Someone recently asked me three challenging questions regarding Peace Corps. Responding to them required quite a bit of self-reflection and I think the answers might give you a peek into some of what I’m experiencing out here…
*What are some things you wish you’d thought about before going into the Peace Corps?*
This is a great question and one I had to think about for a while. I guess I wish I’d thought a bit more about the implications of leaving for 2 years at 28 verses my one year trip to China at 23. These two travel experiences have been VERY different and I didn’t realize how much harder Botswana would be due to length of time and the life experiences I’d be missing.
When I was in China I really felt like things stayed the same at home. There were minor changes but, in general, I came back to the same world I left. I remember thinking several times when I was in China that I missed my family but I had so many friends in Hangzhou that I didn’t really miss my friends.
Botswana at 28 is quite the opposite. Since I’ve been away I have missed 3 weddings, my sister’s engagement, the birth of 5 babies, and my grandmother’s death. Also, eight of my friends got pregnant and I’m going to miss 5 of their baby’s births. More Life Events happen when you’re 28 then do when you’re 23 and it’s very hard to be so far away when your world is being re-written in so many ways.
I don’t regret that I left. I don’t regret that I’m here. I love Botswana and this experience is changing and improving me in ways I never thought possible. But there are sacrifices.
My sister’s been engaged for a year and I haven’t seen her ring or hugged her. I’ll never be a part of her wedding planning. I’ll never be able to go to her bridal shower or shopping with her for dresses. I also didn’t get to say goodbye to my grandmother and when I finally do I’ll be talking to a headstone. I wasn’t able to be there for my family when they were grieving her death. I didn’t get to celebrate my 1 year anniversary with Kris. These things are big. Huge. These are things I sacrificed for a career choice and a personal growth experience. And most days they are worth it. And some days they are not. And I wish I’d thought more about that before I left.
*Things you wish you’d known before leaving for Peace Corps*
I wish I’d known how to protect my computer from viruses. And I wish I’d brought more music and movies. Now, in lieu of the last question this answer might seem very superficial but I think it’s something that should be said and I think it’s something that people Don’t Say because they fear the implications of media-escapism. Well, yes, tv, movies and music are fairly mindless ways to spend your time but here’s the thing: you need it. Very few Peace Corps volunteers are placed in urban sites which means the bulk of us find ourselves in small, remote villages where we don’t speak the language and relationships are difficult to make and harder to develop. You are a person like me who craves long, deep conversations and meaningful relationships. So cooking dinner with my colleagues is fun and taking walks with my neighbours is great but at the end of the day it’s me in a quiet room, in tiny house feeling Lonely. And to be honest—loneliness is alright. It’s good in many ways because it slows you down and gives you time for self reflection, creative expression, exercise and sleep. I really believe that this loneliness and boredom has put me in the most healthy psychological/physical/emotional and spiritual state of my life.
BUT
It’s still loneliness. There entire days I don’t speak to anyone. Last week I went to bed at 9:00 every night. Today I haven’t left my house and don’t plan to. Some of it is a choice to just escape cultural awkwardness and some of it is not. Either way, at the end of the day when I’m feeling homesick or frustrated with language or in need of a good long chat or just phenomenally bored—it is really nice to put on a movie or some music. And I don’t think it makes my experience any less profound or effective… frankly, I think it keeps me sane. That and running. But I knew that about running before I came. I wish I’d brought an extra pair of running sneakers.
*How do you feel about the experience now that you’re there?*
Hm. This is very broad. I think a lot of my understanding of this experience will come in retrospect but at the moment I feel quite good about being here. I really love Botswana and this has surprised me since a flat dessert with boring cuisine and dry history was not my ideal placement for Peace Corps. I had envisioned war-torn Cambodia or dramatic South Africa or delicious India… Botswana had only come up once in my MPH studies as “a place with a lot of AIDS orphans”. Aside from that I didn’t know the first thing about Botswana and I think that has made it all the more amazing to be here. Someone said it so perfectly to me once… they said:
“You were placed in Botswana because you never would have come here on your own… you’ll visit Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania at some point, those countries are on your ‘to do’ list… but Botswana never would have crossed your mind… and now you get to experience it so fully.”
Whenever I get envious of Peace Corps volunteers serving in West Africa or South East Asia I always think of that and feel better. And so, yeah, I’m happy I’m here. I’m happy I’m learning about grassroots international public health work. I’m glad I’m learning the value of solitude. I’m relieved to learn that my friends and family haven’t forgotten me. I’m proud to see I can survive here and learn a language and handle rats and deal with bucket baths and survive without a buzzing social network.
God, I feel like I could talk about this for ages but I guess to answer your question, yes, I feel good about the experience. It has not come without sacrifices but I think it has been worth it for what I’m learning about my career choice and how I’ve been able to experience a different version of life and of myself.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Relevance of my Irrelevance
Every day I have moments when I have to step out of myself and decide if I’m doing it right.
Is this project sustainable?
Am I capacity building?
Does this contribute to the stop of HIV?
Are they acquiring skills?
Am I too involved?
Will this make a difference?
Every project gets analyzed a million times. Every intention dissected.
International public health work forces you to struggle with your humanity. Maybe all acts of charity do but here it is so palpable. And persistent.
My human (and American) flaws make me proud. They make me success-driven and results-oriented and in need of praise, recognition and control.
