“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.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
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;-)
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.
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.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Happy Anniversary.... An Entry From the Edge... Or is it the Middle?
April 16, 2009
“Let me know..
Do I still got time to grow?
Things ain’t always set in stone
That be known, let me know
Let me..
Seems like-
street lights, glowing
Happen to be,
just like moments,
Passing, in front of me
So I hopped in
the cab and
I paid my fare
See I know my destination
But I’m just not there
All the street lights, glowing
Happen to be, just like moments
Passing in front of me, so I hopped
In the cab and I paid my fare.
I’m just not there
In the streets
I’m just not there
Life’s just not fair.”
Kanye West “Streetlights”
Although this song centers on several increasingly foreign concepts to me, namely streetlights (streets, or lights or really, electricity… hmmm cabs? Perhaps in Maun). This one has been on some sort of terminal repeat on the ipod (along with the rest of the CD-lifesavingly fantastic-screw you Rolling Stone, you’re just wrong) in some sort of effort to self destruct the whole machine. I love it.
A year ago today I got on a plane to Philly, which lead to a bus to JFK and another plane to Jo-burg (and thus begins a typical model for Peace Corps travel, minus the vehicle breakdowns). I’ve been ruminating about the fact that the anniversary of the crazy decision I made has been approaching for a while. I’ve plunged into the depths of depression, reveled in the joy around me, questioned it all, answered quite a bit less, learned some, forgot some, lost some, won some, found some, let some go, gained some, gave some more up (occasionally against my will) and would do it all again. I guess that’s peace, at least. Which is all one can really hope for. In the end, I'm still here.
In gratitude,
Namaste
Go Siame
Lorato
“Let me know..
Do I still got time to grow?
Things ain’t always set in stone
That be known, let me know
Let me..
Seems like-
street lights, glowing
Happen to be,
just like moments,
Passing, in front of me
So I hopped in
the cab and
I paid my fare
See I know my destination
But I’m just not there
All the street lights, glowing
Happen to be, just like moments
Passing in front of me, so I hopped
In the cab and I paid my fare.
I’m just not there
In the streets
I’m just not there
Life’s just not fair.”
Kanye West “Streetlights”
Although this song centers on several increasingly foreign concepts to me, namely streetlights (streets, or lights or really, electricity… hmmm cabs? Perhaps in Maun). This one has been on some sort of terminal repeat on the ipod (along with the rest of the CD-lifesavingly fantastic-screw you Rolling Stone, you’re just wrong) in some sort of effort to self destruct the whole machine. I love it.
A year ago today I got on a plane to Philly, which lead to a bus to JFK and another plane to Jo-burg (and thus begins a typical model for Peace Corps travel, minus the vehicle breakdowns). I’ve been ruminating about the fact that the anniversary of the crazy decision I made has been approaching for a while. I’ve plunged into the depths of depression, reveled in the joy around me, questioned it all, answered quite a bit less, learned some, forgot some, lost some, won some, found some, let some go, gained some, gave some more up (occasionally against my will) and would do it all again. I guess that’s peace, at least. Which is all one can really hope for. In the end, I'm still here.
In gratitude,
Namaste
Go Siame
Lorato
A Simple Task.....
I just want to give a small example of what can make life irritating in a rural generally unelectrified Botswana village.
The nurses at the clinic asked me to make a few small changes to a form they were going to use as part of a project to compare diagnostic and treatment methods for malaria.
(There is a lab technician who has come from down south to complete a study on whether the tests we are using to diagnose malaria are effective as well as the effectiveness of the drugs we use to treat it. He arrived in late March (the height of malaria season here happens to be in about January or Feb, when the rains are still frequent) and so the timing was a few months off for maximum effectiveness and he incidentally has been able to examine about 1 case of malaria. The whole thing is likely going to be a bit of a waste of time and money.)
I quickly recreated the form on my laptop, making the changes and completing the whole thing in less than ten minutes, as the generator was still on at the clinic because it was morning. The nurse asked me to get about 30 copies of the new form. It should have been easy enough.
I saved the new form on my flash drive, put my laptop in my backpack and headed off to the police building on foot, as all the ambulances were gone. It’s maybe a kilometer or two from the clinic. No problem.
When I get to the police their generator is on (hurray!) and one of the police officers shows me to where the computer that is attached to the printer is. Within two minutes of inserting my flash drive it becomes infected with no less than 73 viruses, the worst of which is the dreaded “re a leboga” (we thank you) virus, which works by pulling up thousands of windows attempting to connect with the internet, effectively freezing up the computer. How every computer in the village can be infected with the same virus when only two can (rarely) connect to the internet is beyond me. I remove my flash drive and head back to the junior secondary school (half a kilometer back in the direction from which I had come).
I arrive at the junior secondary school and am told that the computer there also has the virus, and cannot perform any function involving a flash drive. Sigh.
I cross the road to the mortuary, where I plug the flash drive into my own computer to remove what have now become 761 viruses. This takes about 20 minutes, all the while quickly draining my battery, as despite constantly carrying 2 plug adaptors to connect my computer to a power source, I have forgotten to schlep along the square to round plug that I need to charge at the mortuary. I head back to the school to borrow a plug adaptor, which takes another 30 minutes to find and swear in my blood that I will return it.
Back to the mortuary. So at this point I am busy trying to make plan, as it seems that the three computers in the village that are connected to printers are all so virus ridden that I cannot print from my flash drive, and as none of them are currently connecting to the internet, I can’t plug in my laptop to try to download the installation software in order to try to print from my computer. Ok.
I scan through the rolodex of people in the Okavango subdistrict in my brain, scanning not by name or location but by access to resources. I try to think of the people who might simultaneously have the following: electricity, a working computer that has working internet, a printer, and a fax machine. I come up with Ricky in Shakawe as the closest and most likely candidate. I call him to see if he has all four of these resources at present. He does. I head back to the mortuary, and email him a copy of the form to print and try to fax back to the junior secondary school, where I should then be able to make the 30 copies provided they have paper and the generator stay on. I text Ricky the fax number for the school.
I send the email. Ricky receives it. He prints it. And his fax goes off line. At this point I cannot bear to go back through the mental rolodex and trying to get this to work again. He tries again for the next few days. I put the whole situation out of my mind in order to avoid losing it. He decides to give the form to P, who will be going through Shakawe the next day. When she gets to Gumare she will attempt to fax the form back to the school. I will meanwhile have to keep calling around to see if the fax has been sent, and if they have had paper in the machine to receive it. And there is how I spent the better part of a Monday. Hopefully we can get the forms by next week. I don’t think I will ever lose it when the copier jams again.
The nurses at the clinic asked me to make a few small changes to a form they were going to use as part of a project to compare diagnostic and treatment methods for malaria.
