poxbritannica

Madikwe

2009-09-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we were meant to go to South Africa, but, about twenty mins from the border, Wethu realised she’d forgotten her passport! By the time we got back to Gabs we weren’t going to make it to the border again before it closed, so we gave up for the night. Instead we got up at 6.30am in the morning, and were out of the house by 7.30. We were going to Madikwe, a game reserve about 750km sq, where one of Wethu’s friends works as a chef in a lodge, and had invited us to come stay with her. After a slight detour of about 45mins on a dirt road in a tiny car in the wrong direction, we got there. Since we were using the staff entrance someone had been waiting to open the gate for us for over an hour, but he didn’t seem pissed off at all!
Nes is absolutely lovely, and the lodge was wonderful. We were all sleeping in Nes’ room and one of the perks of the job is your friends can come visit and join in on any game drives for free, so it was all free! Incredible! Especially as it’s meant to cost £500 a night to stay there (that’s with proper posh food, accommodation and two three and a half hour game drives included, but still!). After Nes had made us the most delicious toasted sandwich I have ever had and we’d installed ourselves in her room, we joined four other British tourists for a game drive. It was incredible, we saw loads (as in about a dozen) juvenile lions right up close, they didn’t seem bothered by us at all. Wethu dropped her camera off the side near the beginning but luckily we found it again when we drove back the same way – it was just lying in the road! We also stopped for ‘sundowners’, just stopped in the bush and the guy set up a little table, put a table cloth on it, arranged various snacks and we all had a drink. It was quite ridiculous but great. Plus we saw rhino, giraffe, impala, warthog, water buck, a chameleon that the guide picked up to show us, and, most terribly excitingly A LEOPARD!  Seeing a leopard is like winning the lottery of game drives, they are really shy and nocturnal, so you barely ever see them. Our guide in Mokolodi had worked there for 5 years and had not seen one yet. And not only that, but this one was really calm and just walked slowly away rather than running away, meaning we got to get a really good look at it (although unfortunately no pictures – by ‘a really good look’ I mean under a minute, not half an hour or anything).
When we got back we were very excited by all that, and went to join Nes at her house for a braai (barbequeue), which was delicious. Then we sat outside and talked until about 11pm with a lot of the staff from the lodge, including our guide from the drive. It was really nice, and, even though we weren’t staying in a four or five start lodge, even though the four of us were cramped in nes’ one room, it was so much better than just staying there as a tourist would have been.
We got up at 5.00am to get ready for another game drive (difficult but so worth it). It was the same people on the drive as the day before which was nice as we’d built up a bit of a rapport. Instead of sundowners we had the African version of Irish coffee with rusks, and we saw more lions (with the cutest little cubs in the world), bat-eared foxes, and a wild dog. The wild dog was really cool actually, it had been separated from its pack (probably during a hunt) and was trying to find them again. So it would run along for a bit along the road, then stop, look around, and make this very plaintiff loud squeal with its head facing downwards so the sound echoed farther, then stop to listen, then go off again. We followed it a fair way before it disappeared into the bush and we couldn’t follow. We also saw loads of other animals but I feel a blow by blow account is unnecessary. Then, after lunch and a chilled afternoon watching tv in Nes’ room, we went home. I am so incredibly grateful to Nes for giving us this opportunity and being so amazingly nice to us, we would not have been able to afford something like this otherwise, and it was totally awesome!

History

2009-09-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we went with Wethu to George’s in the late afternoon, and spent a nice time chatting to various people. There were a couple of blokes from Newcastle, and one of them, when he heard that we didn’t like the BNP (it just came up in conversation somehow), told Kate that he would put her in contact with his friend who was very involved in anti-BNP movements back in Newcastle. She said that would be great, thinking he would give an email or something, but no, he called the UK on his mobile, and after talking for a bit, handed the phone to Kate! Quite a surprise. In direct opposition to that, someone else (after having had a conversation about how my mother was dutch), told me, in dutch (or maybe Afrikaans) that I had ‘beautiful blood’. I don’t really speak Dutch so don’t know if that’s the best translation, possibly ‘pure blood’ would be more accurate in the context. Anyway, it was late by this time, we were all a bit drunk, he was extremely drunk, when I went up to him a bit later and asked him not to say things like that, he then went off on one about the Boer War and how terrible the British were, then about how he was ‘a warrior of apartheid’ and had killed ’50 blacks’, pointing to the barman to demonstrate ‘them’ and such bollocks. Which is beyond weird, seeing as he’s an ex-boyfriend and current friend of Wethu’s. It's like how he lives his life and what he said were diametrically opposed. I didn’t know what to say and started crying (I cry easily when I’m drunk and something upsets me). I don’t want to be told I have beautiful blood. It’s such fucking bullshit, even from a very very drunk person. Even though he later apologised for upsetting me (but not for saying those things). Having someone say that to me made me feel unclean.

dinner

2009-09-15T09:41:00.001-07:00

We finally started teaching Lee to do some computer skills today. It’s quite weird, going through such basics as how to click a mouse, but rewarding, and she seems very happy about it. Apart from that, we just had an unremarkable office-day on Thursday and similar on Friday. On Friday night, however, Martha made a huge and delicious meal to thank us and say goodbye. It was at her house and all the volunteers, her family and June’s family were there, so it was really nice. They gave a speech thanking us which was so sweet (although embarrassing!), and afterwards sang this eerily beautiful hymn, in parts. It was gorgeous. Had a couple of conversations about, for example, why we believed in evolution, why it was just as not ok to cheat on a girlfriend as on a wife (and why spouses should be able to go out with friends without the other one necessarily having to be there!), and other such delights. It was so sweet and nice of Martha, and she is also getting something (we don’t know what yet) made for us at the tailors. As Aunty June has also made us some West African style dressed with headbands, we shall have lots of cool new clothes! 

Nails and Casino

2009-09-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

Ok, so we knocked off slightly early on Wednesday. But only like by an hour, and there wasn’t anything else for us to do anyway. We took a combi to main mall and got our nails done! First time ever for both of us. Kate got a manicure, and I got a ‘gel’, because I bite my nails and it stays on for longer. Basically it’s like this very very thick nail varnish type thing that they paint on with a tiny paintbrush and after every layer you put your hand in a little mini sunbed and they UV it on so it’s hard as nails. It’s awesome. I also got little jewels on a couple of fingers. And hopefully it means that I won’t be able to bite my nails for at least three weeks (it never chips, you have to take it off in the end just because it looks stupid as it grows out), and then they’ll be nice and long and I can start my mission to get myself out of the habit completely.
As we walked out we saw lots of trees in the parking lot of the main mall that had the giant beans we love so much on them. These are beans that are over a foot long, and when they dry they rattle because they have seeds inside them. There is one on the way to the office and we’ve been collecting the ones that fall down to take back to the UK and give to our friends. But apparently the little bastards don’t want to fall so we hadn’t collected very many. So when we saw smaller, climable trees with them on it was inevitable. Kate climbed up one and started passing beans down to me, while every car that drove past was full of people laughing at the crazy, hysterically giggling white chicks, telling Kate she nearly broke her neck when climbing down, asking what we were going to do with them, etc. While getting down she grazed herself a bit so we decided we should go to Qwest, this really nice restaurant, as a reward. Walking there holding an armful of beans caused a few raised eyes and a few chuckles 
After dinner, we actually took a taxi back (it was pretty dark and catching combis is easy but loooooong, and then we would have had to walk from the stop in the dark), and went to George’s for Kareoke. It was really fun, and Kate finally sang! Very beautifully too (Mama Mia). We also both sang a wonderful duet of ‘ObLaDi ObLaDa’, which was very moving ;)
When Geoges’ shut (which is surprisingly early), some of Wethu’s friends suggested going to Gaborone Sun Hotel for another drink. We decided that we would go for a short while, as we’d never seen the place and wanted to before we left. Wethu was really afraid the guys wouldn’t end up going, made them promise they would, and then waited so that they left in their car first. When we got there they weren’t there. Obviously. Bloody wankers. Anway, by that time we’d paid BWP20 to get in, so we stayed anyway. it was ridiculously posh. Like absurd. All marble, and a casino in the bar. They gave us each a free ten pula chip on entry, and as none of us had ever been in a casino we asked someone what we could actually play with this. They said roulette. So off we went, put our chips down – and actually won BWP350! Score! It was all pretty hilarious and we were very loud and drunk and amusing for all the other patrons of the hotel I’m sure. It was a good night, anyway.

