End of Days

These last days in Seronga are spent like pocket change deposited in the piggy bank of my memory, seemingly small, insignificant additions to the collective investment of all I have to look back on here. I run around pushing to fill each moment to its capacity, trying to squeeze out every ounce of meaning and significance. Once the dust in my head has settled and the fog has cleared I want to look back on these days with the proper amount of reverence and honor. I take mental pictures and actual pictures, trying to capture the essence of this place in jars like fireflies, running my fingers along the tapestry of life here to admire the tightness of the weave and the beauty of the texture.

I exist in the slow quick agony of time passing, and yet I feel I cannot fully absorb it, this life of mine that is ending. I paint with the children most days; we’re working on one last project of my vision and their design and talent. There could be no greater immersion into the heart of Seronga than to sit amongst the kids who have been my greatest hope for this place and listen to them speak to each other in their tongues that still remain foreign to me.

As in any other situation where an adult is present amongst a group of teenagers, they have a language of their own, in this case literally. Being such a strange exception to their culture, as white, as a female with some strange endowment of prestige within their village I think they evaluate me as an adult of such a strange combination of oddness that they trust me. I’ve set a precedent in which I speak to them quite openly in the hope of them doing the same, and me perhaps helping to guide them to hitch their wagons to a brighter star than to follow the paths of so many who have come before them and are now suffering the ravages of HIV. We’ve spent enough time together that when I ask them questions, even quite personal questions, they will answer me more frankly than many of the adults I’ve come to encounter here.

They have for the most part let me into at least the front foyer their world, and appear to enjoy spending time with me, yet I am not privy to all the secrets that pass directly in front of my ears. Every so often I will be granted a key, and English word or a word that I know or a translation tossed out in their acknowledgement of the doors and walls that still stand between us. I can get some of the words, generally not a whole phrase, so I’m left with a pirate’s trove of unlockable doors into their world. By the general inflection I can tell that it’s mostly about universal human things, the continuing wonders of teenage life, of awakened awareness, of seeing oneself as an individual, the curiosities of love and sex and relationships. I am far away in their discourse despite being presently physically near.



And yet I can tell I am close, on their map I am an ally at least, as they keep coming back to paint this wall that I have shown them, and they do it for no reasons their culture recognizes as valid, they come.

Each day, we unlock the door to the building, we take out the paints, we discuss the meaning in what we are doing, and how we want the messages to be conveyed. They try to defer to me as the adult and I refuse, not only allowing them creative control but insisting on it. We clown around and we work hard, and to my greatest joy I overhear a man on a donkey cart explaining the painting we are creating on this wall to his child next to him. I excitedly point this out to the teenagers I’m working with, whom in typical teenage fashion pretend not to care.



On occasion we will lift small children over the fence surrounding us and Bokamoso (whose name literally means “future”) teaches the small kids to write their names with markers and paper. They run by on the sandy road with their make-shift toys, riding headless sticks they imagine to be horses or perhaps donkeys and scream to get our attention. I take their photos, they babble at me in Se-yai. I bring some water bottles and spray them, they giggle and run around.



These are the days I hope they are all remembering a few weeks later when I have come to their classrooms to tell them goodbye, and that I am leaving now. Like I quickly learned to say “my name is not lekgowa, my name is Lorato” in their language, I have now mastered “I’m leaving tomorrow, I’m going back to America” strictly from repetition. The tiniest ones just repeatedly scream my name and smile and wave bye bye, my words meaning nothing to them, even in their own language. The ones I have taught to write their names in the sand with sticks appear slightly more bewildered, and the oldest ones that I would teach during days when there were no teachers look very alarmed. Some matter-of-factly ask when I will return, their patient smiles breaking my heart, and I use my other famous Setswana word, ga kitse (I don’t know). Some of them glare at me, others happily shout “go well” and some cup their hands over their mouths and raise their eyebrows while they smile, which to Americans is a gesture that indicates embarrassment, but here tends to have more “I’m upset” or “I’m shocked” meaning.

The teachers wish me well, and prompt the children to say “goodbye, Auntie, see you” in English, which they obediently do, but each of their faces peels a layer off my heart. Classroom by classroom I’m forced to repeat this ritual until I can’t stand it, and am forced to again and again lower very dark aviator sunglasses over my eyes, and back away smiling and waving, the tears burning the back of my throat until I can make it out the door, recompose myself, and head to the next room.

When the time comes to say goodbye to the oldest ones, we exchange email addresses (not that I would imagine many of them will have much better luck with getting internet access than I have), and in their faces I see them struggle between the manners they’ve learned, to not ask difficult questions of adults, and the fact that I've always offered myself as someone they could actually ask their hard questions to and I would do my best to answer them. They are caught between what they've lived their whole lives in their culture and what I've briefly taught them of mine. I know that they want to demand that I answer for myself, and I am a coward and cannot do it. They are still thoroughly Batswana, and thus can generally accept their lot in life without question, yet I can tell that many of them are not happy with me. I want to scream I am so frustrated that all I can leave them with are words and hugs and the promise to send photos. Instead I get into the car and allow myself to be driven away; glad I don’t have to be the one to actively walk away one more time on this day.

