She is the type of girl who is scuffing her sneakers in the dirt of the path that will take her from smoothly athletic tomboy into a slightly more awkward teen before she slips them off and slides her feet into the kitten heels of a self assured young woman.
She is in that beautifully blatant stage of realizing the world offers bigger things to yearn for, even though she’s not quite sure for what she might long.
She could stretch out her fingers, previously curled up and clamped down by the oppressing force of expectations and reach out into a world of the unknown and previously uncontemplated to grasp the sharp edges of whatever challenge might present itself and heave herself over the barrier. She would do it with style, grace and grit, and I think this is what draws me to her.
She is in a ripe position for a mentor, and it’s something I have been aching to provide, to share the wisdom that has been imparted on me and that I have gained over the years. I could see she was craving a challenge and there was nothing I would love more than to be the one to challenge her, to guide her, to advise her. Call it my bossy streak, call it my histrionic personality, call it what you will but I have such a burning desire to mentor this girl.
And she wants to be mentored. She unabashedly calls and texts me, suggesting “now”, when I ask when she’d like to meet. She is polite, extremely inquisitive, and is always willing to openly explain to me things I don’t understand, to translate the curiosities of her culture to me. She is one of perhaps three Herero in the entire school, she should be an outcast by any standard there is, and yet she’s not, they all know her and accept her. She is of her people, and most importantly she is unwilling to forsake her own culture for a blind transition into mine, which so many here want to see as superior without proper dissection. She knows her culture; she knows the parts she wants and the parts she wants none of. This satisfies me greatly, as it is a thin line I must walk with many people here, to learn about their culture and also share mine without the worry that they think I want to turn them into “African-Americans”. She looks past my whiteness; she forgives my English, and wants what I have to give.
Whichever one of us chose the other matters not, as with other instances of brilliant serendipity we both knew we needed each other. I secretly smile to myself, whether I’m pleased that the gaping insecurities that lie within me like still ponds that I’m constantly stumbling into and soaking myself in are unapparent to her, or if she can sees me for all that I am and chooses me for someone who has something to offer her matters not.
She has seen a spark in me. And I have seen one in her. We’ve chosen each other and I silently thank every woman who has helped me and pushed me to reach this point, the one from which I can continue the circle. I have been searching for a realm in which I can feel accomplishment, and she provides an avenue I am familiar with. It will be a win/win situation.
I noticed her at the first practice. Average height, lanky, with the kind of athleticism that comes with a little extra push out the door of the assembly line of creation and honed by a confidence instilled in her by God only knows who. I think I initially thought she looked like someone I had met in the village, someone’s daughter met in passing. She gave off that certain sense of familiarity that makes you certain you’ve known her before.
She was great at softball, one of the only one of the bunch who could actually throw and hit, and she was constantly yelling at the others to play harder, smarter. She wasn’t intimidated by the boys on the team, and while she didn’t play in a show off type way, the grace of her natural movements drew your eye to her. In time, I came to realize I had been thinking she reminded me of myself at her age, although whether a generous personal enhancement of myself in my memory occurred is a possibility.
I was working on batting with some of the other girls and she ran up and somehow managed to get herself in the line of fire. The bat struck her squarely on the back of the head with a resounding thump. She immediately fell to her knees, cradling her head in her hands. I knelt down next to her, seeing the tears that had sprung spontaneously from her eyes fall to the dirt, as her jaw fixed, gritting her teeth together in an attempt to prevent any more from escaping. The other girls clucked “sod-dy, sod-dy” which always sounds a little strange to me, when even those who don’t speak so much as a whisper of English will comfort a baby or someone who is hurt with the word “sorry” repeated. I guess they don’t have an appropriate Setswana equivalent.
Eventually the 2 male coaches sent the rest of the teams off to run a few laps and I helped her up, asking a few questions in the English I knew she understood in an attempt to sound like I could authoritatively diagnose a concussion or some other type of head injury (which I cannot, but I was doing a damn bit better than the other two adults on the scene when I determined that we would need ice- which they were at a loss as to how to provide. They just stared at me blankly when I asked for it. You’d think this would have taught us our lesson about being prepared with a first aid kit, but we were no more prepared the next day when a kid took a ball in the face and ended up bleeding all over the place. Great).
I led her down the path to the main area of the school where the teachers housing was with the plan of checking all the houses until I found one with ice. It seemed important to keep her talking (who knows how hard of a hit she had taken- right on the back of the noggin-really!) and so I asked her her name, (Bame, which means “mine” in Setswana) where her home village is, ect. We eventually found some ice and Bame had taken my cell number and quickly endeared herself to me.
A few days later after softball practice I had retreated to the computer lab at school to write for my blog while there was electricity. Several other girls found me and wanted to sit around chatting in Setswana and hang out, and I told them they either had to sit quietly or go so that I could focus. They tried several times and couldn’t stay quiet so finally I banished them and they went outside giggling. Bame came in so quietly I didn’t even notice she was there as I wrote the entry about the girls and boys softball teams. She was quietly reading over my shoulder and suddenly she exclaimed “That’s exactly how it is! The pregnant girls and all of them wear skirts!” She smiled. “How do you do that?”
“What?” I asked.
“Write things as they are, who are you writing to, how do you know what to write about” A million questions tumbled out of her mouth. I smiled, at this point completely distracted from what I was doing, but with the most sincere sense that she was really the thing I was meant to be paying attention to anyway. I explained the concept of a blog, and told her I was writing the story of my life here for people back home, and that I hoped to publish it as a book someday. When I had asked her about her goals and dreams on our walk to the teachers quarters the other day she had listed off about five, including writing, being a gospel singer and an actress.
Our chat continues, and I am given the opportunity to launch into one of my unrehearsed pseudo speeches, in which I speak directly from my soul about the ways in which I’ve followed my dreams, and thus of course she can follow hers, no matter what they are and no excuses. No of course it won’t be easy but then how often have you done things worth doing that weren’t hard, at least initially, at first? But I assure her that it is absolutely her personal responsibility to reach for the stars, - she can do it and I absolutely believe in the promise and possibility that I see in front of me.
As I make these declarations I can tell I believe them wholeheartedly by the way my hands get cold, and begin to shake, and I notice that my voice trembles ever so slightly, and spouts out of me altogether too quickly. I can feel my eyes shining as though someone has flicked on the high beams in my brain and they are shining through not only my eyes, but also my face, which begins to hurt with the wattage at which I am smiling.
It’s an experience I’ve only ever had when falling passionately (and often tragically, dramatically) in love with the noun-like trilogy of a person, place or idea. It rings with the flowing logic of truth, and I feel the passion of my life being awakened inside me. I recently asked my mother over transcontinental long distance what her passion in life was, and when she in turn asked me I surprised myself when the unpremeditated answer came flowing out of me-
“My passion is reaching people, and helping them grow, in finding their strengths and helping them foster them, when I can see learning in growth happening in someone’s eyes, when they realize their worth and the potential that I have seen in them all along.”
For me, this can even sometimes be in telling people something they don’t want to hear, and I’ve done it, because there is nothing better than that feeling of understanding and caring and connection. I hesitate to call it truth, because what is that really, and who can possess it enough to dole it out to others? I could perhaps settle for calling it beauty, as it is the same feeling I get when I am moved by a work of art, an expression of music, a fleeting irreplaceable moment.
Sitting in the computer lab, we keep talking. She tells me about her life and her goals, and I look at her in wonder. It seems such a simple thing, a bright young girl who wants to do something, and yet it feels to me like so long since I’ve seen one. As it gets dark it occurs to me that I have to get going. She reaches over to help me pick up my bag when I see a silver ring flashing on her finger. Jewelry is not very common in this village, especially not on a young girl.
I grabbed her wrist and examined her hand. The ring looked so familiar. I faced her palm towards me. The ring is inscribed “FEAR NOT.” It was mine. It must have been amongst the things that had been stolen from my house a few months back, and had somehow come to be in her possession. I had failed to even notice it was missing until now. There had been a long story behind how I came to have the ring, and I had made a point of bringing it with me to Bots, somehow knowing ahead of time that its message would be something I would need to remind myself again and again. When I first came to Seronga I had worn as a wedding ring, finding it easier to just hold up my hand and let people believe I was married rather than explain THAT convoluted chain of events. I had worn it exactly as she was now, with the inscription toward the inside of my hand.
The realization of the fact that this girl, this small woman, this person who made me feel like I had just found a buried treasure was wearing a ring I used to wear to reassure myself that things would be fine here struck me, at that moment, as both poignant and hilarious. I was again reminded that indeed things will be fine, or perhaps even great. There is nothing to fear as the universe will continue to find a way to put things right, and will send you little reminders of this from time to time. The ring, like me, had ended up exactly where it was supposed to be.
We have continued on, she and I. She is the main reason the girl’s group I’ve started works. I’ve had her over to watch movies at my place, and she has written a story I’m trying to help her get published in the sub-district newsletter. (I’ve posted it here on my blog. I find it to be a powerful piece that beautifully illustrates the factors that lead to the high transmission of HIV in this country and gives an accurate account of teenage pregnancy at her school. She’s excited to have an international audience! I’m ridiculously proud of her.) I hope to eventually help her write some articles for the district or maybe even national newspaper.
She brings me back, this one. During times when I just want to say f*ck it, I think of her and it all makes a little more sense. She helps give me purpose and reminds me what I’m striving for- in Seronga, in the Peace Corps, in my life. In my attempts to be her mentor, and to encourage her to work hard and reach for her dreams and live up to her potential and steer the course of this village and probably this country, she has led me to try harder to do the same in myself. She has already given me so much more than I could ever hope to give. Even when things are desperate, or annoying, or depressing, or whatever they can be here (and my how they run the gambit) when I think of her and the other girls that I work with I’m reminded of how much I’ve been given. Every day I am at least once reminded of the presence of my pulse, and a passion through my veins; a condition with which I did not find myself afflicted in my former life. I am grateful.
Bame’s article for the newsletter is as follows. This is the third or fourth version and she worked very hard on it. I want to give a disclaimer that it’s very common to have a bit of a morality lesson in any articles written in this country so that’s what the bit at the end is about. I’ve given this article to several village leaders in the hopes that from the words of one of their own children they will be motivated to begin the conversation that can create change in this village. As with all my hopes and dreams for this place, we shall see, but whatever happens, I consider this to be an achievement and a success. Thanks for reading!
Teenage Pregnancy in Seronga
By Mbenovandu Bame Jaruka
It is becoming a problem in Seronga that some of the young girls schooling at Ngambao JSS are dropping out of school because of teenage pregnancy. This is defined as pregnancy occurring amongst young girls below twenty. The most common cause of this is unprotected sexual intercourse, although pregnancy can also result from improper use of contraception. One of the risks of teenage pregnancy is contracting sexual transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS. In addition, delivery of the baby is likely to be difficult as the girl’s body has not yet matured. This may lead to serious complications, including death if there needs to be an operation. Other problems include excessive bleeding, or possibly anemia-which is caused by lack of iron in the blood.
I interviewed one of the teenage mothers who dropped out of school and came back to continue with her schooling as she was given a second chance. She was lucky enough to have enough support to be back in school. She told me the story of how she got pregnant and it all began like this:
“In 2006 while I was sixteen doing form two I started to drink too much alcohol with my peers and my boyfriend who was six years older than me. One day while I was at the bar alone I met another guy from Bobonong. The only thing I knew about him was where he came from. I did not know his family, behaviour or his age, which I estimated was almost twenty years old. I just told myself that all of that does not matter; I will know a lot about him as time goes on. He asked me to be his lover and I agreed even though I had a permanent lover. The reason I agreed was because my permanent boyfriend was not around, as he was gone to the camps where he works for six months. All I wanted was not to get bored and to have some money for buying alcohol.
One day after a week in a relationship, we went out to the bar to quench our thirst with some wines. We drank too much until bars were closed and then we went to my place to rest. While we were in the house we started kissing and romancing each other. We went on and on romancing each other until we could not control our feelings, even though there were no condoms. We started having unprotected sex. I did not think about contracting HIV/AIDS or falling pregnant as I was very drunk.
