Maitengwe village is located 50km north of Tutume village, which serves as the headquarters of the Tutume Sub District. Tutume village itself is located 100km northwest of the city of Francis Town. The village has an estimated population of 7,194 people according to the 2001 census. It has as junior secondary school, three primary schools, fully fledged clinic with a maternity wing, and a number of retail outlets and food shops with tomatoes, onions, meat, pumpkin, milk, yogurt, juice and shelf food.
The first two days I scrubbed the walls and floors of my house and unpacked. On Sunday afternoon I decided it was time to venture out and meet people and to get a breath of fresh air. I met an older school girl so has big ambitions of becoming a lawyer and she was fluent in English. We chatted about HIV education in her school and she shared her knowledge of what she had learned. She also taught me a few words in Kalanga and mostly laughed at my pronunciation.
The first day at work the community volunteers welcomed me with open arms with tea and breakfast. PCVd are supposed to take two months to integrate into their communities by learning the local language and completing our community assessment, but instead I had to meet a proposal deadline by the end of the week. The organization that I am working with does not have a nickel to their name and the project is more or less just surviving. I had to go to the Social and Community Development (S&CD) office in Tutume to go through the bureaucratic processes of submitting a proposal and getting a compassionate social worker to endorse a letter of support for the proposal as quickly as possible (donors will not accept a proposal without an endorsement letter from an authorized social council).
The second week was filled with feelings of homesickness, loneliness, diarrhea and inflamed bowels, you name it. The hardest feeling is the feeling of thinking that I will not make a difference in the lives of these people so what is the point? One minute you feel inspired and the next minute you feel helpless, frustrated and completely disoriented. The moment that I feel frustrated is when I remind myself that I am not here for my own personal benefit; but that I am here to serve the poor and help build the capacity of this community in their fights against HIV/AIDS. There are extreme high and low feelings; the low being extremely low and they are awful. You cannot feel true happiness unless you can feel true sadness.
Botswana is a really pretty country. Most people think of Botswana has desert with not much in it when actually there is plenty to see. The country covers an area of 581,730 square kilometers, roughly to size of France or Texas. The vast, flat Kalahari Desert covers more than 70 percent of the country. The ecosystem has gently undulating sandy plans covered by bush and grass dominate the landscape, while rocky outcrops, valleys, salt pans, acacia woodlands, and Mophane forest. The Okavango, one of Southern Africa’s longest rivers, flows into Botswana from the northwest. It fans out into a huge wetland, covering 16,800 kilometers and eventually seeps into the desert. 17 percent of land has been set aside for national parks and game reserves while a further 21 percent surrounding these areas has been designated for wildlife management. Chobe National Park has the largest elephant concentration in the world with an estimated 45,000 elephants.
Last week I went to Gabarone, the capital city, to attend the National Child Care Forum. It a crash course in training on how organizations, international donors and local governments work in Botswana. The forum discussed the global perspective of orphans and vulnerable children worldwide, Botswana’s National Response to the Orphans Crisis, local youth programs, licensing of child care projects, youth rehabilitation services, child labor, child rights, early childhood development, child abuse, the roles of donors in enabling quality community based child care, and last but not least, district level planning and coordination. There were 150 organizations and a total of 250 people. It was a very informative conference that I wrote the Peace Corps Country Director to advocate that the NGO and Social and Community Development (S&CD) PCVs receive training on the above topics from the Department of Social Services.
Before the conference I met my mom for two days. We went on a short game drive at Mokolodi Nature Reserve. We got to pet a cheetah! It purred so loud, I scratched his ears and put it too sleep. Cheetahs are so
regal and gentle. We also saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, kudu, and tons of wart hogs. We mostly just chatted at the lodge and got caught up with issues back home. I noticed that my pace in life has changed being around another American. My mom kept on asking, “What time is the driver coming? What time is it? What time did you call? When is he going to call back?” I was not worried and just wanted to live in the moment. “The Westerners have the watches but the Africans got the time”. Peace Corps teaches you to live in faith; faith that things will be alright and that your community will accept you and that you will be happy in your new environment—they couldn’t have been more right.
My house has two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, front porch and a hallway type kitchen. It’s a really nice new home with electricity and hot water. I live in my counterpart’s compound that has a main house, small huts, granaries and a garden. The compound is gated so it is very safe and private. There is a servant who cooks, cleans, and gardens for my counterpart but I just stay to myself accept when she is cooking topi which is pounded millet and melon cooked to a thick porridge with sour milk drizzled on top. The servant-type life style is normal for most Africans but sometimes it amazes me how Africans can treat other Africans. My host father is a very respectful and intelligent but he can YELL! When his porridge isn’t cooked on time in the morning, then he’s constantly shouting, this is when I pop my head out and say, “Dumelani Tati, Wamuka Tjini?” meaning-hello father, how are you in Sekalanga. It’s my way of saying, “is it really necessary to yell for porridge (pap) every single morning?” He is a man of politics so I give him all my Newsweek magazines and sometimes we talk about the politics of Botswana and globalization. My host parents have a great marriage, I can tell when my host mom leaves for funerals or business that he misses her. They are models for the rest of their community in regards to family, marriage and responsible citizenship.
I don’t have to worry about someone breaking in my house which is a huge relief since other volunteers don’t have that protection. I do have to be careful who I talk to because there are desperate Zimbabweans roaming around in the village and they are the reasons behind most of the petty crime in Botswana. Another volunteer in Tutume was sexually harassed and was transferred just last week. Typically in the urban areas PCVs encounter more harassment and unwanted attention. Volunteers are happier in the bush because they learn more language and have the ‘traditional’ Peace Corps experience.
