First Congregational UCC - Platteville

Dear Friends and Family,

HAPPY THANKSGIVING . . . I hope you are enjoying the good company of those
close to you. This weekend I will head to Gantsi to celebrate with 17 other
Peace Corps Volunteers. Some of them are travelling ridiculously far in
order to be with us, and I am already grateful for being able to have a good
group of people to be with when I am far away from you. Turkey is rare and
expensive here, so we are having chicken (which I actually prefer) and we
aren’t stuffing the bird(s) because it is much too hot to use an oven.
Grilled chicken for Thanksgiving in Botswana will have to do. I will miss
Dad’s cranberry chutney and Grandma’s pies. You can all eat twice as much
in my honor. ;)

Peace Corps Volunteers are expected to experience up’s and down’s throughout
their service. We were given a handout during training that describes the
emotional rollercoaster we are likely to have, month by month. I am right
on target. I have been in Botswana for almost exactly seven months. I am
feeling on top of the world, or at least on top of the rollercoaster, as it
were. This stage has lasted for a pleasantly long time . . .

I get up before the sun finds its way through my bedroom curtains, making my
cozy refuge under the mosquito net too warm for sleeping in. Last week it
was so warm that I didn’t bother heating water for a bucket bath. The water
that comes from tap runs warm at first since the shallow piping is heated
easily by the sun. I have a bowl of cereal (there is a nice granola at
Score, the most reasonably priced grocery store in Gantsi) that I mix with
Wheatabix, the English/South African/Botswana version of shredded wheat. As
of late, I stumble sleepily outside to water the “plot” (garden) and flower
beds that I have created. My neighbor graciously brought me a load of
well-composted goat manure and I turned it into the sand and watered it for
several days before planting seeds. The flowers have disappointed me, but I
have little green basil sprouts that make me unbelievably excited . . . the
prospect of creating green in the middle of the desert, and in the not so
distant future – pesto, is very satisfying. And I think the smell of Earth,
whether it is infused with Kalahari sand or Wisconsin Sandstone, is the
same. It was a nostalgic process, turning over the soil by the shovelful
and tossing away the stones.

One of my Standard 5 buddies is watering my garden while I’m away. I am
planning on being gone from Kole for much of December, first for GLOW camp
in Gaborone, then visiting my family in Moshupa, then on a Christmas trip
with Monica, Cassie, and Liz. Boago (my friend/helper/student) will take
care of Lefifi and watering the plants while I’m gone. He has already
refused offer of payment. It was actually his enthusiasm which made me
plant the garden in time . . . I was thinking of waiting until after
December so I could be around to water and look after the plants. He
insisted he would help me. He and two or three others consistently come to
my house on weekend afternoons to play Uno, Yatzhee, or put puzzles together
(sort of, in their own fashion). Last week for the first time, a group of
girls came. The gender roles that I know are entrenched in these young
people, especially in places like Kole which are not exposed to the media
campaigns showing fathers cuddling their babies, doing the washing, testing
with their partners, and in other ways being a “monna tota” (a “real man”),
become evident even during Uno games. The boys are bold, playing red on
green and accepting correction without pause, jostling each other between
plays, and responding to my teasing or attention with loud giggles. The
girls sit like statues, or deer in head lights, seemingly hardly daring to
breath. One in particular was put through some rare form of torture by
participating in her first Uno game ever. When it was her turn, her eyes
would dart wildly from the pile to her hand, panic obviously blocking any
ability to reason out which card to play. She would turn to the other girls
and whisper, “what do I put?”. . . every time. Poor thing. It got better,
but still, when there was a pause in play because someone was contemplating
whether or not to make the next person draw 2 or not, she would put her card
down, apologizing for holding up the game, thinking the only reason we could
be waiting would be because of her incompetence.

In general, both genders are taught obedience. It is a value, like being
kind or studying hard in school, or helping out your family. It is also
considered a trait of a good leader, according to Monica’s GLOW club girls
(she has already started a leadership club for the girls at the Junior
Secondary School in Charleshill, aged roughly 13-15). I may have mentioned
this in previous emails, but my immediate family was surprised when I told
them on the phone a couple of weeks ago that the kids are often left
unsupervised in their classrooms at school. The teachers have a meeting, or
need to discuss something (which happens at least once every day), and in
the mean time, they tell the students to read something or right an essay or
study and then they are left to their own devices. This will never cease to
amaze me, the fact that the school doesn’t burn down as a result of this
lack of supervision, I mean. The amount of learning that happens
unsupervised is not suprisingly less than satisfactory, but the obedience is
impressive. Every once in awhile, a Standard 1 or 2 will rush into a
teacher’s meeting crying because so and so beat them, meaning they were hit
(no mark or blood or evidence is necessary for this to be a serious offense,
but as far as I’ve seen, it has not occurred to any of their sweet, young,
obedient minds to misuse the power to get their classmates in trouble with
false claims of beating).

