Meditations on a halfway point: A photographic update...Youth Projects

Youth Projects...

 

A fellow volunteer and myself have taken two groups of students on two school trips, one to the nearby World Heritage Site "Tsodilo Hills," and the other across the river to Sekondomboro for a camping trip. 



The kids at Tsodilo Hills.

 



Transport in the back of a flatbed truck, how else?

 

From the camping trip:

They were able to ride in traditional dug-out canoes, known as "mokoros"

 

 

 

 

 

The other PCV was teaching how to skip rocks while waiting for the ferry to go home.

I also teach an art class with Standard 1 (first grade) students once a week. Here are some photos from when we made paper hats and did potato printing.

 

 

I meet with the Environmental and Health Education Club at the primary school once a week as well. We do different activities to teach about the environment, which is especially important for these students living on the banks of the Okavango River.

 



The club (yep, that's a Chinese student who also lives in the village. A lot of small shops in this country and others surrounding it are actually owned by Chinese families.)

Playing a game like "Marco Polo" where the blindfolded child yells "bat" and the others run around the circle yelling "moth" in response. The game teaches the kids about bats and how they use echolocation to find food. They had a blast!

 

We used a program called Grass Roots Soccer to teach kids about HIV/AIDS and also malaria. In this game, the blanket represents the bed net, while the ball is the mosquito. The kids had to fit under the "net" and avoid the mosquito. If they were "bitten," they had to go and high five the designated doctor at the local clinic to get treated.

I have been working to start Youth Friendly Services at my clinic to provide psychosocial, sexual and reproductive, and general health care specialized for children and teens. It's a project in progress, but we are working hard.

Rude or Not Rude...?

This post is to test your (probably nonexistent) knowledge about what is rude or acceptable or even polite in Batswana culture. Some of these things I learned within my first few weeks here, and others are much more subtle. But all of them are important for integration here.

Q: Failing to say "thank you" when someone gives you something.
A: NOT RUDE. Batswana have their own ways of saying thank you using body language. For example, receiving a gift with two hands, bending the knees slightly, or placing the left hand on the elbow with the right hand extended palm up to receive the item. I have heard people utter the words "thank you" very very few times since coming here.

Q: Writing a brief letter asking for materials from a local government office, printing, and sending the letter.
A: RUDE. Very rude. What I mean is, you need to have the letter be in the proper format, marked with an official stamp of your organization, first sent to your superior/their superior/etc., and then to send multiple copies to all involved stakeholders, including printing at least two copies for yourself. And then you've done it correctly. Protocol is everything here, and people get very offended if you skip a step or put the "From" address below the "To" address in the header. Believe it or not, smaller things have angered people in government offices here. It's ridiculous. It's how things work.

Q: Packing snacks and eating them quietly by yourself during a break at the clinic.
A: RUDE. You always always always offer whatever you are eating to other people. No matter how hungry you are, no matter how special that box of trail mix your mom sent you in that last care package is. If you don't want to share, don't take it out. This is a culture where eating from the same plate (with your hands, of course), is how you mark friendship. Everything is communal. So get used to it.

Q: Asking someone to give you an article of clothes that they are wearing.
A: NOT RUDE. In fact, I have found that this is a form of flattery in this country. When people used to ask me to give them my shirt, shoes, etc., I would cheekily respond by saying that then I would be naked, and we wouldn't want that. But now I realize that, in fact, it's a way for someone to compliment you. I think they secretly think that all white people will freely give their clothes away though, which is the underlying reason why they are asking. Like, "maybe this time she will give me her shoes....let me just ask."

Q:  Asking someone older than you how they are doing today.
A: RUDE.
In this culture, it is commonly accepted that if you are greeting an elder, they are the ones who should ask you how you are doing. To ask them before they ask you (and in some cases, to ask them at all), is considered rude. Like many cultures in this part of the world, elders are respected. Botswana is no different.

Q: Showing up at someone's wedding unannounced.
A: NOT RUDE. There's no such thing as a wedding invitation here...people usually set up a tent with tables and chairs for the close friends and family, but the surrounding area is fair game for anyone. Don't know the bride or groom? No problem. They cater enough for literally the whole village (except for dessert). If you run out of food, it's considered really bad and reflects negatively on the family. Also if you're just dropping by because you heard the music blasting from across town, wardrobe is no problem. The wedding party and family dress up, but for the "commoners" there's really no dress code.