The first two days I scrubbed the walls and floors of my house and unpacked. On Sunday afternoon I decided it was time to venture out and meet people and to get a breath of fresh air. I met an older school girl so has big ambitions of becoming a lawyer and she was fluent in English. We chatted about HIV education in her school and she shared her knowledge of what she had learned. She also taught me a few words in Kalanga and mostly laughed at my pronunciation.
The first day at work the community volunteers welcomed me with open arms with tea and breakfast. PCVd are supposed to take two months to integrate into their communities by learning the local language and completing our community assessment, but instead I had to meet a proposal deadline by the end of the week. The organization that I am working with does not have a nickel to their name and the project is more or less just surviving. I had to go to the Social and Community Development (S&CD) office in Tutume to go through the bureaucratic processes of submitting a proposal and getting a compassionate social worker to endorse a letter of support for the proposal as quickly as possible (donors will not accept a proposal without an endorsement letter from an authorized social council).
The second week was filled with feelings of homesickness, loneliness, diarrhea and inflamed bowels, you name it. The hardest feeling is the feeling of thinking that I will not make a difference in the lives of these people so what is the point? One minute you feel inspired and the next minute you feel helpless, frustrated and completely disoriented. The moment that I feel frustrated is when I remind myself that I am not here for my own personal benefit; but that I am here to serve the poor and help build the capacity of this community in their fights against HIV/AIDS. There are extreme high and low feelings; the low being extremely low and they are awful. You cannot feel true happiness unless you can feel true sadness.
Botswana is a really pretty country. Most people think of Botswana has desert with not much in it when actually there is plenty to see. The country covers an area of 581,730 square kilometers, roughly to size of France or Texas. The vast, flat Kalahari Desert covers more than 70 percent of the country. The ecosystem has gently undulating sandy plans covered by bush and grass dominate the landscape, while rocky outcrops, valleys, salt pans, acacia woodlands, and Mophane forest. The Okavango, one of Southern Africa’s longest rivers, flows into Botswana from the northwest. It fans out into a huge wetland, covering 16,800 kilometers and eventually seeps into the desert. 17 percent of land has been set aside for national parks and game reserves while a further 21 percent surrounding these areas has been designated for wildlife management. Chobe National Park has the largest elephant concentration in the world with an estimated 45,000 elephants.
Last week I went to Gabarone, the capital city, to attend the National Child Care Forum. It a crash course in training on how organizations, international donors and local governments work in Botswana. The forum discussed the global perspective of orphans and vulnerable children worldwide, Botswana’s National Response to the Orphans Crisis, local youth programs, licensing of child care projects, youth rehabilitation services, child labor, child rights, early childhood development, child abuse, the roles of donors in enabling quality community based child care, and last but not least, district level planning and coordination. There were 150 organizations and a total of 250 people. It was a very informative conference that I wrote the Peace Corps Country Director to advocate that the NGO and Social and Community Development (S&CD) PCVs receive training on the above topics from the Department of Social Services.
Before the conference I met my mom for two days. We went on a short game drive at Mokolodi Nature Reserve. We got to pet a cheetah! It purred so loud, I scratched his ears and put it too sleep. Cheetahs are so
regal and gentle. We also saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, kudu, and tons of wart hogs. We mostly just chatted at the lodge and got caught up with issues back home. I noticed that my pace in life has changed being around another American. My mom kept on asking, “What time is the driver coming? What time is it? What time did you call? When is he going to call back?” I was not worried and just wanted to live in the moment. “The Westerners have the watches but the Africans got the time”. Peace Corps teaches you to live in faith; faith that things will be alright and that your community will accept you and that you will be happy in your new environment—they couldn’t have been more right.My house has two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, front porch and a hallway type kitchen. It’s a really nice new home with electricity and hot water. I live in my counterpart’s compound that has a main house, small huts, granaries and a garden. The compound is gated so it is very safe and private. There is a servant who cooks, cleans, and gardens for my counterpart but I just stay to myself accept when she is cooking topi which is pounded millet and melon cooked to a thick porridge with sour milk drizzled on top. The servant-type life style is normal for most Africans but sometimes it amazes me how Africans can treat other Africans. My host father is a very respectful and intelligent but he can YELL! When his porridge isn’t cooked on time in the morning, then he’s constantly shouting, this is when I pop my head out and say, “Dumelani Tati, Wamuka Tjini?” meaning-hello father, how are you in Sekalanga. It’s my way of saying, “is it really necessary to yell for porridge (pap) every single morning?” He is a man of politics so I give him all my Newsweek magazines and sometimes we talk about the politics of Botswana and globalization. My host parents have a great marriage, I can tell when my host mom leaves for funerals or business that he misses her. They are models for the rest of their community in regards to family, marriage and responsible citizenship.
I don’t have to worry about someone breaking in my house which is a huge relief since other volunteers don’t have that protection. I do have to be careful who I talk to because there are desperate Zimbabweans roaming around in the village and they are the reasons behind most of the petty crime in Botswana. Another volunteer in Tutume was sexually harassed and was transferred just last week. Typically in the urban areas PCVs encounter more harassment and unwanted attention. Volunteers are happier in the bush because they learn more language and have the ‘traditional’ Peace Corps experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment