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.