Christmas in Goodhope

CHRISTMAS IN GOODHOPE

            Being away from home on Christmas was something we were approached with some apprehension.  It is a holiday that we always celebrated with our family and with our friends in Manchester.  As is typical of New England, we decorated our home with a live balsam tree and ornaments collected over the years.  We placed lights in the windows, wreaths on the doors and Christmas knick-knacks all over the house.  Snow would usually make an appearance, adding atmosphere to the festivities.

            It couldn’t be more different in Goodhope.  First of all, December 25^th occurs just after the summer solstice.  With at least some rain under our belts, the grassland is green and the scattered thorn trees are full of leaves.  Most days are (at least in part) hot and brilliantly sunny.  Second, there is not nearly enough to remind us of the season.  There are advertising circulars enclosed in newspapers urging people to buy furniture and electronics for “the festive season” as it is called here.  Some stores sport tinsel and plastic tree decorations.  But that is about it.

            There is no Christmas tree tradition here (not surprisingly) and apparently no practice of exchanging gifts or holding parties.  Children are home on summer break, and parents often take vacation days at this time of year.  Like Europe, Botswana observes the day after Christmas and the day after New Year’s as additional holidays.

            We thought that at least in church there would be some signs of the season.  Last Sunday’s gospel was traditional Advent stuff: the angel visiting Mary and Elizabeth.  But nowhere in sight was an Advent wreath, manger scene, garlands or poinsettias.  We don’t know enough Setswana to determine if the hymns were seasonal, but it didn’t seem like it.

            That didn’t stop us.  Stephanie cut small branches off of a nearby thorn tree that has fir-like leaves.  She arranged the branches in a large teapot, and then decorated them with improvised ornaments.  I cut out paper snowflakes to add to the effect.  We displayed the tree on our coffee table.  We also bought two small plastic garlands to hang on the wall.

            On December 23rd, one of our fellow volunteers came to stay with us for two nights.  She brought precious gifts: Parmesan cheese from Gaborone and videos to watch.  We were joined on Christmas Eve day by two more volunteers who stopped by.  We shared good food and conversation.   Christmas Eve, we watched White Christmas on our friend’s laptop.  On Christmas morning, we opened presents: Stephanie received a box in the mail from her friend.  It contained many magazines and, even better, Reese’s pieces.    

            That is not to say that we were devoid of contact from family and friends.  Some emails found their way to us in the days before Christmas.  Our daughter and son called us several times.  On Christmas Eve, they attended the annual neighborhood get together.  Our son read a message that Stephanie had written for the group.  Our daughter video recorded the occasion and sent it along to us.  On Christmas day, they exchanged gifts at our daughter’s place, then traveled to my brother’s place for dinner.  

            We did attend one traditional Botswana Christmas afternoon event in Goodhope.  As in the rest of Botswana, community choirs perform outdoors in a sort of competition that day.  Each choir has maybe 50 members.  They wear matching outfits (matching polo shirts and pants, for instance).  They harmonize many songs a capella and perform dancing or swaying routines as they sing.  A few of the songs are religious (but not Christmas oriented).  Most are traditional Setswana tunes with lyrics that talk about farming and marriage and other day-to-day topics.  The quality of the singing was excellent.  Friends and family come to watch, and it becomes are lively affair.  We understand that these choirs perform again on New Year’s Day, and we will be out to watch again.

Our Health

OUR HEALTH

            Since we told people back home about our decision to join the Peace Corps, most congratulated us, although everyone expressed some concern about us maintaining our health overseas, particularly in Africa.  To date, we remain relatively healthy, thank you very much.

            Peace Corps is very much concerned about our health.  We had to undergo several medical and dental exams before departure, and we had to prove that we had current resistance to various diseases, like polio, measles and mumps.  We had to be current on all recommended procedures for our age, like (ahem) colonoscopies.  Our physician, Neil Markwith, and our dentist, Richard Vachon, cooperated to the nth degree with all of the forms and reports needed.

