She looked pained, which cleared right up at the offer of ten additional pula.

Within twenty minutes we were on our way back to the hut, and that evening, we did indeed enjoy a roast village chicken. My capacity for cooking was of course, not built, but I do have an idea of who to go to next time I have someone offer to make it…. Maybe.

Phone/Home: a story of community integration

Yesterday I traveled from Seronga to Sepopa (1.25 hours over water, about 45kms as the crow flies from Seronga, but there’s no crows providing public transport, so over the river we go) via the clinic boat ambulance, and was then picked up by the Sepopa Clinic ambulance to travel the rest of the way by road to the district offices at Gumare. This route cuts the travel time on the journey from anywhere in the arena of 3 to 7 hours one way by road down to between 2.5 to 4 hours with the water/road combo. It’s definitely the way to travel, and I was excited to be taking the boat again as our ambulance boat has been in the shop for about 10 months.

Maybe it was my excitement over being on the water again, perhaps it was my rush to call the Sepopa ambulance to collect us, but somewhere in the transfer from the boat to the truck I managed to drop my phone. My very expensive, internet enabled, bright orange Sony Ericsson that had been a gift from a friend. I had just decried the fact that my phone was one of a kind in the delta, and was probably going to get stolen on my blog the day before.

I didn’t realize I had dropped it until I got to Gumare and was going to take the Sepopa clinic ambulance driver’s number so I could call to find out when they would be heading back to Sepopa. I couldn’t find my phone anywhere. I could hardly believe that I’d made the hour long journey without needing to text someone, but that’s apparently what happened. Panicked, I dumped the contents of my bag out onto the white sandy road in Gumare and began freaking out.

The nurse, the driver, and villagers in the back of the ambulance immediately began to look around and offer their phones to help me. A women riding in the front of the ambulance whom I didn’t know was already asking my number, which she then reported was ringing. Someone answered. I dashed to the back of the ambulance to see who had it. None of them. I ran back to the woman, confused. She handed me her phone. I asked the man who had answered how he had gotten my phone, completely bewildered at this point. It was Tom-Tom, a guy from Seronga who works for the Okavango Houseboats. They do transfers for clients who don’t fly into Seronga across the water from Sepopa to their various houseboats and bush camps along the river and into Seronga. He told me he found and recognized it was my phone and would be taking it to the police in Seronga.

It turns out my friend the police sergeant, who I’ve been working with on the Men’s Sector Committee as well as the social worker had by chance called my phone and had spoken to Tom-Tom and told him to bring it to the police station when he returned to Seronga. The police sergeant continued to answer the phone for the rest of the day, because, he explained, he didn’t want someone to call and get my voicemail and be worried, because he knows that Lorato always answers her phone (I think this caused a little confusion/alarm for subsequent people who called my phone only to have it answered by the Seronga Police, but we’ve got all that cleared up).

My phone was missing for less than an hour, and was waiting for me (along with some teasing) at the police station when I returned to Seronga that evening. From the time it got lost until I was reunited with it, no less than 4 people from Seronga area came up to me (in Gumare, Sepopa, at the hoof and mouth gate near Ikgoga) to inform me (in various languages) that my phone was at the police station in Seronga.

When I was reunited with my bright phone (which in the end, despite me trying to be discrete about having such a flash phone, was the reason it was returned to me) I called the managers of the Houseboats and the owner in Maun to compliment them on having such a trustworthy and honest employee, as well as thanking Tom-Tom and giving him a small reward and a note.

I was so touched by my village’s concern for me and amazed that my phone, which is likely worth at least a month’s wages around these parts, was returned to me. Thank you, Seronga. Bottom line? I heart Seronga and Seronga hearts me! (no matter what I say next week... Or tomorrow!)

House of Pain

The winds you know so well and the ones I am learning the songs of blow through this place, this city village we each think of as our own for different reasons. The winds blow out of doors and yet they come inside here, through this house, swirling and sashaying among the bones and rafters of all that is left of a place that may have once been a home. They bring with them a chill so comprehensive it remains in the house even when I throw open the curtains and the sun shines in. The house radiates cold in this generally hot place, and amazingly it doesn’t appear to be a feat of ingenuity in engineering. It’s as though all the passion that once lit it up with the fires of your love and rage for each other imploded into some supernova and was sucked out into some dark hole. And all that remains is this particular dark abyss.

