Mice are not Nice....

A new and interesting twist on the same old murder.....

Like so many starlets at the academy awards who tearfully promise themselves they wouldn’t cry, I swore I wouldn’t write about killing mice again. I thought I had covered the whole genre, from trapping to poison to blunt object traumas to the head. I was certain that there was nothing left to say. And generally there wasn’t. Until of course last night.

I was sitting on my bed in a benedryl induced haze, waiting for the drugs to completely put me to sleep. I had been sick with some terrific stomach bug that had left me weak and tired, but as I had laid around for several hours already that day I was finding it tough to sleep despite being tired, so had taken the benedryl to knock me out. I was writing letters home which will inevitably arrive after the event I’m meaning to write about when I heard some soft tapping coming from near my door. I thought perhaps it was the little boy who lived on my compound coming to greet me. I had heard that he had come home earlier, and despite us not speaking any common language, we’ve become buddies.

I shouted a greeting at the door three times to no response. Finally I hauled myself off my bed and opened the door. What greeted me on the other side was not a smiling little boy but a mouse crawling up the inside of the netting I’d wrapped through my burglar door to prevent mosquitoes in the warmer seasons. I pushed open the door and he was dangling like Tom Cruise in one of the “Mission Impossible” films. I grabbed the dustpan from the floor and flicked him off the door into the night. Little did I know that would set the tone for the night…

Around eleven thirty I woke up in from a deep sleep in a big confusion. I heard splashing around in my bathtub. At first I thought perhaps the cork had come out of the piping I’ve been using to shower and the sound I was hearing was the water rushing out into the pipe into the bathtub. Upon closer inspection I saw a dark something in the corner of the tub. I had left a small amount of water in the bottom to rinse some of the laundry I had soaking in the morning as the water has been out. I didn’t remember leaving anything in the tub and as soon as I turned around to grab my headlamp the splashing began again and I had a strong suspicion as to the nature of the intruder.

When I shone the light in the tub it was indeed a mouse, attempting to climb out of my bathtub. A quick survey of the situation determined that he had probably come in through the slightly open window climbing in through a hole in the netting that surrounded the piping. Strangely enough this was not the first mouse I’d seen in a bathtub, the other one was in Maun at Anna’s house. She being a vegetarian and an animal lover that mouse was trapped and released. As I am not a vegetarian or an extreme animal lover, this mouse would not be experiencing the same fate.

I thought that the fact that I had not taken any drastic measures to disturb whichever animals were living in my ceiling making noise and waking me up all the time had been an appropriate enough attempt at hospitality. When I mentioned the intruders to my landlady she suggested that perhaps it was the mice that fly (bats) that had gotten up there and she would look for the hole which they were using to get in and block it. As there are holes all over I very much doubted the success that this mission would bring. She then asked if I had any poison to kill the mice in her house. I told her that I had something better and lent her one of my traps, secretly smug in my current lack of a mouse problem, due to what I considered good management techniques: read two traps and a shitload of poison.

KARMA. (sing-songy voice)

Once I got the headlamp out I was able to catch the little bastard between a shallow wash basin and a deep bowl, using his inability to properly swim to my advantage. I took my improvised trap out in the yard to make a plan. Every time I heard him scramble I yelped a little bit as well. I knew at that moment that bashing him wasn’t going to be an option, as last time that had ended badly. I had been nauseous and generally sick a majority of the week and wasn’t in the mood to lose what little might have remained in my stomach over yet another gory murder in my front yard.

Suddenly the bit of water in the bottom of the basin gave me an idea. Drowning! I’m not certain it was the recent studying I’ve been doing for the GRE about angles and geometry or if it was a drug induced hallucination of some sort. But I quickly decided drowning would be the most effective form of capital punishment. I grabbed a brick to place on top of the upturned bowl and ran for a bucket and the outside standpipe.

I opened the tap only to hear an unsatisfying hiss. No water. Well this would make drowning a more difficult option, but yet not impossible. There was also a bucket full of water in the bathroom, waiting for morning that I would usually use to wash my face. I was going to have to wander around with a dirty face in the morning but it seems knowing this mouse would be dead was worth it. I grabbed the water and went back to where my captive was held.

I carefully poured the water into the basin. Nothing. The water couldn’t get up in the bowl because of the air inside. I still cannot imagine what inspired me to attempt to defy the laws of physics or gravity or whatever scientific truth means that I had effectively created a little submarine bubble for this little bastard but that is exactly what happened. I tried a few times to tip the whole production to get the water up inside the bowl but my hands weren’t big enough to grasp the basin and hold down the bowl. The mouse would escape and swim around desperately, and I would squeal, and it was generally bad. So now I had a trapped mouse, a basin full of mouse shit water, and a brick on top. Prior experience told me crying wasn’t a helpful option in this scenario.

My benedryl addled mind could do no more. I was worried about leaving the whole production either too close to the house as he would inevitably try his little breaking and entering scheme again, or too far into the yard as I have a highly curious four year old little boy who is currently staying on the compound and had visions up him upending the thing and the mouse escaping in the morning. In my drug induced stupor of a brain the idiot mouse clearly had rabies as it was crazy enough to repeatedly try to enter my house (somewhere in my mind the exact diagnosis and suggested rehabilitative treatment was crawling it’s way out from the depths of my criminology and psychology degrees as I’m cross referencing my time at a law firm for the statues on capital punishment that I’d already sentenced this monster to.) and was going to attack the child before I got up and how would I live with that? It seems these bloody things are bent on making me lose sleep whether they’re dead or alive!

So I did something slightly crazy.

I went into my house and grabbed a pen and a post it.

I wrote on the note:

“Please kill the mouse”

And drew a sort of stick figure mouse drawing on it.


I have absolutely no idea whom I was appealing to, as the little boy likely cannot read Setswana much less English. I began to laugh hysterically and exhaustedly in my yard in the moonlight. Perhaps some Tokaloshi or an bilingual African spirit would take care of the job.

I woke the next day and looked at the whole set up in my yard and knew I couldn’t deal with that just then. When I came home from work the girl on my compound upended the whole mess and the mouse was indeed expired.

It just struck me that perhaps it was hypothermia. Eish.

Push.....

Frustration, education, motivation, creation….

It had been an “I hate Botswana” type of morning. As I’ve said, I’m no Susie Sunshine pants, and these times occur. It’s my reality on occasion. I had been at the clinic, and had sat through a meeting in which the doctor (call me simple, call me crazy, call me whatever, everyone else does… but I tend to hold someone who is a doctor up to slightly higher standards, for better of for worse) had complained that there was no “motivation” (read money, t-shirts, food, ect) involved with participation in the upcoming vitamin A campaign.

