First Congregational UCC - Platteville

Dear Friends and Family,

The following was written on March 14th:

The Youth Drama Workshop starts tomorrow. Actually, the youth get picked up from their villages and taken to Charleshill on the back of a huge flat-bed truck (lori) tomorrow and the workshop will start Sunday, after a short ceremony with the Kgosi and some other community leaders blessing the event. I have learned to let things happen in their due course, so I was calmly waiting to hear from Monica (who was running around like a crazy woman in Charleshill, doing the bulk of the work, organizing catering, places for them to sleep, water jugs to be brought from the Water Affairs Dept., writing endless letters requesting the use of tables and chairs and pitsana – three legged black pots – to heat water for baths in the morning). She finally called and the message came to me from a construction worker next door. “Lelesha Lesedi!” Transport is arranged, due to arrive at 1pm. It will be a not so small miracle if that happens. She also wanted me to decipher the names of the drama group from the Kole registration list (names are unisex) to determine numbers of men/women and know where to house them when they arrive tomorrow. I wanted to visit the self-appointed leader, Cynthia (my jewel, as I think I have said before), to clarify who was coming and tell her to tell them to come to the Health Post at 1pm. She came to me first and we went together, walking around the village to tell the other youth. The walk was worth the exercise we were missing from football practice, which wasn’t happening anyway because of threatening rain clouds and chilly weather. And because our coach was at the bar.

We went to the bar to talk to “coach” because his girlfriend was one of the ones signed up for the workshop. He apparently told her that I needed to ask him permission to let her go. Why? Gender roles are taken seriously. You know the Fiddler on the Roof song, “Tradition!” It’s kind of like that, but instead, “It’s out culture!” I learned from a gender roles survey early on that a woman could not let anyone borrow something from the household without her husband’s permission, unless it had to do with the kitchen. I experienced that first hand when I asked Sophie to use her vehicle to move chairs from the school to the community hall for a VMSAC event and she was upset that I had asked her when her husband wasn’t home. We had to find him and ask before she could drive me over and help me take the chairs. (I am not above using gender roles to my advantage, as in having that same man who gave permission to use the koloi move the bulk of the heavy metal chairs. But he didn’t come along to help). Anyway, Shakes and Ola are not married so this asking permission thing seemed unecessary. Cynthia confirmed that it was peculiar, and we had a good time pretending to grovel to “Mr. King Shakes” as she called him on our way to ask that his girlfriend be able to travel 82 km away for 5 days. Eish! He blinked at me through alcohol-reddened eyes. I couldn’t help pursing my lips at him admonishingly and saying the ladies missed him at the pitch. He smiled and looked maybe just a little bit sheepish. I knelt down next to his chair. “I hear I need to ask you for something. (Ke utlwa gore ke tswhanetse go botsa sengwe) . . . Ke kopa gore Ola go ya ko Charleshill, go nale Drama Workshop.” He nodded and said, “Yah, yah, it’s okay,” and took another sip. Ola was standing a few feet away in the doorway to the bar. I gave her a discreet thumbs up and she returned it with a wink, cute pregnant belly protruding. “Tanki, Rra.” (Thank you, sir). Tanki is Afrikans, but for some reason, the Bakgalagadi seem to prefer it to the Setswana: Ke a leboga.

In Shakes’s defense, he has been great with this ladies football thing. He is one of three coaches, but he has been the most consistent (maybe to keep an eye on Ola, but still, it’s impressive the amount of time he has put in). There are semi-serious punishments for missing goals, goalies missing blocks, or, let’s see, what’s the thing I do a lot? Oh, horrible passes (the other team morphs into my team momentarily and only after I have passed directly to my opponent do I realize the error). We do five push ups. He does them with us, though, encouraging to go lower, lower, until we collapse – Ga ke kgone! I can’t! The other coaches tend to try to make the ladies be more serious than we would like. “No laughing!” Shakes doesn’t mind, though. He laughs with us. O a kgona. You can.

It seemed before that I was in a constant state of perplexed turmoil about how to handle “It’s our culture!” things with which I completely disagree, such as having to ask your boyfriend permission to do anything, let alone participate in a drama workshop. Conversations are nice. Asking permission is not. I have gotten to a more comfortable place (perhaps complacent) where it no longer feels like a moral dilemma. (How do I save Ola, how do I make an example of this situation, how do I change Shakes? . . .) That sort of pondering is obviously not helpful and is emotionally exhausting. Breathe. Just be. Follow protocol. Smile. Show the batho ba Kole (people of Kole) who you are. Much better.