(There is a lab technician who has come from down south to complete a study on whether the tests we are using to diagnose malaria are effective as well as the effectiveness of the drugs we use to treat it. He arrived in late March (the height of malaria season here happens to be in about January or Feb, when the rains are still frequent) and so the timing was a few months off for maximum effectiveness and he incidentally has been able to examine about 1 case of malaria. The whole thing is likely going to be a bit of a waste of time and money.)
I quickly recreated the form on my laptop, making the changes and completing the whole thing in less than ten minutes, as the generator was still on at the clinic because it was morning. The nurse asked me to get about 30 copies of the new form. It should have been easy enough.
I saved the new form on my flash drive, put my laptop in my backpack and headed off to the police building on foot, as all the ambulances were gone. It’s maybe a kilometer or two from the clinic. No problem.
When I get to the police their generator is on (hurray!) and one of the police officers shows me to where the computer that is attached to the printer is. Within two minutes of inserting my flash drive it becomes infected with no less than 73 viruses, the worst of which is the dreaded “re a leboga” (we thank you) virus, which works by pulling up thousands of windows attempting to connect with the internet, effectively freezing up the computer. How every computer in the village can be infected with the same virus when only two can (rarely) connect to the internet is beyond me. I remove my flash drive and head back to the junior secondary school (half a kilometer back in the direction from which I had come).
I arrive at the junior secondary school and am told that the computer there also has the virus, and cannot perform any function involving a flash drive. Sigh.
I cross the road to the mortuary, where I plug the flash drive into my own computer to remove what have now become 761 viruses. This takes about 20 minutes, all the while quickly draining my battery, as despite constantly carrying 2 plug adaptors to connect my computer to a power source, I have forgotten to schlep along the square to round plug that I need to charge at the mortuary. I head back to the school to borrow a plug adaptor, which takes another 30 minutes to find and swear in my blood that I will return it.
Back to the mortuary. So at this point I am busy trying to make plan, as it seems that the three computers in the village that are connected to printers are all so virus ridden that I cannot print from my flash drive, and as none of them are currently connecting to the internet, I can’t plug in my laptop to try to download the installation software in order to try to print from my computer. Ok.
I scan through the rolodex of people in the Okavango subdistrict in my brain, scanning not by name or location but by access to resources. I try to think of the people who might simultaneously have the following: electricity, a working computer that has working internet, a printer, and a fax machine. I come up with Ricky in Shakawe as the closest and most likely candidate. I call him to see if he has all four of these resources at present. He does. I head back to the mortuary, and email him a copy of the form to print and try to fax back to the junior secondary school, where I should then be able to make the 30 copies provided they have paper and the generator stay on. I text Ricky the fax number for the school.
I send the email. Ricky receives it. He prints it. And his fax goes off line. At this point I cannot bear to go back through the mental rolodex and trying to get this to work again. He tries again for the next few days. I put the whole situation out of my mind in order to avoid losing it. He decides to give the form to P, who will be going through Shakawe the next day. When she gets to Gumare she will attempt to fax the form back to the school. I will meanwhile have to keep calling around to see if the fax has been sent, and if they have had paper in the machine to receive it. And there is how I spent the better part of a Monday. Hopefully we can get the forms by next week. I don’t think I will ever lose it when the copier jams again.
To Give is to Receive.....
A story of pseudo micro-finance (?), flying the coop, and cherry chocolate m&m’s.
In the end there are lots of things I should probably be ashamed about, but my shame has been gone a long time in this life through the looking glass. Now that I’ve said that, I’m forced to admit I don’t know exactly how it began, how we met, which is the part I should probably be embarrassed about. I should have been paying more attention. But as is common with us humans, we don’t pay attention to the signs and helpers that come into our life to guide us and teach us until they nearly smack us on the head, or shake some sense into us. Typical, know-it-all, stubborn, overly theoretically educated white chick. That would be me.
It must have been one of those moments numbering in the millions, which while initially passing through my life and consciousness in a shocking or disruptive manner, feeling constantly three clicks to the left of normal, have now become ordinary in this village far from home. In retrospect it should feel more significant, or perhaps I just wish it did, so I could claim I saw it coming from the start in my ever alert state of Zen. In the end, which happens to be the present, I only know what it has come to, which is one of the magic experiences that are the reason I decided to come here, the ones I hedged my bets on, and the ones that fulfill my dreams. But enough flowery reminiscence from me, as she wouldn’t stand for it, or she might, as she’s very polite, but she’d likely stand with her arms crossed over her chest, waiting for the obligatory meal to be served. So on with the show.
In my memory her story begins as she enters my life-stage right-as one of several dozen women who asked me for a “piece job” when I arrived in Seronga.
(A piece job is a small, generally one time only cash job. Prior to coming to Seronga I always associated piece jobs with day workers- migrants or refugees. Never did I imagine that there were places in which the local residents of a community survived and tried to squeak out a living this way. Although the community here is quite tight knit, and families are expected to take care of each other, it’s hard to imagine having to try to get by or even get ahead by hoping someone who is likely equally poor has some laundry or something to do to earn money. And although I had an idea that poverty might be slightly contributing to HIV, I certainly didn’t foresee living in a community within one of the wealthiest countries in Africa where this was the main method of employment for local women who are unmarried with children. While government handouts in this country can be too numerous to count, they do little in terms of helping a person actually get ahead, or building a life on. But I digress.)
Now when I came to Seronga I was certainly as green as they come, by Peace Corps or anyone’s standards, wary and distrustful after all the bs they feed you in pre service training, traditionally a mishmash mindfuck of kum-bah-yah “be one with the village” yoda speak and the endless safety and security briefings that admonish us to Mitigate, Eliminate, Deviate, Elevate or some such always-be-on-your-guard danger speak acronyms (sorry Thuso). Although I generally feel as though I’ve come a little ways in differentiating my head from my ass in this country, more often are the times when I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
So as I’ve said, I cannot remember the conditions under which we met. But the one thing I can always remember, and the thing that makes me grin when I think of her, is her smile. This woman has got a million watt high beam coming from her face when she turns up the corners of her mouth, which occurs often to nearly always. Cracked lips and a slight overbite are barely visible in the shadow of the light coming from her eyes.
Months before I could consistently remember her name I could identify her by her smile, and by the fearless way she would greet me in English. This was usually followed by a quick stream of words thrown together which I would only sometimes be able to catch the meaning of. Her enthusiasm and her smile would cause me to stop the endless and mindless pantomime of nodding and smiling that I was used to performing amongst toothless old women who were usually begging me for two pula for Chibuku (traditional beer, I tried some recently, it tasted to me like a sip of a flat wine-beer solution that has been left out overnight after a party and warmed to just above room temperature) to really try to hear what she was trying to communicate to me.
