Mmantshwebisi

We actually managed to get to the office slightly before 9am today. We found only Thebe there, and got to work printing out our talk, and drawing three sets of one hundred stick men. This was to demonstrate how many people were statistically likely to get AIDS if a) they just had unprotected sex (24 out of 100), b) they were circumcised (12 out of 100), and c) they abstained/used condoms properly (0 out of 100). Obviously it doesn’t work quite like that, but it’s a visual way of getting a message across, especially since (according to the internet) a lot of Christian charities have sent out the message that condoms are only 80% effective. That finished, we messed around on the internet until Martha arrived at 10am (as the charity’s combi is not up to driving the distances and especially the end bits of dirt roads, she is borrowing a friend’s vehicle, and had to wait for him to get to work and then go pick it up). So we set off with Martha and Doris.

After a much more agressive attempt by Doris to convert us (she didn’t seem to believe that someone could believe in God but not that Jesus was the son of God), we were off. After about two hours, (punctuated by a stop to buy juice and a stop to pee in the bush), we arrived (the village is called Mmantshwebisi, and is about half an hour on dirt roads further along than Serinane). It was less overwhelming than last time, as people were not already waiting for us. As we drove up Martha explained that a lot of the people in this village were people who had been resettled from the bush. This means that the government (still to this day apparently) sometimes finds San people living as close to their traditional way as is still possible in the bush, and forcibly makes them settle in the village. When I said that I didn’t see why this was necessary, the justifications were first that this way of life was primitive (again, ahhhhhhhhh), and secondly that the world had changed and that they needed access to schools and hospitals. Whether or not Martha is aware of it (and I’m sure she is not), the Bushmen were resettled in three big waves after the discovery of diamonds in their reserve. There were schools and clinics serving them when they were in the reserve, and since resettlement AIDS and alcoholism have become rife (before there was practically no HIV in the community because they were so remote). Although they won a court case in 2006 to go back to their ancestral land, the government has done all it can to prevent this by banning them from using the water supplies (as Botswana’s population and agriculture has increased the water table has gone down and the traditional methods of getting water are no longer reliable), banning them from hunting without a permit and not granting one single permit (despite the High Court ruling this illegal), and banning them from bringing their small herds of goats into the reserve. Well done, Gem Diamonds. For more information please go to http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/bushmen or http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/01/exiles-kalahari - there’s a petition on the first website.

We stopped next to the clinic, which this village is lucky enough to have. After greeting the other volunteers (who has come up in another bucky with food), we were introduced to Tom, a child with some kind of mental problem. He was wearing a grubby white suit jacket and pants and had a big smile. They asked us how old we thought he was and, mindful of the fact that kids here often look younger than they are due to malnutrition, I said 11. In fact he is 15. He stayed around the whole day, he was really cool.

We were introduced to the Nurse at the clinic, a lovely lady, obviously San herself. The clinic provides infant formula (important when mother’s have HIV), and various medicines for a nominal charge (about 20p, I assume they would give it to those who really had no money). There was a free condom dispenser on the outside wall which, unfortunately, was empty, due to ‘lack of supplies’. Useful. Really useful.

Martha came over and said we were going to see ‘two destitutes’, while the food was being cooked. The Nurse showed us the way. First we came to one homestead with a very small, very battered rondavel in it. I have stayed in traditional huts made from cow dung and mud with thatched roves before, and they can be perfectly pleasant, clean places with smooth painted walls and floors. This one had cracked, unpainted walls and a battered door held shut with a piece of string. A man was lying on the ground outside, dozing in the sun. Auntie Martha spoke to him for quite a long while, which obviously I couldn’t understand at all. His leg had a massive burn on it, and he was wearing a white wristband that said ‘zebras4life’ on it (later found out this is a football team sponsored by Orange). It reminded me of the Live8 wristbands. The day before a snake had come into his compound and he showed us how he had pinned it down and killed it. His girlfriend came up with three puppies, and Martha asked in English why he wasn’t married to her. He showed us inside his house. The floor was covered in drifts of sand. There was a few blankets spread on the floor, a stopped clock leaning against the wall, a pile of clothes next to the bed, and a candle stub. That’s all that was in the house.