            During training in Kanye, we received a number of briefings from Peace Corps Botswana’s full time physician and nurse on a variety of topics.  We learned about self-treatment for the most common afflictions that affect volunteers, diarrhea being tops on the list.  We got to see a power point presentation on STDs, complete with graphic photos.  We learned about food safety and the risks of eating uncooked vegetables and dairy products that use unpasteurized milk.  We had a lengthy session on malaria and another session on other parasites, including schistosomiasis, colloquially referred to as “schisto”.   Since our class of volunteers is all assigned in the southern half of Botswana, we are in a malaria-free zone and so do not need to take anti-malarials except when we travel.  We each received a medical kit which includes everything from two diarrhea treatments to wound dressings to topical disinfectants to, yes, condoms.  We received no training at all on poisonous snakes, which reflects the low nature of that threat here.

              Also during training, we received a number of inoculations against various conditions including rabies, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and meningitis (we also got a yellow fever shot before leaving home). 

            We get good medical care here, and it is all free.  We will get a medical and dental exam after one year of service.  We can call or SMS the Botswana Peace Corps medical office to discuss any medical problem we may be facing.  In emergencies, we can call the doctor or nurse any time of the day or night.  If we need to be seen, then we generally are expected to travel to Gaborone.  Some conditions can be diagnosed over the phone and arrangements made to deliver a prescription to us.  In emergencies, we are told to speak with a medical officer before going to a local clinic or hospital.  Some medical facilities meet Peace Corps guidelines and some do not.  Our local hospital passes muster for emergencies, but we are expected to deal with our Peace Corps medical staff otherwise.  In case we need hospitalization, we may be evacuated to facilities in Pretoria, South Africa, or even to Washington, DC.

            So how have we been feeling?  I have had two colds since I arrived.  Each one eventually settled in my chest, where it remained for a week or more.  The medical office supplied me with an expectorant, which helped.  Stephanie inherited my second cold, and it also settled in her chest.  She has now just gotten over it.  The extreme dry weather here seems to affect the course of a cold.  Stephanie also had some diarrhea a couple of weeks ago.  I did not get it, which is interesting because we eat pretty much the same food.  We have speculated on what food likely caused her ailment.  She thinks it was a Russian (a popular type of hot dog from South Africa) served on a bun.  We bought it from a vendor at our local bus rank.  He was cooking them on a gas grill.  But I think she may have gotten it from feta cheese (a real rarity here) that I bought at a somewhat upscale supermarket on a trip to Lobatse.  I had to bring it home on a one-hour mini-bus ride on a really hot day.

            So, it seems likely that we are going to be able to survive here just fine.  By the way, the leading cause of death of Peace Corps volunteers is – traffic accidents.  To curb that, Peace Corps instituted 20+ years ago a no driving/no car ownership/no motorbike ownership policy.  The volunteer death rate supposedly plummeted as a result.  That means we are reliant largely upon public transportation, like most people here.  This is a big country (the size of Nevada, with only two million people) so there are few vehicles on the road.  Public transport will be the subject of another blog entry.

Pula (Rain) For Real

PULA (RAIN) FOR REAL

            The rains have finally come.  Over the past couple of weeks, most days include at least a brief period of rain.  There is a collective sigh of relief from everyone, since most families (even those with a white collar breadwinner) have a cattle post and some also have “lands” on which they grow grains for cash.  These rains should serve to replenish the ground water that supplies drinking water to villages throughout the country via a modern system of bore holes (wells) and networks of pipes.  The rains also mean that the skies are partly cloudy to cloudy each day, which keeps the temperature down somewhat.  We are told that December last year lacked rain, which triggered a poor growing season followed by shortages of drinking water.  The rainy season should last more or less through March.  Then there will be no real rain again until the following November.

            It is interesting to see that “city people” – folks with good paying desk jobs – are now taking vacation leave from work to spend time at their family’s cattle post or lands.  These tend to be located in remote areas several kilometers or maybe tens of kilometers outside of their home village.  At the cattle post there are calves to be branded and herds to be prepared for breeding season starting in January.  The “lands” must be plowed and then planted with maize or sorghum or perhaps vegetables.  Some people have complained to me that their “lands” are not properly fenced, meaning that grazing cattle and goats could devour any seedlings.  Sorghum is also a challenge, because the seeds are favorites snacks for birds.  Apparently live and dummy scarecrows are a requirement.