EU Funding

2009-09-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

Someone had given Martha an application for some EU grant so we spent most of Monday and Tuesday reading through these and trying to figure out how to apply. It’s soooooo complicated! The language in the forms is really really difficult to understand, and the application has to be written in this very exacting way. For eg, there have to be various sections: Relevance, Methodology, Impact, Budget and Cost Effectiveness, and Expertise and Operational Capacity. The points allocated are weighted so that 30 goes to how relevant the project (it has to be a specific action that lasts for under 9 months, has measureable outcomes and the grant is for BWP 100,000) is to the objectives of the fund (various things about what the project has to do that are nigh on indecipherable unless you read through it several times), then 25 points for the methodology, and 15 each for the impact, budget and expertise. The application was made even more complicated because no-one seemed to really have much idea of how much it cost to feed one child one meal, or how much it cost to leave dried food behind for a child to last the week between visits. Plus there are little things that just seem to waste (admittedly small but still) amounts of money. For example, when they cook the stews, they put packets of dried soup in, to make it thick and tasty, which is fine, it’s nice to have tasty food and especially as they get a very small amount of soup with a large amount of maize meal it’s good to have very strong flavours. They used to buy large boxes of the stuff and spoon it in, but when FNB was sponsoring them they told them not to do this because it was unhygienic, and to buy individual packets (like cup a soup). Similarly, FNB told them to make a very big meal for the kids, including for eg some coleslaw, rather than a simpler one. All of which is great, but then when you still do those things when FNB has stopped funding them it doesn’t make any sense.
Anyway, we finally have figured it out, providing a meal of maize meal, beef and a vegetable stew with tomatoes, carrots, onion, cabbages and potatoes costs BWP6.7 per child (that’s about $1). Leaving a family enough maize meal, sorghum meal, samp and beans and milk to last them for a week (samp is bits of maize) costs BWP 128 (so about £11) – we only do this for the poorest families, for the rest one large meal a week would be sufficient to supplement what they have, especially if they get the government baskets of food (which are enough to last two weeks out of every month). So now we have to get proof that we’re a registered charity and send the forms off. Hopefully it will work, although part of me kind of doubts that it will.

church lunch

2009-09-06T08:00:00.001-07:00

The church lunch was kind of how I thought it would be. Around two hundred tickets had been sold but not everyone turned up. There were a few evangelical type songs, a keyboard, a sermon by the pastor (in which he thanked me and Kate and embarrassed us greatly by saying we had ‘offered ourselves up as a sacrifice’ by coming to help AAP!). The meal was huge, with samp, rice, millet pap, goat stew, salad, spinach and chicken, with our trifle for pudding. We spent most of our time playing with kids to be honest, although there was a friend of Dewsh’ from Liberia came and chatted for a bit and he was quite nice. It’s weird how people here also speak about ‘Africa’ as if it’s one place quite a lot. Apart from Nigeria. Nigeria is apparently the home of all crooks. Nigerians have ‘taken over London’, and when we explained the concept of Paypal rather than putting bank details out on the web the immediate response was ‘to protect from the Nigerians! How clever!’. What is so bad about Nigeria?

The Goat

2009-09-06T07:48:00.001-07:00

Didn’t do much on Thursday, apart from spend a nice evening out but on Friday I woke up to find the two cute twins were staying with us for a few days, and that there was a goat in the garden. We figured it was for the fundraising church lunch on Saturday, and indeed a while later we went outside to find the dead goat lying with it’s neck slit (a church member had come to do it). We helped to hang it up from the poles holding up the awning outside, by tying a rope around it’s back legs. The kids were really interested, although they’ve seen this sort of thing many times before, and we sat and watched the guy first skin, then gut, and then cut up the goat. The kids found the goat’s bladder in particular absolutely hilarious, especially when the urine came out. I guess the point is that if you eat meat you should see that sort of thing, and if you can’t stomach it, then you’re a hypocrite for eating meat when you can’t face the reality of it(we don’t normally we just are while we’re in Botswana because it’s easier, is all local so has less impact on the environment, and you can’t really grow vegetables on the land here anyway).
We spent the rest of the afternoon making trifle for the lunch, helped by the kids. Had a couple of disaster moments, but it turned out alright in the end.

Mokolodi

2009-09-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

We didn’t do much on Monday except decide that we wanted to go to a Safari Park while we had time off and book it. Mokolodi is a small park near Gaborone, so we could get a taxi there for about £7. We wanted to camp but couldn’t find a tent, so ended up staying the night in a chalet.
We arrived a bit early and waited around in the restaurant for a bit. Suddenly I saw a rhino. I was sceptical at first and thought maybe it was a mechanical one, as only its ear was twitching. But no, sure enough, it was a real White Rhino, just there in the play area (the restaurant is up on a higher level). Apparently this is normal at Mokolodi – there are 11 rhinos there and they often come up to the restaurant area. It was amazing – they’re bloody massive creatures, with weirdly large heads.
Anyway, after that initial excitement (and laughing at a tourist couple who had a teenage boy who looked soooooooo uninterested and bored, went and sat at a table by himself. There was a frickin rhino there! Look at it you dull boy! ) we went on a two hour game drive. There were only two other people on the same drive as us, which was nice. The guide apologised at the end that we hadn’t seen much game but we thought we saw loads. We saw Kudu, Steinbok, Ostrich, Eland, Warthog, Hornbill, Hippo and Impala (the others also saw this giant lizard but I didn’t  ). There was also this really cool bird called the ‘go-away’ bird because when it sees a predator it flies away screaming something that sounds very like ‘go away!)  The park also has three trained elephants with two Sri Lankan Mahoots who walk with the elephants through the park all day, so we got to see them very up close which was cool. Then we went to see the Mokolodi Cheetahs. These were rescued as cubs and were originally intended to be released back into the wild but couldn’t. So now they are in a (very large) enclosure, and are completely tame, so you can pet them on the head (I admit I was still a bit scared though). It was very cute, and there were also a couple of Spotted Hyenas in an enclosure next to them (same story as the Cheetahs although they’re not tame enough to pet!).
After that, we had lunch and waited around for a while, then went on a two hour Horse Safari (I love horse riding so much and it’s soooooo expensive to do in the UK!). It’s really cool on horses because you can get really close to the animals. We saw a Giraffe, Kudu, Impala, Steinbok, Hares, Warthog and Ostrich all very close up, which was really nice (especially the really cool Giraffe!). I also got to have a few canters which made me very happy. Plus it’s just a really very beautiful place and it’s nice to be horseriding in it, so that was lovely. When we went past the Hyena’s enclosure they ran up and started acting like little puppies with the horses, jumping up and sniffing each other. They were so cute, it was really surreal!
At supper my card wouldn’t work in the machine and we had no cash. I phoned the bank in the UK and they said it must be a problem with the machine as everything was fine from their end (when we told the guy that the bank was open 24hrs so we could phone even though it was late he said “oh yes, you’re first world”). They were really nice about it though and let us eat and have drinks, saying if the card didn’t work we could always go back to Gaborone the next day, sort it out, and come back and pay them when we could. Luckily it did though. Three rhinos came up again while we were eating and the owner of the restaurant got a big bucket of grass out and fed them, which was really cool to see so up close.
The chalet was in the game reserve, we had to get a lift down there. It was very nice, opposite a watering hole. I woke up at six (Kate has a cold and so slept for longer), and sat watching for two hours or so. It was very peaceful and while I didn’t see loads of animals, I saw some Kudu, Monkeys, a Warthog, what I think was a Jackal and lots of birds. Plus it was stunning, and nice to see it get sunnier and brighter slowly. The person who was meant to come pick us up went (as we discovered later) to the wrong chalet, so after amusing ourselves for a while by taking lots of photographs to make sure we have at least some where we are satisfied with how we look, we hitched a lift back to reception with the bucky that had taken the cleaners to the chalet. Very sad to go, we ordered a taxi and came back to Gabs.