As I arrive at the airstrip to fly out of Seronga, I am grateful that the pilot is a close friend, and that the plane is full only of my baggage and truly Southern African Afrikaner men. They cannot by nature deal with females crying and emotions and will thus leave me completely alone. There is no comfort they can provide me with and none that I want from them. I curl up against the side of the plane in a small ball, pull down my aviators one last time and let the tears fall freely now, the engine is loud enough that the soft sobs that occasionally escape me don’t require acknowledgement. I am right, although Paul glances back at me a few times; they ignore me completely, and upon arrival at the Maun airport take me across the street and offer me whisky, which appears to be the salve for the African heart.It warms something inside of me, but it's not my heart, as that remains feeling cold and empty, missing the life I've just left and will not return to ever again.

taking off in Seronga




Landing in Maun

Walls come down....

In which it ends as it began….

In tears.

On my first nights in Seronga I walked around my hut, hairless and confused, scared of every shadow of everything that moved (huge spiders, lizards and geckos on the walls, my own bald reflection in the mirror) as I tried to rid my hut of what I would come to learn are actually permanent amounts of sand and spider webs and set up the place in a way that would make it feel like a home or at least a place I felt I could be. I hung up photos from home and my favorite pieces of art on post cards, and put inspirational magnets on my non working fridge. As I did this I was usually crying, missing home and family and things that felt normal, desperately fighting the creeping feeling that I had made a colossal mistake which was about to evolve into a pretty epic failure.

And now two years later, as I walk around essentially taking apart the hut that has become my home, again I am crying. While I knew it would be no piece of cake to leave this place, I was unaware of the little slivers of pain I would encounter in preparing to leave that would rub raw the new skin I’ve grown since being here.

It seems it’s time to grow some more.

And while I’m ready, I’m also not.

I strip things off the walls of the hut that is home, some quotes and small passages are copied into my journal, most cards and letters read one last time in an attempt to copy them onto my heart. Photographs are stared at and the faces memorized in a desperate attempt to review what was once the starting line-up of my former pre-peace corps life and now sometimes appear like a police line-up of suspects and faded memories. The more reasonable part of me assures what has always been the larger, more powerful emotional, illogical part that when I get home, everything and everyone will fall right back into their rightful place, but doubts and fears crowd around like the ever present dust and sand of this hut. A lot has changed for all of us in the past two years. And the fact that I often forget Very Important Things that I’ve been told about by my family and friends (which breaks my heart on the regular) freaks me out to no end. There are Very Significant People whom I’ve never met, and am about to, and I feel almost shameful in presenting them with this bush-wacked, mentally and emotionally drained version of myself.

Simultaneously feeling constantly full and empty, whole and broken, I am very confused. Emotionally erratic. And numb at times. Very weird.

I stand out in my yard at the burn pile (sorry those of you worried about the environment but although Batswana may mostly burn their trash, and there’s no official “recycling” centers to be heard of anywhere in this country other than Gabs, they’ve got the reuse and refix thing down like what) burning elements of a life. It feels completely ridiculous to be doing this, but this is what we do with things we can’t use anymore in Africa. It’s hard because what I burn now doesn’t exactly feel like rubbish. Notes about projects and dreams which may or may not have happened. Heartfelt letters and cards from friends. Pictures of people back home (sorry guys, I can’t afford to bring or send them all home, I’ve kept the best of all of you) melt into the sand and I wonder if those people will recognize the bush chick they are presented with upon my plane’s final touchdown. Hopes and dreams and fears and plans all go up in smoke. It covers my skin and coats my hair as it blows up at me, entering my lungs and making my eyes water more than the tears that already drift down my cheeks. I wear the scent of my burned up life like a perfume, wanting some sort of physical essence on me to mark the pain I feel almost constantly these days. The smoke drifts past me and I struggle to let my feelings follow it into the atmosphere.

I have to be ruthless with the things I get rid of. I’m taking 50 bajillion planes between here and Minneapolis, and it seems baggage restrictions have changed quite a bit in two years. When I came here I managed to bring my body weight in luggage and not pay a cent of overage. Although my body weight has become less here, there’s no way I’m getting close to that and I can’t afford to ship much, either. I’ve become an expert at talking my way onto bush planes, but something tells me commercial flights might be a different story. I look ruefully at books that have changed my life, things people sent here as gifts or to make my life easier and I stress about leaving it all behind. I know they are only things, and that things can be replaced and in the end don’t really matter, but once a pack-rat always a pack rat. There are times when I arrive in the hut only to turn around and walk back away from it, unable to make any hard decisions about who to give what to and how. The hut itself is so small that any minor movement of stuff from one pile of indecisiveness to one of decision doesn’t lessen the chaos one bit.

Then there is the matter of whom to give what. Since the minute I arrived in Seronga people have been asking me for anything, everything, especially the clothes off my back. It’s an awkward conversation to have, especially when it’s repeatedly, but it usually ends when I promise them something, “lata”. Well it seems lata has come. And of course I can’t remember seven hundred some conversations of what was agreed upon, so how do I decide? I’d like to give things to those who need them most, but how do I know who needs what most? And would the old toothless woman who asks me daily for a few pula for local brew know what to do with a solar powered water purifier, even if she does need it most?

