First Congregational UCC - Platteville

Dear Friends and Family,

It is appropriate to use this greeting for several days into the New Year – Nwaga o mosha!!!

There is a long email that I will not send because it is full of post-vacation funk. I was feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, floundering in the freedom of the month of December when I thought of the return of responsibility (all kinds of potential to be “effective”) with no accountability (who would really know the difference if I just hung out in Kole for the next year and a half?) that is our Peace Corps service.

This will be more uplifting.

Peace Corps moments:

I was in Charleshill on my way home to Kole. I heard my name, “Thapelo.” I looked over to see Mighty (Maitumelo, one of my Glow girls). She was grinning. I walked towards her, relieved to see her as I already felt the “funk” start to lift. She was crouched over an open notebook, showing it to her friends. It was her Glow notebook, the schedule for the week with her notes from the sessions. Now I was grinning. “Stand up and give me a hug,” I said. Displays of affection often come in the form of commands. (“Bring me water,” a mother will tell her child, at that is her way of saying, “You are important, I care about you.”) Mighty did give me a hug, and it was wonderful. The other two girls were scandalized and giggled behind their hands.

The night before, I had another Peace Corps moment. My friend and tutor, a teacher at Kole Primary, Mr. Moncho (or Badisa, as I may have called him in previous emails) has been transferred. He was in the area because he needs to collect his things from Kole and he called me when he got to Ghanzi.

“Where are you?”

“Ghanzi.”

“Le nna.” (me, too)

Squeal of delight, “Can I see you?”

We went to the only restaurant in Ghanzi which is at the only lodge in town and talked and talked. He had wonderful news. He isn’t drinking. He gave me credit, but of course that is ridiculous, he made the decision not to drink. It is an especially impressive feat over the holidays. He went to Gabs to visit his brother who asked him to come specifically to drink beer with him. Badisa would go out to the bar with his brother and drink Iron Brew (a perfectly dreadful imitation of Dr. Pepper which is perfectly dreadful to begin with, if you ask me). And people asked, “Hela, monna. O nwa eng?” (Hey, man, what are you drinking?) And he told them, “Ke bojalwa jwame janoong.” (This is my beer these days).

He had medical issues for a few months before I arrived. It had depressed him and he turned to booze, making the issues worse (it’s some sort of kidney problem). Things improved when I came because I had him busy, tutoring me and also starting up sports again with the young boys and girls. But then he stopped getting his salary. He found out that the education department was considering withholding it permanently, as in, firing him, because he hadn’t followed the proper protocol in turning in doctor’s notices before his almost six weeks of absence from Kole in April and May this year. Luckily for him, the education office did not follow protocol either and no official notice was ever sent to inform him that his salary would not be paid. So, they couldn’t justify what they had done, and they simply transferred him and the salary will start this month.

I won’t go into the haggling and hassling and frustration I went through with my “drunken tutor” as I am embarrassed to admit I called him on occasion. Let’s just say I made my feelings about his drinking clear. He is a teacher and a role model and he tells the boys on his soccer team not to show up to practice hung over. In fact, he yelled at them for it, and the hypocrisy made steam come out of my ears. Somehow, we remained friends. As a traveled this past month and thought about going back to work in Kole, I had been feeling like making a difference “on the individual level” was not enough. When Badisa said, “you helped me . . .”, though, I was reminded that it is more than enough.

Incidentally, I have heard news of one of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers doing wonderful work, addressing the problem of alcohol abuse which is rampant, positively rampant, in Botswana. Not only is it considered a status symbol to be able to afford to drink, it is virtually the only form of entertainment. The developing society is at a stage where they are not kept very busy with work because the government is doing an excellent job of providing for those who would normally be working their butts off to make ends meet. Healthy hobbies have not yet developed. All this not yet considering those who have turned to alcohol to deal with the stress of knowing you are HIV + or knowing you have lost most of your family because of some mysterious disease and people attribute the deaths to (although one instinctively knows this can’t be right) headaches. When drunk, one often engages in risky sexual behavior. So the spread of HIV is helped along and alcohol and HIV might have gotten their ugly heads together twenty years ago and planned the mass murder of this country.