The first time she asked me for a job she was given my standard (and at the time, truly earnest) response of “If I give you a job now, what will you do in two years when I am gone?” or “If I give you a job, what will I do for all the other women in the village who also want to buy their babies new clothes?”
In my stupid American arrogance I truly believed that all they ever saw me as was a white meal ticket, someone to throw money at this village as a beauty queen tosses candy from the Cadillac float in the small town parade, smiling and dutiful in her trumped up role posing as something special. She smiled serenely at me and nodded graciously in response to my now obvious stupidity and went back to waiting in the endless line at the clinic.
Of course, as these things have a way of happening, I soon found myself asking her for something. In the floundering searching of my first few months at site (Or wait, that hasn’t completely ended yet, has it? Hmmm) I spent a lot of time asking people at the clinic and my counterpart what I should do in the village. My counterpart was always good for suggesting projects he had very little intention of doing anything more than serving as my translator.
One of these ideas was to form a PMTCT support group. My smiling friend was the first on the list. I soon learned that she was HIV positive with 5 children. I’m not going to lie, my immediate thought upon hearing this was to judge her, and to wonder how she could possibly convince anyone to practice safe sex when at 29, with 5 children, it didn’t seem to be her forte. As I got to know her, and eventually became comfortable enough to ask about the fathers to her children, she plainly informed me of the circumstances of every child’s conception. Each story included a man who had promised to love her, and support her, and marry her if she had his children. Of the two different men who fathered these children, none kept his promise, and the father of her infant has just become engaged to a woman in Maun. He continues to string her along.
Now if there’s anything I can relate to and feel empathy for it’s a good “But I thought he was a good guy” story. Her unfortunate history with men has lead my friend to the conclusion that she must no longer pray to God send her a man who would love her, but each day makes the heartbreaking plea that God close her heart off from any man who might even try. Her sole concern now if providing for her children, and she emphatically (and repeatedly) informs me that with her HIV status, having another baby ever is completely and totally out of the question, as she must remain healthy to provide for the ones she already has. I emphatically (and repeatedly) ask myself if I would be so strong, if I could maintain a million watt smile in the face of such adversity.
So after several failed attempts at getting a PMTCT support group started, I got involved with the men’s sector event. I put myself in charge of the HIV health quiz, and needed someone with a strong confident knowledge of HIV and AIDS who would not only correct and educate the men who were answering the questions of the quiz but also to ensure that the younger school girls I had also recruited for the task were doing so as well. She immediately offered her services, and was always on time for the preparation sessions I had arranged. She did beautifully at the event, and even came to give the quiz to the many women waiting at the clinic in the morning several times while I was away.
We came to be close acquaintances, as close as two people from such very different life backgrounds and cultures (and an extremely limited overlap of linguistic understanding) can be. I learned that she lived very near me, and I would sometimes stop by her house, which was more immaculate than should be expected for a woman with five children.
On these occasions she would always offer me some of the precious meat that I knew would likely barely be enough to feed her children, and which I always managed to find a way to politely refuse. She was always offering to make me any handicraft she could think of, and telling me it would be free, “for friends”. I also tried to politely refuse this idea, thinking a woman with so little should be selling her wares in order to feed her children. She couldn’t possibly be able to afford to waste the time and effort on me, for no money.
On one of these visits she told me she wanted to add to her impressive portfolio of certificates of completion (she was already doing non-formal education in the village teaching the elderly to properly count money and sign their names, and had her own brown wooden phallus with which to demonstrate the proper way to put on condoms as a peer counselor) by creating a free range chicken coop (which seems to be an oxymoron, but what do I know about these things?). She knew that there was a woman in one of the Etshas (there are several villages called Etsha-with-a-number on the other side of the delta, as it seems that when people move out of the originally named settlements to farm and raise cattle eventually small villages grow. In order to keep track of where people were living they began adding numbers after the main village’s name –as in how many kilometers from Etsha. Apparently there is 1 through 13. On my side they have Dungu 1, 2 and 3 as well as a few Xaus. And there’s today’s little known fact, courtesy of Cliff Clavin….) who knows how to do it, and her brother could help her build it, but she would have to find the money.
In this village, where self reliance and motivation are less than common, I am always chomping at the bit and pretty much falling over myself to help anyone who seems even a little motivated. At this moment I was torn between my own need to “help” and also being very cautious about appearing to be the great white cash cow. Regardless I tentatively asked how much money she would need to get her project off the ground.
“Sixty pula” she responded.
Although this is about ten pula more than I think I am allotted for my needs for a day, it ends up being less than ten American dollars. After all the girrrl power and “if you educate a girl, and give her a goat…..” articles, email forwards and utube viral videos that inevitably make me cry I knew I was gonna figure this one out. I imagined it would have to be done in such a way that wasn’t compromising my own principle of teaching a chick to fish rather than taking her to Red Lobster or whatever. I couldn’t stomach just giving her the money, as I felt that if I did it once, all of a sudden everyone would show up on my door step, wanting money.
It was getting close to the time (oh let’s be honest, it was frighteningly long overdue) for my sheets to be washed, a task I hate worse than anything (pause for all you fine folks at home to imagine hand washing your queen sized sheets in your bathtub, rinsing them in a smaller bucket, wringing them out and carrying them across your floor and the sand yard to hang them on the line all the while inevitably dropping one of the corners in the sand and having to start nearly over again. Finished. Yeah. 2 years, people). 25 pula is the going rate for this type of work in these parts so I quickly struck a deal with her for her to do my laundry twice for 30 pula each time. Then she could buy the materials and I would help her construct her chicken coop. Whether this project would actually happen or not always remains to be seen, but these are the times when one must just have faith.
She showed up each time I asked her to come, sweating in my oven of a bathroom as she laundered and graciously accepting whatever food I mustered up for her (usually a thick starchy sort of something- Batswana tradition, filled with vegetables-my tradition, and with me always making a point to promote the health benefits of vegetables for those on ARV’s. She smiled politely. I usually stuffed a few more carrots or something in her pockets as she left as well, but my big point of pride is that she’s since expanded her formerly exclusively corn producing garden to produce tomatoes and eggplant.)
She earned her 60 pula. I heard nothing about the chicken coop, and relegated myself to the idea that at least I had put some food on the table for a while. I decided that was still good, and even a success, for a woman with five kids to get a little respite from the worry of how to feed them every day.
Time, as it tends to do, moved on until one day I was at the clinic. I was absentmindedly studying my little manuals for the several languages I am attempted to massacre (or wait, I’m supposed to be SPEAKING them, right?) half listening to my coworkers shooting the shit, when I suddenly heard a soft sob. I looked up to find her there, frantically copying the details for a new job posting down from the clinic wall. I’m not sure what shocked me more, that she wasn’t smiling or that she was crying.