There are also times when I am feeling inspired, and I take a bag full of things I specifically want to give to this person or that. I can usually find them somewhere in the village and deliver things to them, maps, books, clothes, movies. We talk about what I’m giving them and why, and as we have these conversations I take mental pictures of these people and attach to those pictures feelings of love and joy. I try to not to think about whether they have HIV or AIDS, that they might be dying soon, or that these moments are likely “goodbye-forever.”

In the end I sold a great deal of stuff, an idea that might make some of you balk knowing the conditions that people here live under, but for me felt like the only fair and respectful thing to do. I simply couldn’t stomach the idea of coming here to teach self empowerment and that white people and black people are the same and that no, I am not rich, only to turn around and hand out things like Santa Claus on my departure. I sold clothes and shoes, random stuff, for 2 pula, 5 pula, 10 pula (to give you perspective, a can of coke is 5 pula, which is affordable to most of my village, and for clothes, no matter how worn out, that is cheap even for Africa. All those clothes that you donate to Goodwill, thinking you are surely clothing the whole of Africa? They are sold in markets in the streets, for much more than that).

It felt yucky to favor one group of people who were my friends over another, or to indulge that perceived white privilege or to have spent so much time telling those in the village that we are the same, only to show them exactly how different we are, that I can just give things away, when even they sell things that they make or buy in another village to each other. So after consulting with a few of my closest and most honest friends in the village I took a big suitcase full of stuff to the clinic and then to the tuck shop that I get most of my airtime from. With the young girl who worked there (a tuck shop is like a tiny little shack that sells small convenience type stuff) I showed her how she might display the things and how to actually give a little sales pitch. I also taught her how to figure out percentages, and each day she would write down what she sold, and figured out 25% of the total, which she was then given for her efforts.


village women and my co-workers at the clinic at my what-garage sale? It was really weird for me, but they had fun. I think in some weird way many of them had more fun with and were more excited with opportunity to buy stuff than the stuff that I had given them especially because it meant something to me. IDK...

In the end, I used the most of the money that I made from selling stuff to pay to ship home goodbye gifts that people made or bought for me. I know. I know. I KNOW. It's a sick irony I'm still trying pretty hard to come to terms with and I am relatively certain I will never be able to do it, or explain it, or anything other than that I understand in my soul that it's an irony of Botswana, and one of those things I'll never be able to make sense of in my brain and will have to just trust my heart on this one.

With the gifts I had tried to discourage them from doing this, for many reasons. I knew I would be traveling after and I wanted our memories to be not based in presents or gifts but experiences we had together and things we created together, like the public art and the workshops, but I couldn’t really find a way to respectfully and appropriately do that within this culture. Sometimes it seems American commercialism is our biggest export. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, and this is all very hard to describe in a way that makes sense to the Western mind, so I’ll just leave it at that.

One of the most adorable gift was from my closest friends Mr. Khumalo, who I did most of my men’s sector work with, and was the main organizer of my Seronga farewell party and who pitched up even though he was clearly ill. He and his wife gave me a wooden carved morkoro, the traditional boat used in the delta, with a note that said I should use it so I can find my way back overseas to Seronga someday.



It's funny, it was too big to fit in the box so I am carting this little guy on my UK adventure with me. The paddle (which I think is really a spoon, as in the delta they use a long straight wooden stick to pole rather than paddle through the river, which makes me suspect this may have been made by a Zimbabwean)makes me laugh for not only that reason, but I also like that it's as big as the boat, which would probably come in handy should I need to beat off any dikwenas (crocs) or dikubus (hippos)on my way in my little boat.

"How Can I Help You, To Say Goodbye?"

~Patty Loveless

Lately it feels I’ve performed a bit of a nasty trick on this village I’ve come to love. I came here and pushed and shoved and found my way into their hearts, I’ve become accepted and referred to as family, only to turn around now and leave, with the prospects of ever coming back very faint and fuzzy. The reality of keeping in touch is grim, with as much work as it’s been for me to attempt it over these months I can’t imagine it will be either easy, or when I’m honest with myself, likely for me to keep in touch with most people from here. When I consider the fact that it was my job to come to understand and care about these people, just as now its part of my job to leave, it all seems a cruel joke.

There are a few people within the village who have been sort of nasty to me lately, and I don’t blame them. Goodbyes are never easy, and everyone reacts in their own way. Some people appear to be quite alright with me leaving, by their understanding I’ve come from some far off planet they don’t understand, and they’re quite nonchalant that the time has come for me to go back there. Many of the men in the village who have offered to marry me and many of the old women who have offered to set me up with their sons have been alternating cold and super friendly in their last ditch efforts to seal the deal with me.

A person in the road translated for me the other day that an old man was yelling at me about why I’m not pregnant yet. When I asked a friend about this, he explained that people are a bit insulted that I’m not leaving with a baby that I’ve made here. People I’ve spoken fluent English with the entire time that I’m here have recently refused to speak it with me at all. It appears that they have now become upset that I cannot speak Setswana, as how else will I explain the Batswana culture to people back home if I don’t bring home a Motswana child that I’ve made here, and teach all of America to speak Setswana (good luck guys). These things seem funny to us as Westerners, but are very serious to the people from my village. Highly educated people are only half kidding when they confront me about these issues. I’m beginning to see that they are worried about their impact on me as much as I worry about my lasting impact on them.