As soon as the words left his lips the other local staff also began to complain. Perhaps it was the fact that it was Friday morning and it had been a long week, or perhaps I had just reached the end of some rope. Whatever my personal “motivation”, I found myself wondering quite loudly, “I’m confused as to why people want more money for completing tasks that are in their job description, during hours they are already being paid to work?” Wrong statement, as all the staff chimed in with variations of the phrase “Lorato… You’re trying to kill us with too much work.” In reality all the vitamin A campaign meant was that the staff would have less time in the afternoon to sit around in the waiting room and shoot the breeze. For one or maybe two weeks. When I tried to talk to one nurse privately about it later, he actually said very seriously “Lorato, that time in the afternoon is for us to rest.”

Granted, when there are patients the nurses are generally working very hard. There is no concept of appointments for the most part in African medical clinics. Everyone just shows up in the morning and waits until it is their turn. The afternoons are generally quiet, which makes sense in the heat of the day, especially in summertime, unless there is a woman in labor or an emergency. On Mondays the nurses have incredibly long days and get up at the crack of dawn to collect blood, and when patients have to go to the other side the auxiliary staff can spend a great deal of time on the road (for which they are paid overtime). I can see and understand all this.

Most days, however, I stop by there in the afternoon and the staff is just sitting around. I can do this about one day a week, and enjoy it sometimes as it can be a good opportunity to chat with the staff and learn more about the different cultures that I live amongst. More than about one or two days in a week, however, and then I begin to lose my mind, so I’ve begun to spend a lot less time at the clinic. I go in the morning and usually leave for the police or school or mortuary. I’ve found that since I’ve changed my schedule to include being out in the village more it has made me more visible and accepted in the community. More people approach me and bounce ideas off me, and many more go out of their way to greet me even in other villages, which continues to astound my fellow PC friends.

But there’s a little tiny American piece of me that seems to be unwilling to die that believes in order to have something better you must work hard for it and earn it. This sometimes involves sacrifice. It can be tough to work amongst people whom are generally making a few times what I am making monthly and listen to them complain about what they feel entitled to. Especially knowing how much better off they generally are than most of the patients in the village they serve.

I have learned in Seronga that there are some times when I just need to walk away. On this particular day I packed a few thousand pills into individual dosage envelopes and informed the staff I would be going to the school. I had planned to meet with one of the teachers who had proposed marriage to me last week at the ferry (which I denied but suggested we could work on a project together if he could be a professional about it as a consolation… this is how I meet many of the people I collaborate with, unfortunately) to plan how to undertake creating a world map mural on the wall of the primary school.

The teachers at the primary had long been complaining that I only work with the junior secondary school, which they decided was because there is generated electricity there. In reality it is because the older children tend to speak a bit more English, but I agreed, it probably was unfair. So I began to try to think of possible projects to do at the primary school. I’ve learned that if I ask people here what they want to do, they tend to respond “whatever you want to do, Lorato.” I realized I have to be the one that comes up with some suggestions and then let them pick. When I was at the hardware store with a map one day and discovered that some of the women working there didn’t know how to find Botswana on the map that there might be a big, raging need for a map of the world to be displayed somewhere prominently in order to educate the whole village. It’s another pipe dream that this will actually make an impact, but I’ve found in the Peace Corps you gotta live on pipe dreams or you’ll starve. Or go crazy. Whichever.

So I went to the primary school to check my friend France. Despite attempting to slip in unnoticed and not disturb the class in session, my arrival was heralded as though the president himself had made a surprise visit. France, the teacher, who had been sitting at his desk playing with his phone, jumped up and greeted me, introducing me to the students and nearly bowing to me in his excitement. The children appeared to be discussing the day’s topic amongst themselves, and many who recognized me from the village began to whisper to each other more excitedly. I quickly gave up any thought I had had of observing quietly and decided to check how the students were doing with the days lesson.

The topic appeared to be multiplying decimals. As I wandered around the room checking the students work I noticed many, many hash marks on papers and numerous children counting their fingers under their breath. These children were standard fives, which is somewhere between an American 3rd and 5th grader, but many of them were older than typical 5th graders, as it seems that children often start school later in the villages. When a child begins school often depends on if they have any older siblings or family they can stay with in the village as their parents will likely spend a great deal of time away from the village during the year at the cattle post, or lands where they keep their animals and crops. It also depends on if and when the parents can get the money together to pay for school fees. I think sometimes children just eventually reach an age where they can stay in the village and manage to get themselves to and from school ok by themselves. As I checked their work it seemed very few of them knew their multiplication tables. I was horrified, but unfortunately not surprised.

The emphasis on education is increasing on this side of the delta, but there are many barriers to education being effective. School is supposed to be taught in English, which is many of the children’s 2nd, 3rd or even 4th language. Most of the educational materials are in English or Setswana, the country’s two national languages. In a village where many of the parents have a form three (between 8th and 10th grade) or even standard 7 (elementary school) education and their mother tongue may be Sheyai, Simbugushu, or one of the Sesarwa languages, which they may or may not know how to read or write, it’s difficult to expect them to emphasize the importance of education. If the parents haven’t passed away from HIV.

Beating is also common in schools, mostly at the older level, but I believe it also happens at the primary school. I have engaged in many long, exhaustive and completely useless conversations with the staff of the junior secondary school about whether beating is an effective form of discipline. I’ve beseeched them to be more creative in their discipline regimen, and given the teachers suggestions, to no avail. I’d like to be able to say that I had some effect on this practice and somehow knew how to stop it completely or even reduce it but I can’t.

I am ashamed to say that there are days when hearing the sound of the freshly stripped stick whizzing through the air towards some child’s rear end has been more than I can handle and I have to walk away. I’ve had to leave meetings because I can’t stand to hear the children’s cries (“Lorato-they are pretending. They are not hurting. They will be laughing in a minute. You don’t understand our culture. You think we are abusing them but they are very naughty”). I haven’t yet decided if it’s worse to hear the children being beaten or to bear to see the look in their eyes as they come from the room where it happened only to see me walking away. Children are beaten with a switch for coming late, for sniffing glue, for not speaking English amongst other offences. I find it hard to say unequivocally that for as much as I enjoy school and learning that I would want to attend school in Seronga.

These are just some of the things that have become a part of my life here that are hard to effectively describe when people ask questions about life here, or make statements like, “Well it’s Peace Corps, didn’t you expect it to be difficult?” Yeah, I did, but not in these ways.

So back at the primary school, I learned on my visit on this particular day that there are over 700 children at the Seronga primary school. From standard 1-7, there are about 100 children each level. And there is sometimes only 1 or 2 teachers for an entire grade level. Seronga, being far from everything, has proven in every government sector (police, clinic, schools, ect) to be a very difficult place to assign people. And the people that are assigned here are generally pissed off about being here (“Lorato- it’s boring here. How can you stand it here? There are no shops and nothing to do. And it’s far from everything, there’s no electricity and these people are backwards. Eish this place is terrible.”) which doesn’t lend to creating a particularly effective work environment.