3days

2009-09-02T08:03:00.001-07:00

We went to Old Naledi again on Friday – there were a lot more kids this time, so many that the food ran out. We had to go and buy bread and scoop the last bits of soup onto it to feed the last ones. Someone from a local bank was there as well, so hopefully some sponsorship may result. They’ve already donated food and stuff, but what we really need is money to replace the last sponsor that dropped out this year, so here’s hoping. I noticed that the kids all eat with their hands and am going to try and contact a soap company or something so that maybe we can introduce hand washing before food. The weekend was pretty quiet, not much to report particularly, except on Sunday night we discovered that Martha and Lee are going to South Africa for three days, so we don’t really have anything to do until Thursday. It’s nice in a way to have a little bit of touristy time, and rest, so that’s ok. Auntie June is making us some nice West African style dressed, which is very sweet of her 

wednesday and thursday

2009-08-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

We spent Wednesday at home doing some research – we looked at companies who we thought might be willing to sponsor AAP and drafted letters to them (not going to send them until the website is up tho…). We found four companies, so hopefully at least one will agree to donate something. I’ve also found this website justgiving.com, which looks like it could be really good but it’s quite an extensive application process, so I don’t know whether it will work out.
On Thursday we went into the office and FINALLY FINISHED ALL THE NAMES!  It was a total of 588 names, finally done. Among them were such wonders as the kids called ‘one’ and ‘two,’ ‘lala,’ ‘doctor,’ ‘stompie,’ ‘pinky,’ ‘kebabo,’ ‘logic’ and many, many more. Masimanyana seems to be the equivalent of ‘smith’ or something. Anyway, it is done and dusted, hopefully now it’s in a spreadsheet they will be able to do stuff with it.
At about three Auntie June took us to the Trade Fair (the real one this time). She had planned to spend the afternoon with us but had to go to a meeting with Auntie Martha to ask a Chinese construction company to sponsor AAP (that thing they say about the Chinese investing heavily in Africa, they aren’t half right…). So first we went to pick up Auntie June’s nephew and niece, then she dropped us off. Her plan had been that the little twins could just wonder around the fair by themselves (they’re eight), but they seemed to want to hang out with us, which was cool. We went on that ride where the chairs on chains spin round and round, and bought a couple of cool things from the stalls, there was lots of really nice stuff, as well as lots of plastic tack. The kids went home earlier than us with June, and we spent aaaages waiting for a combi to get back home. So many people were waiting for the same number, you had to run when one stopped and fight to get in (literally pushing and shoving was the only way). The one we ended up in had a load of teenage boys in, who were all speaking in English with American accents the whole way, calling each other N***** the whole time like American rappers, trying to be well hard talking about prison (“you got nothing there but a bed and a bucket to shit in and if you’re bad they take away the bucket and you have to shit in the corner” – I assume and hope that’s not actually the case here, especially as things such as being homosexual and having oral sex are illegal). It was really weird. I felt like I’d suddenly been transported to a Snoop Dog video, until you looked and realised they were about 16. Kate got somewhat confused because she heard them talk about someone being ‘fisted’, but what they were actually talking about was how they’d seen an old woman get pushed accidently on the bum when she was trying to get onto another combi. Not being fisted. Thank god! We drove past the best private school and the sign outside it said “where ‘just passing’ is never good enough”. Christ. Sounds like hell.

Mmanoko

2009-08-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

On the walk to the office I brought my amazing bubblesword and played with it with the tyre kids for a while. Even though the bubbles don’t really last they loved it, screaming every time and jumping up to try and pop them. It was really fun.
As Martha couldn’t find any other transport, Kabalano drove us all to Mmanoko (it’s much nearer than the other villages). Once again we were based around the clinic, which seemed to be better equipped than the last one (it even had condoms!). The nurse brought together all the older children/young adults (there were about 60-70 in all I’d say), many of whom had babies and toddlers, and we did our talk again. I think it went pretty well, at the end an old man who’d been listening in said that he approved of our talk but not where we cautioned about drinking too much alcohol (we just say be careful and look out for your mates so they don’t do anything stupid). After we helped line up the kids and tried to film/take pictures of them while they were being fed. I think there were around 200 people there, mostly children but also some mothers. One lady tried to get Kate to bring her baby back to England with her.
After all the food had gone we tried to do some interviews to film for the Australian people, but it was pretty difficult – firstly with the lack of English and secondly because it’s such a sensitive subject – are you HIV positive? How many children do you look after? Are they yours or are they orphans? How many of them have HIV? It feels really weird just blurting out questions like that to women you’ve never met before with a camera in their face.
One girl called Catherine came up and gave Martha a big hug. She looked about 10 but was 13. She thanked Martha for giving her the dress she was wearing. Martha talked to us and Catherine (who spoke surprisingly good English) did as well. Her dad is dead, and her, her mother, her brother, and two orphaned relatives all live in the same house, and all have HIV. Catherine has very serious asthma and has had to go to hospital a lot because she also has liver failure (“they told me my liver had expired”). Her little brother has similar problems. She was wearing one pair of plastic-like trainers, with one without any laces, which were her only shoes. She was very sweet and clever to speak such good English. But again, after having a conversation like that with a child, it’s difficult to say “right, can you just repeat all of that while we film you so we can show other strangers how terrible your situation is so they might give money?”