One of my male co-workers began to taunt her and grab her arm. (WHY is this always an appropriate response from men here? They seem to think that no matter what a woman’s demeanor is, whether it is tears or irritation or a refusal for sex, their answer seems to be to tease them and grab arms. There have been weeks here where I myself have gotten bruises on my arms from wrenching them away from overzealous, stupid men who are grabbing my arms to get my attention as they profess their love for me or something equally annoying. I’m going to plead the fifth as to which parts of their bodies end up bruised, but the men in my village are slowly learning to address me by speaking to me only, without grabbing my arms. I’m trying to expand this to be an expectation for all the women they interact with, but baby steps I suppose). I jumped up and grabbed his arm, glared at my coworker until he laid off, and guided her to a quiet corner to ask her privately what had happened. Through her tears and crying she lost most of her English, and she sort of told me a convoluted story about her grandparents taking her to the kgotla (tribal court) and making a slew of accusations, some of them centered on her HIV+ status.
I could barely begin to understand the story when she had to leave, as she had three of her five children with her, but I promised to check her after work. I gave my co-worker a brief and tersely worded (and inevitably immediately forgotten) review of the lesson on sensitivity I have been giving him for quite some time. He smiled and said that he wanted to marry me. I made every attempt not to backhand him, and abandoned this exercise in futility to attempt to focus on my friend.
What on Earth could I do for her? How can I help her with this problem I had little hope of beginning to understand? Frustrated and not able to accept the answer that kept coming of “nothing”, I quickly looked through the package I had just received for something to give her (why is it that Americans always need to give something to someone to make them feel better? I guess this is what you do when you don’t have the words- in English or any other language). I found some cherry chocolate m&m’s (what a crazy novelty!) and left the clinic early to walk to her house.
I gave the standard “ko-ko” (when there are no doors, much less doorbells, in a place one learns to improvise in announcing one’s arrival) as I entered her yard. She had the smallest of her children strapped on her back, and quickly yanked a small chair out from under the next youngest for me. I smiled apologetically at the stunned child in the dirt and sat down.
I offered her the m&m’s, (which are clearly the appropriate answer and method of soothing whichever predicament I had failed to understand earlier) which she immediately distributed amongst her children, not even bothering to pop one in her mouth as she disappeared into the house, singing my name, as people here have a tendency to do when they have nothing else to say. (Lo-Rah-toe….I’ve asked people at the clinic and in the village why they do this and get a whole range of answers, but the one I choose to believe is my favorite- “because we LOVE you!” –also in a sing song voice.) She returned to the courtyard a moment later, the huge smile on her face completely betraying the tears that had been flowing freely less than an hour before. In her hands was a traditional woven basket (Incidentally, sale price? Probably around 60 pula). She proudly handed it to me.
“It my first try. It not perfect. I made for you, because we are friends.”
Yup. Tears. I tried to hold them back. There are enough occasions of sorrow around these parts that they don’t waste tears on joy or any other emotions. And I didn’t have the words to explain. I just nodded and grinned, and thanked her profusely. Later, as I left her gate, I turned my face to the sky and let the tears fall. I whispered “Thank you” to the heavens and anyone else paying attention as the tears burned rivers onto my face.
I walked by her house the other day, shouting “ko-ko” from the gate. Over in the corner was a mesh structure, covered in old blankets. The chicken coop was finished, ready to house the new birds that would lay eggs and provide income. So the crazy white bird from America did nothing to save or solve or throw money at this woman’s problems. She figured out a way to do it herself. I’ve got a lot to learn…..
In the end there are lots of things I should probably be ashamed about, but my shame has been gone a long time in this life through the looking glass. Now that I’ve said that, I’m forced to admit I don’t know exactly how it began, how we met, which is the part I should probably be embarrassed about. I should have been paying more attention. But as is common with us humans, we don’t pay attention to the signs and helpers that come into our life to guide us and teach us until they nearly smack us on the head, or shake some sense into us. Typical, know-it-all, stubborn, overly theoretically educated white chick. That would be me.
It must have been one of those moments numbering in the millions, which while initially passing through my life and consciousness in a shocking or disruptive manner, feeling constantly three clicks to the left of normal, have now become ordinary in this village far from home. In retrospect it should feel more significant, or perhaps I just wish it did, so I could claim I saw it coming from the start in my ever alert state of Zen. In the end, which happens to be the present, I only know what it has come to, which is one of the magic experiences that are the reason I decided to come here, the ones I hedged my bets on, and the ones that fulfill my dreams. But enough flowery reminiscence from me, as she wouldn’t stand for it, or she might, as she’s very polite, but she’d likely stand with her arms crossed over her chest, waiting for the obligatory meal to be served. So on with the show.
In my memory her story begins as she enters my life-stage right-as one of several dozen women who asked me for a “piece job” when I arrived in Seronga.
(A piece job is a small, generally one time only cash job. Prior to coming to Seronga I always associated piece jobs with day workers- migrants or refugees. Never did I imagine that there were places in which the local residents of a community survived and tried to squeak out a living this way. Although the community here is quite tight knit, and families are expected to take care of each other, it’s hard to imagine having to try to get by or even get ahead by hoping someone who is likely equally poor has some laundry or something to do to earn money. And although I had an idea that poverty might be slightly contributing to HIV, I certainly didn’t foresee living in a community within one of the wealthiest countries in Africa where this was the main method of employment for local women who are unmarried with children. While government handouts in this country can be too numerous to count, they do little in terms of helping a person actually get ahead, or building a life on. But I digress.)
Now when I came to Seronga I was certainly as green as they come, by Peace Corps or anyone’s standards, wary and distrustful after all the bs they feed you in pre service training, traditionally a mishmash mindfuck of kum-bah-yah “be one with the village” yoda speak and the endless safety and security briefings that admonish us to Mitigate, Eliminate, Deviate, Elevate or some such always-be-on-your-guard danger speak acronyms (sorry Thuso). Although I generally feel as though I’ve come a little ways in differentiating my head from my ass in this country, more often are the times when I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
So as I’ve said, I cannot remember the conditions under which we met. But the one thing I can always remember, and the thing that makes me grin when I think of her, is her smile. This woman has got a million watt high beam coming from her face when she turns up the corners of her mouth, which occurs often to nearly always. Cracked lips and a slight overbite are barely visible in the shadow of the light coming from her eyes.