In some vaguely American feeling ways that haven’t died in me here I feel strangely guilty about my ability and desire to leave this place. It’s hard to leave when I know that for people here it’s not an option. I can safely say that few to none of the people in Seronga will ever leave the continent of Africa, much less manage to make it into the United States, and yet I guess that’s my plan, to up and head back. It’s a horribly abrupt premeditated departure.

And just as it’s hard for some people here to say goodbye to me, I’m finding it difficult to say goodbye to them. I often lack the words (in any language, never mind the fact that we don’t exactly share one) to effectively communicate my feelings of how much these people and this place have touched my life, or the magnitude of what they have taught me. There has been a colossal shift in my perspective and how I see the world, and so much of that comes from the people I’ve spent time with here. I feel both like a child leaving home for a first day of school and a parent leaving their child with the babysitter for the first time.

Or perhaps there will be no babysitter. I won’t know for sure until after I’m gone, but I may not be replaced. In which case the baby—the village—may have to take complete care of itself. Which it is obviously capable of, hell the place has been here for quite a few years before me, and it’s not like I’m the first Peace Corps Volunteer to have served here. But I want the work we’ve done here to continue. I often think of my proudest achievement is that I myself don’t feel like I’ve done that much, rather I’ve helped others learn what they are capable of, how they themselves can make an impact, so what difference should my leaving really make?

I write my site report, a document intended to be less than four pages giving the basics of the village and yet the paragraphs keep coming. Notes about whom to contact in case of this or that, who can help with the transport of this or that, or who can provide you with vegetables, who has chickens, who might have spare petrol on hand. Last minute emergency numbers on a pad on the fridge. All for a person who may or may not come here.

With each little note, each small instruction, I find something growing in me, a hope that whomever encounters this place after me (be they Peace Corps or researchers or whomever) might feel the same love for it, approach it with the same passion, even as I wish it I know it is not possible. I know my experience has been unique, as they all inevitably are, but what other feeling can you have when leaving a place that has come to mean so much, has shaped you so powerfully? I want to screen them and run background checks! I want to interview and scrutinize any white person that comes through this village (as there is inherently a big responsibility in being white in this and I would wager many small African villages) for any reason to determine if they have it in them to fully appreciate this village for what it is, and to ensure that they will do all in their power to build it up, and love it and help it grow, and to protect it from harm. I can’t help but feel protective of Seronga, all the while knowing how I must let it, and all the people here, go.

As I prepare to leave Seronga, I’m struck by the similarities to the ways I felt when I left other places which have shaped me. They are places I think back to with longing, like in Minneapolis or Duluth. I drive away from these places that have challenged me in some way, that have earned my love with much more sadness than the places I left which have been lacking in personality. I never felt that sense of loss in leaving a suburb (sorry ghetto CR. And Shakopee, despite my residing in and decorating one of your houses, you were never home.)

Being the Lekgowa (white person) in such a small community, the people of Seronga are there and up in my business whether I want them to be or not (as I sit in the hut writing and coughing my lungs out half naked and sweating with fever, my sister Keitikile knocks at the screen door, as she’s heard me hacking and wants to know what the nature of my illness is. I give her the generic answer, which is flu, and she offers to send the children on the compound to the store for orange juice. When the co-op doesn’t have any, the children arrive at the screen door bearing armloads of green unripe oranges from the tree outside my window every few hours). People here know when I’ve been away for more than a day and want to know where I was and what I was doing and with whom, much like any parent of a teenager. If I’m out of the village for more than a few hours I know to expect phone calls and text messages, from people just wanting to “check me”. I know they care about me.

And I about them.

I feel, almost indignantly and surely unfoundedly, that I must prove that I know this place. This has been MY place, I have been hers, and we have been each others. I have in many cases taken “Seronga” as my de facto surname, many of my friends in other places know me as Jen Seronga, which is what they refer to me as over the radio in the bush planes. Seronga and I didn’t experience love at first sight, (or in this case first site), rather we had the sort of passionate love affair that grew over time, with each volley back and forth or challenge and reaction, with triumph and surrender. I feel a senseless possessiveness, as though the jealousy I’ve never quite come to feel over a lover is manifesting itself in my feelings of a place.

Somewhere along this journey, which started out as a difficult to fathom 27 months, the feverous countdown that ruled my first few months faded into the background, the march of time gone by getting bigger and the time remaining becoming smaller. At some point there was a shift and rather than a countdown, this became my actual life. It was no longer an experience with an end date but LIFE. Real life. I haven’t been on some escape or vacation or break the past two years, I’ve been living, and working, and even though sometimes I don’t take it seriously or convey that to those back home, it is.

And in that life there has been an investment.

I’ve given something here. Beyond the two years of my life and all that goes with that, I’ve given my passion and my energy and bits and pieces of myself. And it’s been good. And I’ve gained a lot. But at this point, any semblance of balance is long gone. There are elements of my life that involve mere survival, big elements, and it’s no way to become engrained in permanently living. Bush life is a hard life. And I’ve lived it. And now it’s time to be done.