GLOW drama has subsided. Katlego apologized to the other teachers for not
following protocol in being chosen as the leader for the girls at GLOW
camp. They all apologized back and gave their blessing for the delegation
to go. I was not invited to Guidance and Counseling meeting where this all
happened which seems to me to be against their own rules of protocol and
confirms my suspicion that the protocol is rather arbitrary and a form of
expressing petty jealousy (i.e., the other teachers would have liked to be
chosen by Thapelo . . . sigh).

Speaking of pointless protocol, I was just handed the letter that Monica has
written and edited about 4,000 times in order to request transport from the
Council at Charleshill for her GLOW group and mine to travel to Gabs for the
camp. We need an address (the one of this office, which is the same office
to which we are writing) on the right hand side of the page at the top in
order to make a formal transport request. The implication being that
informal transport requests will be ignored. This is probably a result of
Monica’s less than tactful dealings with the transport officer. He adores
me (the “beautiful lady” who knows better than to speak several volume
levels above the listener which is an unwritten rule that Monica ignores and
therefore intimidates the —— out of people). So, hopefully I can go next
door and sweet talk him into explaining exactly what the problem is with the
transport request because the location of the address is obviously not
really of importance.

Eish, how did I get on the topic of protocol, I am trying to describe how
content I am in Kole, but I didn’t get past watering the garden. Well, let
me give you snippets of the last week to end with, Monica is on her way over
and I need to intercept her before she talks to Cris and demands why he
needs the address in a certain place on the letter . . .

I spent most of Saturday with Twenty and Larona, lazing around her house to
avoid the heat, but preparing, in spurts, the “venue” (raking under a tree
and piling up firewood) and food and music for a party we were having for
our Family Welfare Educators at the health post as well as two Kole teachers
who have been transferred. There is a committee of all the civil servants
in a village called the VET (Village Extension Team). They are supposed to
work together to enhance the village to which they have been assigned, but
mostly the committee turns into a support network for each other. They seem
to feel sentenced to the small rural villages, especially those without
network or paved roads. So, they have parties for each other. An official
“Savingram” (invitation letter) is sent out with a donation amount – if you
want to come, you donate (this party was 50 pula, which is small scale,
apparently). I was in charge of shopping which was quite the fiasco,
running around Gantsi, comparing prices, trying to decide what to get for
two teachers who were transferred down the road from Kole and rejecting
Twenty’s suggestion of getting them a sandwich maker. These boys are not
the type to make themselves a grilled panini for lunch in between classes.
Pelutche does just fine, as it does for the rest of the population. I ended
up getting them folding camping chairs and air time units for their cell
phones (they will have network in their new homes).

The party was lots of fun and we DANCED, which was the best part for me. We
had an exciting (at least for me) scorpion event. The first one, I pointed
to quietly and then what felt like mass chaos ensued — the head teacher was
airborne for a moment I think, and there were several shrieks. I wondered
vaguely if I should run away, but before I could act, my neighbor (Mr.
Pikane, the one who brought me the manure), took of one of his sandals
(which in hindsight seemed foolish) and killed it. He jumped back at one
point when picking it up after we thought it was dead but it was still
twitching its tail. He smacked it some more with his sandal and then
scooped it up and threw it in the fire. Two more were spotted and killed
later, but they were the light tan/small version which is apparently not
very poisonous. The one which inspired such fear is apparently deadly for a
small child and when I asked Shadrack (Mr. Pikane) afterwards if he had been
stung he said, “oh no, you would know, I would be on the ground shaking.”
Gotcha. Avoid the black scorpions. The teachers have given me further
advice about keeping rolled up sheets or towels under the doors of the house
so they don’t slip in, searching for respite from the rain.

Rain. It rained for two straight days this week which was as fabulous and
Earth-shattering as one can imagine it being in the desert. The smell is
overwhelming. The green hasn’t exactly burst forth as a result, but they
say things will start blooming once we get more rain.

The youth have been avid about coming to football practice. We also had a
volleyball match with the Botswana National Defense force last week. Our
team was mismatched and never played together before, but we were evenly
matched against the military men (for some reason) and we had a great time.
This weekend there will be a series of sports tournaments as part of the
celebration of National Road Safety Day. I am not sure why Kole was chosen
to host National Road Safety Day. One might think the kgosi advocated for
his village to host the event to show the national road people that there is
no road in Kole, but actually the kgosi is not terribly concerned about that
(he is fiercely proud of his traditional village). Rather, he has been
advertising a “beast” (the word for livestock) which he hopes to sell at
some point during the weekend at the committee meetings which are held to
prepare for the event.

I have to go, it is past our scheduled lunch time and the RAC has been
deserted as a result, so we should lock up the office and turn in our new
version of the transport letter.

In short, I am doing well. And, in line with Thanksgiving, I am so grateful
to be here and be doing what I’m doing (which I feel like I am not
describing well at the moment, I will have to write more soon) . . .
Although I do miss you dearly.

Much love from Botswana,
leah