            We traveled by khombi (mini-bus) last Thursday to Lobatse for shopping.  On the way, we noticed that the grazing land/bush had suddenly become green and that open fields were newly plowed.  Lobatse, we have discovered, is a community that has an urban feel to it, with a bustling downtown filled with shops selling everything from electronics to furniture to fresh fruits and vegetables.  Yet the signs of plowing season were everywhere.  Men drove aging Ford farm tractors up and down the main street, heading from their homes out to their lands.

            Lobatse is also interesting because you can see a few white faces among the crowd.  There are Afrikaaner farmers who own and live on some larger parcels in various parts of Botswana, including in our southeastern corner close to the South Africa border.  Some people engage in stereotypes about the Afrikaaners.  We only see the farmers, and they seem to be an earthy bunch who operate successful farming operations.  Botswana’s minister of agriculture is an Afrikaaner with an agricultural background.  And many of the agricultural terms used in Botswana are Afrikaans words.  For instance, the soil around here is called “hardveld”, meaning a compacted type of sandy loam.

            About a week ago on a Saturday, Stephanie and I needed to get to a Peace Corps meeting in Kanye.  We waited for a while for a khombi headed in that direction, but there are not so many khombis driving through Goodhope on weekends. We ended up hitching a ride part of the way with a young Afrikaaner couple.  They were no older than 30.  They were driving from their home in South Africa to some family lands near Goodhope.  They were going to begin plowing.

            I may have mentioned this before, but the motto that appears on the seal of the Republic of Botswana reads simply “PULA”, or rain.  It is also a word regularly shouted at the end of speeches to rally a crowd.  In a largely arid country, it makes sense that what is most lacking is also what is most precious.  

Go a Fisa! (It's Burning Hot!)

GO A FISA! (IT’S BURNING HOT!)

            Just our luck.  Right after arriving in Goodhope, we start the biggest heat wave so far.  It got up to 40 degrees (104 degrees F) for several days.  Of course it’s a dry heat, but it is little comfort without a fridge.  We coped by using the Pineware (Chinese) fan we bought at Saaz general dealer, a mere seven-minute walk from our home.  Without a fridge, we trekked to Saaz daily to buy a Coke in the afternoon.  It turns out that some items can survive for days without refrigeration, like eggs and vegetables.  All of our milk is uht (ultra-heat treated), meaning that it can remain on the shelf for weeks and requires refrigeration only after opening.

            Then, after five days of unrelieved heat, Stephanie’s Kenya Peace Corps colleague, Brent Schaeffer, showed up from his Gaborone home with his long time Batswana wife, Mpopo, and, more important, a mini-fridge.  Never before has a hotel sized bar fridge seemed so wonderful.  They lent us their upstairs mini-fridge for the duration until the Ministry of Education could get its act together to deliver us our allocated fridge. 

            With the mini-fridge, we could store meat and partially eaten dinners.  We could keep some drinks cold.  It made the heat wave a bit more manageable.  Which was helpful, since we tried to make a good impression during our first week in Goodhope.  I have a short five-minute walk to school from home, but Stephanie has a thirty minute walk, across a sunbaked, treeless landscape.  Luckily, the graduating classes had finished their exams and exited school, and it was the last week in school for the undergraduates.  The teachers were correcting the prior week’s exams for these students, and the students were performing busy work and cleaning up in their classrooms.  Stephanie enjoyed a girls’ empowerment rally for her fourth form girls, complete with speakers and music.  I befriended the IT staffer at my school, and he promised to help me get internet access from my school’s computer classroom (with the help of Windows XP machines). 

            Each of us were introduced to our student bodies at respective assemblies.  We had been given traditional Setswana names by our host family mother back in Kanye, and those names are the ones that our schools want to use for us.  I am Kabo, which means gift, and Stephanie is Gorata, which means to love.  The students giggled with pleasure at assembly to learn our names (the boys in my school have nicknamed me “KB” already).  But we realize that we need to be given the appropriate respect and hence we need to be called by our surnames, and that will be a task for us when the new school year begins in January. 

            As the week progressed, we decided that we needed to explore more of Goodhope.  So we ventured over to the post office.  Unfortunately, this village is spread out over several kilometers, and nothing is clustered together.  From our house, the post office is a 40-minute walk.  As some consolation, the post office is quite entrepreneurial.  It both sells cell phone airtime (we all have pre-paid cell phones, so we constantly need to top up our minutes) and it runs an internet café – ten Pula for an hour of internet access.