At the same time I’ve got this engrained ethical code that compels me to Empower: to inspire my colleagues, to strengthen my students, to raise role models. To build the capacity of this village. To teach risk reduction they can practice and develop knowledge they can use to examine behavioral patterns and societal norms. To transfer skills that can enhance their professional lives and arouse compassion to provide more care for their families and community.
To leave something.
Anything.
Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I find myself knee-deep in the latest child-rights-drama-performance and wondering…
Why am I leading this alone?
How is this making any difference in HIV prevention?
The social worker had invited us to the “Day of the African Child” Celebration in Mmankgodi. All I had to do was get the 30 kids to put on a drama about protecting children’s rights.
Piece of cake. We started planned. We held practices. We made costumes.
Somewhere in the middle of all those preparations I realized that I didn’t have the slightest bit of drama experience, nor could I understand the bulk of the Setswana script. I also didn’t know any songs or even the history of “Day of the African Child.”
What the hell was I doing?
This was A Mistake. No doubt about it. I was committing the carnal crime of international development work:
I was leading a project alone—without local leadership. And without proper skills.
Bad bad bad volunteer.
But sometimes the universe throws you a bone.
My big break was a workshop that took me out of the village for a full week.
At first I was frantic and narcissistic…
How will they practice without me? Who will lead? What if they have questions?
I wrote detailed notes.
I assigned a director.
I scheduled practices.
The kids nodded and smiled and assured me that everything would be ready when I returned from the workshop on Monday. I bit my thumbnail nervously. The drama was meant to be performed on Tuesday. In front of 600 people. Mmankgodi was providing transport and food… what if it didn’t work out? I’d be held responsible (pride)… I’d look like a failure (success-driven)… I’d be criticized (need for praise, recognition, etc.)
I shuffled off to my workshop and, for a week, resisted the urge to call into school and see how things were going.
At last the workshop ended and it was Monday. I showed up early to school. The kids said they’d missed me and there had been some fighting and one practice had gone badly and they weren’t sure if they were ready. I squeezed their shoulders and reassured them and quelled the anxiety rising in my voice. Our last practice was scheduled after classes, from 3:00 – 5:00. We were leaving at 7:00 the following morning.
By 4:00 they had finally all gathered in the music room and I was checking my watch in an obsessive compulsive rhythm. But in the middle of all that nervous tension I started to notice changes…
For one, the drama had been totally revised. My idea had been replaced for a plot more closely aligned with the day’s theme.
The script had also been re-written… by one of the students.
The student teacher—Mma Tuwe was standing in the corner. She had been supervising all the practices since I left. No one had invited her—she just saw a need and started coming.
And there were other colleagues in the room too. There was Pegosotso, a volunteer from a local NGO. She had been holding a special lifeskills session with our guidance classes when she heard about the drama. She started coming to practices and in the past week had taken on the much needed role of their leader and director.
Matching t-shirts had been donated from the drama department.
A black curtain was on lend from the science lab.
The drama instructor made an appearance to guide them through the songs and choreograph their last dance.
The guidance teacher watched from the door—encouraging the younger students with smiles and cheers.
Surprise was not the word.
I was elated.
All these professionals were working together. The students were fully invested in a project that they’d created and developed. The school departments were offering support with props and supervision. I’d never seen this type of cooperation and community at my school. Or anywhere in my village, for that matter.
I sat on a desk in the back of the music room and watched the play unfold and the facilitators respond. I smiled when the kids looked back at me and applauded when the curtain fell. I surrendered all of those human, American, Bostonian tendencies and just
watched.
Humility is often painful and occasionally rewarding.
I knew that the only reason these people had worked together so completely and so passionately was because my absence had left the need. I was grateful for this. And embarrassed.
We’ve turned the corner on our service. Just eleven months left.
What will remain after I go?
What will I have inspired?
What will I have left?
What will grow in my absence?
I loosen the grip ever so slightly and—to my surprise—things balance perfectly without me.
Maybe part of my impact on them will be felt in the process of fading.
Maybe part of their impact on me will be recognized in this blaze of their strength.
I have a long list of goals for this final year.
Perhaps the most valuable will be, simply, my disappearance...
Is this project sustainable?
Am I capacity building?
Does this contribute to the stop of HIV?
Are they acquiring skills?
Am I too involved?
Will this make a difference?
Every project gets analyzed a million times. Every intention dissected.
International public health work forces you to struggle with your humanity. Maybe all acts of charity do but here it is so palpable. And persistent.
My human (and American) flaws make me proud. They make me success-driven and results-oriented and in need of praise, recognition and control.
At the same time I’ve got this engrained ethical code that compels me to Empower: to inspire my colleagues, to strengthen my students, to raise role models. To build the capacity of this village. To teach risk reduction they can practice and develop knowledge they can use to examine behavioral patterns and societal norms. To transfer skills that can enhance their professional lives and arouse compassion to provide more care for their families and community.
To leave something.
Anything.
Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I find myself knee-deep in the latest child-rights-drama-performance and wondering…
Why am I leading this alone?
How is this making any difference in HIV prevention?
The social worker had invited us to the “Day of the African Child” Celebration in Mmankgodi. All I had to do was get the 30 kids to put on a drama about protecting children’s rights.
Piece of cake. We started planned. We held practices. We made costumes.
Somewhere in the middle of all those preparations I realized that I didn’t have the slightest bit of drama experience, nor could I understand the bulk of the Setswana script. I also didn’t know any songs or even the history of “Day of the African Child.”