This house is yours but it is I who dwell here. Maybe not live in it, but stay in it, hold keys to, refer to and use the same form of the verb I use to describe my own home in my village when people ask me where I stay. In this house we exist amongst the chaos and destruction of your former life. I wander through hallways and sleep in rooms with ghosts and I find myself in the shambles of someone else’s broken past. I call it yours, and know it is, and yet you’re not here, and all I can see of you in it is the sadness that descends onto your shoulders as you walk through the door. We can all tangibly feel it but on you I can actually see it. It trails behind you and drips down on you and threatens to suffocate you and I can’t free you from it no matter how I might want to try.

Despite being full of people this hallow empty wind makes the house seem vacant. I try to fill it, with people and food and laughter and light and music but the oppressive darkness always pushes through. The memories or pain or something I can’t quite see clearly follows us all around like shadows, if that were possible in the darkness. I can’t see it or name it or fix it or change it because it’s not mine, and for once I don’t want to.

The person I used to be would have picked up the broken and scattered pieces of you, meticulously cleaned them and forced them back together in the way I saw fit. I’d have created the image that I wanted to see, rather than waiting for you to reveal yourself to me or learning the one that is you, as you are, who you were. I’d do it; if for no other reason than to ignore the broken shards of me that are what really need healing and repair. Alternatively I’d look as deeply within you as you’d let me, I’d dig and pick and excavate and find some deep seated potential and I’d fall in love with it, not the you you are but the person I could see you becoming if only, if only- whether you wanted to become it or not.

We are each here in this house, this freezing house, together, two bodies, two beings, mostly alone together. Occasionally we bump into each other in the darkness. Sometimes we run directly at each other full speed smashing ourselves together in some attempt to avoid the dark and the shadows, hoping between the two of us to create some spark that can chase away this dark and this cold and this pain. We cling to each other for warmth and yet we feel nothing through this numbing, encompassing cold. You touch me, but I can’t feel you.

We’re in this house, the broken pieces in each of us here scattered around us. Yet we are not completely able to connect, to fill the cracks and chasms, to help each other become whole again. I rub the salve on your hands, hoping that in some way it can reach your broken heart. I wish it could sooth and heal you for your own sake. I know I’m not it, I never was and never could be but I can’t witness the ways you ache and not feel pain myself and want relief of some sort, for both of our sakes.

When Seronga Gives You Lemons

A story of my eternal African pessimistic optimism.

I recently returned to Seronga from training and holiday and have basically been away from my little village for somewhere near a month. Coming back has never been easy for me, and it’s the end of the Botswana winter, so despite the “lake effect” temperature regulation of the world’s largest inland delta outside my door, it still damn cold. People are sick with colds and flu and the clinic is pretty busy.

Not only has the clinic staff been busy but recently it seems as though I, too have been spending more time at the clinic than I particularly care to. Many of my projects at this point take place more in the community with various villagers and other organizations in Seronga. Perhaps the clinic is trying to tell me they miss me. Or perhaps they just realize I’m basically free labor and have decided to take more advantage of my skills. Either way it seems I’ve been put in charge of the World Breast Feeding week activities at the clinic.

As always I dislike being in charge of anything here, which is of course ironic given my tendency to love to control and be in charge of things in my former life. Here it is so clear to me that if I do things for people it ends up disempowering them more than helping. Teaching is another hurdle to overcome with cultural differences making it a bit difficult for me to try to teach those who may be older than me and unwilling to learn or admit they don’t know how to do something. I usually try to find a way to help people do things for themselves in such a way that they don’t have to lose any face.

The good news in all this is that in some ways I’m improving my listening skills. Sort of. I’m getting to a point where I can listen on average about ten seconds longer than I used to be able to before butting in with commentary, opinions and my personal favorite, solutions to whatever statements the speaker has yet to even make. It seems that my headstrong idealism rears its ugly stubborn head on occasion with less alarming frequency but what is likely increased intensity. I try and tackle it and keep quiet and smile politely like I know would be the better idea, but often fail. In attempting to keep myself in line I usually lose the battle quickly and end up pounding my fist on the nearest somewhat solid structure for emphasis while making an impassioned point attacking whichever injustice I’m observing (or imagining). I don’t blame the people here for thinking I’m crazy.