After missing my periods for two months I started feeling abdominal pains. That’s when I was taken from Seronga Clinic to Gumare Hospital to be examined by a doctor. Unfortunately the test results came out positive which means I was pregnant. I went back to Seronga and told the guy from Bobonong that he had impregnated me. I was very surprised when he told me that he had done this knowingly, because he did not want to lose me. All I had thought was that if abortion was legal in Botswana I should have committed it in order to continue with my schooling. At this point there was nothing to be done so I had to continue with the pregnancy.
My mother was the second person to know, but she was not that angry as it was a mistake. She said I should learn from my mistake and never go through the same story again. The guy from Bobonong promised my mother that he would take care of me and my unborn baby. He kept the promise until I gave birth to a baby girl. He is also paying for my school fees. I was able to return to school after my mother begged the teachers to take me back as I needed to continue with my education. I am now a mother and a student doing form three.
Being a teenage mother is so difficult because you have a child to think of. The advice I am giving to my peers is to not engage in any relationships especially sexual relationships. They are too young and they should be focused on their studies. They must avoid negative peers and avoid drugs and alcohol. Alternatives to this lifestyle include: engaging in sports and clubs, reading school books or novels or any activities that keeps themselves busy. I urge my peers to think about the consequences of teenage pregnancy, like finance to support their babies. They should not take a chance to destroy their future. They should abstain from sexual intercourse or use condoms if it is difficult to abstain. I hope teenagers will learn from my mistakes and not go through the situation I have gone through by taking my advice and practicing it.”
Teenagers are very lucky as they are given second chances to go through their education. Teenagers do not have to engage in bad things like alcohol, drugs and unprotected sexual intercourse, as these things can lead to unwanted pregnancy. They should also choose positive peers to avoid bad things and always concentrate on their school work. They can have bright futures as long as they remember that everything has its own time.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Ashes to Ashes... A death in an African Village
It’s a long one… Hopefully something to read over your lunch break at your desk?
“Jen? Jen, are you there?” In typical Botswana fashion there is a poor connection and a slight delay even between a town and a village less than a 45 minute bush flight apart. In typical Jen fashion, I have of course been sleeping with my cell phone in my very bed with me, and after wrestling it from the covers, have answered it before even completely waking up.
She took my thinly disguised grunt that was masquerading as the proper polite response as enough confirmation that I was indeed there. By the tone of her voice I could tell something was terribly wrong, and the next words out of her mouth confirmed it for me.
“Jen, we have a problem,” Debbie’s voice broke. At the sound of this my mind attempted to spring to full attention, and the voice in my head that I would next be attempting to project out of my mouth took on the tone of someone who is completely ready to move heaven and Earth to fix whichever problem we may be finding ourselves up against. Somewhere in the catacombs of my sleeping mind it occurred to me that whatever time it currently was in the morning was pretty early to already facing a problem, but this is Botswana, so in some ways, nothing surprises me. Except the fact that Debbie is crying.
In the short time I’ve known her; I’ve come to think of Debbie as remarkably strong. Not that remarkably strong people cannot cry, but it’s just something I haven’t yet experienced from her. She’s been through a great deal during her time on this planet, and always seems to react with Herculean grace, so for her to be calling me in tears at half six in the morning means the worst has happened. Before she could say anything more I sharply gasped in an attempt to take in the breath that seemed to be alluding me after having answered the phone in what was likely mid-snore. My muddled mind was able to deduce, through the hazy struggle of waking that despite being on my way out of dream world I was actually experiencing one of my worst nightmares. It seems I was the recipient of a phone call before the Minnesota Lutheran prescribed “civil hour” of 8 am, which could only mean one thing. Someone had died.
My brain went from zero to sixty in a nanosecond. My poor body struggled to keep up and in following the incoherent mumblings of my waking brain fumbled around in what I would imagine I thought was “make a plan mode” but really was a lot of getting tangled in my mosquito net and bedding. I attempted to as spring from my cocoon in what I imagined was an impersonation of a heroic leap. I immediately began pacing the one square inch of floor that was cleared enough for pacing (and by cleared I certainly don’t mean that it was free of the inevitable sand or thorns, a particularly sharp specimen of the latter which I immediately found with my left foot like a blinking heat seeking missile) and began to flounder around for the best tools with which to make a plan for the news I hadn’t yet received.
My first thought was Simon. Cold terror griped me. The logical part of my brain slowly and stubbornly sauntered after this idea despite the emotional part galloping off at a full sprint. In the quick flashes of multitasking my increasingly coherent mind was beginning to be able to accomplish I was able to identify the error in this idea. I live in Seronga with Simon, Debbie lives in Maun, and she had just gone home and wasn’t due back for a week or two. The village generally considers me to be what would effectively be Simon’s next of kin, and he would certainly be the first person they would call should something happen to me. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be calling me with this news.
“Jen, Willy Phillips has died. Anne is with him at the clinic. Is there any way you can go there?”
I feel the need break into the story at this point to give a disclaimer for the narrative that follows by admitting that the deceased was not one of my favorite people. We’ve got a few moral, ethical and political differences. In an attempt to not speak ill of the dead, I will make every attempt to not let that fact color my story unduly. We’ll see how it goes.
Willy Phillips is the councilor (Sort of like a mini-senator? Or sort of Governor? A Mayor? But then what would the Kgosi (chief) be? Well it’s tough to say, but he is a man with political power) of Seronga. His father was white and his mother was black, and his white third wife Anne is from Britain (I hate that I point these racial aspects of people out, but in my life here color is very relevant, and it’s also a part of the story. My life certainly is changing… Moving on). He is in many ways a man in between cultures, not quite white and not quite black, and in that way I can sort of relate to him, myself being not quite a villager and not quite an ex pat.
Debbie has known Willy for the better part of probably 30 years, and he is Godfather to her two sons, with whom I have also come to be friends. As she has become a great friend to me has so often been there for me in times of trial, I was desperate to return the favor to her in any way that I could. Willy has on occasion given me lifts back from Maun where he ends up spending a great deal of time in meetings for the district. In Seronga his campaign strategy has always been to give out free vegetables to his constituents, as well as to occasionally help people with lifts to funerals or to Shakawe to get their ARV’s.
In Seronga, it is a very patriarchic culture, and the people here come to think of the figures of government as their fathers or caretakers. There is a lot of dependence on the government and due to diamonds, and income from tourism, the fact is that the government does have money, they can and do provide. Willy is another example of this. I say this to give background to the type of figure Willy was amongst the community, and to illustrate the sort of figure he became immediately upon his death, and the way that the people reacted, and the string of small town controversies that ensued.
But back to that morning. I told Debbie of course I would go to the clinic and in fact I was on my way. Debbie laid out a plan (which of course ended up changing several times over the course of the next hour) and said she and her sons would be chartering a plane from Maun to Seronga. I quickly threw on the first clothes I could find from the pile of items which I have come to think of as clothing purgatory, clothes worn maybe once or twice, not clean enough to be hung back in the wardrobe, but also not dirty enough to go in the completely foul smelling wash pile. It usually consists of mostly pants and jeans, so from my wardrobe I found a freshly clean tank top and threw a do-rag (bandana or a Duk, depending on your cultural preference) on my ever expanding pile of unruly hair.
I called Simon as I brushed my teeth and gave him the news, as Patricia from the clinic called on the other line. The ambiance amongst the white people in Seronga is a strange thing, while we are all quite interdependent in terms of transport out and getting food and supplies in, Simon in particular has an interesting way of getting along with and relating to people. Most of the villagers think that we are all automatically friends because we are white (and generally think we are from the same place, -although the lot of us come from no less than three different countries- and despite the fact that I am the third Peace Corps to come through Seronga, many of the people say that Simon is my uncle or some other form of relation. I can’t completely figure out if this is due to the different ways in which the Batswana determine family relationships, or due to the fact that our cultures are more similar to each other-a point Simon would ardently disagree with- than to theirs or what). But despite this common belief among the villagers that we’re all one big happy white family, Simon and Willy haven’t gotten along for years. They “fell out” as Simon recounts it, a long time ago, although over what is a question with an answer as elusive as the one that accompanies the question “what does Simon DO in Seronga?” In the end it all becomes legend. As I seem to have become friends with Simon first this meant that by default I wasn’t very close with Anne and Willy. We weren’t unfriendly; we just didn’t ever hang out, or really communicate past the requisite greetings in the village. This was about to change.
Patricia continued to call back looking for me as Ma Willy (the other name for Anne, when a couple is married the wife becomes Ma whomever the husband’s first or last name is- they are interchangeable) is at the clinic and I guess at this point it has been decided that I, as a white person will know best what to do with this situation. I have to say, I have been lucky enough in my life to not have had to deal with a lot of death personally, and haven’t seen altogether too many dead bodies. That too was about to change.
I arrived at the clinic and was ushered into the room with all the beds, my authority regarding what to do about something finally being respected by my colleagues, of course at just the moment in which I have less of an idea of what to do than I ever had in my life. I had just seen Willy in Maun two days before, and had almost caught a ride back to Seronga with him (I had ended up hitching with the police instead). Now I enveloped his grieving widow in a sort of awkward hug as my colleagues faded back into the other rooms of the clinic. I searched my mind for comforting words for a virtual stranger, whom the world was treating as my sister. We awkwardly embraced and she quickly went back to cleaning and dressing her husband, a task which I did my best to help her with. I didn’t really have time to process the fact that I was now heaving the weight of one of the first deceased bodies I’ve ever had this much contact with around as his wife struggled to dress him. I was busy thinking of how hot it was already getting at the clinic.
After this task was thankfully finished we walked out to the front of the clinic, where I was immediately saved by Benson. Ben is my good friend who comes into town for a month once every three months as he works as a mechanic for one of the luxury camps in the delta. He is the Kgosi’s (chief’s) son, which makes him my cousin, a fact I had quickly informed him of the first time we met, and has served to keep him in generally gentlemanly like behavior ever since. He has been pretty good friends with Anne and Willy for a while, and had heard the news and had come to be of whatever service he could be to Anne. He also ended up being a huge help to me.
The first problem he solved was the driving. Now I’m not allowed, under any circumstances, to drive as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This is the type of stuff over which they will immediately send you home, so I wasn’t about to do it here, grieving widow or not. In addition, the car Anne had driven to the clinic in was Willy’s and was loaded down completely with stock for the shop he runs in town, as well as being a manual, on the wrong side of the car (for me). Ben came to the rescue to drive us around to search for the girl who ran the shop and thus had the keys. Being Seronga, and the time of day being morning meant that the Mascom cell signal was down, and so we thus had to drive around searching for her. We had to unload the stock into the shop (which is essentially a semi truck container with shelves inside) in order to free up the pick-up for whatever arrangements would lie ahead of us.
It was when we found Kay that I had the first opportunity to do the unsavory task which would become my main job of the day, which was to inform people of Willy’s passing. I quickly found there was no easy or pleasant way to do this so I sort of just went against everything that is generally a part of my nature and tip-toed into the news as gently as I could. Kay was upset, but I maintain that the nerves and framework of African women’s emotions are made of steel, and so she helped unload the contents of the truck into the shop, even directing us what needed to be reloaded to be brought back to the house as the tears slowly slid down her face.
I have to admit that I found a bit of comfort in unloading the truck, as it felt like a tangible thing I could DO to be helpful. My Midwestern roots demand that during a crisis I be USEFUL, and DOING something in order to be effective in any situation, in this case comforting the grieving. I then worked on arranging for Benson to meet Debbie at the airstrip and finding tea and such for the mourners that had slowly begun to arrive at the house. Debbie stepping in was a big help, as she’s a very take charge kind of woman, and this being my first funeral to help coordinate, I was very glad to have some guidance. My main job for the day ended up being to answer Willy’s phone, which lead me to perform my uncomfortable task many, many times, to perfect strangers whom I generally had no idea how they had known Willy or why they were calling. It could have been the garage in Maun or one of his oldest friends and I had nothing but the number on the caller ID (it seems Willy hadn’t really believed in storing numbers to the phone’s memory) and the voice on the line to guide me.
At Willy and Anne’s house the mourners kept coming, and soon nearly all the village elder men and women were there, and as the day went on, most of the village had come. Throughout the day the “plan” which is of course what always needs to be made in absolutely any case in Botswana had changed several times. The first and most pressing issue was getting the death to be certified by a doctor, which took a better part of the day under the hot African sun to complete. It was a horrifying circus of phone calls, pleas, threats, demands, planes, boats, trucks, interventions by councilors from other districts and a menagerie of various other government officials as well as the rescheduling of doctors scheduled to be administering ARV’s at several villages in the area to get a doctor here to confirm that our beloved councilor was indeed deceased.