What the hell was I doing?
This was A Mistake. No doubt about it. I was committing the carnal crime of international development work:
I was leading a project alone—without local leadership. And without proper skills.
Bad bad bad volunteer.
But sometimes the universe throws you a bone.
My big break was a workshop that took me out of the village for a full week.
At first I was frantic and narcissistic…
How will they practice without me? Who will lead? What if they have questions?
I wrote detailed notes.
I assigned a director.
I scheduled practices.
The kids nodded and smiled and assured me that everything would be ready when I returned from the workshop on Monday. I bit my thumbnail nervously. The drama was meant to be performed on Tuesday. In front of 600 people. Mmankgodi was providing transport and food… what if it didn’t work out? I’d be held responsible (pride)… I’d look like a failure (success-driven)… I’d be criticized (need for praise, recognition, etc.)
I shuffled off to my workshop and, for a week, resisted the urge to call into school and see how things were going.
At last the workshop ended and it was Monday. I showed up early to school. The kids said they’d missed me and there had been some fighting and one practice had gone badly and they weren’t sure if they were ready. I squeezed their shoulders and reassured them and quelled the anxiety rising in my voice. Our last practice was scheduled after classes, from 3:00 – 5:00. We were leaving at 7:00 the following morning.
By 4:00 they had finally all gathered in the music room and I was checking my watch in an obsessive compulsive rhythm. But in the middle of all that nervous tension I started to notice changes…
For one, the drama had been totally revised. My idea had been replaced for a plot more closely aligned with the day’s theme.
The script had also been re-written… by one of the students.
The student teacher—Mma Tuwe was standing in the corner. She had been supervising all the practices since I left. No one had invited her—she just saw a need and started coming.
And there were other colleagues in the room too. There was Pegosotso, a volunteer from a local NGO. She had been holding a special lifeskills session with our guidance classes when she heard about the drama. She started coming to practices and in the past week had taken on the much needed role of their leader and director.
Matching t-shirts had been donated from the drama department.
A black curtain was on lend from the science lab.
The drama instructor made an appearance to guide them through the songs and choreograph their last dance.
The guidance teacher watched from the door—encouraging the younger students with smiles and cheers.
Surprise was not the word.
I was elated.
All these professionals were working together. The students were fully invested in a project that they’d created and developed. The school departments were offering support with props and supervision. I’d never seen this type of cooperation and community at my school. Or anywhere in my village, for that matter.
I sat on a desk in the back of the music room and watched the play unfold and the facilitators respond. I smiled when the kids looked back at me and applauded when the curtain fell. I surrendered all of those human, American, Bostonian tendencies and just
watched.
Humility is often painful and occasionally rewarding.
I knew that the only reason these people had worked together so completely and so passionately was because my absence had left the need. I was grateful for this. And embarrassed.
We’ve turned the corner on our service. Just eleven months left.
What will remain after I go?
What will I have inspired?
What will I have left?
What will grow in my absence?
I loosen the grip ever so slightly and—to my surprise—things balance perfectly without me.
Maybe part of my impact on them will be felt in the process of fading.
Maybe part of their impact on me will be recognized in this blaze of their strength.
I have a long list of goals for this final year.
Perhaps the most valuable will be, simply, my disappearance...
Friday, June 5, 2009
Ke Teng – I Am Here
In Chinese the word for “foreigner” directly translates to “outsider”. In Setswana the word simply means “other”. Still, I feel more outside in Africa than I ever did in Asia.
Being Always Outside can be infuriating—especially after living here a year.
- Why do the cars still stop me on the road?
- Why do the children still ask me for money?
- Why do people incessantly touch my hair/skin/clothes?
A new Peace Corps volunteer arrived in Kumakwane today. Twenty-five year old black kid from Georgia. Looks remarkably like my village neighbor. I smile at him and offer to show him around and try to keep the jealousy from creeping into our get-to-know-you banter.
Just once I’d like to be invisible here.
But the outsider label is not always negative. Being invisible has its perks. And one of those perks is that you are, quite simply, Not Real.
At first being Not Real made people feel safe to gossip with me. I know who’s sleeping with whom, why the computer teacher fought with the Setswana teacher and which school administrator is thought to be developing a mental illness. I also know why the village women hate the teacher women (yes, sex—everyone’s favorite cause of chaos) and which students take condoms from the clinic and who was being reprimanded in the Headmaster’s office last Monday.
I could continue. Despite all the loneliness of this life I cannot complain of boredom: I feel like I’m an extra in a soap opera every day.
But, then, of course there is evolution.
It may have been hitting the one year mark. Or perhaps they saw that I was finally comfortable here. But all of a sudden the gossip developed into something far more serious. And far more concerning.
They started confiding in me.
Maybe this kind of pain exists everywhere and I just don’t see it because I’m always a member of the Involved Inside instead of the Neutral Outside. Maybe this country holds an immense ache that goes ignored more times than not. It would take me a long time to explain to you why I have this sense of a deep distrust between Batswana but I feel it intensely. A distance from one another. A guard.
A student once submitted a paper to the question box that read:
“Why do all girls hate each other?”
In an interview with the social worker she told me that, yes, rape cases do happen but mostly go unreported:
“Even when the parents know they usually just ask the perpetrator to pay them money and then everyone forgets about it.”
