(not so) Tiny Botswana Story #6

Disclaimer: This post is heavy and a little bit graphic. But entirely real and something I feel is important to share.

I recently heard an account from a social worker in a village 20 minutes away involving an 11-year-old girl. The girl was having trouble sitting properly in class. She would sit sideways, and the teacher would yell at her to sit nicely in her seat. But she didn’t seem to be capable of sitting properly. The teacher talked with the girl after school and it soon became apparent that the girl was being abused by her uncle.

The student, who is in the equivalent of fifth grade, lost her mother last year to HIV and her father has been either dead or missing for a number of years. She is an orphan at the hands of HIV, like so many other children in Botswana. As an only child with no grandparents or other aunts or uncles, her uncle is the only family she has, and he is solely responsible for her care. He has been raping her repeatedly for an undetermined period of time.

Upon confronting him, the uncle became aggressive and warned the social worker to “stay out of his family’s business.” The uncle’s wife (or rather long term girlfriend, as many people in this area can’t afford to get married though they call themselves husband and wife), was outraged when she learned from the social worker what was happening. Apparently, she suspected something was going on, because her husband would regularly get out of bed at night to “check to make sure the gate is closed” or to “go to the toilet.” The few times that the wife went out to check on him, she at least once found him coming out of the young girl’s room.

This past weekend, my friend and another colleague traveled on the bus with the girl over ten hours to a town halfway across the country to a home for orphans where the girl will stay for at least six months. They also completed a rape kit at the hospital there with the hope of prosecuting the uncle. It amazes me that someone would have to travel so far to access those services, while rape is not an uncommon occurrence here. They bypassed two other hospitals on their way which either don’t have the proper equipment or trained professionals to do the rape kit. In the meantime, my friend also expressed concern that the uncle could kill his wife for speaking out against him in front of the social worker. These types of “passion killings” are a huge problem in Botswana and very much a reality.

After telling me this information, my friend confessed that this young girl’s issue weighs especially heavy on her because she has been through almost the same situation. When she was also an orphan and in fourth grade, a man was raping her as well. She had to get two stitches from the damage he inflicted on her. The man who raped her was luckily put in jail for fifteen years. When he had about five years remaining, he managed to escape from the facility that was holding him. The police managed to find him, put him back in jail, and extended his sentence. This news was too much for the perpetrator, and he ended up killing himself in prison, likely by hanging.

I could tell you half a dozen other stories similar to this. Some involving men raping toddlers on public buses without anyone knowing, some involving men raping four-year-old girls and causing so much damage that the child had to have a catheter and urine-collection bag connected to them. The common nature of these stories is disturbing and also far too real in this country which boasts peace and low levels of crime and corruption. Maybe the true issue lies with under reporting of these instances.   

TBS is back and so am I

It's been a while since I posted anything, so I thought I would bring back these Tiny Botswana Stories (TBS). They are vignettes into the lives of people who touch my life here. I hope this gives you some insight into life in Botswana. I seem to be drawn to sharing the more saddening and occasionally heartbreaking ones, only because those are the ones that I seem to carry with me. But I'm conscious of that and will try to bring along some positive ones as well--because there are a lot of them, I promise.

Read on. //

Tiny Botswana Story #5

We recently got another Peace Corps Volunteer at the Senior Secondary (High) School in my area. He has been writing letters to students to help them practice their English. One student told him about some medical issues she has been having, specifically vaginal discharge since over 5 years back. Upon sitting in a health class recently where they were learning about STIs, she realized the symptoms she had been experiencing were not commonplace. It turned out she had an untreated STI. She did not know the source of the infection, only that it had been plaguing her for so long. At the urging of the Peace Corps Volunteer, she phoned her mother to try and find some answers. As it turns out, her grandmother had suspected witchcraft in their home and had brought in a man to have sexual intercourse with the virginal young girl as a way to combat it. Years of suffering were clarified that day. But it still breaks my heart that it took so long for her to know that truth. And it will undoubtedly take her even longer to come to terms with it, if she ever can. 

Tiny Botswana Story #4

One of the nurses here at the clinic is attempting to get Master’s degree through the internet. The university she is using is based somewhere in India, despite the fact that it has the word “Americana” in the title. For the first few months she was enrolled in the course, she would come to me frustrated and seeking help on how to download her assignments and modules from the clinic computer with internet (and also with a ton of viruses). It's a whole lot of school work that she had to do each week on top of working full-time at the clinic. If she falls behind, she 's pretty much done. 

Unfortunately, on her personal computer she didn’t have any Microsoft Office products, and none of the files were opening despite my attempts to download other off-brand typing programs and PDF readers. We eventually found a way around this by converting the assignments to PDFs and transferring them on a CD to her computer, but every few weeks she has to be connected to reliable internet to take an exam. That means she spends her own money to go to Maun (a 6-7 hour bus ride away) to use an internet café with ridiculously slow internet to take an exam at a very specific and uninterrupted time. And sometimes the cafes are inexplicably closed or the internet isn't working.

 A few weeks ago, she ended up having to purchase her own internet data to use on a dongle (like a USB personal hot spot using the cell phone network). I know for a fact that purchasing enough data to use for a few hours of test writing is anything but cheap. I’ve watched and listened to her struggle and persevere in ways that I don’t know that I would have the strength to do. The barriers she has to overcome to further her education are large and discouraging. She still has several months left in her program (maybe over a year?), but at least she knows I'm rooting for her. 