As we walked away we asked Martha what she’d been talking about. He was epileptic and HIV positive. Once he had had a fit while he was cooking over a fire and fell into the fire. As he was alone he was unable to get out of the fire until his fitting stopped, hence the horrible burn on his leg. His girlfriend was also HIV positive, and he was not married to her because she was already married, with seven children. Her husband had abandoned her without telling her where he was going for a long time, and during this period she had started going out with this man. When her husband came back he was very angry and brought the case to the village Chief. She just said that, although she was happy to cook and care for her husband, she could not now abandon this man who had looked after her while her husband had gone away. So now she lives with her husband, but still cooks sometimes and sleeps with the boyfriend as well. Auntie Martha once again was dismayed by this primitive life and thought they should read the Bible. I can understand.

We went to another house, this one in better nick, although there was apparently no gate (the fence being made from sticks in the ground with three wires stretched across them at different heights which we squeezed through). There was an old couple sitting by the ashes of a fire. We sat down in chairs where the seat was made from wire and orange string woven around the metal frame. They had chickens and a cute kitten. Again I didn’t really understand what was being said, but he showed us his house again. This one was bigger and painted, made from bricks and cement. Inside there was a low bed, and a bench of sorts with clothes on. When he was shutting the door it either came off its hinges or it had no hinges to start with. Either way he had great difficulty in getting in to shut properly, I tried to help but wasn’t much use.

Martha says that none (by which I assume she means basically none) of the people in the village have jobs. To be honest, what jobs would there be? It’s a 40 min drive to the nearest tarred road for godsake, and a lot longer than that to the nearest town. There are a couple of very small tuck shops in the village and that’s it. Some people have a few animals, but it’s not like the land is fertile enough to grow your own vegetables without lots of water and effort. Basically the whole village relies on government handout of food, which the first man whose house we visited said was enough to feed him for two weeks out of four. No wonder people have lots of sex, and drink what they can get. It must be the most depressing existence imaginable.

When we got back it was time to give our talk. The teenagers between 13-16 were rounded up and we went a little way away from the clinic to a tree. We stood because there were plants, thorns and cowshit all over the floor. I’d guess there were about 30-40 of them, boys and girls. Quite a few girls had babies on their backs/hips, we’d been told many people had children very young here. We spoke about HIV, condoms, circumcision, etc. They laughed when we showed them our pictures. Once again we were translated but as a couple of them came and spoke to us afterwards, I’m pretty sure most of their English would have been good enough to understand what we were saying as well as what was translated. I’m sure they’d heard it all before but maybe we said it in a different way, or maybe repetition is the key. I felt useful anyway. At the end one girl asked us to elaborate more on the three different strains of HIV that we’d mentioned in the talk, so that was good, perhaps she’d been unaware of that before (basically there are three different types, some are more receptive to drugs than others, and different drugs work best with them. Therefore even if you and your partner already have HIV you should still use condoms because you could reinfect each other with different strains and make the situation even worse than it already is). It did feel a bit silly going on about condoms when there were none available at the clinic though. Still, we also talked about staying faithful to each other, not being pressured into sex and getting tested, so at least if they have the information they can make their own decisions.

Talk over, a couple of very crisp looking boys came up and asked what London was like. They hope to get a job in Gaborone when they finish school, and maybe go to England one day. One of them had earphones in. Seeing as there’s no electricity in the village, I can only assume they must be a fashion accessory rather than something that actually plays music.

When we got back the food was ready and people were queuing up (there were probably about 120 kids and about 70 adults). At first I was serving out soup (volunteers would go and collect three bowls off people and get them filled up then return them), after a while I did the running back and forth job. Me and Kate got quite annoyed with Peter and Lee because every time they saw a bowl for the second time, they went on and on about how people were cheating and getting more than one helping. Whereas we thought that maybe some were doing this, but many were also eating, washing the bowl, and giving it to someone else who didn’t have a bowl. Plus when you see poverty like that it’s hard to begrudge people a second bowl of rice, samp, soup and beef. Slightly stressed by the busyness and annoyed, we were probably a little too sharp within the context of the local tradition of respect for ones elders. Oh well, I think we were forgiven. Martha and Doris had to go back early because the guy needed his car back, but we said we were happy to stay to help and then go back in the back of the bucky.

Driving back in the back was actually quite fun, if windy. Martha and Doris had been kind enough to leave us their jackets so we wouldn’t get cold. On the long straight roads you can look back and it looks as if the road goes on forever.