Q:  Offering a friend money to cover the cost of a drink or food they bought you.
A: RUDE. So rude...what were you thinking? Coming from America, where split checks and Venmo rule the world, I arrived with the mindset that NOT at least offering to pay for such a thing is rude. Sure, maybe your friend in America will brush it off and say "No, no, this one's on me," but at least you offered. Common courtesy, right? Well here, if you so much as offer, people get offended. If you are friends with someone, you pay for things for them with the expectation that you will return the favor. That's how it works.

Q: Refusing food or drink that's offered to you.
A: RUDE. Well, maybe not rude, but it's at least strange. When you go to a person's house, they will always offer you something. Maybe just water, but often tea or whatever food is cooking at the time. In America, I was taught that it is most polite to just decline so as not to inconvenience the host. But here, people rarely turn away what is offered to them. Also going to someone's house to visit them and asking for something to eat or drink isn't considered rude either. In fact, it's common courtesy.

Tiny Botswana Story #2

I was helping out at the children's clinic the other morning where the mothers bring their children under the age of five every month to be weighed to check for malnutrition. There was a child who was brought in for a post natal care visit following a home birth. He was three months of age, and hadn't gained any weight since the day he was born. If you know anything about tiny babies, it should be that they start packing on the pounds and growing/developing from the moment they enter this world. But this baby wasn't. The mother claimed that both this boy and her other child looked like lizards when they were young. To me, that's a direct consequence of a child being malnourished, but to her, it's a sign of something else. Likely that she or her children have been cursed.

The doctor (he is from DRC) came to see the child. He realized part of the problem was that the mother wasn't producing enough milk because of her diet, so he gave her money out of his own pocket so she could go and buy milk for herself.

Tiny Botswana Story #1

A friend came to me the other day because she had had something of a traumatic night. She stays with her cousin in a small one room cement house with a corrugated metal roof. Her cousin is often gone in the evenings, as she enjoys drinking at the local watering hole and fraternizing with a number of different men.  This leaves my friend home alone most evenings until her cousin returns, if she does.

On this particular night, my friend woke up to a drunken man pounding on the door. He was one of her cousin's boyfriends, and he showed up expecting to find her there. He accused my friend of lying to him, claiming that his girlfriend was inside even though she told him otherwise. He threatened my friend and continued pounding and beating at the door. Her cousin didn’t answer the phone despite my friend’s frantic calls to her. No one else on the compound came to help her.

In the morning light, my friend woke to find her door broken. She had to phone for help because the door wouldn’t open. It had been beaten in too hard. She told me she wants to move, but finding another place to live might be hard and expensive. 

To date, she hasn't been able to move to a home where she feels safe. 

Tiny Botswana Stories

As part of a new series of entries in this blog, I have decided to share with you small, anonymous stories of people I come across during my Peace Corps Service. To protect their privacy, I have of course changed the names if I used them and left out any identifying details, but they retain their integrity. Some are happy, some are short, all of them are true. Some are from my village, others are from other parts of Botswana that I have come across in workshops and traveling and talking to people. I hope you enjoy them and that they provide you with some insight into Botswana and realities of life here, as beautiful and raw as it stands. 

Seth and Maureen's African Road Trip

I was lucky enough to have my boyfriend Seth come and visit me for two weeks! We started in Botswana, stayed in Namibia for a few days and then headed to Victoria Falls. Then we crossed back into Botswana at the other side of the delta and looped back around to Maun where he flew out of. He was able to spend a few days in my village and even shadowed me at work. Here are some of the highlights in pictures: 

Morning rainbows. If you go during a full moon there are moonbows. Pretty incredible!

Rain jackets were a must, and we got soaked anyways

The water went over the falls at such high velocities and then shot back up into the air, causing a perpetual rain storm despite the sunshine. You can see the contrast between spray from the falls here along the bridge you have to cross. 

A rock hyrax, the closest living relative of the elephant if you would believe it

Lilac-breasted roller, one of the most common birds in this country.

