Site Selection

Site Selection

            On Friday of last week, we learned the location of our site for the next two years.  It is Good Hope, a village near the south east corner of Botswana, close to the South Africa border.  We assume that the name is derived from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.  It is the regional center of an intensive farming area (grain and goats, we understand).  There may be Afrikaaner farmers in the vicinity.  The village has a large regional senior secondary school (2400 in grades 11 and 12) which houses a number of boarding students who live too far from home to commute.  We understand that there is at least one supermarket in town, and that there is a larger shopping village not too far away (and yet another one across the border in South Africa).

            The site announcement was greeted with much anticipation, since it seals our fate for our Peace Corps experience.  We knew that all of our group of 34 would be located in three southern districts of the country.  Most of them are in the relatively populous southeastern corner, with the rest in the Kalahari.  Those moving to the Kalahari will have to learn Sekgalagadi, the locally spoken language.  Luckily it is close to Setswana.  The schools teach only in Setswana (early grades) and English.

            To make the announcement festive, our staff decorated the room with balloons and supplied supersized cookies, lollipops and Coca-Cola ready for each of us.  There was a big map of Botswana at the front of the room, with pins for the location of the existing 100 or so volunteers currently serving.  When our names were called, we received a piece of paper with the location of our assignment, some of the issues associated with the location, and the reason we were selected for it.  Stephanie and I were called up together to receive our assignment.  We were each handed pins with our names on them, and we pinned the locations on the big map.

            The Peace Corps country director took us aside later to explain some of the challenges and opportunities that this selection offers us.  Since it is a regional center, there may be more options for us.  We think that we will be housed within the village itself.  The other option is the secondary school compound, which includes modern housing for the teachers.  Since it is on the edge of town, in a gated compound, we think it makes more sense for us to live in town. 

            On Monday and Tuesday of this week, all of us travel in vans to the capital, Gaborone, for a conference to meet with our counterpart and our supervisor in our host communities.  While we will have the opportunity to work with many people, our official contacts will be these two people.  We look forward to meeting with them, to finding out more about Good Hope and our role in it.  We will move there on November 16^th, the day after we are sworn in as volunteers.

Shadowing

Shadowing

            Halfway through training, Peace Corps sends all of us off for four days to stay in the field with Peace Corps volunteers.  The main idea is to let us see up close what volunteers actually do for work, how they live and how they cope with stresses.  The hope is also that we will learn to navigate transportation around Botswana without the luxury of private vehicles.

            First, on the transportation front, we had a training session on what to expect.  The staff performed a great skit about the chaos involving travel by bus, including hawkers coming on board to sell food and drink to long haul passengers at major bus stops, mothers depositing babies on empty laps of other passengers, and Batswana closing bus windows despite sweltering heat inside the bus.  Staff also stopped picking us up in vans near our home stays.  They had previously taken us to the education center every morning, sort of like school children.  Now, we have to find our way there on our own.  Some volunteers live nearby and can walk.  Others do not live nearby and still walk, which can be an hour or more each way.  We live far away, and have opted to share a taxi each morning with others living in our ward.

            Back to shadowing.  As a married couple, we were given the option to stay with the same volunteer or to travel separately.  We opted to travel separately.  Living together and attending class together six days a week is more than enough intimacy, so we looked forward to some time apart.  So, with some fanfare and with a big map of Botswana at the front of our classroom, one of our instructors informed each of us where we would be going.  It was exciting, since the 34 of us would be spreading out across the country.

            Stephanie was placed with a woman living in a small village several hours west of Kanye in the Kalahari desert.  I was placed in a small town eight hours north of Kanye not too far from the Okavango delta.  Because each of us had far to travel, we left Kanye in a van at 4:45 AM so that we could make the 6 AM buses leaving from the capital, Gaborone. 

            As we drove fast through the pre-dawn morning, the main animals alongside, and sometimes in the road were donkeys eating what little grass is available.  The night, it seems, belongs to donkeys.  Or it may be that donkeys are so stupid that they do not realize they should be sleeping at night.  We got to the bus rank in Gaborone with only a couple of minutes to spare. We each boarded separate buses to begin our shadowing adventure.