Months before I could consistently remember her name I could identify her by her smile, and by the fearless way she would greet me in English. This was usually followed by a quick stream of words thrown together which I would only sometimes be able to catch the meaning of. Her enthusiasm and her smile would cause me to stop the endless and mindless pantomime of nodding and smiling that I was used to performing amongst toothless old women who were usually begging me for two pula for Chibuku (traditional beer, I tried some recently, it tasted to me like a sip of a flat wine-beer solution that has been left out overnight after a party and warmed to just above room temperature) to really try to hear what she was trying to communicate to me.
The first time she asked me for a job she was given my standard (and at the time, truly earnest) response of “If I give you a job now, what will you do in two years when I am gone?” or “If I give you a job, what will I do for all the other women in the village who also want to buy their babies new clothes?”
In my stupid American arrogance I truly believed that all they ever saw me as was a white meal ticket, someone to throw money at this village as a beauty queen tosses candy from the Cadillac float in the small town parade, smiling and dutiful in her trumped up role posing as something special. She smiled serenely at me and nodded graciously in response to my now obvious stupidity and went back to waiting in the endless line at the clinic.
Of course, as these things have a way of happening, I soon found myself asking her for something. In the floundering searching of my first few months at site (Or wait, that hasn’t completely ended yet, has it? Hmmm) I spent a lot of time asking people at the clinic and my counterpart what I should do in the village. My counterpart was always good for suggesting projects he had very little intention of doing anything more than serving as my translator.
One of these ideas was to form a PMTCT support group. My smiling friend was the first on the list. I soon learned that she was HIV positive with 5 children. I’m not going to lie, my immediate thought upon hearing this was to judge her, and to wonder how she could possibly convince anyone to practice safe sex when at 29, with 5 children, it didn’t seem to be her forte. As I got to know her, and eventually became comfortable enough to ask about the fathers to her children, she plainly informed me of the circumstances of every child’s conception. Each story included a man who had promised to love her, and support her, and marry her if she had his children. Of the two different men who fathered these children, none kept his promise, and the father of her infant has just become engaged to a woman in Maun. He continues to string her along.
Now if there’s anything I can relate to and feel empathy for it’s a good “But I thought he was a good guy” story. Her unfortunate history with men has lead my friend to the conclusion that she must no longer pray to God send her a man who would love her, but each day makes the heartbreaking plea that God close her heart off from any man who might even try. Her sole concern now if providing for her children, and she emphatically (and repeatedly) informs me that with her HIV status, having another baby ever is completely and totally out of the question, as she must remain healthy to provide for the ones she already has. I emphatically (and repeatedly) ask myself if I would be so strong, if I could maintain a million watt smile in the face of such adversity.
So after several failed attempts at getting a PMTCT support group started, I got involved with the men’s sector event. I put myself in charge of the HIV health quiz, and needed someone with a strong confident knowledge of HIV and AIDS who would not only correct and educate the men who were answering the questions of the quiz but also to ensure that the younger school girls I had also recruited for the task were doing so as well. She immediately offered her services, and was always on time for the preparation sessions I had arranged. She did beautifully at the event, and even came to give the quiz to the many women waiting at the clinic in the morning several times while I was away.
We came to be close acquaintances, as close as two people from such very different life backgrounds and cultures (and an extremely limited overlap of linguistic understanding) can be. I learned that she lived very near me, and I would sometimes stop by her house, which was more immaculate than should be expected for a woman with five children.
On these occasions she would always offer me some of the precious meat that I knew would likely barely be enough to feed her children, and which I always managed to find a way to politely refuse. She was always offering to make me any handicraft she could think of, and telling me it would be free, “for friends”. I also tried to politely refuse this idea, thinking a woman with so little should be selling her wares in order to feed her children. She couldn’t possibly be able to afford to waste the time and effort on me, for no money.
On one of these visits she told me she wanted to add to her impressive portfolio of certificates of completion (she was already doing non-formal education in the village teaching the elderly to properly count money and sign their names, and had her own brown wooden phallus with which to demonstrate the proper way to put on condoms as a peer counselor) by creating a free range chicken coop (which seems to be an oxymoron, but what do I know about these things?). She knew that there was a woman in one of the Etshas (there are several villages called Etsha-with-a-number on the other side of the delta, as it seems that when people move out of the originally named settlements to farm and raise cattle eventually small villages grow. In order to keep track of where people were living they began adding numbers after the main village’s name –as in how many kilometers from Etsha. Apparently there is 1 through 13. On my side they have Dungu 1, 2 and 3 as well as a few Xaus. And there’s today’s little known fact, courtesy of Cliff Clavin….) who knows how to do it, and her brother could help her build it, but she would have to find the money.
In this village, where self reliance and motivation are less than common, I am always chomping at the bit and pretty much falling over myself to help anyone who seems even a little motivated. At this moment I was torn between my own need to “help” and also being very cautious about appearing to be the great white cash cow. Regardless I tentatively asked how much money she would need to get her project off the ground.
“Sixty pula” she responded.
Although this is about ten pula more than I think I am allotted for my needs for a day, it ends up being less than ten American dollars. After all the girrrl power and “if you educate a girl, and give her a goat…..” articles, email forwards and utube viral videos that inevitably make me cry I knew I was gonna figure this one out. I imagined it would have to be done in such a way that wasn’t compromising my own principle of teaching a chick to fish rather than taking her to Red Lobster or whatever. I couldn’t stomach just giving her the money, as I felt that if I did it once, all of a sudden everyone would show up on my door step, wanting money.
It was getting close to the time (oh let’s be honest, it was frighteningly long overdue) for my sheets to be washed, a task I hate worse than anything (pause for all you fine folks at home to imagine hand washing your queen sized sheets in your bathtub, rinsing them in a smaller bucket, wringing them out and carrying them across your floor and the sand yard to hang them on the line all the while inevitably dropping one of the corners in the sand and having to start nearly over again. Finished. Yeah. 2 years, people). 25 pula is the going rate for this type of work in these parts so I quickly struck a deal with her for her to do my laundry twice for 30 pula each time. Then she could buy the materials and I would help her construct her chicken coop. Whether this project would actually happen or not always remains to be seen, but these are the times when one must just have faith.
She showed up each time I asked her to come, sweating in my oven of a bathroom as she laundered and graciously accepting whatever food I mustered up for her (usually a thick starchy sort of something- Batswana tradition, filled with vegetables-my tradition, and with me always making a point to promote the health benefits of vegetables for those on ARV’s. She smiled politely. I usually stuffed a few more carrots or something in her pockets as she left as well, but my big point of pride is that she’s since expanded her formerly exclusively corn producing garden to produce tomatoes and eggplant.)
She earned her 60 pula. I heard nothing about the chicken coop, and relegated myself to the idea that at least I had put some food on the table for a while. I decided that was still good, and even a success, for a woman with five kids to get a little respite from the worry of how to feed them every day.