So without enough teachers the head teacher told me that they have resorted to splitting the classes in two or three groups and then the teacher will rotate amongst the rooms. The children sit by themselves in between waiting for a teacher. This means that some children have gone entire terms without a teacher and are thus missing many basic skills. Someone somewhere in government has decided to introduce teaching schemes (which from what I can understand about what the teacher tells me sounds like some nightmarish developing world version of “no child left behind.” Except that in this version nearly every child is left behind.) The teacher is given the set of topics for the semester and must cover all of them on a certain schedule. Whether the children have the background knowledge and skills to understand the topics or not.

I briefly spoke to France about this, and his complaint was that the children themselves are just slow, or stupid, or inherently ignorant. He claimed to not have had this experience when he taught children “that side” (which is essentially anywhere that’s not here).

Which is where the lightning struck for me.

Anyone can talk shit about their village, or any other village and God knows I often do. It’s one of the most difficult challenges I’ve found with living in Seronga. To go from one situation that’s irritating or frustrating for one reason and stumble across another that’s alarming for another reason altogether can start to feel impossible. It seems an endless cycle of shittiness. Sometimes it seems as though there are altogether too many tragedies, injustices, and unfortunate conditions happening in one small village to know which one to throw my energy at to try to fix. I’ve called Seronga “the place that God forgot” only partly jokingly. It’s a place that’s very, very easy to lose hope in and I have lost my hope, my faith and myself in several times.

And yet I still find myself here.

Because even though God may have forgotten Seronga, it doesn’t mean that I have.

Somehow in all the craziness and heartache and joy and tragedy of this place it became my place. Seronga challenged me and tested me and pissed me off and somewhere along the way made me fall in love with it. All the things that make me want to run screaming from it are the things that make me know I have to keep fighting for it.

The point of the descriptions above is not just to complain about my life here. It’s an attempt to describe the conditions here not just for myself but to give the situation and the setting of the story for all of those who live it. It’s easy to think of this place in a very surface level “why the hell can’t they get their shit together and deal with this HIV thing” sort of way. I know I’m guilty of it. The picture I’m trying to paint for you is a circular portrait of how I’ve come to understand and deal with my own frustrations about the deeper issues in Seronga.

When I get pissed off and frustrated, I generally find someone who is more pissed off and frustrated than I am, and then try to talk them out of it a bit. It’s a bit ridiculous, but I’ve found it works.

I think any Peace Corps volunteer in any country at some point has to come up with certain strategies to deal with things that at the end of the day are just so very different from home. Like many places in Botswana, Seronga has characteristics that make it frustrating, not just for me as an American, or as an outsider, (but those are personal factors of me that add to my own frustration of the place) but also to those who have ever known anything different, or “better” and this includes other professional Batswana who work here who aren’t from here. Where I am lucky is that I have discovered I am not alone in my frustration. There are actually people living here who are even more pissed off and frustrated than I myself am.

Whether it’s my own uncanny sense of timing or some crazy instance of serendipity, it seems I find these people just when I need to.

Speaking with France something sprung in me when he told me those children were stupid. The fire within me was relit from the embers of disappointment and the faint glow of disillusion with a spark of indignation.

For as often as I might, in a moment of weakness, speculate the same thing about the villagers in my own head, for someone else to say it was blasphemy. These children were from my village, which in African tradition makes them mine. I know for a fact there are many bright children in that room, whether they be book smart or village smart or what. And I know even more that I believe in them.

As France is a man who claimed to want to marry me I decided that I had a quite a bit of leeway in terms of what I could get away with saying to him so I laid into him a bit. I argued that if he indeed were to go back and teach the students at the level they are at instead of trying to go along with the syllabus and teaching them things that were ahead of math concepts they had ever reached, he might find more success. If the children were failing perhaps it was his inability as a teacher and not the children’s inabilities as students that was falling short of the mark. If he tried some new things, or different methods, or went off the beaten government mandated path of teaching he might have better results.

Now generally the tone of the culture here tends to be quite docile and accepting, with a focus on keeping the peace at all costs. Arguments or heated discussions are an exception, they’re very rare, and have a few possible outcomes. It generally either freaks a person out or they’re intrigued by it. Women in particular tend to be relatively subservient here as well, at least in public. (In reality they’re running many aspects of the home, the community and the government… Just under the radar.) My behavior right now was throwing my colleague (or former potential suitor-although in my defense, I tend to give men an extensive list of reasons why they would never want me for a wife almost before they finish the last breath of their proposal of marriage) for a bit of a loop, but luckily my buddy France tended to be in the former group and was open to my somewhat forceful suggestion.

We briefly discussed how we could approach the day’s lesson differently, and he agreed to follow my lead, and we would reteach the day’s lesson in tandem, with him taking over once we got started. With the children I modeled a more gentle approach, working around the room rather than sitting at the desk and getting down near each child’s level. I showed them a different way of multiplying by grouping the numbers without the hash marks, and gave them more time to think through the answer, no matter how long it may take. I watched as not only the children’s confidence but France’s enthusiasm increased. By the end there were still a few children counting on their fingers and using hash marks, but the classroom overall expressed a ton more enthusiasm about the idea of memorizing the multiplication tables by next week. I agreed to come and help him for the rest of the term on selected days if he agreed to try new things (and to not beat the children). I’ve taken to quizzing the children that I recognize when I see them in the village on any number of random multiplication tables, and they have also begun to quiz me, although I think they think I’m some sort of magician when I can answer them immediately without thinking (God bless the American education system.)

In the end in Seronga, we’re all in this together. Sometimes the only way of pulling myself out of a shitty mood and reigniting my own hope is to try to do it for someone else. It was by pushing France to be a better teacher, to expect more from himself and believe more in his students that I managed to pull myself out of my frustration. I’m not going to change everything here, and maybe nothing will change, but perhaps if I keep wearing at the things that bother me instead of letting them wear on me, something good will come. I guess I must just focus on trying to create a moment or two of joy and hope amongst the misery and irritation and will be enough. Perhaps all it can take is a little push.

Hostess with the Mostess?

In which my time as Seronga’s social chair and bed and breakfast continues…

Over the course of my time in Seronga I’ve come to host more than a few strangers in my yard or house. They come to me in very strange ways, through a friend of an acquaintance, a friend of a stranger, through the blog, whatever. On one occasion some Americans were hitching down in the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) tank and it stopped as they saw me out on my run and figured that as “a white” I would probably know what to do with some “other whites”. So the fact that these two Aussies and one American had been given my name and phone number by not one but two people in the course of their travels didn’t surprise me in the least.

