People in Botswana return to their 'home village' for holidays. As I walk around Kopong I notice many more people gathered in the shade on their plots. The grandmother next to us, who is raising two grandchildren alone in a house with no windows or electricity, has had a full team of family for days now. My landlady, on the other hand, has been enjoying a few days alone with her husband, having sent her son and daughter and nephew 'up north' to stay with her mother. Family is everything in Botswana and family is not as strictly nuclear as it is in Amerika. It is not unusual for children to be living with aunts or uncles or grandparents, for any number of reasons. I had been living here for a few weeks before I realized that Tselang, the six-year-old, was not my landlady's son, but her nephew. He has been living with them for four years and is treated like her own son. It is not clear to me why this arrangement was made, but Tselang will be going to live with his mother and father in Kasane when he starts school next year, and we will all miss him.
In Kanye my host family consisted of two unmarried sisters raising their four children together. At first I could not figure out whose child was whose because both sisters were called Mma by all the kids, and everyone followed the dictate that the oldest in the family is treated with the most respect. Thus all the children responded when the older sister called tla kwan (come here) and either sister stepped in to discipline or help with homework or fulfill any of the roles necessary to raise their children.
On Lesatsi Keresemose (Christmas day) music was everywhere in the village. I remember reading a novel years ago that referred to the 'drums of Africa'. I assumed it was referring to the bush, but I now think it referred to the constant beat that thrums beneath all music here. More often than not I go to bed feeling the percussion of someone's music vibrating through the ground.
I anticipated Christmas would be difficult for me--most of my family was born on Christmas week (including me) and my sister hosts a huge all-day dinner and yankee swap that had become the highlight of the year. It's amazing how little you really need to celebrate, though. My son in NYC and his inlaws in Dublin Ireland sent me what I am calling "Christmas in a box." Mary sent a wooden Christmas tree complete with tiny ornaments and Jason and Sarah and the girls sent a package with all the things I had jettisoned from my suitcases when I went over the luggage limit last September. The best present of all were photos and a video of my granddaughters and the news that my niece in San Francisco (she's also my goddaughter) is engaged. On Christmas eve I had a lovely dinner with some fellow volunteers and talked on the phone with my son and his family while dodging the antics of monkeys. You can't do that in New England...
monkey business
It certainly was a quiet Christmas - there was no one to remind us tower our cracker crowns - so sad!
ReplyDeleteContests on granddaughter number four! So exciting!