Sweat, Tears.... Blood?

I gave them all for this project.

The beer bottle mosaic begins.

Pictures to follow… Soon… ish.

In the early days of the long road from vision to the reality of starting this project I had explained the concept to some of the Ngambao junior secondary school art students in Seronga (who really show an amazing amount of creativity and talent despite being raised in a relatively low access and resource poor area) trying to find simple English and Setswana words to embody the themes I hoped the project could convey. I told them I wanted to communicate the message that what the youth of Seronga have inherited are the shattered bottles and broken lives caused by alcoholism and HIV, but that as the next generation they are going to use what they’ve been given to create something beautiful and spread a new message, while outlining the relationship between drinking alcohol and impaired decision making that leads to the transmission of HIV. It’s a bit…. Obscure.

Needless to say there were lots of big hand gestures and much stuttering from me and lots of blank looks from them. I put it to the heavens and hoped for the best. A few weeks later (which was now a few months back) one of the students, GB (he has a crazy long Sets name and luckily enough for me goes by GB) found me at my usual spot at the school, which I’ve come to refer to as my office as it has a few virus ridden computers, air conditioning and electricity (sometimes) and when the gods smile, superslow internet. It also happens to be pretty centrally located at the school and I can keep an eye on what’s going on in the courtyard.

“Lorato?” he somewhat shyly called from the door (this was back in the day when although everyone was constantly calling my name as though it were going out of style they rarely had anything constructive to say, it appears they just wanted my attention). “Eeera?” I called back with a smile (loose translation, “Yeah?”).

“I have made this picture for your wall project.” He thrust the paper at me. I looked at it and a smile slowly crept across my face. It was a circle with a huge bottle in the middle, dividing the circle in half. It was wrapped in the AIDS awareness ribbon with the word “No” in bold across the bottom of the circle. On each side of the bottle curving along the circle and looking as though they were pressing their hands into the bottle were a man figure on one side and a woman figure on the other, both of their heads bowed as though in some sort of prayer. It was simple and symbolic, and would work perfectly for the materials and space and message we would be working with.

It was one of those moments in life that I’ve come to have faith will occur despite whatever odds are against me. It’s the frustrating (to other people) line I rely on when I can’t express or accurately describe something I want, and so I say “I’ll know it when I see it.” I saw this picture and I knew. Sometimes you just have to trust that someone else can know exactly what you’re trying to say and can create the exact vision you can’t describe yourself. And this kid could.

My eyes filled with tears and the kid looked alarmed (public crying-doesn’t happen here) and I shook my head and grabbed him in a one armed hug as we looked at the picture together. “It’s perfect. Thanks GB. This is going to be awesome.” I gave him a squeeze and let him go, and he smiled at me, shook his head and walked out the door. I kept that paper in a folder with me at nearly all times for the next few months. I would take it out and look at it whenever I was frustrated with the slowness with which the project was going forward. I pulled it out at meetings and dinners and bars and on buses to describe to people what I was doing in Seronga. They would nod and smile vacantly or occasionally comment “what a nice little art project” but I never cared because this thing was my baby. I felt a rather ferocious sense of protectiveness about it, as well as a blind faith that it would actually get created.

It was a Saturday morning a few months later and not atypically, things were not going according to plan (the irony inherent in the frequency with which the phrase “make a plan” passes both mine and many of the people I know in the delta’s lips will never be lost on me. It is relatively impossible to “make a plan” that is carried through to completion in its original incarnation). Today was the day we were finally going to put glass to wall and officially start the most exciting part of the long awaited mosaic project. I won’t detail all the nodding and smiling and paperwork bureaucracy it took to get this point (it was similar in terms of permissions and supply requisitions to the mural project) so as not to drive you all as crazy as it made me, but the idea has been over a year in the making (in my little brain at least). In the States it could have been done in maybe a few weeks or a month. Even in other places in Bots it might not have taken this long. There were lots of times I thought perhaps in my crazy brain is where the project would stay. But I kept slowly chasing this dream and last weekend I got to see it begin to truly become a reality.

I had discussed the plan for the day with Mpho (his name means “gift”) the advisor for the HIV club who was proving more supportive of the project these days than Jonny the art teacher, who had been my original partner in crime (it seems my loyalties can be quite negotiable when it comes to actually carrying one of these projects out) a few days before. I had found most of the bottles we would need by now [a feat that included wandering around the teacher’s housing as they partied and struggling to negotiate with the teachers for their brown bottles- a rare (the bottle store in Seronga rarely carries alcohol in brown bottles –so they were imported from somewhere overseas-ie across the river in Shakawe or something) as well as a hot commodity as they can be turned in for cash- as they finished them, a process which of course included them getting increasingly drunker and more difficult to understand-and negotiate with, as well as a few small dumpster diving expeditions and a few wine bottles contributed from my own personal use-what can I say? I’m dedicated. Mpho may indeed be more dedicated, his yard was the one where we collected all the bottles and thus now looked like a Shebeen-small local bar that serves traditional homebrew].

