First Congregational UCC - Platteville

Dumela, gape (hello, again).

I came to Ncojane again to meet with the Headmaster at the junior secondary school and have a conversation about the GLOW (Girls/Guys Leading Our World) club I am hoping to help start there . . . he is receptive to the idea of letting his teachers and students be involved. It’s sort of a tricky situation because there is an 8 day long event in December that is supposed to the the spring-board event to starting a leadership club. Speakers and workshops and lots of interacting with like-minded youth while discussing difficult topics that are taboo at home (HIV/AIDS, sex, healthy relationships, communication skills, decision-making skills, etc) are supposed to the the inspiration for a club to do their own activities in their school and community . . . only one teacher and three students can attend. So, with grace and diplomacy (and still lacking language skills), I, as a new pc volunteer, am supposed to at once introduce myself, select the “best” teacher, and tell them to select three of their “best” students, all without offending anyone. Eish! But I am very excited about this. It is partly possible because of the unfortunate news that Susie has finally made a decision to leave her service and return to grad school in the U.S. (in Boston). She has been so sweet the last week, giving me endless gifts of apples and tomatoes (produce is so amazing these days) in attempts to alleviate her guilt. I think she is making the right decision and I have tried not to add to the agony of her decision by telling her how much I will miss her. I will adopt Ncojane if we are doing regional events or, like GLOW, if older youth are involved.

To continue the comical/frustrating fiasco of attending and understanding meetings . . . last week Monica went to a PMTCT meeting in Ganzi. I wasn’t there because no one told anyone in Kole it was happening. It was to continue planning for the drama competition event in August. The meeting started at 9am. Charles Hill is at least a two hour drive from Ganzi, so the staff from C.H. arrived late. They spent about half an hour being reprimanded for being late and not taking the meeting seriously. They proceeded discussing the sub-committtees for the event and who was on them. Monica was wondering, as part of the publicity sub-committee, what her responsibilities would entail. They explained that publicity was letting people know about the event. Monica was grateful for the definition, but still feels at a loss for her actual role in the process. Perhaps the Ganzi District should form a publicity sub-committee to let the villages know when meetings in Ganzi are happening. Anyway, they then discussed when the next meeting to plan the event would be (and, I, for one, am hoping that some actual planning starts happening at this one or I will be partly responsible for there being no food at the event as I am on the catering sub-committee). The next meeting is next Monday. Monica was so bold as to suggest that the meeting start at 10am, since Charles Hill is two hours away from Ganzi (not to mention Kole which is three hours) and it’s unrealistic to believe everyone could arrive by 9am. Clinic staff aren’t on duty until 7:30am. If Pearl and I are serious about being there on Monday, we will go to C.H. on Sunday night and leave with them the next morning. The Kole drama team has come together surprisingly well. The last two practices fell through, but there is one today that I am pretty sure people will attend. They were hoping to practice over this four-day weekend and I was rightfully skeptical about that actually happening. Six people met at the clinic last week to write a script for a play and pick out songs for the performance. These people can sing and dance!

This morning, I went with Pearl on a “home visit.” I was excited, thinking we were doing PMTCT work and following up with mothers who hadn’t come on time for formula or something . . . but we were reminding people that tomorrow is Thursday. Every Thursday morning at 5:30am, those patients who are on ARV treatment are supposed to come to the clinic and get blood drawn for a CD4 count check. It is taken to the lab at Ganzi with the ambulance (remember ambulance is an old, white covered pick-up full of people who may or may not be sick and may or may not just need a ride to Ganzi for groceries). If an ARV patient hasn’t shown up for awhile, they are put on a list and Pearl takes the list and chooses a few, usually who live close to each other to go remind that tomorrow is Thursday and they should go get blood drawn. If it seems unreasonable to expect patients (who are presumably sick, since they need to be on ARV’s) to come to the clinic at 5:30am, there’s a good reason for it. The blood can’t sit overnight.

I was informed at 9am that there was a meeting at 9am at the kgotla about the crime prevention workshop (it’s this weekend, and, if you will recall, I am on the catering committee . . . I just volunteer for the same thing to make it easy for myself to remember what I’m supposed to do at each event). ;) I went to the kgotla to inform them that I wouldn’t be able to attend the meeting because I was going to Ncojane with the doctor, but please let me know when to show up to cook on Saturday. They said fine, the meeting probably wouldn’t start until 10am, come back then if the doctor hadn’t come. The doctor came, but didn’t stop in Kole. In a place where transport is so rare and coveted, it is so disheartening to see the vehicle that you actually knew was coming go flying by without you. So I asked for a ride with the clinic driver who was taking patients that needed to see the doctor in Ncojane. He said, “of course, but the car won’t start.” We fussed around under the hood for awhile and finally got it to start with some pushing. Then I piled in with half of the people who needed to see the doctor in Ncojane. The driver had to go back for the other half. Don’t ask me why they didn’t just wait in Kole for the doctor to come back through. And don’t think about it too much yourself, either, my brain is starting to feel rattled from shaking my head.