Right, back to the positive aspect of this point, my friend Robert (one of those glorious 50 + volunteers) is in Pandamatenga, a village right on the border of Zimbabwe in the northeast. He has discovered, as many of us have, that drinking is a problem in his village. He happens to have a background in counseling. He wanted to get people talking about the issue, but it’s a tricky thing because the phrase “drinking problem” doesn’t mean anything yet. People aren’t necessarily embarrassed about drinking. It hasn’t been recognized as addictive and, unless it means you can’t pay for your family’s needs (which it often does), it is not a problem. Robert held an art contest for the kids. The theme was “How do you feel about people drinking in your family?” The winning pictures are apparently heart wrenching. Parents fighting while the kids watch, someone with HIV, drinking instead of taking ARV’s, and endless images of shebeens (small wooden stalls where locals always go to drink cheap local brew) and the red, white, and blue chibuku (also known as shake shake – it is a traditional beer that tastes like someone mixed bud light with sour milk and let it sit in the sun . . . you can always tell when someone is drunk off chibuku, they look slightly crazy, it is so strong) containers. These images, hung at the clinic, got people talking, so Robert didn’t have to start the conversation after all. He held a community meeting, though, and asked people to share in public what they thought of the pictures and what they thought of the drinking going on in the village. He will keep holding meetings, in whatever size group people feel comfortable, and offer his services as a professional counselor for those who decide they, personally, don’t want to drink anymore. If that is the only thing he did for the next year and however many months, he should still be granted sainthood in somebody’s church, somewhere.

The weather report for Kole is: hot and sunny. No rain. I couldn’t believe it after all the rainy weather we experienced in the north and at Victoria Falls. My house is hot. I don’t have screens on my windows. The mosquitoes are fierce, especially at dusk and dawn and during the night, when it would be wonderfully cool if I could open the windows. I might give in and open them tonight and deal with the infestation in the morning. I do have a mosquito net under which I would sleep comfortably amidst their buzzing.

My garden is growing, thanks to Bashi who is rightfully deemed “the most responsible youth in Kole.” He diligently watered the garden while I was away and fed Lefifi. I planted my garden twice. I thought that all the seeds had dried up and died when I went away for Thanksgiving weekend because it was hot and they didn’t get any water. Seeds are amazing things. So much life contained in such a tiny thing. Both sets of my planting attempts eventually sprouted, so now I have a hap hazard mixture of carrots and onions in two different plots. I thought I planted everything in the same spot, but apparently I take after my father in terms of organizing garden seeds. It has taken him about 20 years to get the now full proof system that he uses to know what he plants where.

This morning I woke up at 5:30am (already starting to sweat, even though the sun had just peeked over the horizon, so it was time to get out of bed). I went for a walk and came back and spent about two hours, trying to bring some order the onions and carrots, transplanting about half of each to two new beds. I also thinned the spinach and moved some of those plants. We will see if anything takes root.

My basil plants are looking lovely. Basil likes the desert, apparently. I think it is crazy to be so green and sprightly looking in such hot sun. I also have flat leaf parsley. The herbs are in big yogurt containers sitting on my back porch. Lefifi, who is ecstatic to have me back, was following me around as I worked this morning, meowing and rolling in the sand. He began wrecking havoc when he started rubbing his chin on the yogurt container edges and knocking them over. Eish! Katse yame! (Goodness, that cat of mine). None of the damage was irreparable, but he had to go inside for the rest of the morning.

I am anxious to start working with the school again. Lizzy and Basiame, two of my teacher friends, came by to welcome me back on Monday evening. They said they are planning on starting an HIV/AIDS club at the school and they want my help creating a curriculum for club activities. I am happy to help, of course, but I can’t help thinking that they should be concentrating on other things first. The situation at the school is as follows: there are seven classes to teach and four teachers. Katlego will be coming at the end of the week (she was sent to a workshop in Ghanzi). Perhaps another teacher will come in March. In the meantime, we still do not have a headmaster, we have a deputy headmaster, Mma Marambe. She might take over one of the two extra classes sometimes, but mostly, she has to act as the “school head”, being in the office. Mr. Pelo and I are still planning on continuing with the dance classes we started in November, as well, but I am of the humble opinion that the extra-curriculars should be second priority to actually teaching school subjects. But what do I know. I may offer to be a teacher for the next few months. Standard 7 is the only class that I could do because they know the most English and Setswana. I don’t think Mma Marambe would allow it, though. That definitely seems like something that would be against protocol.

I am waiting for the doctor’s vehicle to arrive from Charleshill so I can go to Ncojane with him and mail this off. So, I will close for now. Thank you for your patient reading if you have gotten this far. ;)

I love and miss you!

Leah (Thapelo)