Just touched down in Londontown....

As the plane landed in London, all of my African melancholy faded away and I was excited to see my old stomping grounds. I made my way through the airport to customs, smiling like an idiot at all the happy yellow signs of Heathrow airport welcoming me back to yet another of the places I consider an adopted home. Seven years both is and isn’t a long time, but I was ready for the reunion with this city (and of course my friend Jo) to begin.

Having just arrived from Botswana, where lines are the norm, and we’ve all come to learn to just stand in them patiently, I wasn’t at all fazed by the line at immigration/arrivals. I approached the unsmiling agent, handed him my pink passport and gave him my biggest dose of friendly African style greeting of “Hello! How are you?” complete with a big smile. I was soon reminded that here in London, that is interpreted as “crazy” and treated as such.

Unsmiling Immigration Official: “What brings you to London, Ma’am?”

Me (bristling only slightly that in the last 7 years I seem to have gone from “Miss” to “Ma’am”):
“Well I missed it! I studied here some years ago and….”

UIO (ignoring my charming story and flipping through my passport, which is a different one than I had at that time and holds no European stamps. This one starts In Africa as it’s my Peace Corps passport-the other one is expired) “Oh really. And where are you coming from?”

Me: “Africa! Or really, as one should be specific about this as it’s a whole continent, I was living in Botswana-I just finished the Peace Corps- and then I flew out of Jo-burg, but this most recent flight? Well it was from Egypt…….”

UIO (cutting me off): “And where are you staying in London?”

Me: “With my friend Jo! In Paddington!” (Which I know I had written on the little form that was right in front of him, but am quite used to answering tons of ridiculous questions asked by people who have the information right there in front of them.)

UIO: “Paddington is surely a big place. Any specific information about where your friend lives?”

Me (still smiling like a golden retriever): “Well I have it somewhere, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll pick me at the train station.”

UIO (sighing): “And how long will you be in London?”

Me (oblivious): Begin rattling off my itinerary to a man who clearly DOES NOT CARE.

UIO: “And what is your employment?”

Me: “Well I’m unemployed. And really homeless too, if you think about it! See I just finished the Peace Corps in Botswana……”

UIO (cutting me off): “Do you have a ticket to leave the UK Ma’am?”

Me (proudly): “Actually I do!” Begin repeating aforementioned itinerary.

UIO (cutting me off again): “May I see it, Ma’am?”

Me (riffling through my overweight carry-on bag that was put through by the ticketing agent in Jo-burg through just this type of friendly subterfuge): “Yeah, I’ll get it for you now. I’m so glad I had my shit together (insert noticeable eye roll from the immigration agent here) and printed them off in Botswana… Do you want to see all of them or just the one from Scotland to the States? They’re marked with the pink sticky tabs and the yellow highlighter.”

The Unsmiling Immigration Official reviews my travel document as I prattle on about my upcoming travel plans.

UIO (satisfied at finally finding confirmation that the idiot in front of him was not trying to stay in his country on any sort of permanent basis, and again cutting me off, whilst almost violently stamping my passport.) :” Thank you Ma’am, this will suffice. It seems as you are indeed leaving within the allotted amount of time I won’t have to ask you to provide proof of income (muttering)-as it seems you have none- and I have to remind you that you are (loudly) not permitted on this entry visa to work in the UK. Enjoy your visit.”

Me (suddenly realizing this man thinks I’m clearly some sort of terrorist): “Uh, thanks.” Repacking all my shit into my bag and heading to the baggage claim.

As I walked through the same duty free lined hallway I passed through to enter this country on another great adventure (with blinders on, as the amount of bright lights and perfume smells and just well, STUFF that lined the shops would have stopped me for at least a few hours if I so much as glanced left or right) I again grinned, happy to be back, and excited to see something familiar from my past. I grinned at all the people who were not waiting for me, and remembered meeting my former boyfriend here, as well as my mom and sister when they arrived.

I walked over to the cash machine and inserted my card, and punched in my code. Denied.

A small part of me was swept back to 7 years ago, when I arrived in this same airport, alone and more that slightly freaked out at the prospect of 5 months in a foreign country where I knew no one (with the exception of the location of some graves that apparently held some long dead ancestors that my great uncle had told me I should go visit). I was trying to call my mom to tell her I was in London with the calling card that she gave me. We had known it was going to be the middle of the American night when I got in, but she wanted me to call to let her know I was safe so I did. The card, which we thought would last at least few phone calls was finished in about 5 minutes (first lesson about foreign pay phones and calling cards learned the hard way) and I was suddenly alone in a very big city (at least until the study abroad babysitters came to collect me, when the flight with everyone else from the East coast arrived) and I was scared.