I learned they were coming when my friend Drew from Bana Ba Metsi called out of the blue one Wednesday evening. I was in the middle of my girls book club, but as is policy in Botswana, left the girls reading as I went to take the call. After we had spent a precious few (expensive) phone call minutes going through not only the requisite Batswana pleasantries but also Drew’s mandatory British greeting exchange, we got to the point of his call. He mentioned that he was giving some backpackers a lift on the other side of the river and they were headed my way, and rather than allow him to waste more of his cell phone minutes beating around his British bush I interjected, “Sure they can stay here.” It certainly wasn’t the first time I had invited complete strangers to camp out at my house. I have come to see it as part of my karmic duty to help my fellow seekers in any way that I can. It always breaks up the monotony for me, and I usually get at the very least interesting company and conversation out of the deal. In the past I’ve also had a guest that sewed my mosquito netting onto my burglar door so that I can sleep with the door opened (and locked!).

I went about completing my book group meeting and went for my run not having any idea if (or when) they might end up showing up at my place in the evening. I was splashing around in my (mostly cold) bucket bath when one of the villagers called asking where they should drop the makgowa (white people-plural) that wanted to see me. I threw on some clothes and met them at the main road, as although I now have the new landmark of electricity poles (the rumor is that Seronga will be electrified by generators at least as of July, and we might be on the actual grid before Christmas. I’ll believe it when I see the light-yup that’s a lame joke. I need these visitors to keep me sane probably much more than they need a place to crash.) and can say that I live exactly 15 poles from the second, smaller, brown “welcome to Seronga village” sign across the road down the right, this new information does nobody any good in the dark.

So two Australians and an American walk into my yard (yeah this would make the start of a great joke had there been a bar in Seronga-it’s closed- that they could’ve walked into, the story might have been funnier, but it’s pretty good as it is.). They pitched their tents in the dark and I introduced them to the various amenities available to them at the casa de Lorato, including a stove on which to cook (yeah I usually burn out on cooking for more people than just myself-and really when it’s just me I eat a shocking variety of things cold out of the fridge- what would you do without a microwave- after about one meal. Hey I know I’m not a great cook and so if someone else likes doing it more power to em!) and my luxurious mostly cold water splash bathing situation. The three of them were very cool, and by the end of the night I was inviting them to stay as long as they wanted and Liam was giving me some music and movies. I warned them that the next morning I had to head to Gumare super early and left them with one of my famous hand-drawn maps of Seronga. They were going to check out the Poler’s Trust to maybe try to take a Mokoro trip (the dugout canoe looking boats which are poled like gondolas in Venice through the reeded canals of the delta by a local guy). They hadn’t decided if they were going to stay at my place the next night.

There were still two tents in my yard when I got home from a hellish and brief trip to Gumare late the next evening. My new houseguests (yard guests?) hadn’t gone on a Mokoro trip when they discovered the price to be nearly double what it said in the lonely planet and had been enjoying staying in an actual village. Looked like they were here for a while. Game on.

Throughout the next few days the boys built me a solar shower that works great when used in the middle of the day (but also helps store a decent amount of water in a pipe to use when the water goes out). Les and I enjoyed being able to hang out with another American chick who loves travel, and we did pedicures and discussed the elements of making a place feel like home. She also taught me the finer points of packing light (She is incredible and incredibly ruthless when it comes to packing. She rips pages out of books to make them lighter and managed to find a United States Military Government issue Vietnam era can opener. It’s a tiny wonder. The girl carries about 14 kgs and has done amazing things with her passport, and will easily meet her goal of traveling to 50 countries before she reaches 30. She’s a new personal hero.) Liam taught me about photography, introduced me to new music and “Flight of the Conchords” and gave me a copy of the movie (how fitting) Australia! Gavin… Well Gavin, along with being really instrumental in the creation of the solar shower, taught me the value of emergency vodka, and relaxing as an essential way of life and the benefits of early retirement (although 25 might be a touch young for that…)

They were in Seronga for a few days, and I did manage to at least get them a boat ride on the delta for free (I consider it my personal duty to serve as the American Ambassador to Seronga. Sure I’m self appointed and there’s no other American to oppose me but whatever-some privileges come with isolation…. What is that quote about absolute power….?;-) it corrupts absolutely… right. Well. So even though I failed to get them a flight over the delta- which in some ways wasn’t my fault as the plane that was in that day had had many of it’s seats taken out as it had brought a coffin in for a funeral. Bloody legality of needing a seat and seatbelt to fly in a plane!) as well as an evening and several hours in Simon’s sparkling company.

By their last night in Seronga I had also found some Israelis in the village who were making a fatal error of trying to hitch out of Seronga at around 4PM. Knowing they wouldn’t make it to the ferry even if they did manage to find a lift, I offered them to camp in my yard. They politely declined but sure enough an hour later one of the villagers lead them up to my gate. I figured the more the merrier. 6 people ended up being a bit of a squeeze on the limitations on one room in terms of cooking and bathing, but luckily these people were backpackers and we could all handle it. I learned to say the essential phrase (“improve my hut”) that I think has become a condition of people visiting me in Seronga in Hebrew which is good.

By this time the Aussies and American had begun to feel like family, and I squeezed them all into the hut for the night so they wouldn’t have to re-pitch their tents in the sand and could get an early start in the morning. I’m happy to report Gavin adhered to the bed conditions which were “you can sleep in my bed if you keep your hands to yourself.” We were close, but not THAT close. Liam and Les reported being very comfortable on my paupasan mat on the floor.

I was sad to see them go the next morning. I waited out by the roadside with them for Simon and they said if I wanted to skip out on the whole Peace Corps bit I was welcome to join them traveling, they had discussed it and decided I’d make a good fourth, which was an honor. I realized that although I enjoy traveling, I’m probably not that hardcore, and do better with a homebase in an area from which to travel for short periods like weekends, rather than say years (as they were doing. As I’ve said, hard core). As they say, there’s no place like home, which somewhere between here and there I’ve realized Seronga has begun to be.

We said our goodbyes and Simon picked them up to take them up to Shakawe. He also got them a lift for free to the Namibian border, and even stopped to let them grab their beloved rubix cube, which they had accidentally left with Drew from Bana Ba Metsi (cue the Aussies are thieves jokes that really didn’t work as Drew is the British one… but whatever.) who had then buried it in the sand in a plastic baggie for them (and that, my friends, is what you call making a plan!). My hut felt empty with only me there, but I knew that these weren’t the first, and certainly wouldn’t be the last houseguests. I’ll just have to figure out what the next home improvement I can challenge the next ones with will be. ;-0

And Liam, thanks for posting those amazing photos on facebook! I've gotten lots of compliments!!! I hope you guys are still having fun and that your travels are going well, and safely!

Upgrade: A mostly warn shower!

Over the time I’ve lived in Seronga I’ve gotten used to some things. One of them is my bathing situation. I’m getting to be an expert bucket bather, and I only usually find myself in tears over my desire for a hot shower or bath or really any amount of hot water to be touching my whole body simultaneously after about a month in Seronga. I’m used to it. But it could, admittedly be better.

Enter the Aussies.

(Sorry guys. I’m usually better at coming up with genius nicknames but I’m failing here. You’re left for the eternity of the blog as the Aussies. Hope you don’t mind.)

