Cling...

Or: “The day the English died. (The Language, not the people….)”

Or: “You get what you need….”

Or: Goodbye… Again

I was having a little ambivalence about the title for this one…..

I’ve made lots of friends here… They just all seem to keep leaving.

In Botswana, the population is known for being pretty mobile. People are always traveling around the delta, going up and down, here and there, around. Very few professional people spend their working careers in their home villages with their families and are thus always going back “home” to visit or on leave. Government employees are supposed to transfer every three years, a policy designed to prevent corruption that tends to encourage a lack of connection and investment. This policy was often overlooked, until of course recently.

Since I’ve been here in Seronga, many of my buddies have left or are leaving. It’s sad, as just when you make a friend within a few months they leave! It started with Paul, the gentle Zambian nurse who had been in Seronga for 12 years! He left while I was away last October. I’ve met up with him in Maun but it’s not easy. Then Ma Sibindi, the kind Zimbabwean nurse whom I would run to crying, knocking on her door in tears when there were mice in my house, or no water or some other tragedy. She would open her arms and with a huge hug invite me into her house, telling me to make myself at home, or to go rest in her guest bed. She cooked for me a lot while Simon was gone when I first got here as well. I was just beginning to really bond with the kids she had living with her (pictured in the picasa album “the Zims that inspire me”).

When I met up with her at the Co-op on a random Saturday and she said the truck had come to pick her and she was on her way to her new clinic (And these things are so sudden! Nothing moves fast in government here unless it’s a car to take someone away.) and suddenly I’m acting very un-African and making a scene crying in the store.

Each of the other clinic nurses has applied for (and as I found out today, been granted) their transfer, which will leave me as the longest serving non-Serongan of the bunch. I understand, it would be hard for me to swallow the idea of staying in Seronga for longer than three years. It is discouraging as it makes me certain that many of the programs I might try to implement at the clinic won’t survive my own departure, as the nurses I have sold on this idea or that idea will leave. I’ve observed that if it’s not in the job description, regardless if it improves things or makes them more efficient, it likely won’t happen.

Outside of the clinic staff in the past months The Queen was deported (sort of) in March, and although she’d recently returned, now she’s left again until December, and she stays out on what is currently an island in the delta. When the waters recede a bit more she might be accessible by 4 wheel drive (which I don’t have anyways) but it currently requires a truck and a half hour in a boat to get to her. So it takes more than a little effort to meet up with her for tea.

Thuso (with his wife and adorable new baby) transferred to near Maun as of May first, and Golesadi at the Mortuary (internet!) who is one of the few people to invite me over and cook for me, and who also came to my house is gone as well. They are a little easier to keep in touch with via internet or phone, but they’re still not here to invite over for tea.

The kind Afrikaans couple who ran the houseboats (and would inform me of flights and transport to Maun) have left recently, and their young replacements are only temporary, and will leave in December.

Plenty of great people also come in and out of my life here and I know when I meet them one of us will be leaving. Some are backpackers, people here through short term contracts, researchers. When I finally got into this country after much fan fare and Peace Corps drama of leaving home I met some amazing Peace Corps volunteers who have of course since been blown to far corners of the country (although we’ve mostly done a pretty decent job of getting together every so often or at least keeping in touch). In some ways my social life feels more like a revolving door than any sort of solid support system. In Botswana it seems (cue the Lion King soundtrack) the circle of life, the cycle of beginnings and endings, or introductions and departures seems to happen much more smoothly and with much less drama than other places I’ve experienced these events. People fade in and out, one day they are here, the next they are gone, often without much acknowledgment at all. I never realized how much the rituals we have associated with these passages in the States have brought me comfort until now.

In the end it’s not the English speaking that I miss, but the welcoming way each of these people have related to me, and accepted me and my different culture. It’s a connection that’s difficult to establish through different cultures and languages. At the end of the day, yes I realize I’m here experiencing a cultural exchange. However, that aspect of life does tend to become tiring (read exhausting) as it NEVER STOPS. I cannot walk down the street without exchanging cultures, and in all reality, I’m generally spending so much time trying to understand the culture that I’m living in that I don’t really have a lot of time to devote specifically to sharing mine (although I have to admit, these occasions do come along) and sometimes when I do something that confuses or confounds people I just claim it’s because I’m American. This answer sometimes works. But it is a cop out as I only use that one when I am exhausted from explaining a bunch of other things.

I think anyone would agree that it’s more comfortable to spend your leisure time with someone for whom you’re not constantly having to explain this aspect or that of your background or culture. These are people I would consider friends, and hope to keep in touch with in the future. I’m used to having long distance friends at this point (although I do not look forward to trying to keep in touch knowing the limited means of communication in this country… or perhaps it’s just the delta), but I also really like having my friends that are HERE!.