But the bigger part of me has been dealing with bullshit of this nature in foreign lands for the past two years, and simply knew it was a matter of making a plan.

I quickly cursed myself for impulsively buying the overpriced magnet of the green World Cup 2010 mascot in the gift shop in the airport in Jo-burg, as cashing in those Rand might have been enough to try to get a tube ticket at least to Paddington to meet Jo. The little guy is creepy and weird, but I was feeling nostalgic and wanting something to commemorate my time in South Africa leading up to the world cup. Here’s his picture.



Creepy, huh?

As it seems everywhere in the world besides the Maun airport that has wireless internets locks it down and makes you pay, using my laptop to get on Skype or the internet was quickly eliminated as an option.

My next move was to try to use my card to use the internets at the little kiosks (using one's card-three pound minimum-of course-plus international fees) to see if I could get a hold of my mom (unlikely as it was still early in the States and she's usually not on the internet unless I warn her that I might be) or the bank to sort this out.

My "make a plan" skills kicked in once I realized if I could get someone on Facebook who was in the States to call my mom to alert her to the problem she could probably call the bank and we could sort this out. A second cousin of my fathers was quickly found to attempt this duty and my mom was soon on the internet and calling the bank. (thank you so much Lori!!!!!)

After a few hours, a few international calls on my credit card (the irony of using my credit card to determine why I couldn't use my credit card was not lost on me) to determine why I couldn't use the damn thing to get cash or buy a train ticket and I was feeling an awful lot closer to the girl who was here 7 years ago. I had used the internet to ask Jo to come rescue me (bless my amazing friend's warm and wonderful heart, as well as the crazy technology of everyone having the internets on their phones. I did have my Botswana phone that I tried to get a sim card for but that particular machine was allied with the cash machine and the train ticket machine in rejecting me)and was waiting for her in the train station below the airport.

As I waited for Jo's undoubtedly smiling and distinctively unencumbered with luggage figure to emerge from one of the trains, I put my ipod in my ears and felt sorry for myself. This readjustment thing was going to be harder than I thought.I chided myself for the rookie mistake of forgetting to have my mom call the bank and remind them that I would be in the UK for a month (This lovely mistake was confirmed completely the next day when I tried to get cash from the ATM at Paddington station-thinking there was a perhaps a 24 hour hold or something to do with the British bank holiday-and the machine ate my card. Thanks, Visa. This leaves me with no credit card- it shut itself down from disuse from two years in Botswana without using it and now no cash card. Awesome). My ipod was playing a shuffle playlist apparently designed by the gods to bring me right back to all of the happiest times I ever had in Botswana.

I sat against the wall of the station surrounded by my bags and thought back to the disdain in the Unsmiling Immigration Official's voice as I explained my current (and flippant) life plan. I was homeless (and now looked it in the train station sitting against the wall surrounded by my worldly possessions) and jobless (although I did briefly consider that busking might be a positive career move for the time being, before remembering that I HAVE NO TALENTS past giving my friend's cheeky nicknames)and at this point at least, penniless.

Botswana and Africa seemed so close and yet so far away, and I was swept up in longing for the kindness so commonly and frequently shown by strangers there. In Botswana if someone had seen me sitting alone in a train station they most likely would have stopped and chatted with me. They would likely have inquired as to what I was doing alone in a train station,and when I told them what was happening, they would have shaken their heads, muttered "hey" in disbelief, helped me buy a train ticket to be paid back when we got to Paddington. I quickly realized this was not going to be what happened here in London when I briefly tried to greet someone and ask how the automatic ticket machine worked and they looked at me with complete fear in their eyes that a fellow human being might be speaking to them and needing something from them.

Jo rescued me soon after, and I only made friends with one African (the smiling Nigerian ticket taker on the train) on the way home. The impersonality of the western world is going to be a tough one to get used to, but as with all things, we move forward....