The aforementioned habits make me less than optimal for leading such campaigns which must be based in teamwork in order to be successful, but there is also my small personal issue rooted in the matter of the mixed messages about breast feeding being sent by the administration in this country. It’s one of those development things wherein the research and studies being done on (and to and in) this country to determine the best ways to prevent HIV takes forever to actually get disseminated. Botswana is one of the richest and more developed countries in Africa, yet we still suffer from a slowness in both movement supplies and information that is brain rattlingly frustrating.

Right now Harvard is working in partnership with hospitals in Gaborone performing studies about on the transmission of HIV through breast milk and the preliminary findings are that it may not be as big of a risk as previously thought. As Peace Corps volunteers we’ve been hearing about these trials for a year, although the information is not yet published. As various places in the country (read: rural and including Seronga) are often suffering from distribution problems with getting the formula where it needs to go, it seems a reasonable solution might be to encourage women who have a record of good adherence to ARV’s to breast feed.

Obviously the research isn’t complete and hasn’t been published (One of the frustrating things about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is that we have trainings wherein the best and the brightest are brought in to speak to us about the latest and greatest in the research and projects being launched to determine the best practices aimed at the reduction of transmission of HIV in Botswana. While I’m grateful to have such valuable information, it’s very, very difficult to attempt to convince any of my colleagues at the clinic to consider the possibilities. I’m not asking them to change anything, but even to consider our responsibility in not perpetuating misinformation is nearly impossible. It’s a very “written-rule/by-the-book” sort of culture, which can sometimes stand in the way of innovation, which I truly believe to be essential to this country slowing the spread of this virus. But I digress.) and I’m not about to suggest anyone do anything that might potentially put babies at risk of contracting HIV, but I feel we have a certain moral responsibility to honestly education women on their options, using the most up to date research we can give them in a land of no other resources through which a woman could do her own independent research to help her make a decision.

The official government sanctioned and distributed message is that HIV positive women are counseled on the advantages and disadvantages of breast feeding and are allowed to make the choice in the end for themselves. They are then in theory provided with formula with which to safely feed their babies should they choose. The reality I’ve found is that mothers are basically forced- through clinical coercion combined with public stigma- to formula feed. Again the importance of rule following as part of the culture prevents certain levels of critical questioning and open discussion, women just do as they’re told.

Formula feeding can be a risky endeavor when the supply of formula is often interrupted, the water and sanitation are difficult to maintain, and depending on the mother’s level of health, access to nutrition, adherence to ARV’s and other measures of PMTCT during pregnancy, breast feeding could be a way to at least help the baby along through its first few months when those vitamins and immunities are so essential. Just a few more pieces of this problematic puzzle.

So despite my general refusal to be in charge, and in addition to my incredibly extensive (read: ga gona siepe- which means there is nothing.) knowledge about anything related to breast feeding, I’m the boss. A bit reluctantly.

So after a full day (which is really a half day as per the culture of Botswana---man is it going to be hard to come back to the States after this) of World Breast Feeding Week planning activities [(I’m sure I’ll write more later, but all I’m saying right now is that when I’m in charge it means the babies are gonna race, two categories-runners and crawlers- to determine which baby is healthiest. I know there is almost no correlation but the people at the clinic seemed confused and intrigued when I suggested it, and so here we go. American culture exchange day!!!!) which is incidentally the first week in August for those of you who may be interested in commemorating] I was a little tired and frustrated and struggling to decide how I would spend the rest of my day.

It was a warm day, but windy, typical July weather which is the sort of cold warm confusion that I’ve come to think of as typically African winter. The sun shines with a lessened intensity and the wind is enough to keep you on your toes. The nights are extremely cold and yet the days get just hot enough in between the nights that one almost forgets the cold which has come before and will come behind each day. The dead of the Botswana winter is very much like a Minnesota fall or spring, so it feels very familiar in a confusing way to me, which is, when I think about it, how I’ve come to feel about Seronga.

As I’ve said, being that it is winter, it’s also cold and flu season in Seronga. One of the nurses, seeing that I had that bored look on my face which usually means I’m about to come up with an excuse to leave the clinic to go work on one of my other community projects, asked me to pack ascorbic acid (vitamin c).

