Not an "…ism", "just" stigma

There are a few negative observations in this post. You might think I am being prejudiced, and if so, that’s fine, lets chat. It won’t be the first time I have needed an adjustment in my thinking or attitude. But, let me preface this by saying that the things I observed and mention here are not reflections on all Batswana. “Botho” is still the rule. The rudeness we have experienced is not cultural. It might be that AIDS stole the parents of a whole generation of kids who grew up without someone to pass on important cultural values, and young adults have more than enough legitimate reasons to be angry. It might be the function of a lot of inequality throughout history; it might be strictly generational. Elderly Batswana are some of the warmest, kindest people I have ever known. So, I don’t mean for this to be a comment on Botswana culture, only a comment on what it means to be different- something I’ve felt the shame of pretty much everywhere, but very keenly here.

I come from a very privileged place in this country and also in the world. Just take a look at patterns of inequality across the globe sometime. If you have the time, skills, and resources to read a blog, you are probably also a member of a very disproportionate 1%. So, we have no right or reason to complain about disadvantage in any way. Sometimes, though, it’s easier to understand something through your own experience, so that’s what I’ll try to do here.

Just as the day is cooling off on Fridays, I like to go for a run through the “lands” where I can usually be alone. One particular Friday, I was harassed more than usual by men: men cat-calling from donkey carts, men saying “hey baby, hey baby!” from their fields, and men yelling various other things. For once, I found myself relieved that at least there were no school children yelling “lekgoa!”

Let me back up. Catcalling is sexism. I don’t like it. I don’t know anyone who does. It is often pointed out that it doesn’t even work, so why do guys do it? Say a woman is walking down the street with an armful of groceries. A car drives by and the driver whistles at her. She drops her bags and runs after him. “You make me feel so beautiful! I’m ready to take this to the next level! Won’t you please ask me out on a date?” It doesn’t happen. He is never successful in “getting” the girl. But the goal isn’t to get the girl. The goal is for him to exercise his power and for her to feel uncomfortable, so in that sense, it usually works. Otherwise, people wouldn’t continue doing it.

“Lekgoa” (white person) is a different experience all together. People disagree on whether this is derogatory. Most people claim it is not. In fact, a dear friend explained it to me this way. “It is not a bad word”, she said. “In fact, it is a good thing. People call their bosses and beautiful people ‘lekgoa’ also.” Sensing that this equivalent was making me even more uncomfortable as I started to wonder about the history and connotation of this word, she explained, “It’s like in America, if you saw me you would yell ‘black person’ at me…um excuse me ‘African American’.” Hmmm. For some reason, I was having difficulty explaining that although, yes, people of darker colors are generally grouped into one catchall category in America and called “black”, they are not actually called “black, as in “Hey! Hey! Hey! Everybody that can hear me! Check it out, it’s a black person!” Reflecting on my experience of lekgoa, that is partly what bothers me: it is hardly ever directed at me (Once, I was greeted with “whatsup my ‘kgoa’?” and it wasn’t bad). It is directed to others, about me. And that hurts my feelings. I know I’m different.  Almost daily, people point, they mock my accent by repeating things I say in a nasally way, or they mock the way I walk in an exaggerated strut. Kids that don’t know me refuse to greet me, even though I am their elder (a huge faux pas in Setswana culture) because they are too busy staring at this alien thing. That isn’t discrimination or racism. It is just stigma. It is being marked as different because of some quality. It is the same thing that happens to HIV positive people. Even though people are educated enough to know not to discriminate, positive people are still set apart as different (even with their own building at the clinics), and that is enough to make people refuse treatment. No one likes to be an outsider, and no one understands how awful it feels (even when no one is being overtly mean, just staring or paying extra attention) until it’s you in the minority.

Education is a big part of it. And this is another reason that I have no right to complain. A lot of kids in Ramotswa don’t know about the diversity in the world. They don’t know that stigma hurts people’s feelings because they haven’t been taught to think critically or draw parallels to being made fun of, laughed at, or excluded by bullies at school. They have never been out of Ramotswa and never experienced being different. Even the kids in Old Naledi had more education in terms of experience of diversity by nature of living embedded in the capital city. In that sense, it is I who am privileged to know how it feels to be different and to be the same. There is no history of oppression of my race here (in fact, quite the opposite- which could legitimately intensify feelings of racial hostility- but people are kind enough to not let it, usually). However, in a place like Kansas, where there actually IS a history of racial oppression to compensate for, people in the majority often don’t understand why people in the minority still feel racism when nothing overtly hateful is being done. Maybe feeling just a tiny bit of stigma is a small window into why that is.

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.