Out of Africa

The sun rises over the horizon from the plane. A new day. The first out of Africa

I sit on the plane about to leave Egypt. I’ve only been here a few hours and I never even left the airport. But as I sit here, in this crazy luxury, (yeah it’s just coach, but I’m having some trouble schooling myself on how to use the in flight TV counsel thing in front of me) something pulls. I can’t even feel where exactly it’s coming from and yet something in my chest is physically hurting. I’m leaving Afrika. Like for real. When this plane takes off, I will no longer have my feet on the ground of the land that has been my home for the past two years. It’s a different panic than when I left London 7 years back, looking out the window of the black mini-cab, my mother and sister beside me and yet feeling strangely alone.

Back then I calmed myself with the knowledge that I could (and would) return, all the touristy/cultural things I hadn’t quite done would still be around and I could always come back and do them. London wasn’t going anywhere. I set myself a personal goal to come back and do England again, along with heading to Ireland and Scotland before I turned 30. It all seemed reasonable enough then, and now here I am, a year early even, on the plane to do just what I promised myself.

But Afrika is different. Sure there are plenty of things I didn’t get to see while I was here, touristy and otherwise. Many of the things I might have missed seeing are animals, or super old rock paintings or natural wonders that again, aren’t going anywhere (unless you listen to the conservationists, who will have you believe the animals, the delta, and the rock paintings will all be irrevocably changed in the next five years. Who knows. Maybe they will.) But the thing about Africa that has intrigued me and shaped me and will make me miss it is not the powerful natural beauty (although hanging out in the world’s largest inland freshwater delta hasn’t hurt for that) but the people.

And due to HIV/AIDS, the “scourge” that I was sent to Botswana to help reduce, eliminate, stop the spread of, educate about, ect-those people may not be there when I return. When the sweet people of my village would ask, “But when will you be back? (as if Seronga, a very healthy two if not nearer to three days travel from the capital city of the country which was at least a twenty something hour plane ride from Minneapolis away were just a quick hop and a jump to get to), I would have to answer honestly that I don’t know. The ex pats and white locals in Maun, more certain of the economics that dictate these decisions, asked the same question and followed it with insistence of “well you have to come back, we’ll just stick you up at fill-in-the-name-of-the-camp with our bed nights.”

Without a solid plan of what would be next in my life, or even how any income might be generated to possibly forecast when all this might actually happen, it was a hard question to answer. But like everyone who has come before me, and in everything I read, as I sat on that plane, I felt the pull. Africa is under my skin now, and I know that I’ll be back. The comfort of living in uncertainty that I learned within her borders now comforts me that although I might not be able to name how or when, (or with what money) I’ll be back.

To South Africa: A sincere good luck....

As I crossed the border from Botswana to South Africa, a feat that took no less than an hour and a half, standing in a long line in weather of a temperature which has come be feel pretty damn cold to me (good luck MN winters), I was reminded that my sister country to the south will soon be hosting the World Cup. I have to be honest and admit that at first the idea of trying to go to a game of the 2010 world cup was an exciting one, hell I was already here, and I know enough people in SA that I could have certainly found some couch to crash on. This naïve excitement was soon replaced by the reality check of what a stupendous f*ck up the whole thing could and likely would be, and I sat back and smugly congratulated myself on my brilliant foresight in avoiding the whole circus and heading to London.

The further I got into SA, the more skeptical I became. Over and over again I saw workers working at a typical southern African pace to finish projects that should have been done long ago. When we tried to take public transportation, we had to inquire with no less than ten people as to how to find which route could take us to the Apartheid Museum (which they might want to brush up on as I would imagine there might be a few people wanting to go there, and not every person who pitches up in this country is going to have pockets bursting with money, as seems to be the general impression). When numerous people tried to rip me off, I chided them in my broken Setswana (and I just learned that SA officially has 11 languages, which explains a lot), which they laughed at and thought was perhaps Sesotho. Ishrugged and shook my head thinking of all the world’s people (mostly Americans from what I’ve heard about ticket sales) who were about to descend on this logistical African nightmare.

But then, as is always the case in southern Africa, we did find what we were looking for. The Apartheid museum. It was wonderful. As my eyes welled up with tears again and again (what!!?? They had an exhibit about Mandela. That man is so inspirational he makes me well up every time.) and I thought about what not only this country but in many ways this region has been through in the past hundred or so years. As I walked through the exhibits I thought about what I’ve learned from not only the black but the white South Africans I’ve come to know and understand here, and how many sides there are to every story. I was able to put my American cynicism and judgment aside (after all, we were going through some pretty big growing pains during the time Apartheid was being instated on our side of the pond as well) and feel true empathy for what this place and all it's people have gone through.