Although my new house guests were incredibly flexible and undemanding and seemed to fit comfortably right in (perhaps the outback is another terms for bush ;-) in my luxury accommodations they decided at some point in the first day that there was room for capacity to be built in Seronga, namely in my hut. On the second evening we were chatting and I realized the time, temperature and amount of water I would have to heat on the stove and excused myself for my evening splash bath.

And genius suddenly struck my houseguests.

Liam mentioned that he and Gavin had decided they thought they would be building me a solar shower. In their wanderings around the village that day they had come upon the hardware store in their attempts to locate the bottle shop (they’re in the same complex of buildings).They had been at the hardware store and discovered that the humble offerings in Seronga appeared to just about have the supplies to create such a thing. I remained cautiously optimistic.

So the next day we go to the hardware store. I soon found myself haggling with the staff because from the time we were quoted prices for piping in the morning until the time we showed up ready to buy in the afternoon the prices had mysteriously doubled. I was ready to give up. It’s continuously disheartening to me when I find that people I interact with every day can so effortlessly attempt to screw me over with no shame or apology. There was some story about them misquoting the price to me in the am, despite me taking someone outside to show them the exact piping I wanted, as well as confirming the price several times. It was time to call in the big dogs. Or rather big dog.

As with most things in Seronga, this project could definitely come off without Simon, but was made both simpler and more complicated, as well as infinitely more entertaining by his presence.

So in the middle of these near to tears negotiations with the women I check in on nearly daily, Simon shows up. He’s flustered and muttering about a plane coming this side and transport. It seems as more white people move to this side of the delta the responsibilities of the white people already living here are increased based on the fact that life in Seronga is in fact, as Simon himself says, “simpler, but not easier.” Meaning that yes, the village life is lovely in its generally calm and quiet serenity, but this is a direct trade off for the increased difficulty of getting simple (and yet occasionally essential to one’s little piece of sanity on this island) provisions, such as cheese, affordable cement, petrol to run generators, fresh fruit, ect, ect. It seems Simon has become the director of transport, import/export and general movements in Seronga, a title he enjoys marginally, and bitches about constantly.

So Simon’s in a bit of a state. As he takes in my state, he shakes his head at the ladies, declares the whole thing highway robbery and decides we’re going to see what we can do to find the supplies we need in Seronga’s other supplier of general goods, Simon’s own yard. The guys and I load into the back of the pickup and we’re off.

Within about 30 seconds the four of us are tramping through the bushiest, likely most snake and creature filled area of Simon’s yard in search of piping. When we find it, near his sewage tank, it’s filled with a foul smelling liquid that once may have been water, but isn’t currently very promising in terms of something I want to stand my body under in an attempt to get clean. But at this point it’s free, it’s there, and beggars can’t be choosers. We attempt to rinse it out and begin the search for fittings. It’s altogether a more difficult, involved scenario than I had imagined, which reminded me why although Simon had growled something about the simplicity of completing this very task a few months back, I had yet to attempt to undertake it. In this instance, with all this testosterone flowing and all those present needing to prove themselves and complete the task, I decided to just sit back and watch. And wait for the fireworks.

I’ve recently noticed that Simon can get a little funny when I bring friends around. I noticed this is especially true when they’re guys. It’s like everyone, regardless of the circumstances, might be a potential suitor, and thus everyone is put up to some crazy Simon test. Very few past muster upon the later analysis. Thank God no one that comes to the bush is trying to actually date me or we might have a problem on our hands.

So through the process of these two guys attempting to make my life a bit more pleasant Simon sort of put them a bit through the wringer. Whenever one of them had a suggestion or idea Simon was ready to inform them why it wouldn’t work. When one of them starting using a tool to do something it was either the wrong technique, or too slow or he just looked on shaking his head. Like the lone male in the elephant herd he was waiting for one of the guys to earn his respect by showing him up, and when it didn’t happen they were both dismissed, in Simon’s mind at least, as a threat. It was the scene I’d always watched on TV when the guy picks the girl up for the prom and the father stands threateningly and broodingly in the corner. To me it was slightly hilarious, and I tried to explain the concept of the prom scenario to the guys, but being Aussies, they didn’t quite get it. There’s some crazy animal stuff going on in the bush.

So eventually we got all the necessary pieces in order to put together the shower. Les and I started on our pedicures as I figured my role would be mainly a consultative one as necessary. It ended up that I have a huge loop of black piping running in and out of my window and up onto the roof of the building next door.

Within another hour I had damn hot water running in through a pipe positioned in my window. It was actually too hot to properly stand under but gave me a good three or four warm weekend baths before it got to cold for the winter. A subsequent houseguest has managed to rig it from the ceiling and my short self can mange to stand right under it and actually proper shower. I mean there’s conditions, I have to shower while there is still plenty of sunlight to keep the water warm. The water has to be working in Seronga in order for it to work. There are a few pressure issues. Now that its winter it’s too cold to use it unless it’s the middle of the day and it seems I’ve found myself incredibly busy during the day these days. But generally it’s a big improvement. Upgrade!

Dancin' With Myself.........

“There’s nothing to lose and there’s nothing to prove”
“Let’s sink another drink… Cause it’ll give me time to think….”

(Covered by Nouvele Vague- Grey’s Anatomy Soundtrack- gotta love that reimagined version with all the tap dancey background.)

On the advent of “shadow dancing” as a popular pastime in the delta….

“It was a party of note,” (which is the way my buddy Ronny begins most of his “good old days” stories) -when my friends Anna and Godfrey had their camp warming party in the bush. They had invited Simon and I, and I of course invited that weekends guests, and they had quite a few friends on their new island camp as well. In total there were about a dozen of us.

We made our way out “that side” in the afternoon, crossing the river late in the day. I had made a lemon flavored baked good (Simon’s analysis: heavy.) and the wine was flowing freely. I pitched my tent in what I hoped was a low traffic area for nighttime hippo wandering. It still never ceases to amaze me that this is something I now consider on a regular basis.

By the time the dinner cooking commenced it was dark and yet Anna pulled off the whole cooking for a dozen people by a campfire bit as though she had all the amenities and conveniences of the kitchen of a four star restaurant. It was a delicious veggie curry (there was also braiied meat available for the carnivores such as myself in the group.) After dinner someone put on an ipod and the party began.

I’ve been to several parties in the bush, and it seems anytime there are more than about 5 people, someone gets the brilliant idea to start drinking games. I’ve mentioned before that I tend to spend time with lots of people from different cultures, and on this particular night I was grossly outnumbered by the Brits. It generally seemed like a good idea to them that we would be having races “shot gunning” beers. This particular task involves puncturing a hole in the side of a beer, covering it with one’s finger, shaking it a bit and then popping the top then chugging it down through the punctured hole upon someone shouting “go!”

