11 Oct 12
Hi, Everybody!!
 |
| Tutume, Botswana |
I’m writing you from the village of Tutume, Botswana! I made the 8ish hour journey on Tuesday and I’ve gotta say, it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated!!! PC provided us with a van and a driver to take those of us going north up to the capital of Gaborone. From there I caught a bus to Francistown, the 2nd largest village in Botswana. I was fortunate to sit next to a good looking college student who was eager to help me and chat. It was a cool morning, thank goodness, because the buses are not air conditioned. People in Bots have some kind of superstition with opening windows on transport vehicles. They believe that the air blowing in your face can give you the flu. You can imagine what a 5.5 hour bus ride could be like on a hot day. The bus was full, with several people making the journey standing in the aisle. When I arrived in Francistown, I was met by the volunteer I would be staying with, Leah. We purchased some groceries and got on a combi (a van-type vehicle) for the hour and a half ride to Tutume. The combi dropped us off at the local grocery store and we took a 10 minute taxi ride to the home of Leah and her husband, Dan.
I have really enjoyed my stay in Tutume so far. Leah and Dan are feeding me the best food that I’ve had since I arrived in Bots. Tuesday night we had tacos with homemade tortillas. Last night we had spaghetti with spinach, garlic, onion, and tomatoes, topped with Feta cheese. She is an amazing cook. She even made cookies yesterday! The first American-style cookies I’ve had here!
I have visited both of their job sites so far. Leah works at the District Health Management Team office. Dan works at a local clinic, his primary function being weighing children every morning for the child welfare program. Unfortunately, they see a lot of severely malnourished children and it can be emotionally taxing for them. Malnourished children are given rations from the clinic, but sometimes the food is fed to other family members, given away, or even sold. Both Dan and Leah have been working with a mother who is not producing enough breast milk to feed her baby. Because of Botswana’s policy of strictly breast feeding, the hospital will not give her formula to feed her baby and she cannot afford to buy it. Dan and Leah managed to get their hands on some formula for her baby, who was actively dying of starvation, and he is now gaining weight!
This morning we awoke bright and early and set out walking for the ward of Manjani. Villages in Botswana are broken up into neighborhoods called wards. Manjani is the area of the village where the Basarwaa live. Those are people of non-Tswana descent who have been relocated under the government’s rural development program (like what was done to the Native Americans in the US.) Most of the people are destitute and on government assistance. You can definitely tell the difference between Manjani and the
other wards of Tutume. The primary dwellings are mud brick huts, they use trash to build fences, and you see more donkey-drawn carts. Social stigma and discrimination make it difficult for the Basarwaa as there are little to no economic opportunities availble to them.
We were walking through Manjani to find some rock paintings that the Kgosi (chief) of Manjani had shown Dan and Leah. On our way, we saw an unfinished house (no roof or glass in the windows) that was full of pre-school age children. The kgosi’s elderly wife was leading them in some kind of English lesson. Upon seeing us she waved us over to show off her kids. She is teaching the children English by having them repeat random phrases. We heard “Up and Down! If you do! Under the table! When he runs!” The woman had organized a kind of preschool for the children. The kids were absolutely precious and it made me sad to think that most of them will have no opportunities in adulthood because of their ethnic group. The Basarwaa speak several impressive click languages, one being nothing but clicks and whistles, but I wasn’t able to hear any of those today.
 |
| Leah and Dan with rock paintings |
Anyway, we walked through Manjani and back into the bush. We had been walking for about an hour, crossing dry river beds and admiring Baobab and Mophani trees. In December, the worms that live inside the Mophani trees will be harvested, deep fried, and sold as a delicious snack that the local people really look forward to. I digress… We came upon a huge rock, not just any old rock, it was a rock covered in paintings of animals. The Kgosi of Manjani had shown Dan and Leah the rock when they met him doing their community assessment. The Kgosi is one of the few remaining people who know about the paintings and even he doesn’t know how old they are. They may be hundreds of years old, they may be thousands of years old. The coolest thing? I am only the third white person to have ever laid eyes on the paintings (Dan and Leah being the first and second.) How awesome is that?
 |
| river in Tutume, without the river |
Some other things that happened this week:
Sunday last weekend, my friends and I had lunch at the Ko Gae (pronounced co-hi) Café. We were the first customers of the day and I was apparently served food that had been cooked the previous day. It is 105 degrees IN THE SHADE right now so you can imagine that food begins to spoil the minute you take it out of the pan. Sunday night, I began feeling ill and I was sick with my first food poisoning episode of Africa for the following two days. I missed most of training on Monday because I was stuck in bed with horrible abdominal pain. Luckily, by Tuesday morning I was mostly recovered and I was able to
travel.
I mentioned in my last email that I had my first Setswana Language Proficiency Interview last week. I received my results via text message yesterday and I scored Intermediate Low, which is actually higher than I need to graduate from training. I’m pretty proud of myself because I am half way through training and have already scored higher than most of my classmates. I attribute this to the fact that my host mom refuses to talk to me in English when she thinks I can understand her in Setswana, and I talk to people in the community in Setswana.
The language spoken in Tutume is Kalanga, a non Bantu language. It is very different from Setswana but it is has no clicks or funny tongue sounds. Of course, I have been given a Kalanga name, Chipo. It is pronounced, much to my dismay, like cheap-o. It means gift. Everytime I go somewhere I get another name!!
In conclusion, shadowing is giving me a good idea of what the life of a volunteer is really like. The volunteers I am shadowing have nice accommodations, definitely nicer than I will have. They have electricity, running water, and a shower nozzle attached to their tub faucet so you don’t have to use a cup to wash yourself. We have spent each night sitting outside talking about the frustrations, setbacks, joys, and triumphs of being a Peace Corps Volunteer. I’m looking forward to finding out where I will be spending the next two years of my life!
Ke a leboga, bagaetshe, le salang sentle! (thank you, my people, and stay well!)
Sarah Maduo Chipo Kabotho Rachelle Stewart
No comments:
Post a Comment