REALITY CHECK

One year ago....

On September 14 my group, Bots 11, reached the one-year mark in our service. It was fun and sobering to look back at what our expectations were and what the reality is. I expected Peace Corps would mean I would create my own projects teaching or working with students and that I would be in a small village where I would get to know the language, the people, and respond to their needs. I expected Botswana would be as it was depicted in the book and TV series “#1 Ladies Detective Agency.”

The reality is that Peace Corps has very proscribed (and often contradictory) directives and the fact that PC Botswana is closely aligned with the Ministry of Education means it is difficult to create your own projects in teaching or working with students. The village I live in is relatively small (five to nine thousand people, depending on who you talk with) but is basically a suburb of the capital. It has been a challenge to learn the language, and integration has not gone beyond being identified as the ‘white lady.’

In our training Peace Corps told us Batswana are peace-loving, non-confrontational people. We were constantly told that we were fortunate to be in Botswana, as it was one of the best posts, often referred to as the ‘posh corps’ because we can drink the water, and it has most of the amenities of a first world country (paved roads, electricity, internet, etc.) The reality is even here, 20 km from the capital, the water goes off for days, electricity goes on and off and internet is not available in the village. All of that can be disturbing, but not unexpected when you sign up for Peace Corps work.

What was unexpected was the level of violence that we have been experiencing lately. A month ago one of the young volunteers staying in the village where we all do our training was attacked while walking on a road with a former Navy SEAL. The attackers came up from behind and separated them, knocked her front teeth out, and fortunately for her, were finally repelled by the Navy SEAL. She has since returned home for good. A couple of weeks ago another female volunteer was attacked as she walked three blocks from an upscale shopping mall to the home of a peace corps staff member. Three men came up behind her, one put his arm around her neck and lifted her off the ground. When she realized what was happening she began fighting back and screaming. Fortunately for her some people in a car stopped and neighbors came out of their homes. The attackers fled, leaving the necklace they had ripped off, and the knife they were carrying, on the ground. Two nights later a Botswana woman was attacked at knifepoint and died of her wounds.

On Friday September 14 I left the Peace Corps office and walked through Game City, the major mall in Gaborone, to meet some friends for lunch. At noon, in a crowded mall, I was accosted by three young men. One walked towards me asking if I was ‘visiting.’ I said “I live here” and kept walking. He walked me towards a wall, I felt something poke into my back and felt my backpack being lifted. I went into a rage, screaming at the men to get away from me. Although there were many people around, no one turned to look much less to help. The young men walked calmly away, having unzipped my pack but not having gotten anything out.

PACT Training

Peer Approach to Counselling by Teens is a program that began in a YWCA in Cleveland, Ohio and somehow found its way to Botswana. It's a program designed to empower teens to make informed decisions about important issues in their lives and is based on the idea that teens usually turn to each other for information on such things as sex, love relationships, fashion, sex, career plans, sex, dating decisions, sex, etc. And we all know how successful that can be...

So it was that my friend Mia, who works at a primary school in the bush, came to Kopong JSS last Saturday and helped me run a training session for PACT members. The learners (that's Botswana for 'students') had told me they wanted to learn more counselling and public speaking skills. The day began with Spike, my landlord's dog who thinks I am in his charge, counselling the students on how to take over the podium..

Once we managed to convince Spike that we were in charge, the day began with 46 students eager to become counsellors. We did ice-breakers such as "kingdom, wisdom, condom" (can't wait to bring that back to the states) and the time-honored game of 'telephone' which proved once again that you can't believe what someone whispers in your ear.

At one point we divided the men from the women and asked each group to write down the definition of friendship/love/dating/and the ideal qualities they want in a man or woman. The men retreated to the far corner of the room and spent quite a while preparing their answers.

The women talked and argued and wrestled with their answers, but still, they had to wait for the men...

At another point we mixed and matched learners and gave them a 'situation' for one to ask for advice from another. Once all the learners had had a chance to role-play both the counsellor and the advisee, we had them write a list of what was helpful and what was not helpful. The overwhelming response was that the most 'not helpful' thing was laughing at the person who asked for advice. We talked about the fact that people laugh when they are nervous, and that sometimes one wants to ease the tension, but clearly the person being laughed at did not experience it as helpful. The second most common problem was trying to talk to a counselor when they were looking you 'in the face.' Mma Seakobeng, the PACT advisor, took a chair and a learner and showed them how she counsels someone, sitting a bit to the side of them and listening well, but not staring into their face.