Everyone knows I was an English major in undergrad and got my Public Health degree in post grad. They know I am not qualified to give them anything. But still, they come. Because there are so few places to go. Because they are overflowing with these things.
- A student lingers outside the office. I call her in and she closes the door. Rubs the back of her neck. Looks out the window. Bites on the end of her pen. She has come to tell me she’s a lesbian. And that she’s afraid. They publicly whip homosexuals here. They believe such behavior is “of the devil". She wants to stop feeling this way but she can’t make it go away.
- In the empty computer lab my colleague’s eyes water as he’s recounting the story: that party where his best friend told him There Was Talk. Gossip about his promiscuity. Concerns about his reputation. He hadn’t had a partner in 2 years. He just couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of it. Or the implications. Or the threat.
- We’re sifting through paperwork and chatting about the weekend when she tells me she’s not sleeping. We discuss diet and stress but it’s neither. Her mother died of a sudden stroke just last year and now she cant stop thinking about her own death. She’s deeply concerned about having her will authorized. She’s 43.
- She stops me in the hall at 5:00. I’m exhausted and running to the store for milk so I can make it home before dark. But two hours later she’s still sobbing on the desk about the discomfort. Discharge and itching. She’s had it for two years now. We go to the clinic the next day and the nurse tells her she must ask her mother to bring her to Thamaga for an appointment with the doctor. And she sobs and sobs.
I am carrying a dozen more stories like these. More as of late. And the sources more shocking: people I rarely talk to coming to find me. Spilling everything.
I research homosexuality and grief counseling and STDs. Stress, insomnia, promiscuity, domestic violence, neglect, bullying… I distribute ridiculous little stacks of highlighted pages from the internet. And I say my prayers every night. And sometimes in the morning. And sometimes between classes.
I am coming to believe that the way a language develops its greetings can reveal immense truths about the corresponding culture and reality.
In America we ask “How are you?” and we answer “I am well.”
In China they ask “Have you eaten?” and they answer “We have.”
In Botswana they ask “Where are you?” and they answer, quite simply,
“I am here.”
Being Always Outside can be infuriating—especially after living here a year.
- Why do the cars still stop me on the road?
- Why do the children still ask me for money?
- Why do people incessantly touch my hair/skin/clothes?
A new Peace Corps volunteer arrived in Kumakwane today. Twenty-five year old black kid from Georgia. Looks remarkably like my village neighbor. I smile at him and offer to show him around and try to keep the jealousy from creeping into our get-to-know-you banter.
Just once I’d like to be invisible here.
But the outsider label is not always negative. Being invisible has its perks. And one of those perks is that you are, quite simply, Not Real.
At first being Not Real made people feel safe to gossip with me. I know who’s sleeping with whom, why the computer teacher fought with the Setswana teacher and which school administrator is thought to be developing a mental illness. I also know why the village women hate the teacher women (yes, sex—everyone’s favorite cause of chaos) and which students take condoms from the clinic and who was being reprimanded in the Headmaster’s office last Monday.
I could continue. Despite all the loneliness of this life I cannot complain of boredom: I feel like I’m an extra in a soap opera every day.
But, then, of course there is evolution.
It may have been hitting the one year mark. Or perhaps they saw that I was finally comfortable here. But all of a sudden the gossip developed into something far more serious. And far more concerning.
They started confiding in me.
Maybe this kind of pain exists everywhere and I just don’t see it because I’m always a member of the Involved Inside instead of the Neutral Outside. Maybe this country holds an immense ache that goes ignored more times than not. It would take me a long time to explain to you why I have this sense of a deep distrust between Batswana but I feel it intensely. A distance from one another. A guard.
A student once submitted a paper to the question box that read:
“Why do all girls hate each other?”
In an interview with the social worker she told me that, yes, rape cases do happen but mostly go unreported:
“Even when the parents know they usually just ask the perpetrator to pay them money and then everyone forgets about it.”
Everyone knows I was an English major in undergrad and got my Public Health degree in post grad. They know I am not qualified to give them anything. But still, they come. Because there are so few places to go. Because they are overflowing with these things.
- A student lingers outside the office. I call her in and she closes the door. Rubs the back of her neck. Looks out the window. Bites on the end of her pen. She has come to tell me she’s a lesbian. And that she’s afraid. They publicly whip homosexuals here. They believe such behavior is “of the devil". She wants to stop feeling this way but she can’t make it go away.
- In the empty computer lab my colleague’s eyes water as he’s recounting the story: that party where his best friend told him There Was Talk. Gossip about his promiscuity. Concerns about his reputation. He hadn’t had a partner in 2 years. He just couldn’t wrap his head around the idea of it. Or the implications. Or the threat.
- We’re sifting through paperwork and chatting about the weekend when she tells me she’s not sleeping. We discuss diet and stress but it’s neither. Her mother died of a sudden stroke just last year and now she cant stop thinking about her own death. She’s deeply concerned about having her will authorized. She’s 43.
- She stops me in the hall at 5:00. I’m exhausted and running to the store for milk so I can make it home before dark. But two hours later she’s still sobbing on the desk about the discomfort. Discharge and itching. She’s had it for two years now. We go to the clinic the next day and the nurse tells her she must ask her mother to bring her to Thamaga for an appointment with the doctor. And she sobs and sobs.
I am carrying a dozen more stories like these. More as of late. And the sources more shocking: people I rarely talk to coming to find me. Spilling everything.
I research homosexuality and grief counseling and STDs. Stress, insomnia, promiscuity, domestic violence, neglect, bullying… I distribute ridiculous little stacks of highlighted pages from the internet. And I say my prayers every night. And sometimes in the morning. And sometimes between classes.
I am coming to believe that the way a language develops its greetings can reveal immense truths about the corresponding culture and reality.
In America we ask “How are you?” and we answer “I am well.”
In China they ask “Have you eaten?” and they answer “We have.”
In Botswana they ask “Where are you?” and they answer, quite simply,
“I am here.”
Thursday, May 28, 2009
My Old Lover
So I left Botswana. For two weeks.
Amazing vacation on the Greek Islands with Kris. Feta cheese and olives and seafood and sunsets and the ocean have never ever tasted so good. I spent a lot of time staring at Europeans with their blonde hair and long cigarettes and fast walking fast talking fast living pace.
I was mildly culture-shocked but mostly with the minor details:
The newspaper is just one giant sad story.
There are no black people in Greece.
Waiters become sincerely distressed when you order red wine with fish.
A cocktail in Greece costs as much as a week’s groceries in Botswana.
Spending an entire day with someone I love brings a forgotten flush of happiness.
The decent into Botswana on Sunday morning was dreary and stale. I looked out the window at that long brown desert and felt the thick of loneliness and solitude and difference rise into my throat. The other passengers filed off and I waited in H3. Preparing. Or maybe just delaying.
I’ve been back for three days. Pushing through sluggish hours. Counting weeks on the calendar. Tolerating small talk with neighbors. Fabricating excuses for solitude.
It is hard to come back to this un-life and un-home that is my life and my home but not. Just not.
Tonight I go out for my run at 5:00. I’ve just returned from a sexual abuse presentation by the Ministry of Health to the students at my school. The presentation adds to my sour mood and I plan interval training at the track with the hope that adrenaline masks my depression.
Eight laps before the footballer villagers take over the track and field. I scowl at them and head toward the bush.
I’m 40 minutes into the run before I lift my head. I don’t realize I’ve been staring at the dirt like that until I see my edges mingling with the air and color and energy that Is Botswana.
At the time I knew I’d never be able to write it but here I am… trying anyway…
A family files out of the bush in one long line. Women carrying firewood on their heads. Children walking barefoot. The father greets me with weathered skin and gentle eyes.
A donkey cart trudges through the sand. (Sometimes Batswana greet with gestures instead of words) The old man swings his whip in a circle over his head. His wife cracks a wrinkle smile at me and pulls her shawl up to her chin.
The sun sets beautiful in Greece but even that glittery ocean and seagull sky cannot compete with a Wednesday night in Botswana.
Botswana is the only place I’ve been on the planet where the entire sky—all 360 degrees of it—holds kaleidoscope color. Every cloud streaks paint. Even the sand turns orange and purple in the fading of a day.
Botswana feels like an old lover who turns his head just so in the light… or laughs with a tone that sparks your nostalgia... and there you are staring at him and feeling a closeness and an urgency you thought you’d lost.
I’ve been back for three days. But tonight I came home.
Amazing vacation on the Greek Islands with Kris. Feta cheese and olives and seafood and sunsets and the ocean have never ever tasted so good. I spent a lot of time staring at Europeans with their blonde hair and long cigarettes and fast walking fast talking fast living pace.
I was mildly culture-shocked but mostly with the minor details:
The newspaper is just one giant sad story.
There are no black people in Greece.
Waiters become sincerely distressed when you order red wine with fish.
A cocktail in Greece costs as much as a week’s groceries in Botswana.
Spending an entire day with someone I love brings a forgotten flush of happiness.
The decent into Botswana on Sunday morning was dreary and stale. I looked out the window at that long brown desert and felt the thick of loneliness and solitude and difference rise into my throat. The other passengers filed off and I waited in H3. Preparing. Or maybe just delaying.
I’ve been back for three days. Pushing through sluggish hours. Counting weeks on the calendar. Tolerating small talk with neighbors. Fabricating excuses for solitude.
It is hard to come back to this un-life and un-home that is my life and my home but not. Just not.
Tonight I go out for my run at 5:00. I’ve just returned from a sexual abuse presentation by the Ministry of Health to the students at my school. The presentation adds to my sour mood and I plan interval training at the track with the hope that adrenaline masks my depression.
Eight laps before the footballer villagers take over the track and field. I scowl at them and head toward the bush.
I’m 40 minutes into the run before I lift my head. I don’t realize I’ve been staring at the dirt like that until I see my edges mingling with the air and color and energy that Is Botswana.
At the time I knew I’d never be able to write it but here I am… trying anyway…
A family files out of the bush in one long line. Women carrying firewood on their heads. Children walking barefoot. The father greets me with weathered skin and gentle eyes.
A donkey cart trudges through the sand. (Sometimes Batswana greet with gestures instead of words) The old man swings his whip in a circle over his head. His wife cracks a wrinkle smile at me and pulls her shawl up to her chin.
The sun sets beautiful in Greece but even that glittery ocean and seagull sky cannot compete with a Wednesday night in Botswana.
Botswana is the only place I’ve been on the planet where the entire sky—all 360 degrees of it—holds kaleidoscope color. Every cloud streaks paint. Even the sand turns orange and purple in the fading of a day.
Botswana feels like an old lover who turns his head just so in the light… or laughs with a tone that sparks your nostalgia... and there you are staring at him and feeling a closeness and an urgency you thought you’d lost.
I’ve been back for three days. But tonight I came home.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
To Be Heard
I recently submitted this piece for a Peace Corps story contest…
In the first three months of service my sole responsibility was to perform a community needs assessment. This involved holding interviews, administering surveys and organization hours of observation. At the end of the third month I had a 100 page site report and an enormous heart ache.
Botswana is not like other African countries. In my village there are satellite dishes and painted houses and well-fed dogs. Of course there are also shanty houses and roudeval huts and poor children. The difference is that even the poor families are taken care of by the federal government. Destitute families receive food baskets, OVCs have their school fees paid and when drought assaults this dessert, there’s a job relief program for the country’s many farmers.
Botswana takes care of its people. Still, the nation’s rate of HIV is 2nd highest in the world with nearly 33% of the population infected. 1 in 3.
And so this is the reality I thought I had stepped into: politically stable Botswana with an economic safety net and a wealth of diamond revenue. Perfect storm for my mission: to build the local capacity towards achieving effective HIV prevention work.
But even before my second foot had landed, things began to change.
It started with the student’s needs assessment at the school where I’ve been stationed. Just a simple survey with 21 quantitative questions and three qualitative questions. Clean language. Straightforward themes. Easy work.
Or so I thought.
When I had finally collected the surveys from all 340 students I began to tabulate the data. What I found were a plethora of disturbing facts that characterized these children’s reality.
The data confirmed that children were not being fed enough food. That teachers were being physically abusive under the guise of legal corporal punishment. Young girls were involved in relationships with staff members. Teachers were insulting and embarrassing their students publicly. Many classes were missed regularly by teachers and, as a result, the student’s academic scores were dropping.
When I distributed these survey results to the teaching staff they immediately began flipping through the pages and mocking the student’s complaints. Later, in their private interviews, many teachers explained to me that they could not be “open” to their student’s personal needs. They didn’t have time. They didn’t have energy. With hundreds of students, monthly exams, and extra curricular obligations… how could the personal be met without sacrificing the academic?
The teacher support-system was clearly absent. So where did these children get mentorship, supervision and care? I began to ask questions about other areas of their lives.
The great majority of Batswana citizens subsist off small scale agricultural work. While this makes many families self-sustainable it also keeps parents away from their children for months at a time. As the parents leave the village to plow, weed and later harvest the family land, children stay behind to care for the home and attend school. Many children are left alone in their homes for nearly half of every year.
Closed teachers and absent parents. In my first month of service it became abundantly clear to me that the children in my village had little to no support system outside of their peers. This had enormous implications for their emotional health but further ramifications for HIV prevention and risk reduction. No role models, no adult supervision, no personal accountability and no one to listen. If these children weren’t given a platform to voice their physical need for food or their legal concerns about abuse… what else was not being said? What other needs were being neglected?
When I was finally able to tackle some of what I’d recorded in the needs assessment, I first went to the school’s PACT Club. PACT stands for Peer Approach to Counseling Teens and the group of students meets twice each week. The PACT group in my village, however, had been inactive for nearly two years. The problem? Enormous student interest but no teacher facilitator.
At our first meeting we talked about what it means to “Counsel Teens” and how we, as a group, might do more to help our peers. Students suggested recruiting more PACT members, presenting on health themes at morning assembly and referring troubled students to the guidance and counseling teacher. We wrote these ideas on the board and made a plan for each strategy. Once we had flushed out their ideas I suggested something that a fellow PCV had started in her village: A Student Question Box.
The PACT members seemed intrigued by this idea and over the next few months we established a system for the Question Box. First, the idea was presented and approved by the administration, then it was announced to the student body and, finally, the box was placed in the school lobby. In the first week we received nearly 50 questions and the PACT students worked together to answer each inquiry. Questions and answers were then reviewed by the school’s headmaster and posted in the court yard for the student body to read.
The system worked well but was not developed without difficulty. In the first week, for example, teachers protested the box for fear that a complaint would come in about their class or their teaching style. In response we announced that all personalized questions and complaints would be given to the school administration and not posted publicly.
Then there was the issue of position. Where could we place the poster so students could read it without being chased away by teachers? And who would monitor the posters so they weren’t damaged by other students. The PACT club brainstormed solutions to these questions and eventually created a rotating system of poster-monitoring at lunch and tea times.
Finally there were the questions themselves. Some weeks there were too many to answer. Other weeks the questions were too difficult to answer. Some weeks the administration got upset because there were too many questions about dating and not enough about academics.
We dealt with each hurdle as it came. A Question Box Committee was formed. A peer-support training session was held for PACT members. A deal was struck with the administration so that theme that appeared more frequently (such as dating) would be reported to the guidance teacher so she could arrange special classes and guest presentations on these “hot topics”.
The question box has been in place for nearly 8 months. It is, by no means, a solution to our student’s problems but it is a start. And it has given them a voice.
In 8 months we have helped students cope with a number of issues arising from problems such as bullying, gossip, homosexuality, physical abuse, pregnancy, sex, hygiene, corporal punishment, teacher respect, family pressures, academic challenges, self esteem, etc.