Time, as it tends to do, moved on until one day I was at the clinic. I was absentmindedly studying my little manuals for the several languages I am attempted to massacre (or wait, I’m supposed to be SPEAKING them, right?) half listening to my coworkers shooting the shit, when I suddenly heard a soft sob. I looked up to find her there, frantically copying the details for a new job posting down from the clinic wall. I’m not sure what shocked me more, that she wasn’t smiling or that she was crying.
One of my male co-workers began to taunt her and grab her arm. (WHY is this always an appropriate response from men here? They seem to think that no matter what a woman’s demeanor is, whether it is tears or irritation or a refusal for sex, their answer seems to be to tease them and grab arms. There have been weeks here where I myself have gotten bruises on my arms from wrenching them away from overzealous, stupid men who are grabbing my arms to get my attention as they profess their love for me or something equally annoying. I’m going to plead the fifth as to which parts of their bodies end up bruised, but the men in my village are slowly learning to address me by speaking to me only, without grabbing my arms. I’m trying to expand this to be an expectation for all the women they interact with, but baby steps I suppose). I jumped up and grabbed his arm, glared at my coworker until he laid off, and guided her to a quiet corner to ask her privately what had happened. Through her tears and crying she lost most of her English, and she sort of told me a convoluted story about her grandparents taking her to the kgotla (tribal court) and making a slew of accusations, some of them centered on her HIV+ status.
I could barely begin to understand the story when she had to leave, as she had three of her five children with her, but I promised to check her after work. I gave my co-worker a brief and tersely worded (and inevitably immediately forgotten) review of the lesson on sensitivity I have been giving him for quite some time. He smiled and said that he wanted to marry me. I made every attempt not to backhand him, and abandoned this exercise in futility to attempt to focus on my friend.
What on Earth could I do for her? How can I help her with this problem I had little hope of beginning to understand? Frustrated and not able to accept the answer that kept coming of “nothing”, I quickly looked through the package I had just received for something to give her (why is it that Americans always need to give something to someone to make them feel better? I guess this is what you do when you don’t have the words- in English or any other language). I found some cherry chocolate m&m’s (what a crazy novelty!) and left the clinic early to walk to her house.
I gave the standard “ko-ko” (when there are no doors, much less doorbells, in a place one learns to improvise in announcing one’s arrival) as I entered her yard. She had the smallest of her children strapped on her back, and quickly yanked a small chair out from under the next youngest for me. I smiled apologetically at the stunned child in the dirt and sat down.
I offered her the m&m’s, (which are clearly the appropriate answer and method of soothing whichever predicament I had failed to understand earlier) which she immediately distributed amongst her children, not even bothering to pop one in her mouth as she disappeared into the house, singing my name, as people here have a tendency to do when they have nothing else to say. (Lo-Rah-toe….I’ve asked people at the clinic and in the village why they do this and get a whole range of answers, but the one I choose to believe is my favorite- “because we LOVE you!” –also in a sing song voice.) She returned to the courtyard a moment later, the huge smile on her face completely betraying the tears that had been flowing freely less than an hour before. In her hands was a traditional woven basket (Incidentally, sale price? Probably around 60 pula). She proudly handed it to me.
“It my first try. It not perfect. I made for you, because we are friends.”
Yup. Tears. I tried to hold them back. There are enough occasions of sorrow around these parts that they don’t waste tears on joy or any other emotions. And I didn’t have the words to explain. I just nodded and grinned, and thanked her profusely. Later, as I left her gate, I turned my face to the sky and let the tears fall. I whispered “Thank you” to the heavens and anyone else paying attention as the tears burned rivers onto my face.
I walked by her house the other day, shouting “ko-ko” from the gate. Over in the corner was a mesh structure, covered in old blankets. The chicken coop was finished, ready to house the new birds that would lay eggs and provide income. So the crazy white bird from America did nothing to save or solve or throw money at this woman’s problems. She figured out a way to do it herself. I’ve got a lot to learn…..
The Feminine Mystique
It began, as many things do, by me being frustrated with being here. Feeling sorry for myself is what it is in actuality, so long as we’re being honest. I was tired, bored, frustrated with being here and the lack of things to do at the clinic, and the slowness with which my projects were progressing. I was beginning to feel stuck in a rut and on the verge of one of my famous “what is it all about” fits of confused and anxious hysterics when I decided to make a plan.
In an effort to avoid becoming the miserable cow I know I can be in times of frustration and irritation, I fell back on my oldest and most common Peace Corps motivation, self improvement. I’ve been trying to read “The Feminine Mystique” for what feels like the better part of a decade. It was recommended to me a few years back by Abby, a friend from college who now lives in Utah (congratulations of the recent wedding by the way, darling!), and whom I always seem to find in moments of turmoil or success, and is consistently a great source of perspective and wisdom. Despite only speaking about once every 3 or 4 months (or really with international long distance to consider it’s been a bit less recently) we can always catch up on each others comings and goings quite quickly and then launch into the sort of gossipy “our-own-problem” solving sessions that have become the lucky hallmark of our friendship. I trusted her judgment (along with the raves reviews and constant cultural references I was always running across) and knew now was the time to read it.
I had begun to delve into it several times prior to coming to the Peace Corps, and as it was the 40th anniversary edition there were several introductions and forewords that I had to get through before even getting to the actual book. I threw it in my m-bag as something I figured I’d finally have the time and motivation to get through. After a few false starts in this country, it was heavily referenced in another book I was reading and I knew I could avoid the mystique no longer.
For those of you residing in the same cave of dark unawareness of one of the most influential books of the 2nd wave feminist movement as I previously was, let me give you a short briefing. I’ll begin by letting the cat outta the bag that if you are in the mood for a lighthearted page turner this, it not it (but try something from the Shop-a-holic series-they’re cute and I heard they’re turning them into a movie! Which I’ll probably get this side by the time I leave? Perhaps it’s already come out?).
The Feminine Mystique, while well written and organized, can get a bit…heavy. I had out my highlighters and marking pens like I was taking a course on the damn thing (apologies to those I’ve promised to lend it to after this). This was due not to my lack of opportunities for interactive intellectual pursuit in the bush but more for my constant shock and indignation at things present in modern day American society that are remnants of “the problem that has no name.” I was surprised that despite being born several generations after the naming of the feminine mystique there were still so many relevant references within it’s nearly half century old passages (although I must admit there are some embarrassingly outdated Freudian references to homosexuality and a glaringly offensive under representation of women of less means or minorities).