There were enough different stories going around as to if and when a doctor was coming or whether we would have to drive with the body the one to three hours over the long dirt road the ferry at Mohembo to thoroughly confuse everyone involved, and as the mascom signal was still down, it was between my cell phone and Willy’s cell phone to get it all sorted. (Anne and Willy had a land line in the house, but no one but Anne and two of their house servants could go through their gate as they have three extremely vicious dogs who have been known to attack people and have been rumored to have put people in the hospital. So the planning was executed from the guest house. Just to add another element of fun to the day.) It was finally confirmed that the body was indeed deceased and more importantly that the generator was working and had been turned on at the mortuary. The corpse was finally transported from the clinic to the mortuary in the afternoon, setting off the first of many controversies that would occur in the next week.
The culture of the several tribes in the area demands that, amongst other traditions, the body be viewed by all of the mourners before it is buried. This means there should be witnesses through every step of the process. The staff at the clinic was rather insistent that someone watch as the doctor certified the body, although Debbie and Anne refused this. Again, I haven’t had much intimacy with the process of death in my own life and culture, so I didn’t know if this is common in my country or not. My understanding of this tradition here is to prove to everyone with their own eyes that the person has indeed died, rather than as in the Western tradition, to convey a last sense of goodbye. Anne of course, being English, felt that this was all a bit inappropriate, as having died of what was believed to be a heart attack, Willy’s coloring was not very good at this point, especially after having been in the heat for the better part of the day. Many of the villagers were sort of following what had become a regular convoy of vehicles around the village, arriving after us having walked, and sitting down in the sandy roadside whenever the ambulance with the corpse passed.
In a land of extremely strong traditional beliefs mixed in with that special brand of missionary Christianity fanatically popular in this part of Botswana, the basis for people’s beliefs can be rather difficult to describe to an outsider, as it tends to be much more complex than “because the bible tells me so.” I’ve often asked about details of traditional beliefs in relation to religious beliefs but have yet to get many profoundly satisfying answers. Much of what is “traditional” contradicts what I understand to be the teachings of the bible, or Christianity, but again I have to respect the villagers for being able to hold so many contradictory beliefs close to their hearts and not experience much confusion or fugue or angst about it. I can’t decide if it is the complexity or the simplicity of the whole situation that eludes me, but I’m often left with a sort of confused respect.
The one thing I do find quite amusing in regard to the religious diversity in Seronga is that despite nearly everyone in the village actively identifying with one sect or another of what they name as Christianity, we still also have our own family of Christian missionaries in Seronga. It sometimes strikes me as shades of The Poisonwood Bible, but then they and I don’t interact much past the transport and supplies issues either. I’ve gathered that their general outlook is that despite all being Christians, the villagers still have a lot of work to do on being properly saved. So in essence if you throw some traditional beliefs about spirits and witchcraft into the Christianity mixture this village is a regular holy rolling jamboree. It is, in a word, interesting. And soon came to be even more so.
Throughout the day there was great discussion of what the plans for burial would be. Debbie and the boys flew back to Maun in the afternoon, leaving me as one of the last voices of “Western reason”. I soon found that part of my job was to be the ambassador between the African and Western (I’ve always thought it weird that one of the terms for white people around these parts was Westerners, or Europeans. How can Europeans be called Westerners when we are only one time zone east of Paris? And how can Australians be called Westerners? They are so East, or even kind of Asian in some ways but we never call them that. How can I be called European when I come from the States? I’m at least as far removed from my European roots as most white Africans are, but they seldom refer to themselves as Africans. It’s always confused me, and I’ve never known the rules of this particular game, what people are usually referring to is someone’s classification as just white, but it seems we can’t just say it. Hmmm.) camps of opinion regarding what would be done next.
At some point during the day Anne decided it would be most appropriate to cremate her husband, and most of the Westerners agreed that as he is her husband (although they were, in some senses estranged, which added a whole additional element of things to be a bit sensitive about on many, many levels that I won’t get into) she had every right to do. I suggested that if this was indeed her decision she would have to somehow allow the villagers to have their ceremonies with the ashes as well. The logistics of getting the corpse down to Mahalapye (a two day journey unless planes were involved, and even then might be more than a day with transfers and what) and then back to Maun, where it was determined there must also be another memorial as Willy had spent most of his life there and had many friends who would not be able to make it on the long journey to Seronga, coupled with the Batswana tradition of burying on Saturday, (and this being Wednesday, and there was already another funeral that most of the village was meant to attend this weekend-who knew the scheduling of funerals in a rural Botswana village could be so difficult) put us out almost two weeks.
But it was more than timing that became a matata (problem). The villagers, represented by the elder men, felt that as their councilor and thus their father, they had just as much say as she did in Willy’s final resting arrangements. And burning was blasphemy. Anne tried to quote the bible with the idea of ashes to ashes, but methinks there may have been something lost in translation. During the heated discussion that ensued someone remembered speaking to Willy within the past 20 years and him saying that he wanted to be buried out back in his yard (under a big tree that of course ended up being in the flood plain- and incidentally under water at this exact moment). Another villager concurred that he had also heard Willy say this and soon nearly the whole village remembered having an intimate conversation at some point in their life with dear departed Willy about what to do when he passed. It became a virtual chorus. Anne was totally outnumbered. She conceded.
The next bit of drama involved an attempt to get permission to bury Willy under another tree in his yard, which was thwarted by a letter from the Land Board, arriving after the grave had basically already been dug and no less than 6 planes had been chartered to fly into Seronga for the funeral the next day. In a huge display of dramatics Anne got the village to support her in disregarding the Land Board’s decision, amongst them several members of the Land Board. And thus is the beauty of politics in Botswana. Everyone agreed Willy would have wanted it that way.
Sidenote: Let me just take this opportunity to let everyone know that my mom knows what I want done should I croak any time soon. I kind of talk about it all the time. But just in case there’s any confusion…. Burn me. Put my ashes in a bench at the Rose Garden overlooking Lake Superior. Don’t go crazy with some dumb flowers (sorry to every florist I’ve ever worked for- Karly you can go wild if you really must, but I’d really rather you throw some money at a charity or spend some time doing volunteer work while you think of me (humming the tune from “Phantom of the Opera” in my head… did I mention that some chick sang that at Willy’s funeral- acapella, accompanied by her ipod-which only she could hear? I live through the looking glass for Sheezy. Anyhoo.)) I want Shakespeare and show tunes at the funeral. Make it a party. Please serve pizza. The end. Peace Out.
It is standard mourning procedure that the entire village shows up at the home of the bereft to say prayers every day at 6 in the morning and 5 or six in the evening until the body is “at rest” read: buried. Anne initially tried to limit the prayer services to one day, with a break until the funeral but people just kept coming. I felt for her that in her husband’s death she was forced to play hostess. Willy’s position as the councilor of Seronga (and an official figure of authority, and thus most of the villagers “father”) meant that most of the village felt entitled to have the mourning process and funeral proceed in the traditional manner that they expected. Many of them stayed all day, and some even camped in tents on Anne’s lawn. In short, some never left. It is tradition to always be with those who are grieving in Batswana culture, but as a “Westerner” I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed.
After all, how can one properly fall apart with all these people around? From my strange new position of relevance at Anne’s side during these prayer services I was stunned to see how many women essentially threw themselves on Anne’s lap in grief as they came to pay their respects by greeting her. Sobbing and carrying on to his widow, and forcing her to comfort them. Sitting right next to her I caught more than a few of them, and spotted a few more as they swooned during the actual prayers. It felt a little over the top to my ethnically Lutheran sensibilities, and even the Catholic floating around in me kind of wanted to slap them.
Being from a Midwestern “casserole/hotdish” culture I found it quite rude (again, by my own standards) that so many people were going to show up and sit around, and not bring any food. By the first night I realized that no one was really making much effort to make sure that Anne had something to eat, and decided my duty would be to cook (which I don’t know if I’ve made it clear that I hate cooking?) some things that Anne could eat and have at least some leftovers to nibble on so she wouldn’t have to be bothered. This brilliant idea was quickly thwarted when I realized the next day that I had forgotten to factor in several elements of Seronga life that meant that most people here didn’t have a concept of leftovers.
In a world of communal eating, no refrigeration, little concept of budgeting leading to days toward month end with no food, an affinity for extremely carb heavy meals resulting in very full bellies, many mouths to feed and plenty of dogs around to take care of whatever scraps weren’t consumed, the idea of leftovers was completely foreign.
The first day I had brought a pasta dish which should have been enough for Anne and a few people to eat for at least two meals. As we couldn’t go into her house there was no other real place to eat than right there amongst the mourners. It felt incredibly rude to eat in front of people, but I reasoned that there was also an element of rudeness of so many people just showing up and moving onto someone’s lawn because of their beliefs, which were different than hers, and she was supposed to be mourning. One might wonder if perhaps Anne hadn’t thought about some of the finer points of difference between her and her husband’s backgrounds prior to their marriage (and indeed I did wonder, a great deal in fact) but at this late stage in the game it was all a bit irrelevant. So my hopeful little leftovers were soon consumed by the village elder men, who also had the nerve to make faces as they ate (hey I never claimed to be Martha Freaking Stewart but cut a girl a break, it wasn’t nasty face worthy!).
Three more days of this cooking and schlepping food across the village in the rain followed. The chaos at Anne’s guest house continued.
Mourning Management became my new job description during this week. I was rarely at the clinic and when I was there most of my coworkers were asking why I had left Anne. Back at the ranch, most of villagers spent their days sitting around, (which came to be quite a problem as it seemed that we were in the Serongan Monsoon Season- the few days out of the year that it rained or was at least misty for four days straight.) blowing the circuitry with their ever increasing number of cell phone chargers being plugged into too many adaptors in one outlet (I don’t blame them-free electricity!) and demanding hot water for tea. The old men seemed to sit (or place their walking sticks- I was constantly tripping like it was my job) directly in any pathway, chatting loudly in various languages (chatting loudly sounds like yelling and arguing to the untrained ear, and made finding a place to have a delicate phone conversation informing someone of a friend or family member’s death additionally challenging) while Anne and I and various other “Westerners” struggled to make lists of people who had called, who needed to be called back, details about tents and planes and transport and food and arrangements. Eventually, as is custom, Anne had to purchase a couple cows and goats to be slaughtered and get many bags of various starches brought over from her store to be prepared in an improvised kitchen of huge cauldrons over open fires which sprung up under corrugated iron roofs tied between trees and poles which appeared out of nowhere. The place was beginning to look like a refugee camp.
Eventually (FINALLY!) we laid Willy to rest. The funeral ended up being a big production of political grandstanding, advertising plugs for the funeral home, and eulogies galore. My personal send off ended up being that I threw together an impromptu choir to sing Amazing Grace (God bless the amazing harmonizing abilities of the Batswana. I was able to get the words for 4 verses –several via text message thanks to a certain missionary kid- I owe ya a beer, buddy- and main melody and they immediately harmonized with it, learning it in the span of an afternoon.) which is a bit more recognizable for the “Westerners” in the crowd than the Setswana hymns, which are pretty impossible to follow. I cut out during hour 3, as I reasoned that I had properly said my goodbyes.
The whole experience for me was a huge lesson in the pervasiveness of culture, and reiterated for me exactly how deep my own culture runs through my veins. It is in times of what would universally be considered trial that we most readily fall back into our own norms and values, and in which we become most quick to be irritated with and judge the beliefs of others. It’s the rituals and standards and expectations which we hold sacred that, when challenged, bring us most quickly to defend our own as right regarding issues that are so ingrained in us that we may have never questioned them before ourselves. These are the situations that may lead us to deem others as most wrong, strange, or in some way bankrupt when in reality they are just different, born out of the same sense of the respect for the sacred (although not observing it in the same ways) as our own. It has been one of my most valuable learning experiences in Seronga to date.