            Our buses were full and cramped.  They seat five across (three plus two) on narrow seats with little leg room.  At least my bus played videos and then a movie.  The buses are not air conditioned, so opening windows as the day wears on would seem to be important.  But many in this country believe that strong breezes are unhealthy, hence windows tend to stay shut.  I was able to do a little paperwork on the bus, but not much else.  Riding on a bus for hours on end can be mind numbing.  Hitch hiking is the preferred mode of travel in Botswana for volunteers, because the quality of the rides tends to be better, the price may be less, and it is almost always cheaper than riding on a bus.  We’ll see when we begin to hitch hike.  It is quite common here.

            Stephanie’s host resides in a village of 400 people, Morwamuso.  She lives in an even smaller house, a one room round mud walled house with a coned roof.  This is the traditional home shape in southern Africa, and it is known by its Afrikaan name, a rondeval.  This rondeval came with a gas stove and electricity, a couch and a double bed.  It lacked any plumbing.  Water is fetched from a stand pipe and faucet on the property.  Like most of Botswana, villages provide clean water piped to all properties with a standpipe connection at each house.  It is up to the owner, if he or she can afford it, to pipe in the water.  Stephanie’s host’s landlord has not opted to do so, therefore she must fetch water in buckets for cooking, cleaning and bathing (pronounced bath-ing here).  Then there is the matter of the toilet.  Most properties in Botswana still have outhouses (called rather indelicately, pit latrines), even those that now have indoor plumbing.  Here, the host uses the outhouse for all of her calls to nature. 

            Stephanie’s host is attached to a primary school, and Stephanie got to visit the school.  She also sat in on a meeting that the host conducted with the village kgosi (traditional chief) and others to discuss the initiation of a grassroots soccer program for children.

            My host lives in Rakops, a town large enough for a small hospital (really a big clinic), a couple of schools and government offices, and not much else in the way of substantial facilities.  He works with an HIV/AIDS support NGO, and also helps out in the local schools and the clinic assisting HIV patients (all infected Batswana receive free treatment for HIV, which can permit them to live indefinitely).

           

            Since Stephanie’s host lives in the Kalahari, it was to be expected that she would see sand.  It had a beachy color, but with finer grains.  Rakops was a surprise, however, since it is north of the Kalahari.  Its soil is a fine gray dust, what looked to me like moon dust.  Both locations are arid, so dust blows or is carried indoors regularly, and sweeping out the dust is a constant burden.  Our home stay back in Kanye also has an arid climate, but the soil here contains iron oxide and hence has a reddish hue.

            Both of our hosts worry about water, or the lack thereof.  Water would come out of the stand pipe only for a couple of hours per day, at indeterminate times.  This time last year (before the rainy – or the less arid – season begins), he went without water for three months.  My host had to get his water for cooking, cleaning and bathing from storage tanks at the hospital.  He had to haul his water by hand on a daily basis.  So far this year, he has been able to fill up his water jugs at least once per day.

            On the third day of my home stay, my host and I took a two hour bus ride up to Maun, the main tourist town on the edge of the wildlife rich Okavango delta.  The delta fills with water coming from rivers in Angola, and most of the water then evaporates over time in the dry heat of Botswana.  Meanwhile, the ample water attracts all sorts of wildlife.  I went on an all day game drive with other volunteers while in Maun. We saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, kudus, warthogs, impala, hippos, crocodile, etc.  No sign of lion or leopard on this trip, but there will be more.

            

Learning Setswana

Setswana Lessons

            Before our departure, we had understood that English was the official language of Botswana, that everyone spoke it, but that we would learn some Setswana (the major local language) so as to be able to integrate better.  That wasn’t quite the case.  Here in Kanye, the language of the streets is almost exclusively Setswana.  While education is conducted in English from about the third grade, people use their mother tongue for the most part.

            Television illustrates this.  In our host family home, the television receives only one channel: BTV, Botswana television, the only broadcast station in the country. (Many families – but not ours – also own a satellite dish, which receives channels from South Africa.  Some of our fellow volunteers are already hooked on a South African prime time soap opera entitled Generations).  BTV broadcasts the evening news in Setswana at 7 and in English at 8 (different anchors).  Talk shows and locally produced entertainment is mostly all broadcast in Setswana.  Other content, including cartoons and bad American sitcoms, are all broadcast in English.

            All of this has given some urgency for us to learn Setswana.  The urgency also comes in the form of our intensive language instruction, which includes one on one oral examinations and a requirement that we test at a “novice high” level in order to be sworn in as volunteers.  To learn, have been meeting in small groups at a host family home with our Setswana instructors several times a week.  We have homework and we are expected to practice with our host families.