Then she showed us how happy she was with the learners and their counselling skills.

At the end of the day we asked the students to stand in front of the group for ONE minute, take a deep breath, and state their name, where they are from, and name the person they most admire. ONE minute, one deep breath, three things to say.

This turned out to be the most challenging part of the training. Students who willingly introduced themselves at the beginning of the day and sang a song when asked what they liked to do, now tried to exit the hall rather than stand and 'speak publicly.'

Mia did a fine job of coaching each student up to the front and helping them get through their ONE minute of fame.

Then it was time for Congratulations and Certificates.

Today when I returned to school I was told the students loved the workshop and want to know when we will do another one. That was gratifying, but what was most gratifying was hearing that they are 'much more confident' when they speak at the all-school assemblies.

Life's a BEACH

 After 10 months in a dry land, friends and I headed northeast to the Indian Ocean. Here is a photo-log of the trip, beginning with my favorite photo:

Tofo, Mozambique

Botswana's Track and Field Olympic Team was on our flight!

unexpected bus stop 11 am

bus rank 5 am 

in Maputo--tree shopping...

the ladies who sew...note my wallet at the ready...

shopping comes to you--at the restaurant 

In Tofo--more salesmen... 

At last--The Ocean!

yoga on the beach

evening sky

first fish braii

swiss friends on the beach

back to Maputo--the natural history museum

Nucleo d'arte -- artist studios

me and Maputo friend Geraldine at Alliance Francaise

fish market

'I must go down to the sea again...'

Six months of Hope

After some discouraging weeks, I arrived at school on Tuesday to find a slip telling me there was a package for me at the Post Office. Nothing makes a Peace Corps Volunteer happier than a package from home. Mine contained my favorite junk food (red licorice) some essential anti-age, anti-African sun cream, paintings from my incredibly talented granddaughters, books just published by my incredibly talented friends, and inside two Fairway plastic grocery bags:  TWO BRAILLE BOOKS for Hope. Added to the package were clothes my daughter-in-law had culled from the closets of four daughters under the age of six.

I met Hope six months ago during my first weeks in Kopong when I was 'integrating' into the community. She's a strong young woman who went blind 10 years ago at the age of 15. "I went blind slowly," she told me, from Glaucoma. She learned Braille and is determined to get an 'accommodation' which I am not clear about, but believe is a government funded internship of some sort. I don't know if she learned determination and patience or came by those qualities naturally, but every time I meet her I am struck by how much she lives her name.

Her family is 'living on the edge' as my neighbor at home would say--the household includes Hope and her sister Joy, another sister, her mother, her two brothers, the children of a sister who is "late" (deceased) and a young cousin who is living with them in order to go to school. Only one adult in the household is employed. When I arrived with the bag of books and clothes, everyone was sitting outside in the sun. I handed Joy the Braille editions of The Pearl and Of Mice and Men and watched as her slim fingers moved across the raised bumps of the square pages. Everyone watched her silently, her brother Daniel smiling and nodding. She smoothed her hand across the front page, then smiled and said "I am not lonely when I have books."

I told her when she finishes the books we can talk about them. I also told her I was trying to start a book club at the library and if we read the same books she can join us. She smiled again. "I will teach you to write in Braille," she said.

Hope does not have a Perkins Brailler, the machine that types in Braille, but I have no doubt she will have one at some point and she will teach me to write in Braille.

My Life in Orange

Orange is not just a color. Nor is it just a fruit. It is also the name of one of the major internet providers in Botswana. When we moved to our sites last November I went to the Orange store and bought a flybox (for wireless internet) before I bought pots and pans. Being connected to friends and family is what has sustained me here. It has also helped me integrate into my community, as I can offer students and teachers information from the internet and can work with other volunteers to create our monthly Peace Corps newsletter.

In the past couple of months my internet connection has been failing me. Sometimes I cannot get on the internet, other times it is so slow I could take a shower while I wait for a page to be uploaded. Our Peace Corps tech person checked out my computer and pronounced it fine, saying the fault lies with my internet provider. Thus began my odyssey through customer ‘service’ at Orange.

I returned to the place where I bought the flybox—the Orange store at Game City Mall. I brought all my paperwork, my computer, and my flybox and arrived to find a sign saying “we will open at 9:30 today as we have a staff meeting.” Since the store is all windows, I sat and watched them have their staff meeting and was the first one in the door. Isho, a lovely young man, looked up all my paperwork, then proceeded to plug in my flybox and confirmed that yes, it was slow. “You have to take this to the bus rank office to have them test it,” he said. HUH? I pointed out that he had just tested it. Yes, he said, but I had to take it over there for them to test it to find out what was wrong. My inner ugly American began to surface. “This is not the way to do business,” I said. This is not my problem—I paid for a working flybox, it’s not my job to figure out why it doesn’t work.

Isho began to tell me how much he wanted to make me happy, which, if I were younger and prettier could have sounded like a pickup line, but since I’m not, it was clearly what they were told to say to unhappy customers. A few more go-arounds with Isho and he decided to call someone to see if he could give me, as I requested, a new flybox. I stood patiently while he made phone calls and finally returned to tell me that could not be. Isho is a nice young man, and actually seemed to understand my dilemma. “I will take it to the bus rank for you,” he said. I said I needed it, I could not afford to have it gone for days (which happens quite often here). No he said, he would give me his phone number, he would take it to the bus rank and bring it back in the afternoon—I could pick it up there. I decided to trust him, handed over the flybox, took his phone number and began walking down the mall to the Mug & Bean where I could sit with a cup of coffee and get free wireless.  Two stores down I heard him calling Miss Jeff-er-eees. Turns out he had to take my laptop to the bus rank too. NO, I said, I am not giving you my computer. “They have to test it on your computer,” he said sheepishly. NO, I said, that is not going to happen. We can go together, he said. No, I said, I have work to do. Back into the shop, I picked up my flybox, and told him I would go to the bus rank store myself next week….

The next week I loaded up my paperwork, my flybox, my computer, and headed to the bus rank. It took three requests to find the entrance, which was ‘down there’ ‘that side’ ‘go (direction of pointed finger).’ In other words, very well hidden from the main road despite the fact that the building takes up a whole block with ORANGE all over it…

Once I found the entrance and explained my problem I was directed to the ‘service area’ ‘that side.’ Inside the door I had to give them my passport number and sign in before I was allowed to sit on a bench inside the office and watch men eating at their desks and texting on their phones. Finally I was called to sit in a chair next to one of the men who proceeded, after I explained my problem, to ‘test’ my flybox. He plugged it into one of their computers, then sat texting for 5 minutes. Once again, my inner ugly American began to surface. “Is there a problem?” I asked. “I need to test the speed,” he said, and began telling me I should take the box home and run the test, call him and tell him what the speed was. I tried to quietly explain to him that this was not my job. “But I need to tell the engineers what is wrong,” he said. I may not have been as quiet when I told him I was not asking him to come home and do my job.

“Where do you stay?” he asked. (stay=live in Botswana) I told him I ‘stay’ in Kopong.  “You are the only one in Kopong to complain,” he said. It took me a minute to recover from that. How could he know I was the only one? And so what? I explained that I use the flybox in a number of different places, that I travel with it. “I need this for my work,” I said, “I am a writer and I need to send my stories in.” This is sort of true. I am a writer, but I’m not sending all that many stories anywhere… “What do you write about?” he said. “I write about companies and how bad their service is.” It just came out. I couldn’t stop myself.

The power of the press—he then began calling people and setting up for me to get a new flybox. First he wanted to know if I had kept the box it had come in—eight months ago. Why? I asked. “We need to see the serial number on the box to be sure you have the right one.” I pointed out the serial number on the contract I had in hand. That seemed to confuse him, but a couple of phone calls later he smiled and said I could get a flybox if I gave him mine and waited a couple of days for one to come from the warehouse. I began to laugh. As I often say about life here, It’s a Monty Python sketch that isn’t working. I told him once again that NO, I was not handing over my flybox until someone handed me a new one. Well, then, it seemed the only thing I could do was go to the Main Mall (the other side of the city) to their main store and start there.