Tiny Botswana Story #3

Yesterday my co-worker and I went on home visits to do contact tracing with the co-workers for someone who has Tuberculosis. That means giving health education about TB and also investigating whether or not any of the co-workers have symptoms of TB. This particular person is very infectious and has only been on treatment for three days (the first two weeks of treatment the patient is still very contagious). 

On the way back we went to visit a few patients at their homes, as the health educators here often do. We entered the yard of a man who is a psych patient at the clinic. We found he wasn’t home, there were only young kids at the house unattended. My co-worker told me this morning that the psychiatric patient was actually home and in the house, and a couple hours after we were looking for him to check-in, he went into the bush and hanged himself with a soft wire. His mother found him later in the afternoon yesterday.

Psychiatric support at home and at the medical facilities in this country is severely lacking. There is one psychiatric hospital in the very southern-most corner of the country where all of the resources are for the most part. We have a psych nurse at my clinic who has just arrived, but the problem is the patients rarely come and see him. There’s never transport for him to follow-up with the patients, so as a result they often don’t get the help they need through counseling or medications. Occurrences like this are not uncommon.

Holiday Video Blog!

I made a video for the holidays to send out to family and friends to show a little bit about my life here. Sorry it's a little late to the blog, but I hope you enjoy!

(or see it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz1X0pTNqCQ)

Finding Love in Botswana

We closed the camp with an activity where I gave each of the four teams yarn the color of their team. Each person wrapped the yarn around their wrist a few times, said a goal they have for themselves out loud, and then passed the yarn to another person on their team. At the end, everyone was connected through a web. They cut the yarn and tied it around their wrist to serve as a reminder of camp and the goals they set for themselves. 

I have recently finished running a four-day camp for about 65 kids ranging from ages 12 to 20 living with HIV in my district. All of these children were infected with HIV by their mothers or in some rare instances, an HIV positive female who breastfed them. Botswana has come a long way in preventing mother to child transmission (PMTCT), and today the transmission rate is now around 2%. However, there was a long period of time where this wasn’t the case. Unfortunately, these 65 kids are really only a fraction of the kids living with HIV in my area, let alone in Botswana as a whole.

Camp was held at Tsodilo Hills, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was something of an emotional rollercoaster for those few days, as there were many, many challenges in working with the host country nationals. Everything from facilitators disappearing from sessions they were supposed to help lead, to the supplies officer ignoring the menu we provided and instead buying random quantities of other foods. But I won’t bore you with them here, I promise. Things were mildly chaotic and incredibly frustrating at times. But I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

I realized during the camp that this was perhaps the first time that these children could be so completely open and free about their status. They didn’t have to harbor any fear of rejection or stigma, because they were among peers experiencing the same thing. In the morning and evening every half hour we would announce the time and shout, “If you take your pills at this time, go and take them!” They would run off together in groups and take their meds. No hiding, no self-conscious glances, just companionship. I think this was one of the best gifts they received during those few days.

This is Mphande, the Health Education Assistant at the clinic.

At the camp, we did lots of activities and had several sessions with the kids to cover topics such as HIV/AIDS basics, Adherence, Sex and Sexuality, Love and Relationships, Self-Esteem, and Leadership/Communication Building. The days were long and the weather was excessively hot, but it was productive nonetheless. Some of the sessions were difficult to engage the kids in, as students here are often discouraged from speaking out and sharing their own unique opinions. But those sessions were countered with awkward laughing and conversing when I instructed them in condom demonstrations on a very strange-looking hand-carved wooden penis model. One boy ran up to me holding two hard-boiled eggs and said, “Look, these can be the testes!” I was both thoroughly amused and impressed with his comprehension of the male anatomy.

Other sessions were more serious. One afternoon was filled with intimate discussions of healthy disclosure and stigma among the kids. There were some tears shed and some truths spoken. A few of the girls, for example, don’t think they will ever be able to get married or have children because of their status. Several others told stories of classmates who disclosed their status to the whole of their school, leaving them stigmatized and feeling incredibly vulnerable. This exchange of stories and realities was an invaluable part of the whole camp. It’s not something that can necessarily be evaluated on a pre- or post-test or reported on my quarterly Peace Corps report…it’s not something that can really be measured at all. But then again, the most important things rarely are.

Personally, one of my favorite parts of the camp was getting to form stronger relationships with the kids who come to my Shakawe Teen Club meetings. I have such a deep love for these teens…so much so that it sort of took me off guard. I’m really good at compartmentalizing some of the stronger emotional aspects of being here. The loneliness, the frustration. Because if I let myself feel these things too deeply, I probably won’t last here. Maybe I’ve developed a thick skin, or maybe it’s something else. But these kids have managed to burrow into the deep recesses of my emotional caves. The bonds I’m forming with them provide me with so much comfort, and I can’t exactly explain why. Maybe that’s just what love does. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t found that kind of love here until this past weekend. But to love in this way is the core of who I am. And somehow, through this thicket of constant cultural adjustment and personal vulnerability, I have found love in Botswana.