Two Years In

Two Years In

            We’ve been here in Botswana for more than two years. At this point, I’d say that we have met the Peace Corps expectation to become integrated into our community. People wave when either of us walks past. Strangers greet me by my Setswana name, Kabo. The clerk at the post office asks me how her son is doing in my math class. I run into students in church. The proprietor of the general dealer (corner store) tries to stock eggs and 2% milk for us. We think nothing of spending five hours participating in Botswana Independence Day festivities at the Goodhope kgotla (the village meeting place).

 

Stephanie leaving our local general dealer with bags full. If they don't have it, we don't get it.

           

My school choir performing during Independence Day festivities at the Kgotla

 Being integrated also means that I am less likely to take guff than I would have one or two years ago. One of my pet peeves is being called “lekgoa”, or “white person”. We are the only white people in Goodhope, so we certainly stand out. But I try to educate people to call me by name, and not by race. So I say “lekgoa le na le leina” which means “the lekgoa has a name”. That usually starts a conversation and leads to the other person addressing me as Kabo (if an adult) or Mr. Donovan (if a child). Fellow teachers at my school have told me to lighten up a bit, that lekgoa is usually meant as a compliment. But even so, as I see it, dwelling on racial characteristics focuses on just one feature of an individual, a feature that has a troubling past in much of Africa.

            There are many challenges to living in rural Botswana: the lack of water, sometimes for months on end, the limited food options, and our limited fluency in the local language, Setswana. Still, there is much to recommend living here. It is quite safe: we have not been the victims of any crime in Goodhope. Things are very quiet most of the time. There is little auto traffic, which is good for the cattle, goats and donkeys that share the road. We hear an airplane overhead maybe a couple of times a year. People are polite and students are, for the most part, respectful of teachers. The pace of life and work is much slower. The air is clean and the skies are a brilliant blue most days. The sunrises and sunsets are stunning.

Sunrise from our front porch

 

My daily commute to work.

            It is not surprising then that some Peace Corps Volunteers stay on in their host countries after their tour of duty ends. In Botswana, some PCVs never leave. In fact, a few Volunteers from the 1960s are still here. They started businesses. They married Batswana. They settled down and spread roots here. The longer I stay here, the more I understand why some Americans would find that life attractive.

            Still, it’s not for us long term. We crave the variety of food in America. We look forward to driving cars again. I miss Western highbrow culture: the music, books and arts. I miss the American work effort with its creative, problem-solving focus. And of course there’s our home, family and friends. To put it simply: we’re Americans. We’ll return to the United States in November.

            Before we left Manchester, I read some literature on the value of leaving home for an extended period time. It gives a person a better perspective of what else is out there, but more important it gives a better perspective of where one comes from. The return home is the most important part of the journey. Arnold J. Toynbee and Joseph Campbell separately wrote about this as a unifying theory for the lives of heroes in both history and mythology.

            That’s not to say that I am like Odysseus returning to Ithaca or Napoleon to Paris. But it does mean that this experience has changed me, and hopefully for the better.