monday

2009-08-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

We got up early and took a combi to the Main Mall to go to an opticians. Annoyingly when he looked in my eye the contact had gone (it had definitely still been there the night before as I could feel it and see it, maybe it fell out in the shower in the morning). The optician sternly warned me never to fall asleep with it in again, and we bought some eyedrops from the pharmacy. After having lunch we went to the office, and spent the afternoon typing in names, checking our emails (we’d left the computer at Martha’s so hadn’t had it over the weekend), and writing another letter to the land board about the proposed orphanage. The higher land board says we must get the sketch from the local land board of what they want to build on the site instead of the orphanage. Unfortunately such a sketch does not exist as of yet (despite them being certain three months ago that an orphanage could not be built there), and their designer cannot do one for a while. So we wrote a letter explaining what was going on. Some lovely Australian ladies are also trying to raise money for AAP and have requested that some videos be filmed of the children. So tomorrow (fingers crossed) we are going to Mmanoko and will be doing some filming, etc, as well as giving our talk and handing out food. Here’s hoping we can find vehicles!

weekend

2009-08-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

We spent Saturday at home doing work and boring stuff like laundry etc. I found it really difficult to take one of my contact lenses out at night and stupidly thought that it would be ok to sleep in it and get it out in the morning. Woke up with a sore eye, made sorer by my many, many attempts to get the fucker out (it had dried out overnight and was stuck to my eye). We had to leave at around 11 because we were visiting someone so had to leave it in (all the opticians were shut as it was a Sunday).
So anyway, we took a combi to the bus station and then another to Odi, a village about half and hour’s drive away from Gaborone. We then had lunch with an old friend of my Mum’s and his wife. They are both absolutely lovely people and we had a nice afternoon chatting about political and cultural issues, far too many for me to go into much depth here. We got a lift back home during which their son went on about how boring Botswana was and wanted to talk about England (he’s 16 or 17). I asked him what he liked about England and he went on about the expensive cars he’d seen when he was there. Surely there’s more to the UK than that? He was also very surprised when I mentioned homeless people in England (“really, you get them there?”), and asked whether there were a lot of rappers there. I suppose it’s the same as the Australian and after an immensely frustrating and painful evening trying to get my lens out, went to sleep with a red bloody eye 

Djs

2009-08-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

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We had quite a productive day at the office – finally finishing the writing of the website and sending it to our friend to start designing. I also found a Christian shopping site that donates part of whatever people buy to their charity of choice, so once the website is up we will register AAP with them. Kabalano came in the afternoon and we had fun chatting and showing him the music we like but which you don’t get over here.

When the working day was finished we went with Kabalano and Martha to shop for food, as we had been invited over to Martha’s for dinner. After some Jessicatime at their house, Kabi took us out to see his studio while dinner was being prepared. It was just in the back of one of his friend’s houses, but was very shiny and hi-tech, with proper soundproofing, CDJs and several monitors. There were four other guys there who DJ for the same company (they do R&B, HipHop and House, but it’s not really the same as House in the UK). Kabalano whether we could record some just random chat so that he could chop soundbites of our voiced to mix in his songs. Which is how we found ourselves in a little white room next to a massive microphone thingie having to say random things over and over again while trying not to fall off the chairs laughing. They assure us that once they’re done our voices will be unrecognisable and you won’t be able to understand what we’re saying (to be honest that was probably the case for a lot of it from the beginning). Who knows, it might become a massive hit ;)

Dinner was delicious, and after we watched a really good film with Kabi – In the Loop. Very funny, about British and American politics based on the Iraq war. Watch it. No-one thought to tell us that lee was waiting for us to finish so Kabi could drop us all off home though so we came out at midnight to find her tiredly waiting for us! Ooops (but then how could we have known?).

breakdown

2009-08-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

After a day spent at home doing bits and bobs of work and doing Karaoke with Wethu in the evening, we went into the office on Thursday, expecting to go to Mmanoko. Unfortunately, the combi (which Lee and Peter had left in earlier) broke down when it was about 10km from Mmanoko (we hadn’t left yet because Martha was still searching for a vehicle). Therefore actually going to the village was abandoned as an idea as it was getting too late and there was no way of getting the food to the village, and poor Martha instead had to find a vehicle with which to tow the others back. It goes to show how much they need a new combi - this one is from 1986 and despite a nice mechanic fixing it for free, it just isn’t up to doing the work it needs to do. We went home early and decided to call it a day and chill with some films instead of stressing about it all.

Mmantshwebisi

2009-08-19T05:50:00.000-07:00

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.

officeday

2009-08-18T10:57:00.001-07:00

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One of Kate’s friends has been amazing enough to offer to do us a website for adopt a person (and pay for it – he is amazing!), so we spent quite a lot of time researching stuff on the web trying to sort out writing the content for it. Also finalised a couple of letters (with various dramas involved therein). They are appealing to the land board because a Chief had granted them permission to use a piece of land to build and orphanage on (they don’t have the funding yet but getting the land is the first step), and the local land board refused it because ‘it’s earmarked for village expansion’. Surely an orphanage counts as this? Anyway, that refusal letter was dated in April, was received by AAP in May, specifies in the letter that any appeals must be made within four months, and has only now been actually written (possibly hasn’t been sent off yet but I’m not sure). Martha also had quite a blow because she had reapplied to First National Bank for funding (they previously donated a lot but then withdrew this at the start of the year), and had really been hoping that they would reconsider, but they still refused. This means that AAP cannot afford to send out volunteers to bring food to the villages (leaving dried food to last some people during the week) on a weekly basis as they used to. Now they can only bring food to the villages once a month (they still feed people in Gaborone every day though). We also designed and wrote up a talk for older teenagers about AIDS, talking more about condoms, how circumcision does not fully protect, etc. Tomorrow we are going to another village, further away than the last one we went to, and will give a talk to some 14-16 year olds there. Luckily they have a clinic at this village so we will be able to say go there to get free condoms, HIV tests and learn how to put a condom on properly (which saves us trying to show how to with a banana which might I think end up with me, Kate and the teenagers falling over from laughing too much).

not much

2009-08-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

Didn’t do that much today – after sleeping in until 1.15pm (!), we lolled around and did some studying, then went to George’s for a bit to eat fish and chips and play pool. I am indeed very bad at it, but it was fun. Plus there was really good live music. Here is a picture of the buffalo on the wall :)

Goats and Pizza

2009-08-16T07:06:00.001-07:00

We got up at 9am, got showered, dressed and sat down to eat by 10.10 (we figured Lee would be a bit late). She called us at 10.15 and said she was at the BBS shopping complex, and would meet us at the bus stop. We finished eating, gathered our things and walked very slowly to the bus stop. Then we waited for, oh, 15 mins, before calling her. She was still at BBS but said she was coming now. A while later she called again, saying she’d gone home to get some tablets, but was coming now. So we left the bus stop I’d say after 11. Which was cool, we had quite a nice time hanging out there. Watching the combis go past, playing with seed pods, putting on suncream J Once you let go of being on time being at all important, or of time being wasted when you’re waiting for things, it’s actually quite pleasant to just chill at times.

So, got off the combi, walked around trying to find the trade fair, which was somewhere in this park place. We walked in through an open gate and this really wench guy, confusingly in a full tuxedo, told us to go out and go round. So we walked for a good while (at least ten mins I’d say, with the complex on one side and what looked like endless bush and desert on the other), until we finally got there. Once we’d bought tickets and got in we realised that it wasn’t actually a trade fair, it was an agricultural show! So there were lots of tractors, planting machines, sacks of grain, and animals, but no jewellery/wall hangings, which is what we’d been expecting. At first I was a bit pissed off because June had said it was an agricultural fair, but Martha had phoned her friend at the ministry and assured us that it was actually the trade fair. And basically I was missing my Saturday morning lie-in. But Then managed to just embrace it.