We saw so much wildlife on our trip through Chobe National Park near Kasane, Botswana. This is a pensive impala

Seth's first elephant! (not in a zoo) We pulled over to watch him for a bit

Botswana has the most elephants out of any other country in the world....we saw hundreds over the course of a couple days.

(Sorry for the rotation issue) This is a fish eagle, the Bald Eagle's close African cousin

Hippos everywhere in Chobe!

This croc is regulating his temperature by sunning with his mouth open like this

This is a family of kudu, a beautiful species of antelope.

A family of elephants crossing to higher ground by the Chobe River just outside of Kasane where we were staying. 

Sorry again about the orientation issue! Thirsty giraffe

We found ourselves in the middle of a pride of about 11 lions during the last few minutes of the last game drive we did. We stopped the car and watched them as they passed us before following them for a bit. There were two or three large females with their offspring.

A young lion.

It was neat to listen to them "talk" to each other with little growls and gutteral noises. 

Next we headed for the salt pans in the eastern part of Botswana. During the time of year we were visiting, they were filled with water. The entrance area to the pans is actually a bird sanctuary that the local village created as a community cooperative project. There were some beautiful birds residing in and around the pans. We even saw some flamingos fly by!

Wildebeest! Lots of them in the pans 

This pan, called the "Soa" pan, is the second largest in the world. But when combined with the neighboring networks of pans, it forms a body of water even larger, making it the biggest in the world.

The salt pans looked like one big lake, but they were shallow enough to walk across if you wanted to. 

Botswana is in the middle of a multi-year drought, so it felt strange to stand on the shores of what looked like a lake, knowing that the water is far too salty to be potable. 

The trouble with "rata" (love)

Botswana is an impressive country. It is home to the world’s largest inland delta, it has unmatched wildlife in its national parks (more elephants than any other country on the planet), and it has one of the least corrupt governments in Africa. But things aren’t entirely rosy in this country, even though people try to pretend they are.

You see, Botswana is challenged by the roots of HIV, which run deep and pervade farther than you could even imagine. Even in Setswana, for example, the word for “love” and “like” are one and the same. There’s not even a distinction between the two on paper.  And that’s just the start of it.

Of its modest 2 million citizens, about 2/3 of the women claim to have experienced some form of gender-based violence in their lifetimes. That means over 65% of women have been abused, whether it be physically, emotionally, financially, etc. And that’s only reported cases.  And after Swaziland (a little nugget situated inside of South Africa, Botswana has the highest rates of HIV in the world. In fact, Botswana actually graduated from the Peace Corps in the 90s but was later asked back because of the unbelievable losses from HIV. Even today, around 50% of middle-aged women are HIV positive. Those numbers, frankly, are astounding.

Without knowing anything about this place, it’s easy to sit there and scratch your head asking how Botswana got in so far over its head with the HIV epidemic.  With only 2 million people and a national wealth built on a foundation of diamonds, how could this all have happened?  Now, I’ve only been here for a few months, but I’ve learned a lot and I think I can shed some light (keep in mind these are just my own insights)….

1.       Botswana is grappling with the clashing of traditional and modern values. A huge majority of the population here is Christian. And I don’t mean the kind that only goes to church on holidays. I mean speaking in tongues, channeling the holy ghost, multiple-days-of-the-week churchgoers. But, this doesn’t seem to reflect in a lot of their culture. Why is that? I’m getting there, don’t worry.

2.       Marriage…in Botswana, who needs it? I’ve noticed that, especially in the north where I am living, there are hardly any weddings or marriages. This seems like it’s mostly because of the price. A husband-to-be has to pay a lebola, or dowry, for his wife. This varies in price, but can be any number of cattle plus cold hard Pula on top of that. Interestingly, this practice is deep-rooted in tradition, but has evolved into something of a competition. It’s something you can brag to your friends about (“Well my husband paid 20 head of cattle for me…..yours only paid 12?). And, on top of the show-offy nature of it all, it leaves the family of the groom broke and unable to support the newlyweds, who are traditionally expected to move in with the groom’s family straight away. Wouldn’t this money be better spent on a new house or plot of land for the newlyweds? The uncles are the ones who negotiate all of this and also receive a “commission” from the lebola negotiation. And let’s face it, nothing good ever comes of a greedy uncle. Plus, once a woman is married, she doesn’t get much out of the union itself. The marriage is a formality which the man is often essentially expected to disregard even from before it is made official. That leads me to my next point…