I have work to do I said. I have a job. I can’t run all over your country. I paid for internet connection, it is your job to provide internet connection. He really wanted to make me happy, he said. I could see where this was going…

Okay, I said, packing up my flybox, my computer, my paperwork, and my exhausted self. Go Siame. I will go to Main Mall.

That was a week ago. I did indeed have work to do. I do indeed have a job. Right now I’m resting up and doing my meditation in preparation for my next visit to customer ‘service.’

The Sound of Silence

Sometimes I think I should title this blog “the sundial blog” in that I only record the ‘sunny times’ here. When a number of weeks pass without a blog it’s usually because things are not so ‘sunny.’ I have been silent on this blog for the past month for a number of reasons. A week or so with no water, intermittent internet connection, rolling power outrages (usually at dinner time) are really not so hard to take anymore—most of the world lives without the steady stream of amenities that we are so accustomed to in the United States and I have learned to live without them too, thankfully for short periods of time.

            Friends who know me well know that I have an innate sense of direction—put me anywhere and I can usually tell North, South, East or West, take me somewhere once and I can find my way back. That is not true here in Botswana. My first week at site I became totally lost and had to call my landlady for help. I described where I was and she said “Just walk South.” The sun was setting and so I knew where West was, but when I looked in the direction that should have been South I was stymied. It just didn’t feel right. I know I am on the other side of the earth from where I grew up. I understand that although the calendar says May, I cannot expect to see Lilies of the Valley or peonies, I cannot even expect to see anything green… still, I didn’t expect to be so upside down…

            Eight months have passed since I stepped onto the red soil of Africa. We were told over and over that our first year would be difficult, a ‘rollercoaster’, that we would struggle to get things going at our site, to make connections and to integrate into the community. Then, somewhere around the one-year mark things will change, and everything will move along. What we were not told is that although we are volunteers, our workplace may think of us as their employees. This is truly upside-down, and something many volunteers have been struggling with.

            I have followed the advice of previous volunteers and found projects that I love, such as producing the volunteer newsletter and running writing workshops for both volunteers and students in my school. A number of my projects have not gotten off the ground, some have gotten off the ground and crashed back to earth, and some are stuck in some bureaucratic office somewhere. All of that is part of the landscape and can usually be attributed to cultural differences, but sometimes that landscape becomes insurmountable and one has to ask ‘did I leave my home and family to spend two years pushing a rock up a hill?”  This is when the Serenity Prayer should be put on the loudspeakers that roll through the village with announcements (African version of a town crier). Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. It’s a great prayer, and the one I always say when I am asked (as is Botswana custom) to give the prayer before a meeting or after a class.

            What is missing from that prayer is what do to when you know you cannot accept the things you cannot change, and even if you have the courage, you cannot change them. What then? For some it means moving on, accepting the fact that the rock isn’t going to stay at the top of the hill and there are probably better ways to use your time and experience. Unfortunately for those of us who arrived in Botswana eight months ago, two of our group have had to make that difficult decision to move on. It is a great loss to us, and a personal loss to me. It feels upside down and inside out, and I will probably be silent for a while longer.

            view from my door May 19, 2012

The Ambassador Comes to Town

Although it is only 5 miles (as the crow flies) from the airport and only 20 km from the capital of Botswana, my village is [literally] not on the map. So it was a grand event yesterday when Michelle Gavin, the American Ambassador, came to Kopong. 

Ambassador Gavin made the trek out to our village because the embassy was donating health books to all the libraries in Botswana that were built by Robert and Susan Rothschild, a couple from New Hampshire who I met last October at the celebration party for the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps. When I arrived in Kopong last November I made a bee-line for the library and offered my services. I have spent my life in libraries, they are my second home and I have always considered my library card the most valuable card in my wallet. The ambassador seems to feel the same way. She brought her three-year-old daughter and her husband with her, and in her talk she said coming to the library felt like 'coming home'. When she spoke to me at the end of her visit she laughed, saying what a pleasure it was to spend time reading to children rather than sitting in a board room.

People were truly 'honored' that the American Ambassador came to Kopong. We may not have an ATM, or a grocery store or reliable transportation, but we do have a library worth visiting.

My friend Thabo with my her son Bradley and Susan Rothschild. Thabo is wearing her nurses' uniform and Susan is wearing a traditional Botswana skirt, made by a resident of Kopong.

chess players in the library