Speaking of new realizations, I am embarrassed that I have harped on the richness of Botswana. Their diamonds, their government structure and what, what (that’s a Southern African English thing, what, what – meaning, roughly, “etc.”). I was humbled when I made the walk of the village with Cynthia today. These “youth”, 20-somethings, who I see in Charleshill and Ghanzi dressed up in clothes that might have come from Gap or some other store in West Town Mall, looking modern and well off, live their everyday lives in mud-walled, tin-roofed huts with no electricity. On days like today when it rained almost all day and was threatening to storm this evening, their outdoor fires are smoky and insufficient to heat water to a comfortable bathing temperature. Their younger brothers and sisters, the Kole Primary School kids, wouldn’t get a decent breakfast or lunch if it weren’t for the porridge or beans and samp that is served at break time (10 o’clock) at school. Most families eat one big meal at night. A plate is made up mostly of peleche – maize meal porridge made to a stiff consistency (cement-like, really) so it can be rolled into a ball and used to scoop up food instead of silverware, a small bit of meat and a tiny spoonful of “soup” (tomato, green pepper, carrot, or potato in MSG filled flavored broth, which is, ironically, “part of the culture”). On special occasions, there are salads, either beet root or cabbage salad. The uniformity of this meal is startling. Sophie doesn’t cook her peleche any differently than Katlego, than the Zimbabwean “auntie” at Twenty’s house, than the professional caterers in Gabs.

Seeing Keolebogile, one of my Run for Life girls, was especially striking for me. There were 8 people in their small Setswana kitchen (sticks stuck in the sand in a square around a fire), sitting and talking, babies draped over knees or slung to backs with polyester blankets. There were two small, small houses on the compound. I don’t know where all those people slept.

It seems odd that I am writing about this now. Shouldn’t I have noticed the poverty first and then seen the richness? Granted, there are days when I feel little to no sympathy for a situation that looks so poor, so sad, the structures so dillapidated, the clothing so dirty, the smell of woodsmoke so infused and the tell tale signs of Chibuku cartons about . . . there are opportunities here. The old American dream is actually possible in Botswana, so I sometimes feel like, “Well, you reap what you sow.”

Really, my delayed reaction to the way people live in Kole probably has to do with my defensiveness about me being a “lekgoa.” Although I try not to waste time or energy explaining something no one will ever believe, I can’t help it. I have repeatedly explained that I am not getting a salary for working here, that I am not rich, that if it weren’t for the Botswana government being generous, as they tend to be, I could not afford the house I stay in, etc, etc. But I cannot explain away reality. And the reality is, I stay in a two bedroom house, a very Western looking house with a porch and thick cement walls and a flushing toilet, all by myself. I have plenty of food. I have plenty of clothes. And my age mates are living with their grandparents in mud huts. Shame on me for thinking that they needed me to tell them how good they have it, as oppose to listen to their dreams for a life that happens to involve things that I have.

I have GLOW again tomorrow. My translator is not around, so I will have to do things in Setswana (they really need Sekgalagadi for me to know they understand), but we are doing an art project tomorrow, thinking about “Who Am I?” so hopefully the art will be self-explanatory. “Who Am I?” is a fairly foreign concept in a communal society. I want to encourage the girls to think simply about their likes and dislikes, their talents, their personal beliefs, their favorite color and then the idea of making individualized decisions about what they want to do in their lives doesn’t seem so impossible. Oh, this is me. I have control. I don’t want to do this because it isn’t me. I do want to do this, because that is what I would do.

I won’t have them go through all of that tomorrow. Tomorrow is just making name tags and personalized collages. But we’ll get there. J

It rained hard last night and all morning. It was one of those days that made you want to “stay in the blankets,” (go nna mo dikobo) as they say. I made a pot of chili instead and fed Cynthia after we walked all chilly evening. She ate an amazing amoung of chili for her tiny size, which was extremely gratifying.

At present . . .

I am in Ghanzi, on my way home from the long Easter weekend which I spent with 10 other volunteers, traveling to Maun, Etsha 6, and Shakawe. We went “Up North” to the Okavango Delta. We saw the Tsodilo Hills, a National Heritage site where the oldest surviving cave paintings still decorate the two hills that stick up out of an otherwise flattened landscape. It was a beautiful hike and an overall enjoyable trip. I am going home to start work on Guidance and Counselling activities for the month at school and to arrange for a football tournament/event involving mobile testing centers and possibly a soccer (football) player from the National team coming to address the crowd of Kole villagers about the importance of knowing one’s status and also men’s involvement in taking responsibility for the health of Botswana. (As of now, 66% of people who test are women).

The drama workshop last week was a huge success. I was so impressed with the kids and the instructors. The end result was a play that they performed in front of the strip of bars and shops in Charleshill. There was an audience of about 200 people to watch their message of nurturing relationships with love, trust, care, and communication (their idea completely!) in order to fight HIV. I will post pictures of that on facebook soon . . .

I love and miss you!

leah