3.       Culture of infidelity. Men here (and often women, not to discriminate) are incredibly unfaithful. It doesn’t matter if you are married or dating or what…there is pretty much no expectation that a couple will stay faithful to each other. On multiple occasions I have had conversations explaining how this whole concept of infidelity is foreign to me as an American. I mean sure, people in America are known to cheat, but rarely is it brushed off and seen as normal or even expected. Not that it is encouraged here. People will tell you that you shouldn’t do it, but when it comes down to it, cheating is a part of a relationship. There is even a term for a man’s mistress, or “small house,” referring to the small house built on his compound for her to live in, right under the wife’s nose. And child defilement is something that can be found in every village/town in this country. Transactional relationships between older men and young girls exist where the men give the girls cell phones, air time, new clothes, etc. in exchange for sex. When you're a teenage girl who has no income for yourself, it's easy to see how tempting such relationships can be. Not to mention the myths that exist whereby if you have sex with a virgin you will be cured of HIV. Turns out that's not true, but it doesn't stop men from trying it anyways. 

4.       The end of the month is my least favorite time in Botswana. At the end of the month, everyone gets paid their monthly salary. The bars are full, people are staggering around, and the verbal abuse is rampant. I know what parts of my village to avoid (the bar that the chief owns, for example, despite a big sign posted near the community center that shows him taking a stance against alcohol), but it’s impossible not to notice the drinking culture here. In fact it was one of the first things I picked up on. At the risk of generalizing, it seems that for the most part people either drink to get wasted, or else they are staunchly opposed to alcohol consumption. There is little to no middle ground where people have a couple beers in a social setting, which makes it hard to explain your own preference for alcohol. It’s such a hot-button issue when people ask you, and you never know which side of the chasm they are on. Alcohol is involved in a staggering number of instances of gender-based violence and HIV transmission. It has accelerated the progression of this virus unfathomably, as HIV transmission in cases of sexual abuse is incredibly higher. The government has even tried to discourage alcohol usage by charging a high alcohol levy tax, but it seems as if it has had no effect on consumption rates. So instead, people are spending a higher percentage of their income on purchasing the same amount of alcohol, leaving them with fewer funds to, for example, support their family with. I’m not disagreeing with the existence of the alcohol levy, just questioning if it’s the most effective way to tackle these issues.

5.       And to me, this is really the kicker: the government employs a majority of people in this country and has the power to send its employees anywhere in the country with no real say from them. Here, government workers include all clinic/hospital employees, teachers, miners, builders, cleaning staffs, and even some clothing stores. If you want to talk about big government, you should do some research on Botswana. With a lot of families where the husband is the breadwinner, he may be sent to another part of the country to work, while his wife and children are left in the home village. He might come home for holidays, but it can get lonely living somewhere by yourself…this seems to be where a lot of the sleeping around happens. And when he does return home on the holidays, who knows what kinds of STDs and infectious baggage he is bringing back with him. This is especially true with miners who spend so much time living in groups of men far from home at the mines where sex workers linger and loneliness bites.  I really believe that by breaking up families for employment purposes like this, it is putting undue strain on the family unit and creating voids filled by infidelity and lack of family prioritizing. And the thing is, no one talks about this as being a large contributing factor. For Batswana, it's just the reality. 

  

You see, this this country is small. With only 2 million people living within its borders (and about 150 PCVs), its one small world. And when many of those people have multiple concurrent sexual partners, may not be using protection, and are living far from their families and partners in a culture that on some level accepts this infidelity, you can see how HIV seems to have spread like wildfire. Not to mention the desire among many young people in this country to get the virus early so that you don’t have to keep worrying about getting tested or contracting it later. Test positive now, and don’t worry about continuing to test yourself or use a condom for your own protection later. Seems fairly logical when you put it that way, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that 100% of health care is offered for free in Botswana, so you can be on ARVs (HIV medications) for the rest of your life at no financial burden to you whatsoever.

So knowing what you know now, how on earth do you convince someone that they should watch out for their health and protect themselves against HIV. To many people here, HIV seems like an inevitability, and one that is, thankfully, no longer a death sentence. Stay tuned, folks. That’s my mission.