And I was reminded of the most important lessons that Africa offers up to those of us lucky enough to spend a decent amount of time here. The lessons are about hope. And perseverance. My time in southern Africa taught me a lot about holding out for things that I believe are important, even when it seems like they might never be accomplished, or are impossible. It taught me a lot about letting go of the things I previously thought to be important, or at least to question those things, as in a majority of cases I was hanging (sometimes quite desperately) onto a lot of stuff that didn’t truly matter.

The next day on the plane out of Africa I watched “Invictus” (more tears, this time because I missed all my South African friends and their crazy accents, and because hell, it’s a beautiful story, and more Madiba). For those of you who haven’t’ seen it- and I would highly recommend it- it’s about how after Apartheid the new South African sports ministry wanted to eliminate the name and colors of the national South African rugby team, the Springboks, as they considered them to be symbols of Apartheid and oppression. Mandela convinced them to keep the team, name and colors, and the team went on to win the 1995 South African hosted Rugby world cup (I have seen how passionate South Africans are about their rugby.. getting rid of the team would indeed have been a big problem.) and provide a unifying source of pride for the country.

As I reflect back on my so recently departed adopted homelands from the creature comforts and confusion of London, I am again warmed with excitement for South Africa again on the eve of their big show. Whether they are completely successful in their big debut onto the world’s sporting event stage, they have approached the big event with excitement and hope. I put my cynicism to rest, and my heart smiles on behalf of the country and continent that eagerly awaits its turn to shine and be acknowledged for something besides the heartbreaks and hardships which seem to be all one hears about from Africa on the evening news.

Good Luck South Africa. May your World Cup debut show the world all the good you have to offer.

“Invictus”
By William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Seronga Village: Joy Division

The fierce Seronga militia, ready to defend the humble hamlet in any battle....

(The title for this blog entry comes from the movie “Control” which I watched after a visiting Australian (Thanks Liam) put it on the hard drive of my computer. I found it a bit weird, but couldn’t get the band’s name that the movie was about out of my mind… and so here we are)

As the time approached for my family to arrive (back in late September.. yeah this is a bit of an old story, but it’s still cute to me) I began to look around my hut and realize some… “home improvements” might be in order. I was hoping to convince my mother that indeed I wasn’t living in the sort of squalor she imagined. The plan for when they came to visit was for all of us to spend at a night in the place so the family could really get the feel of bush life and what I had been describing about a night in a hut. As I thought about three members of my inevitably over packed American family arriving in Seronga I began to panic, and decided I needed to do a major and thorough cleaning (which ended up being really good-as despite risking heat exhaustion cleaning that oven all day I got rid of lots of shit-and the place probably needed it.)

Although I thought moving to Botswana would cure me of my pack rat habit, indeed in some ways it made it worse. I hate to shock you with this unsettling information, but there is no Target store anywhere on the continent. The dry goods store and hardware dealer in the village are only open until 5 on weekdays, and I’ve run into enough weirdly timed emergencies wherein I need strange things that I have come to save nearly everything.

Couple this with the fact that I have learned in this village how many uses there can be for what I previously would have considered garbage. As it seems the recycling center in Seronga is yet to be constructed (perhaps after the water treatment facility, road, bridge, electricity and Target store arrive… although I’ve heard a rumor that there is one in Gaborone) I also have guilty feelings about the bottles remaining from the products I’ve received from America. I’ve really begun to lose it when I see the plastic burning in the trash pile out on the compound. So thus I’ve become really creative.

Being that Febreeze has become a necessary substance in my time in Seronga (Thank you thank you thank you Keith for the influx of the stuff you brought when you came in November!) I had many empty bottles just hanging around behind my bathroom door, where I also have several million bottles of disturbingly colored water in case of emergency. There was also other spray or pump bottles that I had cleaned and saved, and the time had come to get rid of them. Remembering the Supersoaker water gun or hose fights we used to have around the neighborhood growing up, I decided to create little village militias and see what happened.

I put all the cleaned bottles in some plastic bags and set out to arm the neighborhood children with the next best thing I could think of to squirt guns. Anything that could pump out water. I walked to the first standpipe I saw near my compound and a gang of children came running at me top speed as expected. I had filled one of the bottles and sprayed the front line. They were a bit shocked and certainly confused.



Many of my little soldiers didn't have the fine motor skills or manual dexterity to operate any of the weapons that I gave them. But they sorted it out eventually..

Although not really on each other... but we had fun. Or at least I did.

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.