The students concerns have helped to inform the establishment of new school rules and teacher accountability as well as the topics for the school’s weekly health themes. A number of students have come to the guidance office for help with issues they had voiced anonymously through the Question Box. The village social worker was contacted and asked to set up a weekly meeting with our school’s guidance office so she can meet privately and regularly with students who needed her services.
The school’s staff is still suspicious of our “dangerous” little box but the accountability it has laid upon teachers and the voice it has given students is invaluable. We will deal with suspicion and fear if it means that more students will be helped and more PACT members will be trained on peer counseling.
HIV prevention work involves, foremost, risk reduction. I cannot be certain that my students are protecting themselves from HIV but I do know they have started to talk about a number of their life risks and receive advice and strategies for coping with those risks.
Each week our little box fills up with deeper questions and more urgent needs. I can only hope that one day the pain and need inside this box will subside. Until then, we collect on Mondays, answer on Tuesday and post on Wednesdays. One week at a time.
In the first three months of service my sole responsibility was to perform a community needs assessment. This involved holding interviews, administering surveys and organization hours of observation. At the end of the third month I had a 100 page site report and an enormous heart ache.
Botswana is not like other African countries. In my village there are satellite dishes and painted houses and well-fed dogs. Of course there are also shanty houses and roudeval huts and poor children. The difference is that even the poor families are taken care of by the federal government. Destitute families receive food baskets, OVCs have their school fees paid and when drought assaults this dessert, there’s a job relief program for the country’s many farmers.
Botswana takes care of its people. Still, the nation’s rate of HIV is 2nd highest in the world with nearly 33% of the population infected. 1 in 3.
And so this is the reality I thought I had stepped into: politically stable Botswana with an economic safety net and a wealth of diamond revenue. Perfect storm for my mission: to build the local capacity towards achieving effective HIV prevention work.
But even before my second foot had landed, things began to change.
It started with the student’s needs assessment at the school where I’ve been stationed. Just a simple survey with 21 quantitative questions and three qualitative questions. Clean language. Straightforward themes. Easy work.
Or so I thought.
When I had finally collected the surveys from all 340 students I began to tabulate the data. What I found were a plethora of disturbing facts that characterized these children’s reality.
The data confirmed that children were not being fed enough food. That teachers were being physically abusive under the guise of legal corporal punishment. Young girls were involved in relationships with staff members. Teachers were insulting and embarrassing their students publicly. Many classes were missed regularly by teachers and, as a result, the student’s academic scores were dropping.
When I distributed these survey results to the teaching staff they immediately began flipping through the pages and mocking the student’s complaints. Later, in their private interviews, many teachers explained to me that they could not be “open” to their student’s personal needs. They didn’t have time. They didn’t have energy. With hundreds of students, monthly exams, and extra curricular obligations… how could the personal be met without sacrificing the academic?
The teacher support-system was clearly absent. So where did these children get mentorship, supervision and care? I began to ask questions about other areas of their lives.
The great majority of Batswana citizens subsist off small scale agricultural work. While this makes many families self-sustainable it also keeps parents away from their children for months at a time. As the parents leave the village to plow, weed and later harvest the family land, children stay behind to care for the home and attend school. Many children are left alone in their homes for nearly half of every year.
Closed teachers and absent parents. In my first month of service it became abundantly clear to me that the children in my village had little to no support system outside of their peers. This had enormous implications for their emotional health but further ramifications for HIV prevention and risk reduction. No role models, no adult supervision, no personal accountability and no one to listen. If these children weren’t given a platform to voice their physical need for food or their legal concerns about abuse… what else was not being said? What other needs were being neglected?
When I was finally able to tackle some of what I’d recorded in the needs assessment, I first went to the school’s PACT Club. PACT stands for Peer Approach to Counseling Teens and the group of students meets twice each week. The PACT group in my village, however, had been inactive for nearly two years. The problem? Enormous student interest but no teacher facilitator.
At our first meeting we talked about what it means to “Counsel Teens” and how we, as a group, might do more to help our peers. Students suggested recruiting more PACT members, presenting on health themes at morning assembly and referring troubled students to the guidance and counseling teacher. We wrote these ideas on the board and made a plan for each strategy. Once we had flushed out their ideas I suggested something that a fellow PCV had started in her village: A Student Question Box.
The PACT members seemed intrigued by this idea and over the next few months we established a system for the Question Box. First, the idea was presented and approved by the administration, then it was announced to the student body and, finally, the box was placed in the school lobby. In the first week we received nearly 50 questions and the PACT students worked together to answer each inquiry. Questions and answers were then reviewed by the school’s headmaster and posted in the court yard for the student body to read.
The system worked well but was not developed without difficulty. In the first week, for example, teachers protested the box for fear that a complaint would come in about their class or their teaching style. In response we announced that all personalized questions and complaints would be given to the school administration and not posted publicly.
Then there was the issue of position. Where could we place the poster so students could read it without being chased away by teachers? And who would monitor the posters so they weren’t damaged by other students. The PACT club brainstormed solutions to these questions and eventually created a rotating system of poster-monitoring at lunch and tea times.
Finally there were the questions themselves. Some weeks there were too many to answer. Other weeks the questions were too difficult to answer. Some weeks the administration got upset because there were too many questions about dating and not enough about academics.
We dealt with each hurdle as it came. A Question Box Committee was formed. A peer-support training session was held for PACT members. A deal was struck with the administration so that theme that appeared more frequently (such as dating) would be reported to the guidance teacher so she could arrange special classes and guest presentations on these “hot topics”.
The question box has been in place for nearly 8 months. It is, by no means, a solution to our student’s problems but it is a start. And it has given them a voice.
In 8 months we have helped students cope with a number of issues arising from problems such as bullying, gossip, homosexuality, physical abuse, pregnancy, sex, hygiene, corporal punishment, teacher respect, family pressures, academic challenges, self esteem, etc.
The students concerns have helped to inform the establishment of new school rules and teacher accountability as well as the topics for the school’s weekly health themes. A number of students have come to the guidance office for help with issues they had voiced anonymously through the Question Box. The village social worker was contacted and asked to set up a weekly meeting with our school’s guidance office so she can meet privately and regularly with students who needed her services.
The school’s staff is still suspicious of our “dangerous” little box but the accountability it has laid upon teachers and the voice it has given students is invaluable. We will deal with suspicion and fear if it means that more students will be helped and more PACT members will be trained on peer counseling.
HIV prevention work involves, foremost, risk reduction. I cannot be certain that my students are protecting themselves from HIV but I do know they have started to talk about a number of their life risks and receive advice and strategies for coping with those risks.
Each week our little box fills up with deeper questions and more urgent needs. I can only hope that one day the pain and need inside this box will subside. Until then, we collect on Mondays, answer on Tuesday and post on Wednesdays. One week at a time.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Presence
The village kids always come to greet me on my way home from work. Lately they’ve developed this routine of hanging around and asking to help me prepare dinner. It’s adorable. They peel onions and measure water for the rice and carry the scraps out to the chickens. After everything is prepared and boiling away on the stove we play Go Fish and Uno in my livingroom until their parents call them home for supper.
I love this routine. I look forward to seeing them. It’s nice to come home to someone. Or many little Someones.
Today was my one year Peace Corps anniversary. I flew out of
The kids didn’t know this. I almost forgot myself until I was walking home with two enormous bags of groceries and watching the sunset and greeting the villagers and marveling at how familiar this has all become in just a year.
As I approached my house the kids ran up laughing and squealing.
“Look, Jessi! Look!”
On my porch there sat four flowers that had been placed on top of notebook paper. The paper held giant pencil letters that read:
“Dear Jessica,
I give you these flowers. We have been friends since you came.
From Soma”
I’d trade a standing ovation and ten bottles of champagne for the feeling I had when I read that note.
I Belong.
I Fit.
I am Here.
I am Happy.
And a little boy who doesn’t know what day it is or why my eyes are watering has wrapped his arms around my waist and made everything Perfect.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
In My Absence and Your Departure
It’s just camping. I’ve gone camping a dozen times since I’ve been here and there have been parts of this experience where normal day-to-day living felt more like camping than anything else. Still, it’s Easter weekend and I’m excited for a trip with 10 friends to northern Botswana.
Jenah and Aaron are two Kenyans who have lived and worked in Pikwe for 16 years and offer to bring us to their private camp site on the Letsibogo Dam. We load up their truck with tents, sleeping bags, groceries and booze. We arrive at dusk on Friday.
It’s hard to do the experience justice so I will simply say that it is true that absence can illuminate affection. And remind.
I have not seen a body of water in one full year. Rivers, yes. Ponds, yes. But this was no pond. This was an enormous pool, no less than 100 miles in circumference. Gorgeous in its breadth and with the garnish of picturesque islands and exceptional serenity.
We set up camp on a ledge overlooking the banks and facing the sunset. In three days we see two wedding parties and one family picnic. Otherwise the view and peace are completely ours.
Canoeing, hiking, jogging, fishing, grilling, drinking… everything a camping trip should be.
Still, there were moments when I caught them stopping mid-task to stare out and breathe the beauty and experience that unexplainable human fascination with water in its vastness.
I spent Sunday morning crossed legged on a rock for several hours. Feeling all those things that can never quite make their way to us in the absence of nature and stillness. Maybe you were there with me. Thirty five relatives in a room where I should have been and where you were leaving us. We say goodbye in different ways. And in different places. I sat in my Paradise and you in yours and things aligned.
Jenah and Aaron are two Kenyans who have lived and worked in Pikwe for 16 years and offer to bring us to their private camp site on the Letsibogo Dam. We load up their truck with tents, sleeping bags, groceries and booze. We arrive at dusk on Friday.
It’s hard to do the experience justice so I will simply say that it is true that absence can illuminate affection. And remind.
I have not seen a body of water in one full year. Rivers, yes. Ponds, yes. But this was no pond. This was an enormous pool, no less than 100 miles in circumference. Gorgeous in its breadth and with the garnish of picturesque islands and exceptional serenity.
We set up camp on a ledge overlooking the banks and facing the sunset. In three days we see two wedding parties and one family picnic. Otherwise the view and peace are completely ours.
Canoeing, hiking, jogging, fishing, grilling, drinking… everything a camping trip should be.
Still, there were moments when I caught them stopping mid-task to stare out and breathe the beauty and experience that unexplainable human fascination with water in its vastness.
I spent Sunday morning crossed legged on a rock for several hours. Feeling all those things that can never quite make their way to us in the absence of nature and stillness. Maybe you were there with me. Thirty five relatives in a room where I should have been and where you were leaving us. We say goodbye in different ways. And in different places. I sat in my Paradise and you in yours and things aligned.
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