The winner of this sophisticated game (did I mention that a majority of these competitors were PhD level animal researchers?) is determined by the first person to place the empty beer can on their head. Brilliant.

As I’m not a beer drinker, I got through about one of these little pleasures. I resigned myself to drinking my cider at a more reasonable pace and being the judge of the shotgun contest. Soon this got boring and so I found myself a nice open space in which to dance. I soon noticed that if I danced with my back to the full moon I would watch my shadow on the ground. I soon pointed this out to Anna, who was coaxed away from the shot-gunning and was soon immersed in dancing with her shadow as well. Our frantic movements (efforts to “out-dance” our shadows) soon gathered the attention of the group, who found this to be hilarious (more ridiculous than sucking beer out of a hole in the side of a can and then placing it on top of one’s head? I’ll let you, the reader, be the judge….). There was soon a rush to determine the greatest song for shadow dancing. This lasted for the better part of two hours; complete with nearly every genre of dance we could think of (although I think Godfrey the Irishman definitely won the Riverdance competition).

It still strikes me the strange things I find entertaining in this world through the looking glass. A few weeks later I found myself watching the washing machine at Anna and Godfrey’s Maun estate go through an entire cycle. And I wasn’t alone. Anna’s assistant Eeva sat with me through the whole thing, during which we discussed the highlights of this or that button going by, as well as exclaiming with delight when the rinse cycle would change over and bubbles would fill the window of the front loading machine. This is what happens in a world without television, my friends. Kiss your Tivo for me.

Give: A Moral Dilema

I live in a relatively poor village. I can’t say that it’s alike or different from any other, it just happens to be the one I live in. I live here. Pretty much full time. It means I interact with the people every day. All the people. Including the children.

I know that to some people to make a child smile might be the high point of their day, and indeed, it has often been the pinnacle of mine. An easy way to do this is to give them something. A sweet, a balloon, a toy, some money. It’s not like they don’t know that you, or me as a white person, likely have it. It’s not like they aren’t asking. For many of the children in my village it’s the only English they know.

I can see the attraction. I’ve seen the look on tourists faces as they give the scrambling hoards of often dirty, sometimes half naked children sweets. Then the tourists take pictures of the children, shot from their vantage point above them and thus generally having the visual effect of a “save the children” ad to take home and report that they’ve been to “Africa.” For some of the kids, it may be the only thing they’ve had to eat that day, but it’s unlikely.

The tourists hand the sweets or small change that likely amounts to a fraction of a cent of whatever currency it’s been converted out of into pula. They reach into whatever deep pocket they’ve remembered they have the coins or sweets or bubble gum in, and get their joy from seeing the children smile, and laugh to themselves as the children follow them like lemmings, grasping their hands and coming merrily along. The self satisfaction beams from the tourists faces, and one can see that they fancy themselves a sort of Santa Claus, and feel good about themselves the rest of the day. They leave my village with warm fuzzy memories of their trip and perhaps a greater sense of gratitude of how much better off they are than those poor starving children in Botswana that they saw on holiday.

Call me a miser, but I don’t agree.

It may seem logical that these people feel they have given the children of this poor, rural village a smile, and from their frame of reference it might appear that this sweet might be the only reason that child has had to smile in a long time. Not true my friends. Yes, there are many aspects of this village that are enough to make a lesser mortal (like myself) cry like a baby.

And yet. These children genuinely smile more than many children I’ve seen anywhere else in the world. Their toys consist of trucks they push along the road made of bits of wire and soda or beer cans for wheels. They create purses out of old rice bags, and fans out of stray bits of paper. I’ve seen children with improvised guitars and drums, and often they’re smiling like maniacs and running around happy for no tangible reason that I can see, and I find myself wishing I could be like them, happy and full of joy for no reason.

The point. This is an economically depressed area. There is little money being passed around, but I can assure you, based on the number of children I usually have to stand in line at the co-op who are throwing whichever coins they scavenged from wherever to see how many candies the clerk will give them today (it has occurred to no one that this might be a great learning opportunity to teach kids about money and adding) that the children can get their sweets. Sure ours are usually better quality than the stuff we get here from China (patriotism at it’s best;-) but it’s all sugar isn’t it? It’s not like these are kids who only get sweets when rich white people come around distributing them like…. Candy. Although there aren’t a ton of white people or foreigners in this remote place, they do come through with more regularity than you’d think. Despite their fantasies to this effect these tourists are not Columbus for crying out loud.

But sweets are so not the point. The point is the association of white people with money, sweets, higher intelligence, the ability to create jobs, solve problems, fix things. What’s wrong with that? Because yes, I agree it can feel pretty flattering to walk around every day with people treating you like the second coming. But after a while it feels… Gross. Because eventually you realize all the negatives that come with this sort of attitude. Namely, that if I automatically hold these attributes because I am white, then logic would denote that there’s probably some inherent thing that makes me better. If this is true, then if someone is black, then perhaps they can never aspire to these attributes. Maybe they have no responsibility to try.

The whole thing has begun to feel very toxic to me, I sometimes feel like the keeper at the zoo, muttering to the tourists “Please don’t feed the animals.” Because in the end that’s really what it’s about. Human dignity. Saying no rather than reinforcing all these crazy and damaging stereotypes about white people. It seems like a small thing, and it is. But for me it’s a big deal.

This is my home. These people have become my people. I want something better for them than to see white people (which I also happen to be) as the answer to their wants and needs. I want to help them believe that they can provide, and create and change their conditions and situation into what they want it to be, rather than thinking they need to depend on white people, or the government, or to think that any of this is outside their control. (Again. This is my village and I describe my particular situation. Each of us living in this country has to negotiate their situation in whichever way makes them feel and sleep best. This is how I feel about Seronga and I don’t judge the actions of any other volunteers in any other place on Earth.)

I have often heard people around the village complain that tourists always take pictures of the children when they are dirty, or the ones that are in rags and it gives Seronga a bad reputation. I have agreed with them, and then I have asked what Seronga has done to present a different image of itself to tourists who come through? This usually stops them in the middle of their complaint, but they have a valid point, they just may not know what to do about it. I try to gently point out that it might be a start for the adults themselves to set an example by not asking any white person they see for money, alcohol or cigarettes and also to teach their children not to do it either. Apart from that it gets kind of tough.

Because it’s not that the villagers don’t bathe their children because they do, usually daily, depending on water. We just happen to live in a place which can constitute a rather large sandbox much of the year. Hell, I’m always shocked by the amount of dirt I see in the puddle that comprises my bathwater. And Seronga is not Milan, nor does it attempt to be a fashion capital of anyone’s world (I myself am an obvious enough example of that on a depressingly regular basis). So if the clothes happen to have a whole of a few tears in them as long as they still sort of fit, so what?