So we wandered around, checked out some chickens, geese, rabbits and ducks in cages, looked at prize-winning seedheads of various plants. Looked at some bloody disgusting cows with rings through their noses, cute pigs, really cool goats (I wouldn’t let Kate buy one). Learnt about ‘Newcastle Disease’ in chickens. ;) Basically it was pretty hilarious. On the way out Lee asked the person at the gate and discovered that the trade fair proper will be on the 25^th. So hopefully we’ll go to that one as well! Lee is so nice to spend her Saturday taking us out so we don’t get lost, 9we definitely would have without her there) - she really is a sweetie.

Spent the afternoon doing an impressive yet gruelling four hours of studying, sitting outside with a lovely background noise of some political rally broadcast on loudspeakers going on all afternoon. Then to reward ourselves we decided to get pizza and beers. Wethu was going out to buy milk anyway so I went with her to get said deliciousnesses. Because the proper liquor stores were closed by this time she took me to what she called the ‘locals’, basically the grotty bars that open from 10am to 9pm, where alcohol is a lot cheaper than at the ‘posh’ places like Georges and Bull and Bush. The entire car park area was strewn with hundred of empty beer bottles and cans, with lots of people sitting outside drinking. It kind of looked like a festival or something. Went it, bought a couple of beers for just over a third of what they cost at Georges (around 60p a small bottle), then went to get pizza. Spent the evening munching and watching ‘Miss Congeniality’ (tried to then watch ‘Miss Congeniality 2’ but it was so awful we couldn’t stomach it). We may make this a weekly ritual, it was really fun J

a simple day

2009-08-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

Once again we flopped getting to work on time L (we’re just really bad at getting up ok?). We were expecting to go to a Trade Fair selling traditional handicrafts with Lee today. However once we got there she said that she needed to sort some stuff out first, so we just pootled about in the office doing a few things. Then, when she was ready, she said that actually it was now quite late to go, because there may be a queue to get in and then we wouldn’t have much time in the fair. The others were knocking off early so we left too.

We walked to BBS (a shopping complex near where we’re staying), had lunch at Nando’s (mmmmmm), then bought antihistamine cream and some books and pens (we’ve been studying close to two hours a day on average, and we wanted separate books to write in for our dissertation work/other work). On the way back Kate got like a million evil little thorny buggers stuck in her flip flops which went all the way through the foam. So we stopped, picked them all out, and started walking again. Two minutes later we realised that what we’d actually done is picked them out, thrown them onto the floor immediately in front of where we’d been standing, waiting sneakily for Kate to walk over them again and get stuck in her shoe again. Geniuses, huh? So, after picking them out again, we finally made our way back.

After studying for a while and eating supper, we went out with Wethu to a restaurant (it was an expensive one so we didn’t want to pay for a whole meal there – the premium price places in Botswana are almost the same price as the UK). Had a very nice time with Wethu and a couple of her friends, although there were meant to be other people sitting with us (Wethu’s cousin, her husband, his sister and her husband). However when they came, the sister-in-law decided for some reason that she didn’t want to sit with us, and without even saying hello, went to another table, about three metres away from us, forcing Wethu’s cousin to go over there! I’ve never experienced such rudeness. Anyway, we had a nice time despite that. Wethu and her friends went out afterwards but we just took a taxi home, as we’d arranged that Lee was going to come to the house between 10 and 10.30am to pick us up and take us to the Trade Fair the next day.

we love jessica

2009-08-16T06:15:00.001-07:00

Due to falling asleep for 45mins after our alarm went off and then having a 45min conversation about individualistic versus communal societies, this dichotomy in anthropological theories and whether or not the Greek distinction between family life and honour and that of the polis, as expressed in Antigone, fitted into this discourse, without realising how long we’d been talking for (sometimes Cambridge creeps up on you, but fuck it, it was an interesting talk, even if it was slightly ridiculous), we were very late at the office. Ooops.

When we got there they were having their (admittedly very early) lunchbreak. Martha wanted us to go to her house so we could discuss things with her and send an email (she thought the internet at the office was still broken but we didn’t realise that until after we were at her house). We sent the email to American friend who is going to send it on to churches, along with some photos, corrected another two, asking for help in buying a new combi and trailer (the one they have is from 1986 and completely worn out from lots of travelling on dirt roads, etc). She talked to us about a few of the cases she had recently seen. One was particularly sad – the shack of a family in Old Naledi had caught fire when there was no-one home except a sleeping four year old girl. She burnt to death and the entire house too. Martha appealed to FNB (a bank which donated a lot in the past but has been unable to continue doing so, presumably due to the credit crunch), who donated P100,000 (about £9,000), which she stretched to build not one but two 2-bedroom houses, one for that family and one for another which desperately needed a new home. She now wants the President to come and open these houses (in a country of under 2 million people this isn’t as crazy as it sounds), because it would be good publicity for AAP and get the President involved in the charity.

Between doing this, ordering a pizza, chatting to Martha about things and, most importantly, playing with Abi, the helper’s five year old, and Jessica, Tshwaro’s beautiful little girl (who I may have to take back to the UK with me), the afternoon passed pretty quickly. The above picture is of Kate and Jessica (who looks a lot bigger than she really is because she is wrapped up in many layers – this is the Botswana ‘winter’, where it gets as cold as 20 degrees Celcius during the day, after all…).

names and karaoke

2009-08-14T04:46:00.000-07:00

We got up early (for us) and were in the office at 9 something or other. Every single time we walk to the office, we walk past children playing with car tyres. No matter what time of the day, morning, midday, afternoon, they're always there. Possibly there are different children who just happen to hang out on the same street playing with tyres, or that's just all these kids do (it is school holidays so it's possible). Some of the kids are basically smaller than the tyres themselves, I don't know how they run along with them so easily. They often say hello to us, they are very cute indeed :) I never seem to manage to get a proper photo of them running with it, but here's one of some of them.

On Wednesdays Martha and Opa fast and pray, so they weren’t at the office. We spent most of the day doing data inputting – they have compiled on scrappy bits of paper lists of the name, age, gender and location of the children they work with (now over 700), and wanted us to put it on the computer (no-one is very computer literate – we are going to give lessons next week). This would be a lot easier and quicker if it weren’t for the fact that firstly, most of these names are ones we’ve never heard of – like Tlotlo Ramosekwe (tl being pronounced as a click, of which there are several in Setswana), and secondly that the handwriting is often indecipherable. I read out the names, often guessing at letters, and Kate typed. The monotony was broken up sometimes by amusing names such as Lala and Girlly, or by simply making up the ends of words that trailed off into squiggles. Some children have names such as Jim or Piet for their surnames, some have no surnames, like five year old ‘Timmy’, which reminded us of the South Park character and sent us into a giggling fit (I guess you have to have fun somehow). Some of the kids don’t have ages written down, I can only assume because they didn’t know how old they were. Anyway, a few hundred names and many hours later, we knocked off and went back home.