Let me be clear that I don’t mean to make complete light of the situation surrounding Willy’s death. I've observed that the Batswana tend to have what I would consider a more healthy viewpoint surrounding death, most specifically that it is indeed a natural part of the living process. Willy's passing is unfortunate, although he lived a long, productive life (he was 73) and did some positive things for the people of Seronga. I found the circumstances surrounding the whole process of the funeral rather than the death itself to be humorous, and as with most things in this village, if one does not laugh (at least a little) one may never stop crying.
So now, with the realization that I’ve wordily recounted the details of one funeral in a rural African village, and the contributing social and cultural factors that make it so interesting as a foreigner, as well as my own reactions in as many pages as I wrote my paper on Japanese policing techniques for my international criminology class which counted for 50% of my grade when I was schooling in London I shall sign off. With one of the longest run on sentences of my life. Cheers.
Willy Phillips, RIP
Died 28 January 2009, buried 1 February 2009
“Jen? Jen, are you there?” In typical Botswana fashion there is a poor connection and a slight delay even between a town and a village less than a 45 minute bush flight apart. In typical Jen fashion, I have of course been sleeping with my cell phone in my very bed with me, and after wrestling it from the covers, have answered it before even completely waking up.
She took my thinly disguised grunt that was masquerading as the proper polite response as enough confirmation that I was indeed there. By the tone of her voice I could tell something was terribly wrong, and the next words out of her mouth confirmed it for me.
“Jen, we have a problem,” Debbie’s voice broke. At the sound of this my mind attempted to spring to full attention, and the voice in my head that I would next be attempting to project out of my mouth took on the tone of someone who is completely ready to move heaven and Earth to fix whichever problem we may be finding ourselves up against. Somewhere in the catacombs of my sleeping mind it occurred to me that whatever time it currently was in the morning was pretty early to already facing a problem, but this is Botswana, so in some ways, nothing surprises me. Except the fact that Debbie is crying.
In the short time I’ve known her; I’ve come to think of Debbie as remarkably strong. Not that remarkably strong people cannot cry, but it’s just something I haven’t yet experienced from her. She’s been through a great deal during her time on this planet, and always seems to react with Herculean grace, so for her to be calling me in tears at half six in the morning means the worst has happened. Before she could say anything more I sharply gasped in an attempt to take in the breath that seemed to be alluding me after having answered the phone in what was likely mid-snore. My muddled mind was able to deduce, through the hazy struggle of waking that despite being on my way out of dream world I was actually experiencing one of my worst nightmares. It seems I was the recipient of a phone call before the Minnesota Lutheran prescribed “civil hour” of 8 am, which could only mean one thing. Someone had died.
My brain went from zero to sixty in a nanosecond. My poor body struggled to keep up and in following the incoherent mumblings of my waking brain fumbled around in what I would imagine I thought was “make a plan mode” but really was a lot of getting tangled in my mosquito net and bedding. I attempted to as spring from my cocoon in what I imagined was an impersonation of a heroic leap. I immediately began pacing the one square inch of floor that was cleared enough for pacing (and by cleared I certainly don’t mean that it was free of the inevitable sand or thorns, a particularly sharp specimen of the latter which I immediately found with my left foot like a blinking heat seeking missile) and began to flounder around for the best tools with which to make a plan for the news I hadn’t yet received.
My first thought was Simon. Cold terror griped me. The logical part of my brain slowly and stubbornly sauntered after this idea despite the emotional part galloping off at a full sprint. In the quick flashes of multitasking my increasingly coherent mind was beginning to be able to accomplish I was able to identify the error in this idea. I live in Seronga with Simon, Debbie lives in Maun, and she had just gone home and wasn’t due back for a week or two. The village generally considers me to be what would effectively be Simon’s next of kin, and he would certainly be the first person they would call should something happen to me. It wouldn’t make sense for her to be calling me with this news.
“Jen, Willy Phillips has died. Anne is with him at the clinic. Is there any way you can go there?”
I feel the need break into the story at this point to give a disclaimer for the narrative that follows by admitting that the deceased was not one of my favorite people. We’ve got a few moral, ethical and political differences. In an attempt to not speak ill of the dead, I will make every attempt to not let that fact color my story unduly. We’ll see how it goes.
Willy Phillips is the councilor (Sort of like a mini-senator? Or sort of Governor? A Mayor? But then what would the Kgosi (chief) be? Well it’s tough to say, but he is a man with political power) of Seronga. His father was white and his mother was black, and his white third wife Anne is from Britain (I hate that I point these racial aspects of people out, but in my life here color is very relevant, and it’s also a part of the story. My life certainly is changing… Moving on). He is in many ways a man in between cultures, not quite white and not quite black, and in that way I can sort of relate to him, myself being not quite a villager and not quite an ex pat.
Debbie has known Willy for the better part of probably 30 years, and he is Godfather to her two sons, with whom I have also come to be friends. As she has become a great friend to me has so often been there for me in times of trial, I was desperate to return the favor to her in any way that I could. Willy has on occasion given me lifts back from Maun where he ends up spending a great deal of time in meetings for the district. In Seronga his campaign strategy has always been to give out free vegetables to his constituents, as well as to occasionally help people with lifts to funerals or to Shakawe to get their ARV’s.
In Seronga, it is a very patriarchic culture, and the people here come to think of the figures of government as their fathers or caretakers. There is a lot of dependence on the government and due to diamonds, and income from tourism, the fact is that the government does have money, they can and do provide. Willy is another example of this. I say this to give background to the type of figure Willy was amongst the community, and to illustrate the sort of figure he became immediately upon his death, and the way that the people reacted, and the string of small town controversies that ensued.
But back to that morning. I told Debbie of course I would go to the clinic and in fact I was on my way. Debbie laid out a plan (which of course ended up changing several times over the course of the next hour) and said she and her sons would be chartering a plane from Maun to Seronga. I quickly threw on the first clothes I could find from the pile of items which I have come to think of as clothing purgatory, clothes worn maybe once or twice, not clean enough to be hung back in the wardrobe, but also not dirty enough to go in the completely foul smelling wash pile. It usually consists of mostly pants and jeans, so from my wardrobe I found a freshly clean tank top and threw a do-rag (bandana or a Duk, depending on your cultural preference) on my ever expanding pile of unruly hair.
I called Simon as I brushed my teeth and gave him the news, as Patricia from the clinic called on the other line. The ambiance amongst the white people in Seronga is a strange thing, while we are all quite interdependent in terms of transport out and getting food and supplies in, Simon in particular has an interesting way of getting along with and relating to people. Most of the villagers think that we are all automatically friends because we are white (and generally think we are from the same place, -although the lot of us come from no less than three different countries- and despite the fact that I am the third Peace Corps to come through Seronga, many of the people say that Simon is my uncle or some other form of relation. I can’t completely figure out if this is due to the different ways in which the Batswana determine family relationships, or due to the fact that our cultures are more similar to each other-a point Simon would ardently disagree with- than to theirs or what). But despite this common belief among the villagers that we’re all one big happy white family, Simon and Willy haven’t gotten along for years. They “fell out” as Simon recounts it, a long time ago, although over what is a question with an answer as elusive as the one that accompanies the question “what does Simon DO in Seronga?” In the end it all becomes legend. As I seem to have become friends with Simon first this meant that by default I wasn’t very close with Anne and Willy. We weren’t unfriendly; we just didn’t ever hang out, or really communicate past the requisite greetings in the village. This was about to change.
Patricia continued to call back looking for me as Ma Willy (the other name for Anne, when a couple is married the wife becomes Ma whomever the husband’s first or last name is- they are interchangeable) is at the clinic and I guess at this point it has been decided that I, as a white person will know best what to do with this situation. I have to say, I have been lucky enough in my life to not have had to deal with a lot of death personally, and haven’t seen altogether too many dead bodies. That too was about to change.
I arrived at the clinic and was ushered into the room with all the beds, my authority regarding what to do about something finally being respected by my colleagues, of course at just the moment in which I have less of an idea of what to do than I ever had in my life. I had just seen Willy in Maun two days before, and had almost caught a ride back to Seronga with him (I had ended up hitching with the police instead). Now I enveloped his grieving widow in a sort of awkward hug as my colleagues faded back into the other rooms of the clinic. I searched my mind for comforting words for a virtual stranger, whom the world was treating as my sister. We awkwardly embraced and she quickly went back to cleaning and dressing her husband, a task which I did my best to help her with. I didn’t really have time to process the fact that I was now heaving the weight of one of the first deceased bodies I’ve ever had this much contact with around as his wife struggled to dress him. I was busy thinking of how hot it was already getting at the clinic.
After this task was thankfully finished we walked out to the front of the clinic, where I was immediately saved by Benson. Ben is my good friend who comes into town for a month once every three months as he works as a mechanic for one of the luxury camps in the delta. He is the Kgosi’s (chief’s) son, which makes him my cousin, a fact I had quickly informed him of the first time we met, and has served to keep him in generally gentlemanly like behavior ever since. He has been pretty good friends with Anne and Willy for a while, and had heard the news and had come to be of whatever service he could be to Anne. He also ended up being a huge help to me.
The first problem he solved was the driving. Now I’m not allowed, under any circumstances, to drive as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This is the type of stuff over which they will immediately send you home, so I wasn’t about to do it here, grieving widow or not. In addition, the car Anne had driven to the clinic in was Willy’s and was loaded down completely with stock for the shop he runs in town, as well as being a manual, on the wrong side of the car (for me). Ben came to the rescue to drive us around to search for the girl who ran the shop and thus had the keys. Being Seronga, and the time of day being morning meant that the Mascom cell signal was down, and so we thus had to drive around searching for her. We had to unload the stock into the shop (which is essentially a semi truck container with shelves inside) in order to free up the pick-up for whatever arrangements would lie ahead of us.
It was when we found Kay that I had the first opportunity to do the unsavory task which would become my main job of the day, which was to inform people of Willy’s passing. I quickly found there was no easy or pleasant way to do this so I sort of just went against everything that is generally a part of my nature and tip-toed into the news as gently as I could. Kay was upset, but I maintain that the nerves and framework of African women’s emotions are made of steel, and so she helped unload the contents of the truck into the shop, even directing us what needed to be reloaded to be brought back to the house as the tears slowly slid down her face.
I have to admit that I found a bit of comfort in unloading the truck, as it felt like a tangible thing I could DO to be helpful. My Midwestern roots demand that during a crisis I be USEFUL, and DOING something in order to be effective in any situation, in this case comforting the grieving. I then worked on arranging for Benson to meet Debbie at the airstrip and finding tea and such for the mourners that had slowly begun to arrive at the house. Debbie stepping in was a big help, as she’s a very take charge kind of woman, and this being my first funeral to help coordinate, I was very glad to have some guidance. My main job for the day ended up being to answer Willy’s phone, which lead me to perform my uncomfortable task many, many times, to perfect strangers whom I generally had no idea how they had known Willy or why they were calling. It could have been the garage in Maun or one of his oldest friends and I had nothing but the number on the caller ID (it seems Willy hadn’t really believed in storing numbers to the phone’s memory) and the voice on the line to guide me.
At Willy and Anne’s house the mourners kept coming, and soon nearly all the village elder men and women were there, and as the day went on, most of the village had come. Throughout the day the “plan” which is of course what always needs to be made in absolutely any case in Botswana had changed several times. The first and most pressing issue was getting the death to be certified by a doctor, which took a better part of the day under the hot African sun to complete. It was a horrifying circus of phone calls, pleas, threats, demands, planes, boats, trucks, interventions by councilors from other districts and a menagerie of various other government officials as well as the rescheduling of doctors scheduled to be administering ARV’s at several villages in the area to get a doctor here to confirm that our beloved councilor was indeed deceased.
There were enough different stories going around as to if and when a doctor was coming or whether we would have to drive with the body the one to three hours over the long dirt road the ferry at Mohembo to thoroughly confuse everyone involved, and as the mascom signal was still down, it was between my cell phone and Willy’s cell phone to get it all sorted. (Anne and Willy had a land line in the house, but no one but Anne and two of their house servants could go through their gate as they have three extremely vicious dogs who have been known to attack people and have been rumored to have put people in the hospital. So the planning was executed from the guest house. Just to add another element of fun to the day.) It was finally confirmed that the body was indeed deceased and more importantly that the generator was working and had been turned on at the mortuary. The corpse was finally transported from the clinic to the mortuary in the afternoon, setting off the first of many controversies that would occur in the next week.