As I’ve said, I live here. Every day. Many of the children here are conditioned by the frequent tourists we have coming through here to beg, and most of them try it with me, most of them should know better by now, but many must figure why not try their luck. Hell most of their parents try it as well, for money for local homebrew. It’s to the point that I might take someone more seriously if they asked me for fifty pula, but I generally barely return the greeting when they greet me but asking for two pula in broken English. (The thing that gets me the most is that it is their own cultural norm of politeness they are violating by not properly greeting me by saying hello in any number of the local languages. Most people should know by now that I can properly greet in all of them. I can’t say much else, but by God, I can greet.)

Exhibit #1: I was leaving for training in September for a week or so. I had some fruit in my fridge that I didn’t want to let go to waste. I was on a flight out of Seronga on a small plane, so I couldn’t take it with me. I had some oranges and other fruit, and decided that I would get rid of them as quickly as possible, by just giving them to the first kids I saw. I did so, and hopefully some kids got a days serving of vitamin c out of the deal. It would have ended there, but the effects of my actions still haunt me to this day, namely in the few kids who still, 7 months later, ask me for oranges specifically, nearly every time I see them.

Exhibit #2: I can count the people in my village on one hand whom, regardless of how long I have known them or how close we are, have not asked me to give them something, bring them something from America, or feed, clothe, provide water for or in some way give something to themselves or a member of their family. It’s tough to be seen as a bank or charitable organization every day.

Call me petty, but this is not the association I hope to leave with this place. I absolutely do not want to be the “white” that everyone remembers for something material she gave them. I selfishly want my legacy to be more significant than that.

These may seem typically overdramatic of me, and perhaps it is. But I’m the one living here, struggling with the dilemma of “what is right?” And how can I show these people the love I feel for them in a way that feels good to me too?

(It’s a fascinating thing to spend every day staring some moral quandary or other in the face. I guess it’s both the thing that makes me a feel alive and the thing that can occasionally make my heart feel like it would be easier just to turn completely to stone.)

The lesson I’m hoping to impart: If you don’t give money to every panhandler you see in your own country please don’t do it here. Furthermore, think very carefully about the impact and impression you’re leaving. These children aren’t zoo animals, they’re people with dignity, and by rewarding their begging behavior no matter how little it means to you it’s reinforcing some pretty ugly and dispiriting stereotypes.

Finally, I get a lot of candy in the post from people and last time I was on the phone with my mom she said someone had given her a big bag of suckers he wanted her to send for all those “poor little children in Africa”. I tried to explain the dilemma. My dear mother asked me if perhaps I couldn’t put aside my rule and be nice to the children for one day (as if I’m an a-hole to them every other day) ;-). I informed her that it was more of a principle than a rule and if I abandoned it once to please someone in the States who would never even meet these children (Don’t even get me started on the increase in diabetes as a result of an increase in refined sugars being introduced as a desirable part of the Batswana diet. And tooth decay? These children have never been to a dentist in their lives!! The mobile truck for the whole community comes once a month, and it tends to focus on the elderly whose health is at risk due to their oral hygiene. Or even the adults for that matter. Toothbrushes. You want to send something send toothbrushes. Or really, send books. Help me expand these little minds that think I am so wonderful, -or perhaps not as I never give them candy. But I digress) than it wasn’t really a principle was it? She sighed and called me a Grinch and we laughed. (She will see when she gets here!!!)

What I have been doing with the candy is distributing it as “incentives” when I do teaching at the schools, or presentations or when a member of my book club gives a great answer, or when I see people at the clinic working particularly hard. I try to use it more as a “we’re celebrating our hard work together” than a “reward” of sorts but there’s just no easy way about it. I try to do it as nonchalantly as possible, and sometimes I claim I got it from the government, or I found it, or I say that the volunteer who was here before me sent it in the mail because he misses them and loves them very much.

Truly. If you want to send something for the “poor little” children, send art supplies, send books, send maps. Send something I can use to teach them something about our American culture, rather than something to rot their little teeth. Ok, enough soap box for now. I have to go great my adoring fans;-)

Last of the Mozambicans?

Here’s an entry I found on my computer from back on vacation in Mozambique. Amazing what can get misplaced for 6 months. Perhaps I’m just dreaming about “the good old days” of vacation. Who knows.

In which I get my frilly Peace Corps panties in a bunch on vacation….

Now I struggle with being very careful about generalizations and stereotypes about entire groups of people. At the end of the day clichés are called that for a reason and it tends to be that there are some common characteristics about certain groups of people that tend to quite often be true. A perfect example is the cliché of Americans abroad. People tend to think we are loud, (obnoxious) occasionally overbearing, demanding, confident, inquisitive, and sometimes culturally insensitive and a host of other things my foreign friends haven’t bothered to share with me. When I’m honest with myself I can admit that I fit the bill if I’m not careful (or maybe all the time?). I can openly admit that my friends and I fit into some of these negative American stereotypes at various times while on vacation and probably on occasion through our time here.

So with generalizations. I struggle. I’m not perfect in this area. It’s a common thing here. Southern Africa tends to have a great deal of xenophobia and racism of all sorts. Perhaps there isn’t more than in other places, but here it just tends to be more out in the open as a result of their history. So generalizations are easier to fall into in a culture where they are not only prevalent, but it can be generally still acceptable, as in not politically incorrect as they might be in the States. I try to learn as much as I can about people as individuals before I put them in a box but sometimes encounters happed that don’t allow for that type of in depth investigation. This happened during several chance encounters on vacation.

The other disclaimer that I have to make is that I have many South African friends who happen to be white. I try to defend the entire group to my American friends in general, because I have had many good experiences with them. Due to the nature of our work here, the Americans I know (which are admittedly mostly Peace Corps) tend to at least try (again and again, every day, sometimes it’s hard, it’s usually a struggle of sorts) to understand and appreciate the people here, their cultural differences and tendencies that may seem backward to us or even harmful practices within their own culture (ie those that increase the transmission of HIV). I would hate to be assumed to be and associated with the type of American who fits the stereotypes of small mindedness and racism (although it has happened more than once to me here) that can exist in my culture and I try not to do it with South Africans, but the point I’m trying to make is that it can exist, and we ran into it several times on vacation.

So on with the show.

It was our second or maybe third night at the backpackers in Vilanculos. It had rained since we had been there and we were a bit cooped up and desperate. We were tired of the scene at the backpackers and wanted to go out on the town.

A, as is her tendency, can make friends with anyone, even a brick wall if it was painted in such a way that it attracted her. She had already of course made friends with a majority of the local population of Vilanculos and had met a guy who said he was a deejay and would be performing that night at a club called the “Afrobar”.

A group of the younger South Africans from our hostel who had already made it apparent to us that they were generally not interested in “our kind”: read Americans, had announced to the whole bar at the backpackers that they would be going to the Afrobar as there would be a party hosted by a major cable music network that we’ll call “Brace” (if you’re really dying to know who it is email me and of course I’ll spill) to avoid any legal troubles. As they had deemed to include us in the mass invitation we thought perhaps this was a bit of a peace offering, or at least they had overlooked the fact that we were at the bar when they mentioned it. Either way we knew they would be there. We grabbed our Mexicans (the new friends that we had made that were absolutely invaluable in translating the Portuguese of Mozambique with their flawless command of Spanish (it was, after all, their native tongue)) and were on our way.