I have long known that I am a member of a generation whom, while not suffering the same pressure and lack of options by which the women of the 50’s and 60’s were oppressed, is still struggling with having it all. It is now more acceptable to be living outside the societal boundaries of marriage and motherhood, and indeed while many of my agemates are married or have children, there is still fair amount who don’t. There are plenty of role models for women who don’t want to be married, or have children, or have found ways to have both of the above as well as a meaningful career.
I found the book to be as engrossing and interesting as any modern day conspiracy theory tome due to Friedan’s extensive research of the historical, political, economic, societal, pop-psychological, and baby boom trends that led women back into the home with the goal of reaching “sexual role fulfillment.” Having had a few desperate housewife sort of near misses with marriage in my day, it was fun (in a completely sick way of course) to read about what I sometimes wondered if I was missing out on, look out the window at the African sky (or dirt, crazy trees, mating donkeys, whatev) smile (or really, smirk) and think…. Nope. Glad I’m here.
Overall I think it is an amazing book and would recommend it, whether you’re male or female. It’s been interesting to try to translate the message of it to those who are not from America, but luckily(?) our culture is pretty pervasive and most people of European descent that I spoke with could at least relate to the concepts. It was admittedly more difficult to me to describe it to the Batswana women in my village (read, it was a complete comedy of errors) but at least provoked some interesting discussion.
Towards the end of the book, as I was slowing down in a victory lap of competition, Friedan puts forth a chapter on the “New Life Plan for Women.” In the heart of her description of the concept that is will be a difficult transition for women to make, to go from being unaspiring, unactualized, unfulfilled homemakers to the risk of self discovery through meaningful work, I got to thinking about the value of things. Not physical, economic, material things, but the value we place on our interactions with others, the relationships we foster, and the ways in which we show that we care. With this theme in mind, please bear with me now, as I’ve been thinking about this one for a while.
One of the interesting things I’ve experienced during my time in the Peace Corps is an overwhelming generosity from people. Friends, family, and complete strangers have reached out to me to send me stuff, letters, encouragement and kind words via my blog or email or the post. People I’ve met throughout the delta and the country have helped me, fed me, sheltered me, and taken me out to the bush or to really nice hotels or somewhere when I need to escape it all. I have been extremely blessed and lucky. It is this support that has undoubtedly helped buoy me along, especially in times of personal crisis, so common and natural and occasionally overwhelming during an experience like this. I’ve often struggled with how I can repay these generosities, or even what I could have done to deserve it. It’s especially hard under conditions like I experience in Seronga, when I question if I could even be having any impact in terms of “paying it forward”. I’ve found that unfortunately, in some realms it seems I “keep score”. I’ve always had a hard time accepting things and feeling indebted to people, especially when I grapple with trying to determine the means with which to repay someone. I’ve really struggled to come to terms with it here.
I wanted to ask people “If I could give you a gift, in the form of something I could do for you, rather than buy or create, what would it be?”
My thought process in arriving at this question came from ideas about: How often are we able to offer up something of ourselves, something only we can give, or offer, in the face of possible misunderstanding or rejection? How often are we able to ask someone for something we need that cannot be purchased? How can we connect with people we know and love and have often evolved in relationships with in which we operate on a series of assumptions rather than caring, vulnerable inquiry? Especially when the ins and outs of our every day lives may have become so different and varied as a result of the inevitable time and space that results when one chooses an experience like mine? This is admittedly something I’ve struggled with a lot since being here. For some back home their lives are rapidly changing on a scale in which I will have a hard time recognizing them and their situations when I return. This is certainly true for them with mine.
It’s an interesting question to be asked via text message but you make do with what you have..
I began with my mom, and have to admit I was kind of nervous as to what her response would be. Her being my mom, my best friend, and, as she tends to be, my safety net for this experiment, she of course responded with the obvious but touching “Come home to me safe and sound and happy I love u.”
I realized I was putting myself in a vulnerable position. When taken seriously the question often puts the other person in a vulnerable situation as well. A big theme of “The Feminine Mystique” was real versus imagined (or created, or oppressively enforced) vulnerability as women, and how often a path to fulfillment or enlightenment often involves risk of some sort. I think emotional vulnerability is as real of a risk as any other so I tried to plough ahead.
I decided to “man up” and send the text to several more people (so now if you received one you know the whole deal, if you didn’t, now I’ve explained the concept in many, many more words that a text could carry, and so you know what I was up to. I’m still interested in everyone else’s response if we haven’t spoken about this yet, it seems with my internet time being limited as it is these days my blog is my main forum from which to speak with most of you.) and ask a few people face to face.
The responses I got were great. They ranged from sincere, to sexual, to sarcastic, to confused. It opened up several great conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and presented a powerful jumping off point from which to build deeper relationships with people that for many reasons I may not have had that connection with before.
I guess the point I’m very round about-ly trying to make is really an attempt to share some of the contemplative thoughts (Truths? Conclusions? Bullshit?) I occasionally feel that I come to here. I’ve been feeling quite lonely lately, and desperately miss the type of late night (or occasionally happy hour) discourse in which people sit around a table collectively pondering anything from the meaning of life to the beauty of the label on the wine bottle. I am realizing here that although I can hack a hell of a lot more that I previously thought in terms of solitary living, I am inherently a very social person. I crave the sort of deep connection that was present in so many of my relationships back home, that I may have taken for granted, that has come more slowly here in my efforts to rebuild the wheel of my social life from scratch. I want this connection, over something that feels as real as my life here, to be the basis for my relationships in the future, rather than defaulting to the typical question of “what do you do” as the defining element of who someone is. Perhaps this is the mid-service crisis. Perhaps I’m too far into my head with no one to pull me back out? Who knows. Read the book.
In an effort to avoid becoming the miserable cow I know I can be in times of frustration and irritation, I fell back on my oldest and most common Peace Corps motivation, self improvement. I’ve been trying to read “The Feminine Mystique” for what feels like the better part of a decade. It was recommended to me a few years back by Abby, a friend from college who now lives in Utah (congratulations of the recent wedding by the way, darling!), and whom I always seem to find in moments of turmoil or success, and is consistently a great source of perspective and wisdom. Despite only speaking about once every 3 or 4 months (or really with international long distance to consider it’s been a bit less recently) we can always catch up on each others comings and goings quite quickly and then launch into the sort of gossipy “our-own-problem” solving sessions that have become the lucky hallmark of our friendship. I trusted her judgment (along with the raves reviews and constant cultural references I was always running across) and knew now was the time to read it.
I had begun to delve into it several times prior to coming to the Peace Corps, and as it was the 40th anniversary edition there were several introductions and forewords that I had to get through before even getting to the actual book. I threw it in my m-bag as something I figured I’d finally have the time and motivation to get through. After a few false starts in this country, it was heavily referenced in another book I was reading and I knew I could avoid the mystique no longer.