You’d have thought all these goodbyes would have prepared me for the worst yet. The English English leaving. Back in May I walked over to Simon’s house and something wasn’t right. I walked past the gate and into the yard and finally into the house. He was packed. He had been saying for weeks (months, years?) that he would be moving out near Gunotsoga and Ronny to work on building the backpackers lodge. I guess today was the day that that was going to happen. (Or really the next day.)

Simon had some random people (they’ve rented a small cottage in the village with the late councilor’s wife and are supposed to be coming back from the Southern trip of South Africa sometime towards summer. So in short, they are more temporary, part time people.) who had stopped by to visit him and we talked and had sundowners, talking the local talk, keeping tabs on the movements of all the other ex pats.

They were drinking beers and I poured myself a glass of wine. I had a feeling I was in for a long night. The guests left and I quietly asked Simon what was happening. He answered, almost defensively, that he was moving everything, yes everything, out to the camp so that he could start really working on the backpackers. I picked at a hole that was starting in the knee of my jeans to divert my nervous energy. We’re not really known for our heartfelt talks, Simon and I, and when I express something anywhere close to a “girly” emotion either his gruffness increases to near unbearable levels or he goes eerily quiet. I kept tipping back my wine glass so as to conceal my tears and we sat in silence, the closest thing we have to a heart to heart.

I knew this move would be good for him, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking about how bad it would be for me. Simon has been my go to guy here, the grumpy rusty old knight in shining armor whom I call in emergencies (after, of course, I compose myself from any lingering effects of a girly (read crying) response). I’ve lived here long enough and learned enough and become efficient enough at “making a plan” to know I can do it on my own, but that certainly doesn’t mean I want to.

I realized that this meant that the battles we would have about the presence of onions in the food (please no) would be over, and I would be able to watch any movie on any night I wanted now, instead of allotting all the cranky British ex pat worthy choices for nights we would watch together on his TV and saving all the musicals and romantic comedies for my little laptop in my hut. I would no longer be assured of a hot shower at his place or drinkable water to take when my water was out, and there would be no one I trusted with my life that was near when I would get scared of something in the night. There would be no one to gruffly remind me that things would be fine, to give me hope through the presence of his extreme cynicism, and no one to help me “make a plan”. (Well technically there would be someone, in fact a lot of someones. But you know how it is when you just want to hear it from that particular person who has previously filled that role so well.) The things I used to expect from Simon would now have to come from within me.

When I describe Simon to people, and when they first meet him, many people are a little shocked, or confused at the symbiotic relationship we had developed. Through his constant criticisms of nearly every move I make, and his steadfast stubbornness that there is one and only one correct way of approaching and issue and behaving in any situation (his way, or at least the British way) he has made me tougher and more resilient. I have had to learn when to push back and when to give in, as in some ways with him I have finally met my match in terms of someone capable of steamrolling people. It has been an exercise in tolerance and compromise. Through my optimism and energy, and the ways in which I have come to depend on him it has softened him, and filled the places in his life left empty by a lifetime of solitude. I’m someone he feels he has to take care of, and although he may complain about it, I know (mostly from other people telling me) that he misses me when I’m gone, and I him. We can’t put words to it (he even less than I) but there’s a love there, and the man has become like family to me since I’ve been here. He’s a difficult man, which is nothing new to me and perhaps even provides some of the comfort and familiarity I find in him.

In the end, despite the difficulty of our strange interdependence, I would rather have him here than not. He’s got an aerial antenna for his cell phone at his camp, and so for the most part he’s still only a phone call away, but the distance is still tangible. There’s no three times weekly evening dinners and movies, and when I find some guests to entertain, we can’t just go to Simons, which has been one of my favorite pasttimes.

I find myself pondering the sayings about continuing to keep one’s heart open to love and friendship and connection, and I have to be honest, sometimes I find that to be a really hard concept. There are times when I just want to shut people out rather than letting them in, to build up a wall to protect myself from future goodbyes and missing someone. I want them to stay firmly on the other side of the fence where I don’t have to care too much.

Alternately I want to cling. I want to intermix my being with someone else’s so as to feel that bond, that connection. I want someone to be right here living this experience with me, breathing the very air I exhale, I want to be completely in someone’s space, and know they aren’t leaving, that they’ll be around for a while. I want familiar connection to be the rule rather than the exception, and I want it to be simple, not Herculean effort. Instead of longing for someone in their absence I want to be overwhelmed by a comforting, familiar presence.

But that’s not the way it is, or the way it will be. Throughout the phases of life here, with its predictable unpredictability, the only constant continues to be that I don’t know what will happen next, and who will enter or leave my life. I guess it’s no different than life anywhere else, but much like the hot Botswana sun, here I’m just more aware of it. No matter what I may want, through this experience I will manage to get what I need. I continue to learn the difference, and try to appreciate living in moderation while existing in conditions of extremes.