Everyone was quite pleased to walk out of the gate at the backpackers and feel a break in the nasty rain that had been plaguing our days on vacation. We walked into Afrobar at the altogether too incredibly early A dictated time of 9PM. It seems we had forgotten about the concept of “African time” because we were on vacation. The bar was empty, and so we grabbed a seat at a prime location for scoping out any new “talent” that came through the door.

I saw him as he entered the bar, and being myself I immediately called “dibs.” From a distance he was really good looking, and as he approached the bar I learned that he was indeed, ready for his close up. As it was established amongst the girls on the trip that I got the first chance to hit on him, I began the game by promptly ignoring him.

He was one of those guys whose name is likely Brad. His capped teeth (and dare I say blonde highlights) implied that he surely hadn’t known many of the world’s tragedies personally (but then really, have I?). He was chatting with a group of his friends (which I soon learned were his coworkers) who had settled near us at the bar. They too ignored us and the two groups collectively waited for someone to make a move. This is usually my job in the group, but I’ve learned that men from places other than the States can occasionally be put off by women who approach them and so we all just kept waiting.

Eventually “Brad” placed our accents (or was it our volume?) as Americans overheard me speaking with a few of my friends and upon hearing our American accents quickly sidled up to us and began to recite his resume of people and places he knew in the States. He was gorgeous in that traditional, clean cut sort of way, and arrogant in the ways that only those who have grown up with a certain sort of privilege can be. He then went into the amazing place they were staying, the private pool overlooking the ocean, ect, ect ect,. I found out that he was from Joburg and worked for the music channel that was putting on the party (as evidenced by all the banners hanging up announcing that this party was put on by Brace as well as the fact that there were guys setting up cameras near the dance floor.) We chatted for a little while and I excused myself to go hang with my friends again.

In a few hours the music started, being played by a white deejay. The music was typical house, with really nothing about it to place it as specifically from South Africa. I don’t like house music in general, and this stuff wasn’t exemplary in any way that made me appreciate it any more, and I soon became bored.

As is typical of any bar when the music first starts and before the drinks really start flowing the dance floor was empty. I figured this deejay thing was just a temporary thing to warm up the crowd before the local guy A knew came on to perform. But the deejay continued with the lackluster music for a few hours, and eventually the people from the music channel got out on the dance floor and tried to get more people out there. I’m usually all for dancing, but the music was really not working for me. The TV crew began filming mostly themselves dancing to the South African house music. Eventually the group from the backpackers got out on the dance floor with, of all things, those crazy ropes that have fire on the end. They start showing off for the cameras and twirling them, which cleared the dance floor again. All the local people were hanging out on the sidelines.

Eventually Brad came over (it’s not his real name but I can’t remember it anyways, plus I’m beginning to enjoy this alias thing) and tried to get our group to dance. I followed him out to the floor and began to ask him what the music channel’s aim was in filming all the white tourists in a bar in Mozambique. Would it be an extension of American MTV’s “Spring Break” for Africa?

He told me that they were filming a segment in which they wanted to play South African house music as a way of exposing Mozambicans to it, and to film how much they enjoyed it for the show.

I looked at him, looked at the dance floor, looked back at him and cocked my head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “But it doesn’t look like the Mozambicans are enjoying the music at all. They’re standing on the sidelines.”

There was of course, of no concern to dear blonde Brad. He began to wax poetic with what was inevitably outtakes from the station’s illogically conceived interoffice memos about how this was such a great opportunity to show Mozambicans what good music was and get them turned onto the beats that were making an impact all over the continent. We danced for a while longer and surprisingly in relation to the alcohol being consumed beautiful Brad became a bit less attractive (we all know generally the opposite is true).

I was just making my way off the dance floor to leave Brad with the flame throwers when the music abruptly changed and all the local people started streaming towards the stage. The local guys A had talked about had begun performing and they were really good. Mozambican music has some Portuguese influence to it that leaves it sounding like a really cool unique hybrid of African and European. I turned on my heel and headed back to the dance floor where I began to dance with some of the local girls who had just come onto the dance floor and were singing along with the lyrics. The rest of my friends soon joined us and we were having a grand old time. The fire twirlers were forced off the floor and the camera crews began filming all the local people dancing. They tended to fit the stereotype of African people who are really, really good dancers. This was a proper party.

Soon the some of the women who were with the music station pushed their way up to the front of the crowd and began grinding up on each other like it was a “girls gone wild” video shoot. They pulled some of the local girls into it and soon the bright lights near the camera were redirected to them. The local chicks were soon dancing like any other group of crazy spring breakers in Cancun and many soon abandoned their own dancing style to get on camera. The local group played about four songs and then it was back to the South African deejay and music and many of the locals left the floor again.

I looked at my friends in surprise. What just happened? Everything was cool and now we’re back to this crap music!

As my friends left the dance floor I went to find my buddy Brad. He was talking to the flame dancers and they were saying they had gotten the crazy rope torches during their holiday in the Southeast Asia. As I say, the drinking had continued and Brad embraced me as though he hadn’t seen me in years. I peeled him off of me and tried to ask him what had happened with the music.

He rambled something about being able to dub the footage of the locals dancing to the local music with the South African house music. The aforementioned house music was blaring so loudly I thought I had misheard him so I leaned in closer. He repeated what he said and continued on about bringing “these people” “proper culture.”

I looked at him, leaned in even further, and yelled more loudly than necessary to my former friend Brad, “They don’t need your f-ing crap musical culture, they have their own, and it’s ten times better than this garbage. Why doesn’t your channel take this opportunity to showcase Mozambique’s cultural music to the world, rather than bringing your bullshit in here deafening us with it, and then completely misrepresenting it to the world via your station?”

Exit me stage left. Needless to say what I had originally hoped would be my torrid vacation romance with Brad ended before it began.

Of course having had a few drinks I was focused on what I had now interpreted as a gross cultural offense and the words “cultural imperialism” may have come out of my mouth along with all sorts of blathering about neocolonialism. In retrospect this may have been a slight overreaction. Because really, how is some of the work I do as a Peace Corps Volunteer much different? I’m trying to simultaneously learn about Batswana culture and expose the Batswana to American culture, and hoping they’ll pick up some of the aspects that I tend to think of as positive. Who says that’s right? Who knows?

In the end I guess we just have to keep struggling to appreciate and admire other people’s cultural differences. Culture is such a strange thing across the board, but I myself have to keep working on this, tolerance, appreciation, and gratitude for my part. Not generalizing and falling back on stereotypes. And I have to hope that I haven’t seen the last of the true Mozambicans.