The clinic is both the hospital and the pharmacy for the people of Seronga. The clinic is divided into several areas according to function. There’s an injection area, and area to dress wounds, a small maternity ward, and another room that would be like urgent care. In the consulting room one nurse consults the patients to determine what is wrong with them, and then in the dispensary the other nurse reads what is written on the patient’s health cards and dispenses the drugs that the first one recommends. The drugs come in in huge bulk containers like you would get at Sam’s club, which are then divided into small seed bags in common numbers of doses and labeled accordingly. The task of pill counting and packing is undertaken by anyone who happens to be around and not doing anything, and is mind numbingly boring, and most definitely not what I had in mind when I agreed to come to Africa to work with HIV, but something I often find myself asked to do.

I quickly packed a few hundred pills to show I was doing something the clinic staff considers to be “useful” while I plotted my escape. I decided to go next door to Okavango Community Trust to see what, if anything, was happening there.

A few weeks back I had stopped by the OCT office to try to send a fax and had promised one of the women I would come back again and try to help her feel more comfortable speaking English by chatting with her. I walked through the gate to find all of the staff at the Trust sitting in a circle in the yard. How they justify getting paid for this I will never know, but I try not to spend too much time around it because it makes me a little mad, as I know they are getting paid a decent salary to do just that, when that money could be used for so much more, or they could at least be doing something tangible to benefit the community. But how do you convince someone who is getting paid to do nothing that they should increase their workload to something, which then might potentially come with responsibility and dare I say actual stress of some sort?

I greeted everyone and sat down. I tried to make a little conversation and nobody was really interested in speaking English, which was what I explained I was here to do. The woman I had met a few weeks back was “tired” which seems to be a constant ailment in Seronga. “Tired” to me can generally be roughly translated to mean “bored”, which was what I was about to become in this crowd. For my hyperactive American brain this is something to be avoided at all costs, but I’ve found within Seronga this is often an only slightly negative state of being, and preferable to suffering through its alternative, which is being “too busy”.

So I quickly racked my brain for something to occupy and amuse me while not feeling such an incredible waste of time. I vaguely remembered that there was a lemon tree back by an abandoned house on the property (which is in and of itself a sad remnant of another community project which was sort of neglected and then basically destroyed by the very community it was put there to benefit, but that again is another story). I asked if perhaps there were any lemons growing right now. A small squabble broke out amongst the six of so people sitting in the circle about who was going to take me back to the lemon tree, or if they should just tell me there were no lemons (the little Setswana I can hear just comes in very handy sometimes.) I smiled and told them that I knew there were lemons and could someone please just take me back there?

My Setswana amused one of the old men, and he jumped up to take me, dragging along with him a reluctant younger woman. We walked back through the gates and past the abandoned house and toward the lemon tree. It was down a hill a ways, just short of the delta, so the wind that came over the hill was warmer in the sun. The smell of lemons wafted through on the breeze. I was briefly confused by the smell I always associated with summer coming at me in the dead of an African winter, but have come to know this constant slight sense of confusion to be normal.

I looked at it and was amazed at how many lemons were growing there, and quickly realized that this was a great resource that the community was just wasting. Not to mention a great source of cold preventing vitamin c. All my remaining shit attitude drifted away of the lemony breeze and I became excited at the potential I had uncovered to “build capacity” in my favorite sort of way, which was to help the community take better advantage of something already plentiful in their community. My eternal militant optimist busted forth from the darkness of my mind, and I became more and more excited to a point where I had eradicated flu (and probably HIV and TB) in Seronga in my little brain. Wishful thinking ;-).

I filled my bag with lemons and explained to the people in the circle that I would go home and make some foods with these lemons and come back the next day to have them taste them and teach them how to make some things with lemon, and by the way have you all ever tried lemons on fish? My enthusiasm was slightly catching, and the woman who had wanted to speak English was excited and I bounced off in a cloud of lemony scented pleasure and eager fervor.