So I showed up and no one was around. It appeared the first task of the day would be to complete the scavenger hunt required to discover who was currently in possession of all the necessary keys to unlock the various rooms which held the supplies [It surprises me how much emphasis is placed on locking things up and protecting them- from what I’m not sure, theft? vandalism? only to have teachers frequently give any random student they happen to see the keys to deliver to any other random teacher, who indeed may or may not be where they are supposed to be. One amazing thing I’ve found in this village is that you can just call out to any child, give them anything from a folder of important papers to a fistful of cash, tell them to run an errand of any sort and they will do it (and come back with your change). I even gave a teacher 100.00 pula to buy 7.50 pula worth of paraffin. Then I left that school, went to another school and an hour or so later some random child approached me with my 100 pula and a message in broken English that “sorry there was no paraffin at the shop.”]

Two hours post scheduled start time we busted the first bottle. One of the most difficult aspects of this particular project was explaining the concept of a mosaic to people who had never seen one, and then inform them that we would be smashing glass with teenaged children and then try to convince them that I wasn’t crazy or homicidal. I had obtained both gloves and safety goggles for as many as 15 kids but of course the goggles were now nowhere to be found and so I just prayed to the “glass breaking around children” gods that no one took a shard in the eye, because as capable and competent as my coworkers at the clinic are, I don’t know that they have the tools to painlessly extract glass from eyes. (I’m happy to report that as of this writing we’ve had no eye related glass accidents, although knock on wood, cause they’re going to continue working on it next weekend when I’m on my way to Gabs for training.)

As is common for these sorts of projects at the beginning very few kids showed up, but being at the prime location (these poor kids even have to come to school on Saturday mornings for study) at the junior secondary we soon had lots of kids involved. I usually try to play supporting role in these projects, letting the kids do most of the work and the problem solving so that they can truly feel as though it’s something they’ve created themselves. I think my part mostly consisted of working through the background work with the other adults to get permission, funding and supplies. Although I couldn’t resist sticking on a few pieces of glass, a task for which I was rewarded with a tiny slice into my left index finger (thus I’ve even given blood for this project ;-)

So I stood back in the sun, away from the wall so I could see it becoming reality from a distance. As I was trying to become invisible so I could take out my camera and snap some candid pictures, I was struck by a little teary pride. GB, the boy who had created the design was now carefully sticking brown glass to the brown people he had envisioned for his project. He was working with other kids who had primed the spot on which he later sketched his drawing a few weeks back. Some of the boys were even doing the “girl’s work” of cleaning and scrapping the labels off of the bottles (yeah, that was my mandate too, gender neutrality in art project tasks aka: Lorato in Seronga, breaking down one antiquated sexual stereotype at a time…Those boys also swept and cleaned up after the project, I’m happy to report, although they tried to call a group of girls over to do it for them…)

At the clinic on Monday I gave a short report in the morning meeting that the glass project had begun. It turns out that some of the people at the clinic had seen it, thought it was cool and were now complaining and asking why I hadn’t done that project at the clinic instead of the mural. I didn’t have the heart or patience to remind them of the uproar they had made when I had introduced the idea of painting a mural on the wall.

Later when I was speaking to my friend Aniki I joked with her about just that. “Ah! Lorato!” she exclaimed. It seems people can’t actually say much of anything to me without beginning this way, by grunting and exclaiming my name in an almost indignantly sounding manner, no matter what the tone of the statement that happens to follow it.

“We can see now how well your projects are going. We may not have been willing to listen to you at first but now we can see. And even though we didn’t support you at first you never gave up and now we can see. You kept going. And people will see these projects for many years and they will say “Ah! That is Lorato’s project and she loved us and she made that painting and that glass project there because she loved us. And even though we didn’t believe her she didn’t give up. We can learn from you.” Aniki crossed her arms across her chest and gave an authoritative nod, as though she now considered me properly chastised.

And I smiled at her and shook my head. For once I didn’t try to side step taking credit and spout one of my usual mantras that “these projects are about showing people that if they want to have something beautiful to look at they can make it/ they don’t need lots of money from some white people to make it (the money is all from within Botswana through the district multisectoral AIDS committee-which is a long and convoluted process by which money that probably came from the States in some form is distributed through plans made by the local districts, but I digress)/and if they want to make a project they have to work hard/ and look what the children of Seronga can create aren’t they wonderful?” I just let the pride wash over me, and I felt very happy. I did make these projects because I love them, and I want them to have beautiful things, and because I believe that they can do anything they want. I’m proud that some people here get the message of working hard and creating for themselves that I am trying to send. And I feel fulfilled and honored that somehow I managed to take this idea from in my head, inspired by my disgust and frustration with the broken bottles under children’s bare feet to create something beautiful and lasting. It was so worth it. All of it.