Every Wednesday, George’s pub (mentioned earlier in this blog) has a Karaoke night. We were going to go with Wethu but she cancelled on us because she’s been feeling ill and wanted to go to Church (yes, you’ve read that right, she wanted to go to Church at 9pm on a Wednesday instead of going down the pub). Since it’s only a two minute walk away and Wethu said she was happy to pick us up, we went alone anyway. It was really fun, watching people play pool, drinking cider and listening to some terrible, terrible singers, but all in good spirit, there was no booing or anything like that. I ended up singing a song, Kate has promised she’ll sing one by the end of this trip, and I’ve promised to play pool with her at some point despite the fact that I’m shockingly, embarrassingly bad at it. For some reason the videos that went with the song words were all really corny, eighties-inspired things, weird views of sunsets and people in ridiculous eighties jumpers walking through forests and stuff like that. I wonder if they’ve had the same machine since the eighties…

second half of a busy day

2009-08-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

Anyway. Rant over. Lee is a very nice lady, and I respect what she is doing with her life. We also had a conversation about Christianity (everyone in the charity is evangelical Christian), and at least she accepted the fact that we’re not Christian and not likely to become Christian any time soon.

After a while the children came – someone had driven 25 of them up from Old Naledi. We first gave them food (rice, beef and vegetable stew) and then started the talk. Lee needed to translate even though they knew some English, partly because of the difficulty of the topic and partly because they can’t understand our accents/how fast we speak. I know this seems maybe a bit pointless, but they seemed very keen for us to do it, both because we’re young and because we’re foreigners, they think it will have a larger affect on the children than just the same old coming from their mouths. Also I think our talk was quite different in many ways from how a Motswana would phrase things and talk about it, although of course you can’t really tell how your words are being translated.

So we spoke first about why they shouldn’t really be having sex yet (as the oldest was 13 I had no qualms about that). Martha says that it is a problem when the whole family lives in one room the kids obviously get curious about this sex thing that their older sibling/parents are doing. We spoke about how Botswana has a very high rate of HIV (24.1%), and so they must be particularly careful, even more so than in other countries. We asked them if they knew how HIV was spread (“if you have sex without a condom!”), and spoke about the importance of being careful with blood, not drinking from the same cup as people who have sores on their lips, etc. Also how people can look healthy but still have the virus, so you should be careful around everyone and importantly, not treat people with HIV any different to other people. Then we used something from a voluntary sex-ed thing I did in the UK four years ago, which is telling them how to resist unwanted sexual advances (say no, leave the room if that doesn’t work). All mixed up with stuff about respecting your body and that sex is not just a physical thing, it also affects your emotions. Finally we told them that if anyone ever did anything to them that they did not want to happen, the most important thing is to tell a trusted adult about it immediately (we had been asked to include this. I think abuse can sadly common). We asked them to think about who they would be able to tell, and then Lee asked if anyone couldn’t think of anyone. Four children put their hands up. We asked them why they didn’t have anyone they could turn to for help. Two of them said that their parent (only one was mentioned in each case) was out all the time and they didn’t know where they went or what they were doing. The other two were orphans and said they didn’t trust the family that they lived with at all (the UN Development Agency estimated that 20% of all children in Botswana will be orphans by 2010). Lee took their names so the charity could keep an eye on them and asked them to please come to her for help if they ever needed it. Then (after the obligatory prayer interspersed with hysterical giggling), they all scrambled into the back of one bucky (pick-up truck), bar two who sat in the passenger seat, and went back home. Next week we are going to two villages and will give a talk there to older kids, talking more about condoms and other such wonderful things.

After washing up the kid’s plates we went back home. Auntie June was sitting in the kitchen in front of three huge boxes of pills and potions. They run a pharmacy and these were all the out of date medicines from the past year or so. She asked for our help so we sat down with her. The government has ordered that all out of date pills be destroyed, because people pick through the rubbish dumps and they are worried that they may harm themselves by taking out of date or the wrong pills. So we were putting them all in a big bucket filled with liquid (diarrhoea medicine actually), popping them out of their foil casing and throwing them in to be dissolved. We sat there for at least an hour, it was actually pretty satisfying, and we got scarily into it, even figuring out how to use an out of date needle to get the insulin out of the container for diabetics, as there seemed to be no way to pour it out. The mixture was pretty crazy, all these gelatine capsules floating to the top, the smell was really strong. Our favourite pills were these tiny little pink heart shaped anti-depressants, and my favourite job was puffing all the stuff out of inhalers until they were empty. Apparantly the mixture will eventually turn into a solid ‘stone’ which they will then throw away.

First Half of a Busy Day

2009-08-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

This was an incredibly busy day. We got up at 7.15, got to the office by 9.40, and didn’t really stop all day. First we helped to cut vegetables and meat for a meal for the children at Old Naledi (the smell of chunks of beef stayed on my hands for ages yuuuuck). Washing several kilos of rice without a sieve is hard, I discovered. Then we were told that we would be taking a class of 25 children from Old Naledi that afternoon! So we quickly went and brainstormed what to say to them, with help from the people here. We were told this group of children would be young teenagers, mainly twelve to fourteen (in fact they turned out to be between nine and thirteen). Once this was done, we corrected a couple of letters that Martha had composed to some Chinese contractors and American churches (she is fluent in English but phrases such as ‘we help the children through nutritious food wellbeing’ and ‘we ask your help for the upliftment of the community’ can do with a bit of tweaking). It’s actually very difficult, trying to correct someone’s letter without just completely rewriting it, without being patronising.
At lunch we had an odd assortment of crumbed chicken bits, white bread and guacamole – supermarkets donate bits and bobs of food that is about to go off and this is what feeds the volunteers (who don’t get a salary) as well as the children. I saw Ann put a prepackaged ‘Italian salad’ with lumps of cheese into the vegetable stew for the kids – I guess so long as the food isn’t wasted that’s the main thing! We had a long talk over lunch. One thing that I found very shocking was some of the things Lee said. For example, she said that she thinks “African people are dishonest, more so that white people”. Even though this was qualified by saying she didn’t mean white people were ‘better’, it’s still implicit in what she was saying. Given that this came entirely unbidden from the mouth of a black Zimbabwean woman, it really saddened me. How do these horrendous vies seep in? We hastened to tell her that British people were also dishonest sometimes, that they cheated and were unfaithful as well, that there are sexual diseases in the West as well. Then, a bit later, when talking about how Botswana is the country with the highest HIV rate in the world apart from Swaziland, she started saying that she thinks it is because the King of Swaziland still adheres to these old, ‘primitive’ ways, setting a bad example for his country. Now, every year all the young nubile girls of Swaziland dance topless for the King (who runs the country), and every year he chooses a new wife from them. I don’t think it’s doing much for the rights of women, respect, etc. But ‘primitive’? There’s so much colonial history, so much ‘evolutionary’ bollocks and stigma attached to that word. Even typing the word and remembering makes me wince. We British, we really did a good job of fucking up these countries and these people’s perception of themselves, didn’t we. Jesus. Even now you can see the scars. I hate it hate it hate it.

(I will write the rest of this day and post is asap, to be continued...)

First Day at the Office

2009-08-12T06:54:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we did very little, as everyone else was at church. Martha and Opa didn’t get back to their home until 8.45pm. We read books and washed our clothes by hand.
On Monday morning we went back to the bank and, after going through four separate queues, Kate finally got her travellers cheques! J Then we went to the office of Adopt-A-Person for the first time (luckily it’s only about five minutes walk from Auntie June’s house). There are five volunteers here full time, two men from Malawai, Peter and this really jokes guy whose name we haven’t been able to catch yet, and three women, Anna, Thebi and Lee, and well as Martha when she’s around. We had a chat about what we would be doing with the charity, and then were taken to Old Naledi, the slum area of Gaborone. There about fifty kids were given food (normally it is over one hundred but because they were late that day there were less children). The charity goes to Old Naledi every day, so this is the area in which they have seen the most marked fall in mortality rates of the children since they have been getting at least one square meal a day.