I walked back through the village to my hut with a big Disney Princess smile, as opposed to what can occasionally be my Icabod Crane tendency towards shoving my nose quite antisocially and culturally insensitively into a book. I will not apologize for this habit as sometimes you do what you gotta do to get through the day as Seronga’s local celebrity (read: white person). For a long time there has been no such thing as anonymity for me in this village and sometimes I need to be mentally somewhere else to attempt to ignore this fact (I feel ya, Britney;-). The book reading used to occasionally become a really interesting habit that often caused me to risk my life when I would be reading something as I walked and nearly walked into one of the randomly placed grave sized holes that had been dug for the electricity poles. It was a close call more times than I care to admit. The things would pop up out of nowhere, completely unexpected when you consider how long anything usually takes here, these holes would appear quickly each day in different locations. Needless to say I made it through that little minefield with no major incidents. Just another little love tap from Seronga.

I got to my house and busied myself with sifting the tiny bugs out of the flour (a practice which disgusts and appalls me, and which I would avoid at nearly any cost except that the last five bags of flour I purchased already had them in it, and I cannot afford to keep throwing the shit out. I’m grossed out but am told that this is what most of the locals do-I guess the others just cook with them in there. I try not to think about it and keep repeating to myself, “When in Rome, when in Rome, when in Rome.”) to the beats of some new music that I had recently pirated from a friend (no shame, I’ve got no shame). I screwed up two batches of lemon bread nearly completely (Botswana has taught me to salvage, salvage in any ways possible) but was able to get something together to bring the people at OCT the next day.

I arrived bearing lemon bread pieces which in the States would have been sampled by a whole office but here in Botswana covered three and a half people (likely three but I begged one of the women to save a piece for the old man who had taken me back and climbed the tree to get the lemons down for me, but I very much doubt that happened. Whenever there is food present it is taken as custom that as much of whatever is there is supposed to be consumed immediately, I believe I’ve gone into the policy with leftovers before ie; there are none…ever. There is never any concern as to make sure there is enough for anyone else, and the idea of being rude by grabbing half of whatever is offered to you regardless of how many other people may be present is completely and totally foreign). I heard the Setswana words for “tastes good” while hearing the critiques of the item (too sweet) kindly stated for me in English, followed immediately by the inquiries as to why didn’t I bring more and when will I be bringing it again? “Thank you” is a statement I’ve come to not even dream might be heard.

I smiled through what were very close to gritted teeth and repeated my promise to teach whoever wanted to learn once they got hold of a bread pan and measuring cups (which can be purchased in the nearest town of Shakawe, and where a majority of the residents of Seronga go at least occasionally for some sort of supplies, or could even be borrowed from neighbors). Where there had been enthusiasm about the idea yesterday, today there was again the glazed over boredom and excuses as to why this baking project would be an impossible undertaking, why can’t I just make the bread again for them, I already know how to do it. I politely took my leave and went back to the lemon tree, this time collecting lemons to attempt to make lemonade for the staff at the clinic.

I bought some sugar at the co-op and mixed up several batches of lemonade for the staff at the clinic, touting it as “an American drink that we have in the summer,” while also babbling about the different uses of lemon and local honey (available care of our resident bee-keeper through the small store in town) in tea and as health improving “muti” (Setswana word for medicine, particularly “traditional” which in my culture would be “homeopathic” except here there doesn’t seem to be any requirement of any sort of evidence of these particular remedies working for what they are reported to heal, but then I suppose that is true of some things in the States as well.) with as much charm and enthusiasm as a “seen on T.V.” host of some late night infomercial. The response towards this effort was as enthusiastic as that reception at OCT, and I was again struck at how much I appreciate good old American polite dishonesty when it comes to my cooking slash drink making skills.

The whole episode reflects something I’ve found here, which is my seemingly never ending ability to cultivate hope and excitement, at least in myself, in this village that seems to so desperately lack both. I’ve often thought of myself as a pessimist, due to the fact that I can some up with 17 reasons your idea won’t work before you completely finish explaining it without blinking an eyelash. But here in Botswana it seems I’ve found new and formerly untapped wells of optimism, I often finding myself blatantly refusing that there are aspects of this or that idea or project that can’t work, and my problem solving skills have become frightening on occasion. I can “make a plan” to get things that might seem impossible on the surface accomplished or completed. It’s a quality I’ve come to admire in myself (but am, of course still very intimately in touch with my less endearing qualities-see above), and hope I can continue to harness it more effectively (and appropriately) when coupled with my newfound habit of patience (repeat to self: “will into reality, will into reality, will into reality”) which has come a long way in my time here.

We’ll see how it all goes after Breast Feeding Week ;-)