The culture of the several tribes in the area demands that, amongst other traditions, the body be viewed by all of the mourners before it is buried. This means there should be witnesses through every step of the process. The staff at the clinic was rather insistent that someone watch as the doctor certified the body, although Debbie and Anne refused this. Again, I haven’t had much intimacy with the process of death in my own life and culture, so I didn’t know if this is common in my country or not. My understanding of this tradition here is to prove to everyone with their own eyes that the person has indeed died, rather than as in the Western tradition, to convey a last sense of goodbye. Anne of course, being English, felt that this was all a bit inappropriate, as having died of what was believed to be a heart attack, Willy’s coloring was not very good at this point, especially after having been in the heat for the better part of the day. Many of the villagers were sort of following what had become a regular convoy of vehicles around the village, arriving after us having walked, and sitting down in the sandy roadside whenever the ambulance with the corpse passed.
In a land of extremely strong traditional beliefs mixed in with that special brand of missionary Christianity fanatically popular in this part of Botswana, the basis for people’s beliefs can be rather difficult to describe to an outsider, as it tends to be much more complex than “because the bible tells me so.” I’ve often asked about details of traditional beliefs in relation to religious beliefs but have yet to get many profoundly satisfying answers. Much of what is “traditional” contradicts what I understand to be the teachings of the bible, or Christianity, but again I have to respect the villagers for being able to hold so many contradictory beliefs close to their hearts and not experience much confusion or fugue or angst about it. I can’t decide if it is the complexity or the simplicity of the whole situation that eludes me, but I’m often left with a sort of confused respect.
The one thing I do find quite amusing in regard to the religious diversity in Seronga is that despite nearly everyone in the village actively identifying with one sect or another of what they name as Christianity, we still also have our own family of Christian missionaries in Seronga. It sometimes strikes me as shades of The Poisonwood Bible, but then they and I don’t interact much past the transport and supplies issues either. I’ve gathered that their general outlook is that despite all being Christians, the villagers still have a lot of work to do on being properly saved. So in essence if you throw some traditional beliefs about spirits and witchcraft into the Christianity mixture this village is a regular holy rolling jamboree. It is, in a word, interesting. And soon came to be even more so.
Throughout the day there was great discussion of what the plans for burial would be. Debbie and the boys flew back to Maun in the afternoon, leaving me as one of the last voices of “Western reason”. I soon found that part of my job was to be the ambassador between the African and Western (I’ve always thought it weird that one of the terms for white people around these parts was Westerners, or Europeans. How can Europeans be called Westerners when we are only one time zone east of Paris? And how can Australians be called Westerners? They are so East, or even kind of Asian in some ways but we never call them that. How can I be called European when I come from the States? I’m at least as far removed from my European roots as most white Africans are, but they seldom refer to themselves as Africans. It’s always confused me, and I’ve never known the rules of this particular game, what people are usually referring to is someone’s classification as just white, but it seems we can’t just say it. Hmmm.) camps of opinion regarding what would be done next.
At some point during the day Anne decided it would be most appropriate to cremate her husband, and most of the Westerners agreed that as he is her husband (although they were, in some senses estranged, which added a whole additional element of things to be a bit sensitive about on many, many levels that I won’t get into) she had every right to do. I suggested that if this was indeed her decision she would have to somehow allow the villagers to have their ceremonies with the ashes as well. The logistics of getting the corpse down to Mahalapye (a two day journey unless planes were involved, and even then might be more than a day with transfers and what) and then back to Maun, where it was determined there must also be another memorial as Willy had spent most of his life there and had many friends who would not be able to make it on the long journey to Seronga, coupled with the Batswana tradition of burying on Saturday, (and this being Wednesday, and there was already another funeral that most of the village was meant to attend this weekend-who knew the scheduling of funerals in a rural Botswana village could be so difficult) put us out almost two weeks.
But it was more than timing that became a matata (problem). The villagers, represented by the elder men, felt that as their councilor and thus their father, they had just as much say as she did in Willy’s final resting arrangements. And burning was blasphemy. Anne tried to quote the bible with the idea of ashes to ashes, but methinks there may have been something lost in translation. During the heated discussion that ensued someone remembered speaking to Willy within the past 20 years and him saying that he wanted to be buried out back in his yard (under a big tree that of course ended up being in the flood plain- and incidentally under water at this exact moment). Another villager concurred that he had also heard Willy say this and soon nearly the whole village remembered having an intimate conversation at some point in their life with dear departed Willy about what to do when he passed. It became a virtual chorus. Anne was totally outnumbered. She conceded.
The next bit of drama involved an attempt to get permission to bury Willy under another tree in his yard, which was thwarted by a letter from the Land Board, arriving after the grave had basically already been dug and no less than 6 planes had been chartered to fly into Seronga for the funeral the next day. In a huge display of dramatics Anne got the village to support her in disregarding the Land Board’s decision, amongst them several members of the Land Board. And thus is the beauty of politics in Botswana. Everyone agreed Willy would have wanted it that way.
Sidenote: Let me just take this opportunity to let everyone know that my mom knows what I want done should I croak any time soon. I kind of talk about it all the time. But just in case there’s any confusion…. Burn me. Put my ashes in a bench at the Rose Garden overlooking Lake Superior. Don’t go crazy with some dumb flowers (sorry to every florist I’ve ever worked for- Karly you can go wild if you really must, but I’d really rather you throw some money at a charity or spend some time doing volunteer work while you think of me (humming the tune from “Phantom of the Opera” in my head… did I mention that some chick sang that at Willy’s funeral- acapella, accompanied by her ipod-which only she could hear? I live through the looking glass for Sheezy. Anyhoo.)) I want Shakespeare and show tunes at the funeral. Make it a party. Please serve pizza. The end. Peace Out.
It is standard mourning procedure that the entire village shows up at the home of the bereft to say prayers every day at 6 in the morning and 5 or six in the evening until the body is “at rest” read: buried. Anne initially tried to limit the prayer services to one day, with a break until the funeral but people just kept coming. I felt for her that in her husband’s death she was forced to play hostess. Willy’s position as the councilor of Seronga (and an official figure of authority, and thus most of the villagers “father”) meant that most of the village felt entitled to have the mourning process and funeral proceed in the traditional manner that they expected. Many of them stayed all day, and some even camped in tents on Anne’s lawn. In short, some never left. It is tradition to always be with those who are grieving in Batswana culture, but as a “Westerner” I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed.
After all, how can one properly fall apart with all these people around? From my strange new position of relevance at Anne’s side during these prayer services I was stunned to see how many women essentially threw themselves on Anne’s lap in grief as they came to pay their respects by greeting her. Sobbing and carrying on to his widow, and forcing her to comfort them. Sitting right next to her I caught more than a few of them, and spotted a few more as they swooned during the actual prayers. It felt a little over the top to my ethnically Lutheran sensibilities, and even the Catholic floating around in me kind of wanted to slap them.
Being from a Midwestern “casserole/hotdish” culture I found it quite rude (again, by my own standards) that so many people were going to show up and sit around, and not bring any food. By the first night I realized that no one was really making much effort to make sure that Anne had something to eat, and decided my duty would be to cook (which I don’t know if I’ve made it clear that I hate cooking?) some things that Anne could eat and have at least some leftovers to nibble on so she wouldn’t have to be bothered. This brilliant idea was quickly thwarted when I realized the next day that I had forgotten to factor in several elements of Seronga life that meant that most people here didn’t have a concept of leftovers.
In a world of communal eating, no refrigeration, little concept of budgeting leading to days toward month end with no food, an affinity for extremely carb heavy meals resulting in very full bellies, many mouths to feed and plenty of dogs around to take care of whatever scraps weren’t consumed, the idea of leftovers was completely foreign.
The first day I had brought a pasta dish which should have been enough for Anne and a few people to eat for at least two meals. As we couldn’t go into her house there was no other real place to eat than right there amongst the mourners. It felt incredibly rude to eat in front of people, but I reasoned that there was also an element of rudeness of so many people just showing up and moving onto someone’s lawn because of their beliefs, which were different than hers, and she was supposed to be mourning. One might wonder if perhaps Anne hadn’t thought about some of the finer points of difference between her and her husband’s backgrounds prior to their marriage (and indeed I did wonder, a great deal in fact) but at this late stage in the game it was all a bit irrelevant. So my hopeful little leftovers were soon consumed by the village elder men, who also had the nerve to make faces as they ate (hey I never claimed to be Martha Freaking Stewart but cut a girl a break, it wasn’t nasty face worthy!).
Three more days of this cooking and schlepping food across the village in the rain followed. The chaos at Anne’s guest house continued.
Mourning Management became my new job description during this week. I was rarely at the clinic and when I was there most of my coworkers were asking why I had left Anne. Back at the ranch, most of villagers spent their days sitting around, (which came to be quite a problem as it seemed that we were in the Serongan Monsoon Season- the few days out of the year that it rained or was at least misty for four days straight.) blowing the circuitry with their ever increasing number of cell phone chargers being plugged into too many adaptors in one outlet (I don’t blame them-free electricity!) and demanding hot water for tea. The old men seemed to sit (or place their walking sticks- I was constantly tripping like it was my job) directly in any pathway, chatting loudly in various languages (chatting loudly sounds like yelling and arguing to the untrained ear, and made finding a place to have a delicate phone conversation informing someone of a friend or family member’s death additionally challenging) while Anne and I and various other “Westerners” struggled to make lists of people who had called, who needed to be called back, details about tents and planes and transport and food and arrangements. Eventually, as is custom, Anne had to purchase a couple cows and goats to be slaughtered and get many bags of various starches brought over from her store to be prepared in an improvised kitchen of huge cauldrons over open fires which sprung up under corrugated iron roofs tied between trees and poles which appeared out of nowhere. The place was beginning to look like a refugee camp.
Eventually (FINALLY!) we laid Willy to rest. The funeral ended up being a big production of political grandstanding, advertising plugs for the funeral home, and eulogies galore. My personal send off ended up being that I threw together an impromptu choir to sing Amazing Grace (God bless the amazing harmonizing abilities of the Batswana. I was able to get the words for 4 verses –several via text message thanks to a certain missionary kid- I owe ya a beer, buddy- and main melody and they immediately harmonized with it, learning it in the span of an afternoon.) which is a bit more recognizable for the “Westerners” in the crowd than the Setswana hymns, which are pretty impossible to follow. I cut out during hour 3, as I reasoned that I had properly said my goodbyes.
The whole experience for me was a huge lesson in the pervasiveness of culture, and reiterated for me exactly how deep my own culture runs through my veins. It is in times of what would universally be considered trial that we most readily fall back into our own norms and values, and in which we become most quick to be irritated with and judge the beliefs of others. It’s the rituals and standards and expectations which we hold sacred that, when challenged, bring us most quickly to defend our own as right regarding issues that are so ingrained in us that we may have never questioned them before ourselves. These are the situations that may lead us to deem others as most wrong, strange, or in some way bankrupt when in reality they are just different, born out of the same sense of the respect for the sacred (although not observing it in the same ways) as our own. It has been one of my most valuable learning experiences in Seronga to date.
Let me be clear that I don’t mean to make complete light of the situation surrounding Willy’s death. I've observed that the Batswana tend to have what I would consider a more healthy viewpoint surrounding death, most specifically that it is indeed a natural part of the living process. Willy's passing is unfortunate, although he lived a long, productive life (he was 73) and did some positive things for the people of Seronga. I found the circumstances surrounding the whole process of the funeral rather than the death itself to be humorous, and as with most things in this village, if one does not laugh (at least a little) one may never stop crying.
So now, with the realization that I’ve wordily recounted the details of one funeral in a rural African village, and the contributing social and cultural factors that make it so interesting as a foreigner, as well as my own reactions in as many pages as I wrote my paper on Japanese policing techniques for my international criminology class which counted for 50% of my grade when I was schooling in London I shall sign off. With one of the longest run on sentences of my life. Cheers.
Willy Phillips, RIP
Died 28 January 2009, buried 1 February 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
What to do in Seronga when you're bored....