I’ve come to care deeply about the people in and the essence of Seronga, and our stories have become interwoven. I’ve fought with and for and against this place, emerging from this battle bruised and battered and in some cases bleeding but in the end deeply and profoundly in love. As with any relationship that touches you so deeply to the core- how can you easily know when to say enough is enough? How do you calmly and gracefully walk away without the sting of little pieces of you being unceremoniously ripped out?

You don’t. But you leave it anyways, because it’s time. You trust that the words they’ve said a million times when it appears that a project or event is going to fall completely apart are true. “Don’t wodddy, Lorato. It will be Ohhh Kaaay.”

And you hope and pray, to their Gods and yours that it will.

Typical

So after over two years of life in Botswana, I managed to get my baggage that I'm traveling through Europe with (gee, was that me who said just seven short years ago that she had learned her lesson about this and would be properly backpacking through Europe when I did it next, only to be bringing a backpack...inside a rolling duffle? no! couldn't be. WILL I NEVER LEARN????) with down to my backpack packed inside my rolling duffle,some clothes to wear along the way, a few gifts and that is it. I think (hope, pray, ect) that the whole shebang is under 20 kgs (or we're going to rely on tears and mastercard to get that bag on the plane. or all 7 of them. eish.) Despite a Herculean effort on my part to get rid of stuff, including burning, burying, selling, giving away and just hiding and leaving stuff in secret piles from myself, I still had two boxes of stuff that I just could not part with and cannot bring with me. It's journals and baskets and kikois that I've acquired or been given that I want, but cannot take on 7 plane rides.

I had packed, repacked, and culled the boxes to the bare minimum and had sealed them. I was dreading the inevitable clusterf*ck of accomplishing anything to do with most anything in Botswana, but consoled myself with the fact that this would all be over soon, and this would be one of the last ridiculous things I would have to manage in Africa, besides getting myself off the continent.

So the other morning, Clara and I made our way to the post office early in order to ship three boxes (she had one to send as well) to the United States of America.

Below are pictures of what we accomplished.

We placed all three boxes on the counter, and told the guy they must all be shipped to the States. Now in the States, from what I can recall, and including all evidence I have based on the leftover postage tag on the box I am now sending back to it's homeland, when one ships something abroad, it is weighed and measured, information is typed into a computer, a total is given, and a neat little pinkish orange (and might I add presticky) white tag comes out with the amount of the postage, that money exchanges hands either through cash,(possibly check) or credit card, and a few forms are completed, attached to the box, and away it goes, arriving at it's destination in a few short weeks. Not so in Botswana. What a lovely and completely unexpected surprise!

Or not so much, as the only surprise was how much more ridiculous it was than even I anticipated.

Here of course there is no credit card machine at the post office, which I expected, so I had preplanned the route I was going to take to the nearest cash machine once I got a total. Predictably the total I was given was wrong, but I accounted for that and took out more than they said while Clara paid her total. This meant that Clara was given her stamps first. Yup that's right Stamps. Like you put on letters. Correction like you LICK and put on letters, except in the rest of the world they are like stickers these days. These boxes that weighed in the neighborhood of several kilos each (three and seven to be exact on my part. What? I had a lot to write in two years and many friends who gave me shit I couldn't part with when I left;-)

And we filled the things with STAMPS. THAT YOU LICK.

so as I said, since Clara had handed over her cash first, in a usual feat of Botswana brilliance despite the fact that I had the heaviest boxes she was given her stamps first. And as the post office is a government office, they never have enough of pretty much anything. Including large denomination stamps. So they give Clara her several hundred pula worth of stamps in the larger denominations. Then they give me my even more expensive total amount of the stamps for my smaller box. There were still quite a few stamps on each of these boxes, but we had used enough stamps that all the bigger denominations (and by this we mean like 4.60P, and 3.00P). So there were still lots of stamps on these boxes (see photos)

It was at this point, when we were already feeling a bit sick from all the glue that we had to ingest to finish off the first two boxes that the guy began handing over the pages of stamps required to send my largest and heaviest box halfway across the world. That's right pages plural.550.40 Pula worth of postage.... in 2.60 stamps. Which are round FIFA world cup stamps that you can cut out of a square outer ring to save space. And would have taken 6 years and the remainder of my patience for all things Botswana and I still had a week left in the country. Needless to say there were a lot. And we just stared at the post office guy.

And he stared back.

So we proceeded to make ourselves sick licking these nasty things (we had about ten stamps left when they brought us an ancient but useful looking roller-wetter thingy). As we are nearly finished, and have gone through a minor battle with this dude about whether we can put them on the bottom of the box, he then produces forms. Which we also have to put somewhere on this box.

At one point I asked what happens if all the stamps were to fall off, or if some of them did, as there were hundreds on the damn box and I was damned if this bloody thing was going to be returned to this bloody country for alleged lack of postage or some such false infraction. As some of the stamps are stuck on top of duct tape, and they are the lick and stick kind, this is a possibility in my American, preplanning, anticipate and prevent problems ahead of time brain.

His answer?

"They can't."

When I realized he had to then make a black stamp on top of each and everyone one of the hundreds of stamps already on the box I had to step outside and breathe through the rest of the process.

Those boxes may indeed arrive in America, but anyone working at the post office there is certain to have one helluva laugh.

THIS IS AFRICA.