            Needless to say, this has been a challenge.  Part of learning a language is learning its grammar, which is not hard for me.  The more important part is learning the vocabulary, which is hard to do for us older folks.  Setswana is a Bantu language, so it has nothing in common with most European languages.  Stephanie recognizes some words that are similar to Swahili (which she learned for Peace Corps in Kenya in 1973). Still, Swahili is a mixture of Arabic and (apparently) a Bantu language, so she really does not have much of an advantage. 

            Last Thursday, we had our first oral examination in Setswana, one on one.  Attached is a photo of me from that day heating up a cup of tea in the microwave of our classroom at the Kanye education center, surrounded by other nervous volunteers, just before we are to be called in to our individual exams.  Stephanie and I each think that we came through it reasonably well: not the highest, not the lowest.  There are a number of bright young volunteers in our group, some with prior experience in Kenya and in South Africa (where several million speak Setswana) and some with recent college experience absorbing exotic languages like Arabic.  They are more enthusiastic and more adept at picking up Setswana.  Watching them, it took us back many years to our own high school experiences learning a language.  Among them, there is some competition.

            We will all find out how well we did on our exams shortly.  We will then be re-sorted by ability into new small groups for Setswana classes.  Since some of our group will be placed deep into the Kgalahadi (Kalahari Desert), they will be place in groups to learn as well some Sekgalahadi, the local language spoken there, closely related to Setswana.  We are not likely headed out there, so we probably will not be placed in one of those groups.

Kgotla

Kgotla

            Botswana is a modern western style republic with a parliament and a president.  It is remarkable for Africa that Botswana has maintained since independence a well functioning government with good leaders and little corruption.  The result (with the help of diamond mining) is a society with a standard of living second highest in all of Africa.

            But Botswana decided to retain in place in its governance a feature of its earlier society.  Traditionally, each village had a chief, or kgosi (-osi with a throat clearing sound before it).  He was an older, supposedly wiser, man.  He ruled with the aid of other older men.  While the arrangement was not democratic, it was considered largely fair, particularly because Batswana (the people of Botswana) revere older people.

            In the Botswana constitution, the tradition of a village kgosi was retained.  The position is inherited.  The kgosi and the other older men form what is called a kgotla (-otla plus that throat clearing), a group of leaders and the place where they meet.  The kgotla performs some land use functions (where and what sort of new homes may be built), some civil court functions (claims for damages) and some family court functions (civil marriages, family disputes).  It also serves as a community center that leads the observance of holidays and ceremonial occasions.  It is more personal than the parallel elected village council and local government bureaucracy.  The largest cities do not have kgotla structures, although our current village of Kanye (with maybe 50,000 people) has a kgotla in each ward with one paramount kgotla village wide.

            Peace Corps wants us to work with the kgotla structure as well as the local civil authorities.  They recognize that the kgotla may represent the social backbone of a community.  Its apolitical nature may give it more moral authority.  I don’t know whether modern communications and the increasing reach of civil government will lead to a diminished structure of the kgotla, but that is something I will want to explore.

            Early on, we trainees all visited a kgotla meeting in the wards where we lived.  Last Sunday, we attended Botswana Independence Day festivities in our kgotla.  It included some speeches, singing and a dinner prepared for the 200 or so in attendance.  Our host family mother is very much involved in civic activities and is the treasurer of the kgotla (I think). 

            The kgotla building itself is made of open frame construction, with a thatched roof and with one side open to a large courtyard before it.  The concrete floor of the kgotla building contains a raised circle, being the symbolic village fire.  Placed before it were decorative baskets of maize and of sorghum with fancy animal pelts on the floor.

The women prepared the food a day in advance.  The kgosi donated a beef cattle, which was slaughtered the day before.  The carcass was boiled for hours, then the meat pounded off the bone using a mortar and pestle.  With some flavorings added, it tasted like pot roast.  We also had phaleche (maize meal that looks like mashed potatoes), cabbage and squash.

            Because we are guests, we were served first, along with the kgotla members.  Then the other adults, then the children were served last.  Everyone brought their own plates and utensils from home, and all were served cafeteria style. 

            The Peace Corps volunteers who were present were all introduced in the formal part of the festivities.  As an older, married man, I was asked to sit up at the front on a dais facing the people, along with the members of the kgotla.  I was forewarned of this, and so I wore coat and tie, similar to the business dress of my fellow monna mogolo (old men).  Apprently our appearance was appreciated.  My host family brother who accompanied us (and who sells cars in the capital) proclaimed me to be the boss of the kgotla.