Since a majority of time in Seronga is spent going about the daily business of food procurement, cleaning the ever entering sands from not the hourglass, but from one’s life, cleansing one's body (if not always one's soul), running around the village and plotting one’s next internet fix, the limited amount of free time one has must be spent on having fun, if for no other reason than that if not for some fun one would lose their mind, shit, ect. One must be creative in these “fun” pursuits, and in order to give my adoring fans a glimpse into what counts as “fun” in Seronga I’ve made my top twenty list of my favorite Seronga pastimes. You have to supply your own visuals, and it’s in the “you” form as I also do a lot of talking to myself here….
1) Teach yourself the harmony parts to Postal Service songs (thank you so much L-I’d kiss you if you weren’t back in America!!!) and then do high kicks to same during upbeat numbers. Contemplate writing and choreographing Broadway revival a’la “Mama Mia” and realize the report on Andrew Lloyd Webber you did while in London was closest you’d get to the Great White Way. Settle for Peace Corps being your current claim to fame (for now!)
2) Hunt down someone to open the computer lab at the school-this will take the better part of an hour and at least ten pula worth of airtime on your cell phone- (hopefully your buddy Eman, then spend a while wondering (again) why you don’t just have your own key?) and just wait. Eman will declare today a “work day”, proclaim that he’s very sad and wants to cry today and will put on the Usher “Confessions” album and the two of you will have a sing along. He will also cue up such gems as the Michael Boltan classic “Said I Loved You But I Lied”, along with every thug-tastic sad song that’s been released in the past two decades. Question Eman’s guaranteed melancholy disposition; realize that when you’re sad listening to sad music is funny and thank God for him.
3) Gaze down at your belly button and upon viewing the ring that is still there, have an argument with yourself as to whether this is your high school or college post break-up body, due to semi starvation and partial malnutrition in rural Africa. Rue the fact that no ex boyfriends are going to happen upon you on the road in Seronga. Thank god for Facebook, where they might. Wonder if you could ever maintain this in the presence of real food. Realize there’s no fricken way, and make a goal to get over body anxieties. You’ve got two years…
4) Come up with a convoluted and ridiculous plan to have a contest to name the lizard that lives in your windowsill. Think of some possible names yourself and realize you blew your cleaver name wad on those damn cats. Be cheered in the fact that you’ll probably be able to name some kids someday and realize you should practice with the lizard. Or not so much.
5) Write many, many semi coherent blog entries and letters home. This is fun in that in attempting to describe life here, you realize it could never, ever be done. You will never do it justice. As it is impossible, there is less pressure and thus you can just be wildly entertaining. Ha.
6) Make long and random lists of ….everything. Life goals, goals for the next year, six months, week, day, ten minutes, knowing that a grand and frightening majority will probably never happen. Make peace with that for about ten seconds and move on. Lists of favorite foods that you miss, reasons you’re happy to still be here, reasons you wish you were home, great things about Seronga/Botswana/Africa/ make a large and ongoing list to complete Vanity Fair magazine’s Proust questionnaire, dream of new and amazing half cocked ideas for ways you could change the world that again, will likely not pan out. All of the above to be written in crayon. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
7) Photography 101. There is no shortage of amazing, weird and wonderful things in Seronga and Botswana to take photos of. Favorite subject when all else fails? Self.
8) Repeat random and useless celebrity and entertainment gleaned from celebrity imported magazines as well as the fact that you often spend your precious internet time checking out people.com (and realizing you could be checking out like cnn.com if you were more of an adult…) to unsuspecting (and possibly unenglish speaking) villagers in effort to keep on top of useless celebrity knowledge game. Mentally go through the ever changing family tree of Brad and Angelina. Mourn the fact that you have likely ended your glory days as an unstoppable contender at Trivial Pursuit (the last 20 years) and Scene It.
9) Pedicure toes. Again.
10) Practice walking around balancing things on your head. I myself am up to quite a few steps before whatever thing I’m balancing falls off. If I put one arm up to support whatever it is I’m doing even better. In addition to being a fancy parlor trick, I figure this may be the one indicator that I’ve actually lived in Africa (as I suspect the tan may fade with time…)
11) Go through stockpile of magazines to determine the next short transitional style for hair and plot out who in this country might be qualified to perform the operation. Contemplate what it means that hair role models for now are Pink, Victoria Beckham, Katie Holmes and Agnyess Deyne. Make collage of pictures for back of door.
12) Plank position (like the up part of a push up). Done to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “American Girl”. Hold until arms, legs, abs and other previously unknown muscles shake violently (generally the length of 1 song) laugh hysterically and repeat. This constitutes one set. Do three or four.
13) Baking. Like from scratch with a recipe book. Spend most of day wandering around village looking for eggs.
14) Pick up a few more languages. This may seem ridiculous in light of the fact that you are barely conversational in one, however. If one is going to suck at one African language, one can certainly handle being terrible at three or four. In all seriousness, learning the greetings to several of the other languages in my village-priceless. Seeing the toothless old people grinning and commenting that the Lekgowa now speaks Simbugushu and Seyai, heartwarming. Being unable to tell which tribe any of these toothless old people are from, and risking offending them (I've been told that these two tribes in particular really strongly dislike each other)- a little more dangerous, but i like to live on the edge. And I think they at least see I'm trying...
15) Cheerleading. Not the yea rah rah type, but the kind in which one runs around the village encouraging people to follow through with the things you've previously asked them to do for this or that project. This'll take a while.
16) Continue on with house decorating project. It only looks a little like an asylum now, and more like a standard issue padded room with pictures and writing everywhere. Surely there's a little more space over here....
17) Re-view every movie you have. Watch them again with the second commentary. Not the one with the director and the main stars, the one with the dolly grip and the sound guy giving their recollections of filming. Dream up additional alternate endings. Laugh out loud. This is your life.
18) Imagine the first thing you'll say to everyone upon arriving home. Stop that. It makes you homesick.
19) Read. Another. Book.
20) Gaze out at the day, the sunlight, the raindrops, the stars, the moon, the clouds, the clear sky, the delta. Walk through the village and find something to smile about. Great the children and the old ladies, the friends and the strangers who know your name when you might not know theirs. Write random things on the pavement at the school in chalk. DAnce to the song in your head (or on your ipod). Breathe in the air and do all the things you never had time for in your previous life. Express gratitude. Even when it's boring, this is an amazing experience you're having, and it only gets better with time.
1) Teach yourself the harmony parts to Postal Service songs (thank you so much L-I’d kiss you if you weren’t back in America!!!) and then do high kicks to same during upbeat numbers. Contemplate writing and choreographing Broadway revival a’la “Mama Mia” and realize the report on Andrew Lloyd Webber you did while in London was closest you’d get to the Great White Way. Settle for Peace Corps being your current claim to fame (for now!)
2) Hunt down someone to open the computer lab at the school-this will take the better part of an hour and at least ten pula worth of airtime on your cell phone- (hopefully your buddy Eman, then spend a while wondering (again) why you don’t just have your own key?) and just wait. Eman will declare today a “work day”, proclaim that he’s very sad and wants to cry today and will put on the Usher “Confessions” album and the two of you will have a sing along. He will also cue up such gems as the Michael Boltan classic “Said I Loved You But I Lied”, along with every thug-tastic sad song that’s been released in the past two decades. Question Eman’s guaranteed melancholy disposition; realize that when you’re sad listening to sad music is funny and thank God for him.
3) Gaze down at your belly button and upon viewing the ring that is still there, have an argument with yourself as to whether this is your high school or college post break-up body, due to semi starvation and partial malnutrition in rural Africa. Rue the fact that no ex boyfriends are going to happen upon you on the road in Seronga. Thank god for Facebook, where they might. Wonder if you could ever maintain this in the presence of real food. Realize there’s no fricken way, and make a goal to get over body anxieties. You’ve got two years…
4) Come up with a convoluted and ridiculous plan to have a contest to name the lizard that lives in your windowsill. Think of some possible names yourself and realize you blew your cleaver name wad on those damn cats. Be cheered in the fact that you’ll probably be able to name some kids someday and realize you should practice with the lizard. Or not so much.
5) Write many, many semi coherent blog entries and letters home. This is fun in that in attempting to describe life here, you realize it could never, ever be done. You will never do it justice. As it is impossible, there is less pressure and thus you can just be wildly entertaining. Ha.
6) Make long and random lists of ….everything. Life goals, goals for the next year, six months, week, day, ten minutes, knowing that a grand and frightening majority will probably never happen. Make peace with that for about ten seconds and move on. Lists of favorite foods that you miss, reasons you’re happy to still be here, reasons you wish you were home, great things about Seronga/Botswana/Africa/ make a large and ongoing list to complete Vanity Fair magazine’s Proust questionnaire, dream of new and amazing half cocked ideas for ways you could change the world that again, will likely not pan out. All of the above to be written in crayon. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
7) Photography 101. There is no shortage of amazing, weird and wonderful things in Seronga and Botswana to take photos of. Favorite subject when all else fails? Self.
8) Repeat random and useless celebrity and entertainment gleaned from celebrity imported magazines as well as the fact that you often spend your precious internet time checking out people.com (and realizing you could be checking out like cnn.com if you were more of an adult…) to unsuspecting (and possibly unenglish speaking) villagers in effort to keep on top of useless celebrity knowledge game. Mentally go through the ever changing family tree of Brad and Angelina. Mourn the fact that you have likely ended your glory days as an unstoppable contender at Trivial Pursuit (the last 20 years) and Scene It.
9) Pedicure toes. Again.
10) Practice walking around balancing things on your head. I myself am up to quite a few steps before whatever thing I’m balancing falls off. If I put one arm up to support whatever it is I’m doing even better. In addition to being a fancy parlor trick, I figure this may be the one indicator that I’ve actually lived in Africa (as I suspect the tan may fade with time…)
11) Go through stockpile of magazines to determine the next short transitional style for hair and plot out who in this country might be qualified to perform the operation. Contemplate what it means that hair role models for now are Pink, Victoria Beckham, Katie Holmes and Agnyess Deyne. Make collage of pictures for back of door.
12) Plank position (like the up part of a push up). Done to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “American Girl”. Hold until arms, legs, abs and other previously unknown muscles shake violently (generally the length of 1 song) laugh hysterically and repeat. This constitutes one set. Do three or four.
13) Baking. Like from scratch with a recipe book. Spend most of day wandering around village looking for eggs.
14) Pick up a few more languages. This may seem ridiculous in light of the fact that you are barely conversational in one, however. If one is going to suck at one African language, one can certainly handle being terrible at three or four. In all seriousness, learning the greetings to several of the other languages in my village-priceless. Seeing the toothless old people grinning and commenting that the Lekgowa now speaks Simbugushu and Seyai, heartwarming. Being unable to tell which tribe any of these toothless old people are from, and risking offending them (I've been told that these two tribes in particular really strongly dislike each other)- a little more dangerous, but i like to live on the edge. And I think they at least see I'm trying...
15) Cheerleading. Not the yea rah rah type, but the kind in which one runs around the village encouraging people to follow through with the things you've previously asked them to do for this or that project. This'll take a while.
16) Continue on with house decorating project. It only looks a little like an asylum now, and more like a standard issue padded room with pictures and writing everywhere. Surely there's a little more space over here....
17) Re-view every movie you have. Watch them again with the second commentary. Not the one with the director and the main stars, the one with the dolly grip and the sound guy giving their recollections of filming. Dream up additional alternate endings. Laugh out loud. This is your life.
18) Imagine the first thing you'll say to everyone upon arriving home. Stop that. It makes you homesick.
19) Read. Another. Book.
20) Gaze out at the day, the sunlight, the raindrops, the stars, the moon, the clouds, the clear sky, the delta. Walk through the village and find something to smile about. Great the children and the old ladies, the friends and the strangers who know your name when you might not know theirs. Write random things on the pavement at the school in chalk. DAnce to the song in your head (or on your ipod). Breathe in the air and do all the things you never had time for in your previous life. Express gratitude. Even when it's boring, this is an amazing experience you're having, and it only gets better with time.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Dear Grandma, Happy Birthday
I hope you have a most wonderful birthday a half a world away from me. It's times like this that I curse the skin you've always said was too thin, and wish for longer sleeves, it seems the ones on which I wear my heart aren't doing much to relieve the aching way in which I long to be near you today. I know the pain is normal, that it means I'm growing and that the discomfort is a kiln which is firing me to be a stronger tea cup or china or whatever antiquated piece of kitchen wear you use to make the analogy, but for now I just want relief in the cool calming waters that I know to be you. I miss you so completely, every day, but especially today.
If I were there I would kiss your face and "mess up" your hair. I would put lotion on you hands and you'd complain about how hot your feet are, while mine would be too cold, and you'd admonish me to wait, my time is coming. We'd trade shoes and you'd find something in a drawer or a closet or a book or a can or jar of something that you'd "been meaning to give" to me. You'd listen to my advice and suggestions cautiously or enthusiastically, scowling or grinning at my youthful certainty, or uncertainty. You'd tell me what to do, and I'd roll my eyes, knowing that you're probably right, but only taking it completely in later, on the drive home.
We'd eat too much, sugary and sweet and chocolatey and whatever newfangled health remedy you're trying after getting a crazy email forward about how it will change your life. The vinigar, the yougurt, the garlic, the vitamins, whatever, washed down with whatever chocolate or sweets you had in the house. Cause that's what you do at Grandma's. You'd shake your head and bitch and moan about my picky eating habits (which I promise you, are changing here)swearing that I was too old to act this way, and yet we'd dine on whichever meal you'd prepared especially because you knew I was coming, whichever items you could most recently recall as being my "favorite". I would listen for your ticking heart, and the whisp of the oxygen, and I would breathe in the familiar scent that I've never been quite able to find anywhere else on Earth, only hints of it, here, or there, which always inspire my heart to miss you and love you.
We would have long chats in which I'd speak too quickly and too loud, taking time to settle into the calm that you create in me. We would laugh until we cried, or really in your case, not really cry, but sort of, and then cry until we laughed again. We'd agree and disagree and agree to disagree. I'd shriek and you'd whisper, and we'd both use too many gestures. We'd talk until there was nothing left to say, but to just feel the space in the air left by the warmth of our words, the kind of closeness only those who have shared so much of their souls with each other over the years can create.
And I've been lucky. So lucky. Because not everyone has someone in their life who will proudly pull back their curtains and expose the inner workings of the dirty business of living a life. Not everyone is strong enough to show the shadows, and expose the mistakes, wear the failures like badges of honor. It seems small, and obvious, and yet it has the effect allowing anyone in your presence to take the risks that will make them a better person, that will make them stronger, that will allow them in turn to grow and reach and strive and yet to have the safty of knowing they can always come back home if the plan fails, if the lover is the wrong one, if the choice was mistaken, or the efforts in vain. Not everyone has someone who has lived such an extraordinary and yet ordinary life, and is willing to teach them the lessons, again and again until she is horse, and still repeat them no matter how many times I miss, forget, ignore, overlook or fail to learn them. And yet with every success, and even most failures, I know you're out there in the crowd, silently crying in your way, clasping your hands together with pride in the front row of the stage from which I live my life. And I'm so very, very, blessed.
So congratulations my dear, on completing another lap round the sun on this planet. And thank you for giving those of us lucky enough to live in your essence another year with you. I miss you bittersweetly, and love you completely, and cannot wait until we meet again.
I love you, Happy Birthday.
Your Granddaughter,
Jennifer Korrin Katchmark
If I were there I would kiss your face and "mess up" your hair. I would put lotion on you hands and you'd complain about how hot your feet are, while mine would be too cold, and you'd admonish me to wait, my time is coming. We'd trade shoes and you'd find something in a drawer or a closet or a book or a can or jar of something that you'd "been meaning to give" to me. You'd listen to my advice and suggestions cautiously or enthusiastically, scowling or grinning at my youthful certainty, or uncertainty. You'd tell me what to do, and I'd roll my eyes, knowing that you're probably right, but only taking it completely in later, on the drive home.
We'd eat too much, sugary and sweet and chocolatey and whatever newfangled health remedy you're trying after getting a crazy email forward about how it will change your life. The vinigar, the yougurt, the garlic, the vitamins, whatever, washed down with whatever chocolate or sweets you had in the house. Cause that's what you do at Grandma's. You'd shake your head and bitch and moan about my picky eating habits (which I promise you, are changing here)swearing that I was too old to act this way, and yet we'd dine on whichever meal you'd prepared especially because you knew I was coming, whichever items you could most recently recall as being my "favorite". I would listen for your ticking heart, and the whisp of the oxygen, and I would breathe in the familiar scent that I've never been quite able to find anywhere else on Earth, only hints of it, here, or there, which always inspire my heart to miss you and love you.
We would have long chats in which I'd speak too quickly and too loud, taking time to settle into the calm that you create in me. We would laugh until we cried, or really in your case, not really cry, but sort of, and then cry until we laughed again. We'd agree and disagree and agree to disagree. I'd shriek and you'd whisper, and we'd both use too many gestures. We'd talk until there was nothing left to say, but to just feel the space in the air left by the warmth of our words, the kind of closeness only those who have shared so much of their souls with each other over the years can create.
And I've been lucky. So lucky. Because not everyone has someone in their life who will proudly pull back their curtains and expose the inner workings of the dirty business of living a life. Not everyone is strong enough to show the shadows, and expose the mistakes, wear the failures like badges of honor. It seems small, and obvious, and yet it has the effect allowing anyone in your presence to take the risks that will make them a better person, that will make them stronger, that will allow them in turn to grow and reach and strive and yet to have the safty of knowing they can always come back home if the plan fails, if the lover is the wrong one, if the choice was mistaken, or the efforts in vain. Not everyone has someone who has lived such an extraordinary and yet ordinary life, and is willing to teach them the lessons, again and again until she is horse, and still repeat them no matter how many times I miss, forget, ignore, overlook or fail to learn them. And yet with every success, and even most failures, I know you're out there in the crowd, silently crying in your way, clasping your hands together with pride in the front row of the stage from which I live my life. And I'm so very, very, blessed.
So congratulations my dear, on completing another lap round the sun on this planet. And thank you for giving those of us lucky enough to live in your essence another year with you. I miss you bittersweetly, and love you completely, and cannot wait until we meet again.
I love you, Happy Birthday.
Your Granddaughter,
Jennifer Korrin Katchmark
11-03-2009 Hello, Sully.......
Welcome to this world, my new little prince. You are (really, besides your father who is more of an honorary member, kisses Martin) the first man to be born into our tribe. I have been awaiting your arrival here on Earth from the far off lands and waters of Seronga, and cannot wait until I get to hold your little face in my hands. It will be awhile, but you will know me. Before I came to Botswana a wise woman informed me that I had sent certain parts of myself ahead to Africa prior to actually coming here so that I would recognize the person I would soon become, and so I would feel more at home in my skin once I got here. I have left an equal amount of myself that side of the world, to keep watch over you and yours and be with you there as I am here.
You are a lucky one, little man, with the amazing family you’ve come into, and we will love you well. I cannot wait to impart with you all the mysteries that I have discovered, and cannot wait for you to teach me to uncover new ones as well. We will adventure, we will explore, we will learn and grow and we will love.
I am so excited you are finally here (or there, rather). Welcome to the world of life and all it’s mysteries.
I love you already.
Aunty Katch
You are a lucky one, little man, with the amazing family you’ve come into, and we will love you well. I cannot wait to impart with you all the mysteries that I have discovered, and cannot wait for you to teach me to uncover new ones as well. We will adventure, we will explore, we will learn and grow and we will love.
I am so excited you are finally here (or there, rather). Welcome to the world of life and all it’s mysteries.
I love you already.
Aunty Katch
Pet Sounds... Life in an African Village....
With a title like this one, you'd think that I'm about to wax poetic about all the raging parties in Seronga... Not so...
When I first arrived in Africa- or what I thought of as “real Africa”- the village of Moleps, my first few nights were… Interesting. The night sounds of an Africa village are an unfortunate symphony of the constant barking, braying, clucking, crowing, bleating, mooing and fornicating of the village animals. It crescendos at the full moon.
On the plane to Africa I had somehow managed to score a pair of earplugs (although how or why I would have needed them on the plane to block any noise out of my ambien and wine induced slumber is anyone’s guess) and then at my host family’s house I was reusing the “one time use only” charming blaze orange foam wonders to a point that lacked any semblance of hygiene to block out not only the sounds of the livestock but also the night sounds coming across the open rafter walls of my house. Luckily my mom sent more.
It was funny to me that I needed earplugs to block out the sounds of all the barnyard animals that wander the villages of Botswana day and night (this is the first time I’ve been to a country where they fence their yards to keep wandering livestock out, rather than in..) when I think back on all the places I’ve slept through noises of all kinds.
I’d slept through tons of movies played full blast, innumerable bandits toilet papering my house through my teen years, one year in the drunken, typically screaming haze that is a girl’s freshman dorm floor at college, 2 years in a house directly above both the Duluth fire station and the police station, (cue the blaring sirens at all hours of the day and night) on a hill in which semi trucks flew down the slippery winter hill throwing their jake brakes and screeching day and night. I slept through the city noise of London, near the Imperial War museum on the eve of an unpopular war and its frequent protests complete with drumming, singing and shouting. I’ve slept on a volcano that had been actively erupting and spent more time than I care to admit sharing a residence with an unruly cockatiel who didn’t completely understand what a sheet over his cage meant. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.
Over time I have adjusted to sleeping through my new barnyard “neighbors” without the assistance of earplugs. At Scott’s camp I have been able to add lions, elephants and groaning hippos to the menagerie of animal night sounds I have slept through. On any given night anywhere near the water of the delta (of which now that it’s flooding I live within a half a mile of) there are so many frogs chirping and singing it sounds like some sort of crazy windchime. I have to admit on the extremely rare night of silence in my hut I have a rather difficult time falling asleep. Luckily, due to the reinvasion of my house by mice (and perhaps bats are what I hear scampering over my head upon a thin layer of nearly particle board that separates me from the invaders?) this isn’t often a problem. It seems the sounds must be sporadic and loudly disruptive to be my lullaby. Ah, Africa.
When I first arrived in Africa- or what I thought of as “real Africa”- the village of Moleps, my first few nights were… Interesting. The night sounds of an Africa village are an unfortunate symphony of the constant barking, braying, clucking, crowing, bleating, mooing and fornicating of the village animals. It crescendos at the full moon.
On the plane to Africa I had somehow managed to score a pair of earplugs (although how or why I would have needed them on the plane to block any noise out of my ambien and wine induced slumber is anyone’s guess) and then at my host family’s house I was reusing the “one time use only” charming blaze orange foam wonders to a point that lacked any semblance of hygiene to block out not only the sounds of the livestock but also the night sounds coming across the open rafter walls of my house. Luckily my mom sent more.
It was funny to me that I needed earplugs to block out the sounds of all the barnyard animals that wander the villages of Botswana day and night (this is the first time I’ve been to a country where they fence their yards to keep wandering livestock out, rather than in..) when I think back on all the places I’ve slept through noises of all kinds.
I’d slept through tons of movies played full blast, innumerable bandits toilet papering my house through my teen years, one year in the drunken, typically screaming haze that is a girl’s freshman dorm floor at college, 2 years in a house directly above both the Duluth fire station and the police station, (cue the blaring sirens at all hours of the day and night) on a hill in which semi trucks flew down the slippery winter hill throwing their jake brakes and screeching day and night. I slept through the city noise of London, near the Imperial War museum on the eve of an unpopular war and its frequent protests complete with drumming, singing and shouting. I’ve slept on a volcano that had been actively erupting and spent more time than I care to admit sharing a residence with an unruly cockatiel who didn’t completely understand what a sheet over his cage meant. I’m a pretty heavy sleeper.
Over time I have adjusted to sleeping through my new barnyard “neighbors” without the assistance of earplugs. At Scott’s camp I have been able to add lions, elephants and groaning hippos to the menagerie of animal night sounds I have slept through. On any given night anywhere near the water of the delta (of which now that it’s flooding I live within a half a mile of) there are so many frogs chirping and singing it sounds like some sort of crazy windchime. I have to admit on the extremely rare night of silence in my hut I have a rather difficult time falling asleep. Luckily, due to the reinvasion of my house by mice (and perhaps bats are what I hear scampering over my head upon a thin layer of nearly particle board that separates me from the invaders?) this isn’t often a problem. It seems the sounds must be sporadic and loudly disruptive to be my lullaby. Ah, Africa.
