Bungee Chords

Maybe I had it coming since I was a bungee chord girl. Katie and I used to lie in bed with our sheets rigged up to our bookshelves and curtain rods, much like how we had to hang our mosquito net during homestay in Serowe. When Katie and I stepped out of this army tent where we role-played wartime reporters, we pulled up to our shelf-converted-to-sound-board and slipped on our headsets to start our morning radio show. Life has never been simple for me and I have never figured out if I am jealous of, or totally opposite of, people who know and like one thing, they study that one thing, they get a job in that one thing, they get married, buy a house, they have babies. They just do the next thing that makes sense. I love and am intrigued by so many things, that maybe I was bound for a little wanderlust, and a few seasons of life where bungee chords are the only thing holding it all together.

If you could only see some of the ways we figure out systems to make the oddest things work. We have running water 3 to 4 days out of the week on average. That’s more complicated than simply not having water, where you have a pit latrine and you’re not trying to dump 2 buckets (that’s a lot) each time you flush a modern toilet. But, its also a luxury to be able to expect it back on within a few days if it goes out in the middle of doing laundry or washing your hair. We squirrel away 2 liter bottles, we have buckets of gray water and rainwater, and we have a kind neighbor with a pit latrine: we make it work. Its one of the ways in which answering questions is a bit complicated here. Do you have water and electricity? Ummm…on a scale of one to ten, our water situation is about a 7. We’re happy with it. You?

Answering the question of how we like it here is, and probably always has been, the most complicated of questions. By American standards, every day is really frustrating, but there is a way to let go of frustration, while still being in the same frustrating situation. On the one hand, God has made it clear as glass that this is the place for us- that there is a need and we GET to be a part of His work here. He’s also given me a quirky LOVE for the people and the culture here- even when the secrecy and the focus on women’s bodies infuriates me to no end. It’s not that different from the clarity that we felt about life in Manhattan while we were there. We had an incredible niche and a deep love for being among family and special friends there. America is a wonderful and comfortable place to be sometimes, even when the greed and the complacency infuriates me to no end. Get it? Yes, its culture, but not all of it is great…anywhere.

So, are we struggling or thriving? Here’s the other hand: I came back here because of God’s plans, but some of those plans were my own too. I had few expectations, but I also have a lot of memories. There really is nothing like returning to a place to “find the way in which you yourself has changed” (Mandela), or to find that it’s hardly even the same place. It is hard being this close to Old Naledi and the Tlamelo project, which is struggling in ways that I feel I could help with if only I had a car, was not in the Peace Corps, didn’t have a different job, or was ok with “fixing” something that is not my place to fix. Its hard knowing that grassroots missions in direct contact with hurting people is there, but I am stuck in a bureaucratic office where very little gets done. But, that’s also not true. There are hurting people in my office. There is also something to be said for foreigners not building their own thing, but trying to help strengthen the people and frameworks that already exist, so that they are better off and can do more on their own.

I am struggling in my office. I think I was placed in this position because I “have experience with statistics.” Dr. Goe would be appalled that what I am actually doing would ever be labeled as “statistics.” I came in to analyze and help give feedback to the communities on the data collected in the Monitoring and Evaluation department, but I might not get to that point because it would be putting the cart before the horse. This is something that even the people I work for might not understand, so its a constant lesson in not meeting people's expectations, and being ok with that (Not my strength). A few examples…

-Perhaps one of the most important pieces of information gleaned from health data is how many people died and of what.  Diarrhea with blood, for example, can indicate an easily fixable sanitation issue. This is hard to locate because one of the major hospitals in our district started as a private mission hospital and often refuses to cooperate in reporting to the district. The other clinics are often unreachable by phone, and of course, there is no transport.

-In December, most of the data was lost because people didn’t know about the “save as” function, so all the December reports were saved over with January data. I spent a week trying to convey the importance of “save as” and labeling our data with the correct dates.

-After the last M&E officer left, he left a computer full of documents titled “name of facility,” because those were the first words in the document, hence the default filename. I spent many days opening every document, renaming it, and organizing it into folders.

-While showing a head nurse how to report the number of children dying in our district and from what, Owen discovered that computer work was keeping her away from her other work because she didn’t know how to type. So, Owen spends his afternoons teaching typing. One of the biggest breakthroughs: learning that you can use “shift” instead of “caps lock” to capitalize the first words of your sentences. It is amazing how much time that saves.

-Almost every morning when I arrive, nothing can be done until I have finished with the morning several hour meeting, figured out how to expunge new viruses from the only computer that keeps medical records for the district (which also happens to be the computer that people plug their phones into to charge or download music), and I have reconfigured the electrical outlets with duct tape and a mess of chords in an attempt to keep my monitor on.

All of this is a struggle. So yes, we are struggling. But, I think if you look closely, it is also right to be here. “Save as” might be a tiny baby step, but its also kind of a big deal.

So that’s work. What about life in the community? My friend, Heidi, always says it’s the little things that matter, and when you’re not listening to God, you don’t catch them. So, one of my grand (non) expectations for coming back, especially with the Peace Corps, was to finally become fluent in Setswana. Peace Corps was rumored to have some of the best language training you can get.  The rumors were correct. Meshack, and his team of LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators) were excellent in improving our conversational, work-related, and HIV/AIDS related Setswana. Still, once we left training, we became integrated in a much more complex environment. The doctors at my DHMT are from Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Some speak no Setswana at all, and I am dusting off my Swahili. The boys we hang out with at home are Kalanga and English speakers. We have been blessed with friendships, but they are diverse and complex, and not at all like what I imagined cultural integration would look like or what it has looked like to me before. We are in a village (which seems TOTALLY more “African” than the city), but we run in government circles more now than before, and integrating with our coworkers is almost a different culture than integrating with our neighbors. And what about those neighbors? We have Moses and Wendy who hold high-powered jobs in Gaborone, and who lived in Soweto through the uprisings in the 1970s and 80s, and we also have Mma go Sadi, who has never left Ramotswa. She lives in a one-room cinder block with her family and enjoys a good chat while hanging out the laundry.

Life is messy, it’s confusing, we struggle, we make it work, we rig something with bungee chords. It’s alright.