Frustrations and Initiations

2009-08-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

Despite the late night and alcohol, we got up by around 10am, as June had said the day before that she would take us to the bank to sort out the travellers cheques, that the bank closed at 11, and after that we would go to Mochudi for an initiation ceremony (more of that later). After crawling out of bed we go and get some food, and wait for June to appear. And wait. And wait. At about 11.40 she suddenly appeared, pointed at the clock and then we had to run through the house for our shoes while she hurried us up. On the drive to the (different, presumably bigger and therefore still open) bank she said that we had to hurry because she didn’t know how long the ceremony is going to last (Mochudi is over an hour’s drive away). I was getting very anxious because I REALLY REALLY wanted to see the ceremony and I know it’s a once in a lifetime experience. We got out of the car and walk towards the bank. Obviously, June met a friend and stopped for a quick chat. Finally got to the bank. June sorted out some way that they will change the traveller’s cheques using her as a guarantor. The reason they won’t do it normally unless you have an account is because last month some traveller cashed some fake travellers cheques. Then we waited some more. And some more. There was a portrait of the President on the wall (as in most big shops, etc), and above that a pen in a little display cabinet, with the words “winner of internet competition 2008” or something along those lines below it. Then we were told someone is coming to help and they would just serve the other customers in the queue until they come. Three customers and June asking what the hell is going on later, and the other guy made an appearance. Then we waited some more while they typed stuff into the screen. Then, finally, they said that three of the travellers cheques were valid but not the other two. She couldn’t type their numbers into the computer or something. Kate was going mental because she’d countersigned the cheques meaning they won’t be valid anywhere else. The lady said that we should come back on Monday and she will sort it out (if she changed just the valid ones that would mean two transaction fees). So we left the bank sans any pula. I was getting huuuuuugely frustrated and so legged it back towards the car. Except I had to stop because June had met another friend. While she chatted to him another guy she knows came past. We greeted them both and stood around for a little while. Finally, just when I wanted to start screaming or collapse into hysterical laughter, we got back into the car. Quickly drove home to change into skirts not trousers, and women wearing trousers was forbidden at the ceremony, then, at last, oh my god at last, started driving to Mochudi. Africa teaches you patience.
Anyway, to explain a bit about this initiation ceremony. In traditional Tswana culture (basically, in traditional culture throughout the world if you go back far enough), all young people have to go through a rite of passage, and only after do they become adults. The wonderful British of course decided that this was heathen and stupid and savage, and so the practise didn’t exactly completely die out, but became much rarer. People associated it with the old, ‘uncivilised’ ways. Now, the Paramount Chief of the Bakhatla tribe in Botswana (I’ve probably spelt that wrong, apologies. Imagine the ‘K’ as a click) is trying to revive the custom. His father, Chief Linchwe, whom my mother knew very well, also tried to do this, but support for him dropped after a scandal around a decade ago.
Basically, the body of a young girl was found with body parts missing. This clearly pointed to a killing to traditional medicine, or mutti. Although most traditional medicine is about herbs, going into trances to speak to the ancestors, perfectly innocuous and even, depending on your beliefs, positive practises like that, some people, ‘witches’ still practise the other kind, where human body parts are used to increase a client’s strength or potency. It is rare and expensive but it does still happen. In this particular case, a businessman was accused, and Chief Linchwe stepped in to protect him (I don’t know the details). After that people associated the Chief with witchcraft, and his efforts to revive the ignition ceremonies fell flat.
Now, however, his son is Paramount Chief, and he has a lot of support (he is also a qualified, and practising, lawyer). Earlier this year, a call was sent out that any men who had not received initiation and wished to should sign up for this programme. It was immensely popular, with over 1,500 men wishing to do so, of all ages. Normally is would only be young men of the same age set but because it hasn’t really happened in so long there were both young and old men participating. Employers were requested to let their employees go without repercussions to their jobs. They spent one month (originally it would have been three) living out in the bush, learning the traditional ways of their tribe, the laws, how to marry and treat your wife, how to hunt. There were so many men that they had to ship is wild animals from elsewhere because they needed them to eat and to use the skins. The men were also circumcised in the bush (with doctors in attendance). There were so many men it took ten days to circumcise them all (this is also a great thing because circumcision reduces the spread of HIV). The ceremony we attended was the ‘graduation’ of all these men, and it was a huge deal because it was the first in a long time, and so many men participated.
As we drove to Mochudi we listened on the radio to the speeches that were being given. The Chief was talking about how the traditional ways were important, and that in modern Botswana a lot of respect had been lost. June seemed incredibly proud of and happy with what he was saying (she is of the Bakhatla tribe herself). It wasn’t all serious though, he also joked with the men, saying that they must be looking forward to seeing their wives after one month without seeing any women, and that their wives would be very curious to see what they looked like from the front now!
When we arrived there were lots of cars and a crowd of people watching. As far as I could see we were the only white people there except the people doing the technical support for the sound and the massive screen that showed the stage. As we walked up a guy turned around and said “Welcome, you are welcome”. We would have happily hung around at the back, but June pushes forward until we’re right at the front. All the men are in rows, all wearing animal skins on their backs, holding sticks with white ostrich feathers on and with headdresses of ostrich feathers and/or antelope horns, or the heads of the animal with the skins hanging down. They mainly wore western style clothes as well. One guy was wearing a leopard-print cowboy hat with an ostrich feather in, a boiler suit, and carrying a rifle with feathers stuck in the barrel. In between speeches all the initiates would stand up, dance from side to side holding the sticks with feather on in the air and singing traditional songs. It was incredible. And the mixture between embracing modernity – the big screen, the microphones, the fact that it was being broadcast on national tv – with a pride in their traditional culture. One thing symbolised it perfectly for me – a man who had tied his ostrich feather on with both a bit of stripped bark, and a shoelace J
We also watched on screen Chief Linchwe’s wife formally hand over her Queenship to her son’s wife. June explained a bit what was going on, she handed over a drum that has been passed down for over 130 years, and also a sceptre of some kind. At one point everyone, including the audience, had to sit down (incredibly uncomfortable as there was only really room to squat, my legs were killing me!). Then, suddenly, it was over, after a prayer. I can only assume it was a Christian prayer because it ended in ‘Amen’. The Chief and his family left on horses with ostrich feather livery, like the horses in Cinderella. He had a crown made from a strip of animal hide with the long hair sticking out in a circle round his head, and a mane-like strip going down his back. Then some royalty from South Africa came past. Finally all the men were called by where they lived and processed out, right past us. Lots of them were joking with June that they wanted to marry us, to which she jokingly said “that’s fine, but first you must come up with the cattle” (bride-price, or lubola, still happens here, although people are changing from cattle to cash quite a lot). June says she would not accept less than eight cows for each of us! Her brother, Khotso comes past, looking very haggard and like he would love a shower!
All in all, it was amazing, and a resounding success. People from other Twsana tribes (there are eight, although they are very similar culturally and all speak the same language) and from South Africa are asking the organisers of this to help them do the same in their tribes. These are not just simply village men, these are modern, educated, wealthy, travelled men as well. June’s brother Khotso owns a bar. But they all felt that going through this was something they want to do. Which I think is absolutely fantastic. Next year there will be an initiation for women, and the year after another for men, and so on. I hope very much that it spreads and gives people a new knowledge and pride in their traditional culture.

Pubs and Clubs

2009-08-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

We did not do much during the day except go shopping to try and buy a sim card and change travellers cheques. They will not change the travellers cheques unless we have a bank account (logical, huh), and both our phones are actually locked so do not accept the Botswanan sim. So not exactly the most productive of days, although I did get some studying done.
In the evening all the people of the household went out to dinner at the local pub, George’s, except for June’s husband, Lesley, who was going to a funeral far away and so not in Gaborone for two days. This is the fourth funeral people we’ve heard of three days. Also in the house are Wethu and Nto, June and Lesley’s daughters. The pub is owned by a Scotsman and serves pizza, steak and kidney pie and fish and chips, among others. There is a huge buffalo head on the wall with a cigarette in its mouth. I came here for my 21st birthday at Christmas and sang karaoke for the first time.
After George’s, Wethu drives us to the Bull and Bush, a bar/club that Kabalano is DJing at tonight and has put us on the guest list for. It’s so weird seeing the difference between these places in Gaborone where drinks are only slightly cheaper than in Britain, where the rich kids go, compared to the village we were at the day before. When me and Kate went to dance we were immediately surrounded by guys trying to sleaze us up. And I don’t mean like in the UK, I mean like waaaay more intense. I resorted to dancing with lots of movements that include jerking my elbows backward loads and retreating into the corner. Weirdly, though, seeing this guy behind Kate who she can’t made me decide, (in a drunkenly logical way), to shout into his ear “sorry brother but please just leave us alone”, and he immediately did. Score! Elbow whacking is unnecessary!

Serinane Village

2009-08-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Having made plans to be picked up at 9am, and asked to be woken at 8.30, we were somewhat surprised to wake up and find it was 10.30. We soon learnt that it was because of a delay with finding a car, and eventually left at 12. We were going with Martha, and another lady called Doris, to a village around two hours drive away. When we drove up there was a crowd of people, mainly children, under a tree in front of the kgotla, which is where village meetings take place.
As soon as we stepped out of the car a bedraggled looking woman came up to us and started hugging us. I suddenly remembered that I’d seen her when I spent a short while in Botswana at Christmas and visited the same village, and that she was probably mentally ill. After she spat in my face a bit (I think accidentally), I firmly pushed her away. However she then went over to Kate and after a few seconds, took her breast out of her top, brandishing it around and then sucking it. A man immediately rushed up and pulled her away, even hitting her with a stick. It was horrible, obviously. But what to do? There’s no hospital or clinic here, they’ve only built a primary school this year (before that the nearest was 40km away), people are desperately poor and a huge percentage of them have HIV, have orphans to look after, dying relatives. What can they do with this crazy woman? I still wouldn’t hit her (in fact that man seemed far too fond of hitting things with sticks, the stray dogs, the ground…), but it’s not like there’s a psychiatric hospital where she can stay. Later I saw her chasing around like a child, with a woman chasing her, and both laughing.
Anyway, we then went over to the kids. Martha spoke to them in Setswana, telling them (I think) about these two nice girls from England who have come to help, and then praying with them (Martha’s husband Opa is an evangelical pastor and everyone working with the charity is very religious except for us. Being handed our food in the car we immediately started eating, not realising they were going to pray first. Ooops.) The kids are mainly orphans, many of them HIV positive. There are horrible sores on some of their heads and faces. Most of them do not have shoes, and many of their clothes are torn. One child was wearing the orange hood from a puffer jacket. Just the hood, with a pink t-shirt and trousers. Some of them have the swollen bellies you see on tv, and one has very swollen cheeks, which we think means a goitre. Each child has a bowl, and we lined them up (smallest children at the front) to come and get some food. Some have been waiting there since 7am Martha says.
In smallish groups they came up and get small amounts of rice, pap, chicken or beef, coleslaw, and vegetable stew. At the moment the charity can only afford to come here once a month, leaving some tinned food behind for the poorest families. If they had the money they would come every week, and leave enough food so that the community volunteers could cook a meal every day. This is not just for preventing hunger. In Botswana people with HIV get antiretrovirals, which improve and prolong life drastically. If you are malnourished, these do not really work. If your stomach is empty, they become toxic in your body and make you sick. So getting food is doubly important.
Once the children have eaten the older adults and teenagers do. Martha pointed out to us one very old woman feeding a small baby. Her hand was shaking and it was difficult for her to get the spoon to the baby’s mouth. She is one of the many grandmothers who, having lost their children to AIDS, now have to look after the grandchildren. Martha knows one old woman who has ten kids to look after by herself.
After everyone had eaten, we drove back to Gaborone. Saw Martha’s two sons, Kabalano and Tswaro. Tswaro lived in my Mum’s house in England for about four months when I was in Year 8. He now has a baby girl, which is quite the scandal as she was born (shock! horror!) out of wedlock. Martha offered to the mum to take the baby, so she now lives with them. She is a darling with immensely thick hair that went up in a little bobble at the back of her head. Kabalano is a pretty successful House and Hip Hop DJ, and has invited us to go see him. Me and Kate enjoyed the speakers in his car J

Arrivals

2009-08-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Day 1
We arrived at Gaborone airport at about 9am. Inevitably, the people who were collecting us were late. Having experience of this, we weren’t however worried, and eventually (an hour late) they came. Luckily Gaborone airport is so small that you can scan the entire departures and arrivals area in about two minutes, so we didn’t have to spend a long time searching for each other. (I also liked the way that, after realising I’d left my hoodie on the plane, I could simply stroll back onto the runway and onto the plane again).
So, Auntie June and Auntie Martha. June is who we’re staying with, and Martha runs the AIDS orphan charity that we’re working with (Adopt-A-Person), which she set up herself. We drove to June’s house to find a fried breakfast, prepared by the helper, Portia, on the table. Portia is from Zimbabwe but, like so many others, has moved away. She lives in a room by the side of the house, and wants to eventually set up her own restaurant.
After breakfast and chats (including a conversation about how being vegetarian benefitted the environment, which raised a few eyebrows), we went out with June, who had to drive to a village to collect some garden furniture. Because it is winter Botswana is very dry, with daytime temperatures of around 20 degrees. In Gaborone there are tarmac roads, and there are big motorways connecting these huge spaces, but as you go into the villages it becomes dust roads. The traditional huts with thatched roofs are still around but making way for modern houses with corrugated iron roofs. These are not as cool in the summer nor as warm in the winter, but as June said, they do not have to be replaced every ten years for a lot of labour. June showed us a piece of land she is slowly developing, and while we were stopped a mini-tornado (say about two metres wide) suddenly came and whipped up a load of dust and leaves, before quickly moving on.
We then went to see some ladies who have a weaving co-operative, where they hand-weave beautiful tapestries, bags, etc, made from handspun, hand-dyed wool. At first they had some help from the government and from a Swedish charity, but now they are on their own and not doing so well. I admired the work greatly, painstaking tapestries that took a month to make, showing scenes of village life, however it was far too expensive for us to buy (around £150 for one a metre squared). If you think of this in terms of a month’s wages, and in terms of a piece of art, then it is obviously worth it. However it is out of the budget of most people, and I think that’s why they’re not doing so well.
The place where June had to pick up furniture was a hotel she built from scratch and is now renting out. We sat down and had a couple of ciders, enjoying the music. A young woman came up to us with a broad smile, saying ‘White people! I love you!’ and trying to get us to dance. I don’t really know what to say to that.