My lighter box to be sent to the States



the heavier box



This is covered on all sides including the bottom. we had to fight with him about the form and whether the stamps could slightly cover each other. He seemed to think this was all our problem.



Mine and Clara's lighter boxes

Under Afrikan Skies

“Be guided by the stars which you place well on the canopy of your night sky”- Mary Anne Radmacher

I sit. In the middle of the dark, in the middle of the night, in the middle of my yard, in the middle of a sleeping bag. The sobbing as subsided, which is probably good, as I can’t remember if my family is here, there are as many abandoned looking cars in the yard as usual. I sit under the Afrikan skies, waiting for answers, for some divine intervention to descend from the heavens and tell me what to do. For hours I’ve been sitting under these Afrikan skies, howling at the stars, in the end coming to the usual conclusion that this particular act has remedied nothing other than to take some of the pounding pressure off of my chest. Meanwhile my soul remains heavy and my brain foggy. I have no idea what to do. As Nathan has so eloquently reminded me tonight, no one is going to tell me what to do; I have to figure it out for myself.

Having this latest rug, the one filled with designs of staying in Botswana, pulled out from under me has put me into a tiny emotional tailspin. As if there is such a thing as a minor breakdown.

In trying to describe these feelings to friends from America who so graciously returned my panicked calls, this emotional volley back and forth between staying on another year and going, I realized I wasn’t certain either how to continue living in Botswana, or how to go back and resume living in the States. I suddenly didn’t know how to stay-or how to go. The result of this little crisis left me with extremely soar sinuses, puffy eyes and a burning, painful wondering in all this struggle and all this… everything, what exactly was I fighting for? And with whom?

In the past few years I’ve battled several demons here, not all of them self induced. It’s hard to place blame or declare victories in this particular war within me. The recipient of the reparations remains a mystery. I can’t see which way is up.

Because nothing is clear except the Afrikan sky. I wish my heart was the same, but instead it’s a mash up of confusion. I want to stay in Africa, I think, I want to stay in Botswana, but it’s hard to tell if that’s what I’m actually feeling or if I just don’t want to leave the children I’ve worked with here with as few options as when I found them. I never came here with the intent of being a savior, and quite frankly, babies are born and they die, and sometimes I look at them and wonder what their mothers were thinking bringing them to life under these conditions, in such numbers. It’s a cruel thought, but then being here on a humanitarian mission I have in some ways lost my humanity. I don’t want to, and never really had visions of saving people. I had hoped to try to inspire them to save themselves.

HIV is still here, by some estimates the numbers increasing from the time I arrived. Many of the living conditions I found here have not changed tangibly for the better, and that’s a hard way to leave the people I’ve come to know and love. While I very much doubt my staying in this country another year would make a big difference, I had some ideas born from what I witnessed in this place that I naively thought might change a little something at least, here or there. It is as it has always been for me, hard to let go. It’s difficult to look around and see success, which is why I think I chose to try to put it up on walls, in the form of community art. I’m not an artist, and I don’t know how to paint hope, but I think I found children who do, and I’ve given them paint.

I should go to bed soon. Nothing productive is coming from this exhaustion. Another day of not quite saving the world must be put to rest. I try to comfort myself with the thought that tomorrow I will paint with the children. The children who were born here, and aren’t the ones who died, they lived. They have defied the laws of the nature of this place to reach an age where they are aware of the world and the idea that it might possibly offer them more than what they’ve seen in their village. These teens are, as government mandates say “by virtue of their position,” survivors in my eyes. They both thrill and haunt me. And they seem to have reached out to me as a lifeboat, as some sort of magical white alien angel who can give directions to some sort of life, some sort of salvation beyond this village. And yet in less than a month I will leave them here behind, with only some vague lines and dots on a map embedded in lessons I hope they’ve found in my rambling speeches and overly personal probing questions to guide them toward the dreams they’ve shared with me.

To be the doctor that cures HIV. To be an artist or a graphic designer. To be a pathologist. To do these things, to become these destinies that they’ve held in their hearts like secrets because to voice ambition and hopes for their own futures in their culture is not accepted, to brag or achieve or be “better than” is not acceptable. Obedience and respect are paramount, staying with the group, for to stick one’s neck out and excel is considered bad form, and is often punished by their peers. And to dream of a bigger life, one outside Seronga, where one might do something more than farm and produce children, well there’s just really not anyone around who can fathom much less encourage that. Except for maybe me.

I tell them the things I was told as a child, that you can do or be anything you want. To them these are novel and new concepts. I weave for them stories of success, and tell them that with hard work anything is possible. These kids see me, so far from me home, following a dream that began as a hazy notion on a cold dark night and whether I like it or not, I’m a role model. I feel unqualified for this responsibility. And maybe I really haven’t been given this responsibility, maybe it’s all in my head.

Me. Yes me. The one who now cries in her yard in the middle of the night as I have no idea what direction I want my life to go. I’ve got ideas, but in steering by starlight I’m left in darkness, at least for now. I again look to the stars for answers and find only more unknown lands and constellations that while beautiful, lack the clear navigational bounds of the maps that have become my obsession.

Brixton would say things will look better in the morning. I lay my head down and cry until sleep creeps in and takes over, hoping that this indeed will be true.

“The possibility of untethering happiness and sadness from circumstance felt frightening and wonderful, like a new brand of freedom” Pam Houston.