            As our first week of work ended, clouds approached in the late afternoon, pouring down showers on the parched and heated plain.  The rain allowed various bugs to emerge from the ground, including glossy black millipedes, dung beetles, five-inch long grasshoppers and fuzzy orange-red ladybug-like creatures.

Coming Home to Goodhope

COMING HOME TO GOODHOPE

            On Friday, November 16^th, a driver and a representative from Stephanie’s school drove to Kanye and picked us up along with all our accumulated belongings.  We traveled south from Kanye and its hills.  The land began to flatten out and the lands became more obviously devoted to grazing cattle and, occasionally, growing maize or sorghum.  After driving south for 70 km we turned east on a connector road for another 10km and into Goodhope.

            There wasn’t much to see from the connector road.  We turned left into what we thought led into the center of the village.  While it was wide and rimmed with street lights, there wasn’t much along the roadside.  We passed a police station compound (including bungalows for the police staff), we passed a very new and attractive clinic and then we approached Goodhope Senior Secondary School, Stephanie’s home base for the next two years.  It is a massive campus serving 2400 students in only two grades: fourth and fifth forms (11^th and 12^th grades) and only open to students who pass their leaving exam after third form.  There are fewer than fifty such schools in the country, and Goodhope is one of the newest, opened in 2008.  Like many senior schools in Botswana, it is a boarding school, with about 90% of the students living in hostels (dormitories) on campus.  The faculty live on campus in bungalows or townhomes.  The school offers many facilities for the students.

            After a short visit with the school head, we popped in at my home base for the next two years, Lotlamoreng Junior Secondary School.  This is a non-boarding school of about 550 students serving forms 1, 2 and 3 (8^th through 10^th grades) in the Goodhope area.  It features a series of smaller one story classroom blocks spread around a campus compound of well-tended red dirt and assorted trees.  The agriculture program’s goats wander about the edge of campus.  There are bungalows to house the school’s faculty.

            After this whirlwind tour, we proceeded on to our own home.  Peace Corps and the host community decided to place us in a house in the village, and not on one or the other school’s compound.  Partly this was to integrate us better into the community: living on a school compound can be isolating. 

            Our home is a one story stucco bungalow of apparently recent construction.  It fronts on a dirt path but backs up onto the paved driveway leading to the police station compound.  It has a newly painted tan exterior with a green tiled roof.  The windows are metal framed casements.  We are on a fenced and gated lot of maybe 100 by 100 meters.  The yard features red dirt landscaping.  We overlook a flat expanse of dirt and grass upon which goats, donkeys and chickens graze during the day.  There are other small homes in the distance, and the closest of them belongs to a family that spends most of the time in Jwaneng, where the husband works in the diamond mine.  Our lot, in other words, is relatively private.

            When we got inside our new home, we found a mix of furniture left by the landlord along with some furniture delivered to us by the Ministry of Education (which is supposed to fully furnish our accommodations).  The gas stove was among the items delivered, but no refrigerator.  The house did come with electricity (not all the volunteers get that), running hot and cold water (another optional feature for volunteers) and a bathroom with a bathtub and toilet (ditto).  We have two bedrooms as well.  There is a third bedroom, but the landlord has stored and locked  furniture there.  The Ministry failed to supply us with bureaus or wardrobes, an issue for us since we have no closets here.  The walls are painted and the floors have large glossy tiles.

            Despite some rumors, Goodhope has general dealers (smaller food and supply stores) but no supermarkets.  Thus we needed to shop immediately for food to eat.  Later that day our driver drove us 15 km to Pitsane, the location of the nearest supermarket.  It turned out to be a nice, clean, well-stocked Choppie’s, which should be able to serve most of our needs over the next two years.  We will be able to get there and back by khombi (mini-bus) from Goodhope (remember, we are strictly not allowed to own vehicles).

            After returning from shopping, our first task was to unpack and pile onto the floor the contents of our suitcases and bags of home purchases.  Stephanie set herself to cleaning the kitchen (which needed a lot of work).  Still, after our home stay, it felt like a luxury to live with a kitchen that contained a sink (double!) and a long kitchen counter for preparing meals. 

            Over the next several days, we have made other small improvements to make our stay here more accommodating.  More details on that to come.