For those of you residing in the same cave of dark unawareness of one of the most influential books of the 2nd wave feminist movement as I previously was, let me give you a short briefing. I’ll begin by letting the cat outta the bag that if you are in the mood for a lighthearted page turner this, it not it (but try something from the Shop-a-holic series-they’re cute and I heard they’re turning them into a movie! Which I’ll probably get this side by the time I leave? Perhaps it’s already come out?).
The Feminine Mystique, while well written and organized, can get a bit…heavy. I had out my highlighters and marking pens like I was taking a course on the damn thing (apologies to those I’ve promised to lend it to after this). This was due not to my lack of opportunities for interactive intellectual pursuit in the bush but more for my constant shock and indignation at things present in modern day American society that are remnants of “the problem that has no name.” I was surprised that despite being born several generations after the naming of the feminine mystique there were still so many relevant references within it’s nearly half century old passages (although I must admit there are some embarrassingly outdated Freudian references to homosexuality and a glaringly offensive under representation of women of less means or minorities).
I have long known that I am a member of a generation whom, while not suffering the same pressure and lack of options by which the women of the 50’s and 60’s were oppressed, is still struggling with having it all. It is now more acceptable to be living outside the societal boundaries of marriage and motherhood, and indeed while many of my agemates are married or have children, there is still fair amount who don’t. There are plenty of role models for women who don’t want to be married, or have children, or have found ways to have both of the above as well as a meaningful career.
I found the book to be as engrossing and interesting as any modern day conspiracy theory tome due to Friedan’s extensive research of the historical, political, economic, societal, pop-psychological, and baby boom trends that led women back into the home with the goal of reaching “sexual role fulfillment.” Having had a few desperate housewife sort of near misses with marriage in my day, it was fun (in a completely sick way of course) to read about what I sometimes wondered if I was missing out on, look out the window at the African sky (or dirt, crazy trees, mating donkeys, whatev) smile (or really, smirk) and think…. Nope. Glad I’m here.
Overall I think it is an amazing book and would recommend it, whether you’re male or female. It’s been interesting to try to translate the message of it to those who are not from America, but luckily(?) our culture is pretty pervasive and most people of European descent that I spoke with could at least relate to the concepts. It was admittedly more difficult to me to describe it to the Batswana women in my village (read, it was a complete comedy of errors) but at least provoked some interesting discussion.
Towards the end of the book, as I was slowing down in a victory lap of competition, Friedan puts forth a chapter on the “New Life Plan for Women.” In the heart of her description of the concept that is will be a difficult transition for women to make, to go from being unaspiring, unactualized, unfulfilled homemakers to the risk of self discovery through meaningful work, I got to thinking about the value of things. Not physical, economic, material things, but the value we place on our interactions with others, the relationships we foster, and the ways in which we show that we care. With this theme in mind, please bear with me now, as I’ve been thinking about this one for a while.
One of the interesting things I’ve experienced during my time in the Peace Corps is an overwhelming generosity from people. Friends, family, and complete strangers have reached out to me to send me stuff, letters, encouragement and kind words via my blog or email or the post. People I’ve met throughout the delta and the country have helped me, fed me, sheltered me, and taken me out to the bush or to really nice hotels or somewhere when I need to escape it all. I have been extremely blessed and lucky. It is this support that has undoubtedly helped buoy me along, especially in times of personal crisis, so common and natural and occasionally overwhelming during an experience like this. I’ve often struggled with how I can repay these generosities, or even what I could have done to deserve it. It’s especially hard under conditions like I experience in Seronga, when I question if I could even be having any impact in terms of “paying it forward”. I’ve found that unfortunately, in some realms it seems I “keep score”. I’ve always had a hard time accepting things and feeling indebted to people, especially when I grapple with trying to determine the means with which to repay someone. I’ve really struggled to come to terms with it here.
I wanted to ask people “If I could give you a gift, in the form of something I could do for you, rather than buy or create, what would it be?”
My thought process in arriving at this question came from ideas about: How often are we able to offer up something of ourselves, something only we can give, or offer, in the face of possible misunderstanding or rejection? How often are we able to ask someone for something we need that cannot be purchased? How can we connect with people we know and love and have often evolved in relationships with in which we operate on a series of assumptions rather than caring, vulnerable inquiry? Especially when the ins and outs of our every day lives may have become so different and varied as a result of the inevitable time and space that results when one chooses an experience like mine? This is admittedly something I’ve struggled with a lot since being here. For some back home their lives are rapidly changing on a scale in which I will have a hard time recognizing them and their situations when I return. This is certainly true for them with mine.
It’s an interesting question to be asked via text message but you make do with what you have..
I began with my mom, and have to admit I was kind of nervous as to what her response would be. Her being my mom, my best friend, and, as she tends to be, my safety net for this experiment, she of course responded with the obvious but touching “Come home to me safe and sound and happy I love u.”
I realized I was putting myself in a vulnerable position. When taken seriously the question often puts the other person in a vulnerable situation as well. A big theme of “The Feminine Mystique” was real versus imagined (or created, or oppressively enforced) vulnerability as women, and how often a path to fulfillment or enlightenment often involves risk of some sort. I think emotional vulnerability is as real of a risk as any other so I tried to plough ahead.
I decided to “man up” and send the text to several more people (so now if you received one you know the whole deal, if you didn’t, now I’ve explained the concept in many, many more words that a text could carry, and so you know what I was up to. I’m still interested in everyone else’s response if we haven’t spoken about this yet, it seems with my internet time being limited as it is these days my blog is my main forum from which to speak with most of you.) and ask a few people face to face.
The responses I got were great. They ranged from sincere, to sexual, to sarcastic, to confused. It opened up several great conversations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and presented a powerful jumping off point from which to build deeper relationships with people that for many reasons I may not have had that connection with before.
I guess the point I’m very round about-ly trying to make is really an attempt to share some of the contemplative thoughts (Truths? Conclusions? Bullshit?) I occasionally feel that I come to here. I’ve been feeling quite lonely lately, and desperately miss the type of late night (or occasionally happy hour) discourse in which people sit around a table collectively pondering anything from the meaning of life to the beauty of the label on the wine bottle. I am realizing here that although I can hack a hell of a lot more that I previously thought in terms of solitary living, I am inherently a very social person. I crave the sort of deep connection that was present in so many of my relationships back home, that I may have taken for granted, that has come more slowly here in my efforts to rebuild the wheel of my social life from scratch. I want this connection, over something that feels as real as my life here, to be the basis for my relationships in the future, rather than defaulting to the typical question of “what do you do” as the defining element of who someone is. Perhaps this is the mid-service crisis. Perhaps I’m too far into my head with no one to pull me back out? Who knows. Read the book.
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