The Plan... For now

After a few hours and a hellish night of crying and confusion and what feels like last minute arrangements with the Peace Corps administration to change the box I checked from “staying” to “going” I’m leaving Botswana. It seems so easy and is of course difficult (schlepping back and forth between every office with a fax machine in the village trying to send in forms) but the date is chosen, the money for a ticket home is being processed and I’m leaving.

It feels weird to have to change an entire life plan so quickly, but I guess since at this point I’m only living a year (or in the current case, a month) at a time it gives me a lot of freedom. I happen to be very skilled at meeting soulmate women named Jo from extreme western Minnesota who happen to be living in the UK at current, and both of these lovely ladies have agreed to host me during my spontaneously planned tour of the UK in June. When I studied in London with Jo(anna) in 2003, I said I would return there and visit London along with Ireland and Scotland before I turned 30 (ahhhhhh! Next year!!!) which was the only way to get myself on the plane to leave there the first time. With this deadline approaching, I thought now might be the time. This was confirmed when I text Jo(hanna) in Scotland and informed her that my Peace Corps plans had fallen through, and she, also being former PC whose plans went a bit awry, told me to book a ticket.

So I have.

Anyone with any contacts I should meet in London (1-11), Dublin (12-19), or Edinburgh (20-30) in June, let me know. I’m also making a one night only appearance in the big apple (NYC June 30-July 1) before I touch down in the mini apple (HEYYOOOOO Minnesota!!) on July 1. After that I have no plans.

Your move, Universe.

I guess you're just what I needed.....

I continue to find it amazing and weird how if one is open to it, the universe will always provide what one needs, even if sometimes we are too dense to realize it at the time. As my time in Botswana comes to a bit of an unanticipated close (sooner than I expected, see most entries below) many of the dynamics of the friends I’ve made here have become strained in some ways. I think it’s natural that as “goodbye, possibly forever” approaches that there is a little stress involved, and it can get to be a nasty thing to deal with.

Many of my Peace Corps friends are dealing with their own burned out, ready to be done, not knowing what’s next or knowing what’s next and it’s hectic emotions or any range /combination of these feelings. Many of my researcher friends are dealing with finishing up their research and heading off to write, and my expats are dealing with another whole crop of temporary people leaving. The villagers are realizing I’m going and that they’ll probably never see me again. None of us know if I’m going to be replaced which is another dynamic in itself.

The Peace Corps volunteers that are leaving are like black holes hurtling through the universe, we are sucking the energy out of anything that passes by us. We’re exhausted, tired, and we stare at things a lot. We’re about to go through reverse culture shock, and when we get together it can often be like a supernova of moaning, low level hysterics, random tears and unsolicited anger, fear, or jubilation, at completely unpredictable intervals. We are unbalanced ions looking for the matching atom that can catalyze us out of this particular situation, and in the absence of that, we just bounce against each other in chaos.

Granted, it’s nice to not be going through all of this alone and there is obviously some comfort in knowing that other people feel just the way you do at this moment in time. There’s always someone to call and know that yes, they will understand you. And yes, being a friend entails being there for one another. But as this journey we’ve been on together comes to a close, we face a new challenge, and that is not one of being physically isolated from members of our own culture and alone anymore, as most of us have become pros at spending huge amounts of time as the only American in many kilometers. But we always know that when we do get to see each other, we know that the others are going through a similar experience. The challenge ahead is going to be a new one that each of us will be going through completely alone, that of being surrounded by Americans full time and knowing that few of them get what you’ve gone through. Reentering the atmosphere to find you don’t immediately recognize your own planet anymore.

Which in the end is ok. We’ll move on from this experience, readjust and be fine. But right now most of us are in the thick of it, experiencing a whirlwind of emotions and under a great deal of stress, either about our own or each other’s impending departure. This doesn’t lead to being the greatest of friends. Lately I’ve noticed us speaking to each other with more sharpness, or at times I’ll look over at a friend who is looking away with tears in her eyes.

Not that my friends are doing anything wrong. They, like me, are just living their experience. We are on one hell of an emotional rollercoaster. I know that I myself am currently no cup of tea to deal with. It’s to be expected, but it’s just hard. Sometimes you have to come to the conclusion that the friends that you have, and that are like a warm sweater or your favorite pair of jeans just aren’t the ones you need to wear ALL THE TIME. You might need to add a new item you’re your wardrobe of battle gear, one that serves to cover and protect an area of vulnerability you may not have known you had.

I remember when my friend Johanna was leaving for the Peace Corps three years ago. We had only met in about February, and I ended up being the one to drive her to the airport in June. We developed a close and fast friendship, one based in the knowledge that we would both be leaving each other for a long time, and that we wouldn’t be the sort of friends that are based in seeing each other all the time to meet for tea. I was sad that she was leaving as I liked her a great deal, but it was also comforting to watch someone go through what I myself would be going through in the next year. I would miss her in the immediate in my everyday life, but I wasn’t so used to her as being part of the fabric of my day to day clothes that I resolutely needed her for warmth. Johanna was like my ball gown, or my go-to little black dress, the perfect thing to find in your closet that makes you smile, and goes with everything.