Hm, I accidentally brought you up to the moment and left out stories from earlier in the week. Yesterday, I got a cat. I heard from Andrew before he left that the owner of the gas station in Charles Hill had some older kittens that they were giving away for free. Monica had inquired for me, and sure enough, there were two, a boy and a girl, about 6 months, all shots taken care of. I took the girl home. Her name is Lefifi, Lefi for short (it means dark in Setswana). She is pure black and has semi-long hair. She is sooo pretty, and that is not just a biased pet-mom’s opinion. Batswana are supposed to be afraid of black cats, but the four Motswana who have seen her have been impressed. :) The owners gave me some cat food until I have a chance to go to Ganzi and get more, but she will eat people food, too, especially the canned fish that are so readily available (again, I don’t understand why, these fish are canned whole in tomato sauce. They smell horrendous and don’t seem edible for humans but people don’t feed their pets anything but pelutshe — paylaytche — cornmeal mush).

Ah! I have all kinds of “these people”-type statements coming out in this email. I apologize, I do know better than to generalize, but I guess it’s inevitable in the process of learning and (hopefully) coming to understand “these people.”

Anyway, Lefi seems to be adjusting surprisingly well to a new home. She is eating and using her litter box and sleeping with me and purring almost constantly just like she’s been there forever.

Tomorrow morning I am supposed to have a meeting with the Kgosi. I confirmed it this morning, so I think it will happen. I want to hear about the history of Kole and the political structure and demographics and his perspective on HIV/AIDS and how it affects his community. This is all part of the small anthropological study that Peace Corps assigns along with the advice to “relax and not try to start any projects and adjust to the language and culture in the first three months.” I hope it will be helpful in gaining perspective . . .

The funeral ceremonies that I mentioned in my last email continued all last week and culminated with the arrival of the body on Saturday night and the burial Sunday morning. For a country that has experienced a lot of death recently, they sure haven’t given up on the cultural practices for funerals, at least for important public figures as this teacher apparently was. Friday morning, I was at the school, “supervising” the fifth graders cleaning their classroom. Three girls did most of the work and all of the explaining to me about the process, which involved slopping buckets of soapy water on the floor and rolling up our pants and sloshing around in the cold water (brr!) to mop the extremely dusty, dirty floor. I finally understood after the fact that we were doing such a thorough cleaning because the school was hosting out-of-town guests for the funeral. We took all the chairs across the road to the family’s home where the services were held and secured all the books in locked closets because, Tatlego informed me, they would “walk off” with the guest teachers if we didn’t. It was the first time I had thought of the possibility of something being stolen in Kole, and I have my doubts that it would have happened. Tatlego attended the church of the man who passed away, so she gave me special insight to the funeral proceedings and took me by the hand (literally) to the proceedings. She was leading hymns and prayers and by the end of the week, I was not only recognizing melodies, but understanding phrases (Modimo wa rona, re kopa go botsa . . . Our God, we want to ask) . . . It was a wonderful opportunity for me to be “visible in the community.” While I was in Charles Hill, Monica’s counterpart told me that her aunt had seen me (the lekgoa) at the funeral and she thought it was nice that I was there. So, I am grateful, but found the whole process extremely exhausting and can’t imagine if I had actually known the man. The prayer service on Saturday was from 8pm to midnight and then the viewing of the body on Sun. morning started at 4:30am. The burial service started at 6:30am and ended around 10am. Then people were serving food at the family’s home until late in the afternoon. I have no idea where their energy came from, I couldn’t think of eating, let alone cooking.

Besides Tatlego, a new lady teacher, Lizzy, arrived last week. I like her so much. She has two daughters, one in first grade and one 9 month old and a nephew who she is registering as an orphan today while we are in Ncojane. Her younger sister, Lesedi (the sister to the father of Lizzy’s kids, actually, but Lizzy introduces her as her sister) is also staying there for child care and to “keep her busy” because Lesedi just failed out of University. Lizzy just arrived last Friday, so we have the common bond of being “new to Kole” (as she says). That family unit is fairly typical, by the way. They are all staying in the gov’t house provided for Lizzy . . . I assume it is against protocol to have extended family stay in the gov’t worker houses, but I know it is common.

That’s all for now.

THANK YOU . . .

Beth, for the package. I was delighted with the tea and lip gloss. :) The chocolate probably would not have survived, and I don’t mind the typed letter. Thank you, thank you.

Aunt Linda, for the lovely article and letter.

Mom and Dad, for your steady slew of letters . . . I don’t mind if you repeat yourself, Mom. ;)

And to all of you who sent emails.

Ka Lorato (with love),
Leah