Highland Fling
I hadn’t planned to go to Maun, but when transport from Gumare back to Seronga went awry when the head nurse informed me that my only ride back to Seronga that day would be in the back of an ambulance with several drums of petrol (likely not completely properly closed and fuming like what) I decided to make a new plan in deference to my remaining brain cells. A few well placed calls informed me that I would have better luck catching a lift from Maun back home with the police from Seronga after the weekend, so Dudu and I made a plan to get to Maun.
As with most ventures through the metropolis that is Maun, it began with me texting the usual suspects about my impending arrival. “Rough” the dashing Scotsman I had met a few months back responded to the social calendar inquiry by asking if I had heard about the Scottish Burns Night. Indeed I hadn’t, although I had to admit the name, along with the brief text he had sent describing a night filled with “wit, poetry and whisky” in and of itself sounded quite promising. When he told me the level of dress was to be “formal” a glimmer of the party-dress girl I used to be danced to the surface of my mind. There are just so few events to which one can attempt to wear make-up and feel pretty in the bush! This was an opportunity, and I’m not one to look a gift donkey in the mouth. When I jokingly inquired about Tuxedos (thinking Bond, James Bond… What with all these gorgeously accented ex pats and pilots running around) and he text back “No…. Kilts.” Yeah. Like I was gonna turn THAT one down. I figured it’s still a cultural exchange, just a Scottish cultural exchange. And it certainly was.
As I was already in Gumare at this point Dudu and I then raided her closet for some suitably appropriate China shop attire. (I hate to say this for the complete political incorrectness of this but when I say “China shop” I’m not speaking about places peddling fancy wares such as china and perhaps flatware and pretty linens. But then perhaps you noted that when I mentioned the state of other marketplaces in the area. “China shop” means junk shops run by Chinese people. No one here seems to think this odd or offensive in the least. Just thought I should clear that up at the start). We made a plan with some dresses we thought would work and I mourned the fact that I couldn’t find a decent pair of heels in the Northwest region of the country. We headed out to the hitching spot in Gumare, thumbed a ride, and were on our way to Maun.
Now this happened to be Friday, and during the rounds of meeting up with the friends and associates I’ve somehow collected in Maun, we managed to get completely sidetracked by my friend “Canada”. He’s nearly Motswana, as his parents are missionaries and have lived in Maun most of his life. He is however, still pretty close to American (which I remind him about how he’s so NEARLY there all the time… Which he loves as much as you can imagine a typical Canadian would.) He ended up inviting us boating the next day, which was the day of the Scottish party, which he had no plans to attend.
The boating adventure ended up being just that, with us stopping to meet up with a friend of a friend of a friend who had all the tame zebras running around their yard that you see in my new photos. (Side Note: There are tons of Zebras in Botswana, and many of them are quite tame as they are not hunted, poached or eaten because they are the totem of the President of Botswana’s tribe. I’ve still never seen them get this close to humans. It was weird. I threatened them-although being in English I wonder if they understood- that they had better not trample me or my mother was going to be PISSED. Perhaps the threatening fist I shook at them made it clear. I’ll let the pictures tell the story…) Long story short (or really, told in parenthesis) after a brief run in with a hippo at close range, by the time we had docked the party had begun about an hour previously.
Now really, things never start on time in Botswana, so when we showed up nearly two and a half hours late, I thought we’d be right on time. It seems I forgot about the Brits and their “timeliness above all” which you’d think I would have really taken in after spending all this time with Simon, for whom half 4 means twenty past. We wandered into the entryway of the assigned seating formal sit down dinner function (mental note: not a good idea to try to sneak in two and a half hours late when you are seated at the host’s table… ooopps.) and I began the smile and feign ignorance apology dance. The whisky began to really flow soon after and all was forgiven.
It seems we were just in time for the actual main course of dinner, which was a lot of stuff that usually goes on my “scary food” list, but as I was trying to play “cultured” I sampled (most of it). The Haggis wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be so long as I focused on not thinking about what it was (intestines, nasty ground up bits,-google it). There was also a really amazing thing that was so damn close to a cheese cake that it nearly brought tears. The poetry was surprisingly (to me) pretty good, or if not good, at least sweet, considering the purpose of the night was to immortalize a man whose legend lies heavily in his sexual infidelities. The whole night had the effect of really transporting all present to the experience of a cold winter’s night in a Scottish pub, which is a pretty impressive feat in the heat of Botswana.
In the end, the only thing missing was the bag pipes, which it seemed even Rough couldn’t pull off managing to procure in Africa. The highlight of the evening ended up being the dancing, which the three actual Scots present attempted to teach the rest of us. Scottish dancing is all about being in pairs and constantly switching partners and (in the beginning at least) attempting to focus and count and attempt to go in the right direction. It was hilarious to watch what were undoubtedly a bunch of former prep school boys in their ties twirling around like little leprechauns (I know that’s Irish, but really, it fit) to some dance it appeared they may have mastered at some point in their lives in their Physical Education class and were just remembering in a whisky induced haze now. They were tossing Dudu and I around enough to nearly compensate for the fact that letting a man lead me while dancing is an art form I have not yet mastered.
During the breathless breaks between songs I realized how cool it was just to have a space in which to sit around and speak with people that didn’t carry the “thrill of the hunt” type atmosphere of most of the bars in Bots (or really, the world). Everyone kind of sat around drinking and talking and not necessarily trying to figure out whom was going to try to go home with whom. The dancing had broken the ice amongst people who would have normally spent the night only speaking after they had had their inhibitions worn away by the dulling effects of alcohol. Somewhere between the dancing and the raucous harmonizing of Auld Lange Syne at the bar at the end of the night with lyrics scribbled on a bar napkin and 10 people craning their necks to see and sing, I got a chance to speak with Rough and some of the other Scots and discovered that this is actually is how it is in Scottish pubs. Yeah, there’s crazy drinking (they’re kind of known for it after all) but there’s also this element of widespread socializing amongst the whole room through movement that I would say in American culture we’ve lost (if we ever had?) in the bump and grind of the clubs.
The whole experience made me certain that I need to follow through with the idea I’ve had since London (6 years ago now!!!) that I need to get to Ireland and Scotland for my 30th year of life (also quickly approaching) and with all the friends I’ve met from England, it seems I’ll have to make a few stops there as well. So much for the idea that living in Africa would cure me of my itchy feet…..Here we go again ;-)
As with most ventures through the metropolis that is Maun, it began with me texting the usual suspects about my impending arrival. “Rough” the dashing Scotsman I had met a few months back responded to the social calendar inquiry by asking if I had heard about the Scottish Burns Night. Indeed I hadn’t, although I had to admit the name, along with the brief text he had sent describing a night filled with “wit, poetry and whisky” in and of itself sounded quite promising. When he told me the level of dress was to be “formal” a glimmer of the party-dress girl I used to be danced to the surface of my mind. There are just so few events to which one can attempt to wear make-up and feel pretty in the bush! This was an opportunity, and I’m not one to look a gift donkey in the mouth. When I jokingly inquired about Tuxedos (thinking Bond, James Bond… What with all these gorgeously accented ex pats and pilots running around) and he text back “No…. Kilts.” Yeah. Like I was gonna turn THAT one down. I figured it’s still a cultural exchange, just a Scottish cultural exchange. And it certainly was.
As I was already in Gumare at this point Dudu and I then raided her closet for some suitably appropriate China shop attire. (I hate to say this for the complete political incorrectness of this but when I say “China shop” I’m not speaking about places peddling fancy wares such as china and perhaps flatware and pretty linens. But then perhaps you noted that when I mentioned the state of other marketplaces in the area. “China shop” means junk shops run by Chinese people. No one here seems to think this odd or offensive in the least. Just thought I should clear that up at the start). We made a plan with some dresses we thought would work and I mourned the fact that I couldn’t find a decent pair of heels in the Northwest region of the country. We headed out to the hitching spot in Gumare, thumbed a ride, and were on our way to Maun.
Now this happened to be Friday, and during the rounds of meeting up with the friends and associates I’ve somehow collected in Maun, we managed to get completely sidetracked by my friend “Canada”. He’s nearly Motswana, as his parents are missionaries and have lived in Maun most of his life. He is however, still pretty close to American (which I remind him about how he’s so NEARLY there all the time… Which he loves as much as you can imagine a typical Canadian would.) He ended up inviting us boating the next day, which was the day of the Scottish party, which he had no plans to attend.
The boating adventure ended up being just that, with us stopping to meet up with a friend of a friend of a friend who had all the tame zebras running around their yard that you see in my new photos. (Side Note: There are tons of Zebras in Botswana, and many of them are quite tame as they are not hunted, poached or eaten because they are the totem of the President of Botswana’s tribe. I’ve still never seen them get this close to humans. It was weird. I threatened them-although being in English I wonder if they understood- that they had better not trample me or my mother was going to be PISSED. Perhaps the threatening fist I shook at them made it clear. I’ll let the pictures tell the story…) Long story short (or really, told in parenthesis) after a brief run in with a hippo at close range, by the time we had docked the party had begun about an hour previously.
Now really, things never start on time in Botswana, so when we showed up nearly two and a half hours late, I thought we’d be right on time. It seems I forgot about the Brits and their “timeliness above all” which you’d think I would have really taken in after spending all this time with Simon, for whom half 4 means twenty past. We wandered into the entryway of the assigned seating formal sit down dinner function (mental note: not a good idea to try to sneak in two and a half hours late when you are seated at the host’s table… ooopps.) and I began the smile and feign ignorance apology dance. The whisky began to really flow soon after and all was forgiven.
It seems we were just in time for the actual main course of dinner, which was a lot of stuff that usually goes on my “scary food” list, but as I was trying to play “cultured” I sampled (most of it). The Haggis wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be so long as I focused on not thinking about what it was (intestines, nasty ground up bits,-google it). There was also a really amazing thing that was so damn close to a cheese cake that it nearly brought tears. The poetry was surprisingly (to me) pretty good, or if not good, at least sweet, considering the purpose of the night was to immortalize a man whose legend lies heavily in his sexual infidelities. The whole night had the effect of really transporting all present to the experience of a cold winter’s night in a Scottish pub, which is a pretty impressive feat in the heat of Botswana.
In the end, the only thing missing was the bag pipes, which it seemed even Rough couldn’t pull off managing to procure in Africa. The highlight of the evening ended up being the dancing, which the three actual Scots present attempted to teach the rest of us. Scottish dancing is all about being in pairs and constantly switching partners and (in the beginning at least) attempting to focus and count and attempt to go in the right direction. It was hilarious to watch what were undoubtedly a bunch of former prep school boys in their ties twirling around like little leprechauns (I know that’s Irish, but really, it fit) to some dance it appeared they may have mastered at some point in their lives in their Physical Education class and were just remembering in a whisky induced haze now. They were tossing Dudu and I around enough to nearly compensate for the fact that letting a man lead me while dancing is an art form I have not yet mastered.
During the breathless breaks between songs I realized how cool it was just to have a space in which to sit around and speak with people that didn’t carry the “thrill of the hunt” type atmosphere of most of the bars in Bots (or really, the world). Everyone kind of sat around drinking and talking and not necessarily trying to figure out whom was going to try to go home with whom. The dancing had broken the ice amongst people who would have normally spent the night only speaking after they had had their inhibitions worn away by the dulling effects of alcohol. Somewhere between the dancing and the raucous harmonizing of Auld Lange Syne at the bar at the end of the night with lyrics scribbled on a bar napkin and 10 people craning their necks to see and sing, I got a chance to speak with Rough and some of the other Scots and discovered that this is actually is how it is in Scottish pubs. Yeah, there’s crazy drinking (they’re kind of known for it after all) but there’s also this element of widespread socializing amongst the whole room through movement that I would say in American culture we’ve lost (if we ever had?) in the bump and grind of the clubs.
The whole experience made me certain that I need to follow through with the idea I’ve had since London (6 years ago now!!!) that I need to get to Ireland and Scotland for my 30th year of life (also quickly approaching) and with all the friends I’ve met from England, it seems I’ll have to make a few stops there as well. So much for the idea that living in Africa would cure me of my itchy feet…..Here we go again ;-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)