I think that in her end of days before the Peace Corps I filled a certain role for Jo, I was someone who could quietly witness her experience without getting overly wrapped up in the emotional tug of war that went on as she prepared for her journey. Because I didn’t’ really know her “prethisbigthing”, I could just jump into her circus and play with the tigers with her without many questions or judgment. She gave me a map of how to move from one world to another, and in the year after she left, I followed it. During those last few days before she left for Georgia, she defined the parameters of her universe and I was lucky enough to be in the orbit.

Our friendship has grown over time and distance, and I’m looking very forward to seeing her and catching up on the past three years when I meet up with her in Scotland. She also had an abrupt end to her intended service, and having served in the Peace Corps herself there are just so many things that she “gets” without lengthy explanations. And yet her experience in Eastern Europe was undoubtedly different to one in sub-Saharan Africa, thus in being with her will hopefully move me a bit past this whole “Botswana is the center of the universe” thing I’ve been sucked into for the past few years. I mean it’s true, development and HIV and Batswana culture have pretty much been my life for a while, but I need to shake myself out of that mind frame a little, as I have a feeling not many people in America are going to be able to (or want to) listen to me ramble at length about these topics, which are never going to be the center of anyone else’s universe.

Enter Clara. It seems in the waxing hours of my time in Botswana that I’ve found another one of these versatile friends who came along just when I needed her. I actually met her in August at HOORC (Harry Oppenheimer Okavango Research Center) while I was pirating internet and waiting for a friend to finish with a meeting. It was like her second day in Bots and one of her advisors was introducing her around. As they passed me, he stopped, and despite not ever having seen me before in my life, began introducing Clara to me. As I began to speak his face lit up and he said “oh excellent, you ARE American, so is Clara.” She shyly shook my hand and we established that she was researching birds. I tried to explain that I wasn’t actually based in Maun, and didn’t know how great of a contact I would be, but I would try to introduce her around. As an extremely loud person, her quietness made me a little nervous, but we exchanged numbers and email addresses. I put her in touch with some of my friends in Maun, and didn’t see her much after that, as my work was really getting under way in Seronga, my family came to visit, ect.

As my service has continued on in Seronga, I have to admit that burn out has taken over quite a few aspects of my life. Over time I’ve gone from being the Seronga welcome wagon, hosting strangers and going out of my way to meet people and help them, to somewhat of a strange hermit. It’s not that I don’t want to meet new people; it’s more that I’m just tired. I’m tired of the energy required to give it the old Jen Katchmark “Heyya!” It’s been a struggle to fight against the limited communications with the outside world (read: The States) and I’ll be the first to admit that my efforts have slipped in the last half of my service. In the priority list of my life, new people have just fallen to the wayside. I know this isn’t good, and I’ve probably missed out on opportunities to have some really great relationships with some nice people. But I know a little part of me doesn’t want to take on the emotional work of getting to know new people, only to turn around and miss them and mourn them when I leave. It’s happened with the new houseboats people and the new Nigerian doctor and his wife. They’re right here in Seronga, and they’re really nice and friendly and keep inviting me over, but honestly, I just don’t have it in me. I’m running out of energy to give to new relationships, so I guess I’ve chosen to not really engage in them at all.

But I guess Clara made it in under the deadline. Because although I didn’t know it at the time, she needed to. From the time we met in August, Clara and I became the type of friends who would greet each other in passing (as is the custom of anyone in Southern Africa) and became familiar enough acquaintances that we didn’t have to put down a lot of the “new friend” groundwork. I seriously don’t know what changed about our intersecting social circles but suddenly we were seeing each other all the time. And shy little Clara reentered my life like a storm. I’m not even sure how exactly it happened, but all of a sudden Clara was on my constant texting list and we were always making plans that included each other. We went from nodding to each other in greeting to finishing each other’s sentences.

She’s come up to visit me in Seronga, and I’ve stayed with her in Maun. We talk a lot about our different experiences here, her having come on her own as part of her Fulbright scholarship and studying birds and not people. And yet there are some things about the expatriate life that are just constant and bond you together if you are one. She’s fresh and new in her excitement for her work, and her being American means that there aren’t the same sort of cross cultural struggles that can make making new friends under these conditions a pain in the ass.

It’s such a nice change to listen to her talk about her work (which is neither development or piloting nor tourism work, which seems to be the only other options of things people do here beside animal research) and her passion has reignited some of mine. With her I can talk about my feelings about leaving and the uncertainty of what’s next without it being the emotional mine field it often becomes with my other friends. Sure she’ll miss me, and I her, but we’re also both quite used to an existence unlinked to each other.

Not to say that it will continue that way. We’re already planning a road trip across the motherland at the end of summer (finances permitting). She’ll leave Botswana in August, and she also doesn’t exactly know what’s next.

I just feel so happy, and so lucky that the universe decided to bless me by giving me Clara (especially with all the cursing it I was doing when I first arrived in Seronga) and that my heart was open enough to invite her in. She came along when I thought my borders were closed to new visitors, and she turned out to be just what I needed.








Top: Clara and I at the animal party 2010
Bottom: Johanna and I before she left, 2007

“We are incomplete creatures. We cannot live alone; we cannot find our own meaning alone. We realize our potential, we become alive, only when we find ‘between.’”-Jonathan Haidt