Ramotswa in the News

This is Botswana

It can be really hard to describe this place to people who haven’t spent serious time here because there are so many contradictions. You can tell stories that reinforce all the stereotypes- and they would be true. Or you can tell the complete opposite. Also true. That’s a conundrum- a word I recently explained to a guy who was dictating to me exactly what I needed to yell at his friend in Setswana so that he and his buddies could all be entertained by me. Competing truths that lead you to opposite life applications: “on the one hand, I LOVE speaking Setswana, on the other hand, I HATE being told what to do…conundrum.” So, in honor of all these contradictions…this is Botswana:

1. No shirt, no shoes, no service. Modesty is a tough one to figure. Don’t be surprised to be greeted by a bishop with his robe slung over one shoulder, peeing in full frontal view of the road. Similarly, boobs just get hot and need to be aired out. Tube tops, skin-tight short pencil skirts, and balance-your-lunch-on-it cleavage are all the rage. Also true: a woman once apprehended Owen (she saw him put his shirt on as he approached town after a long run). She stopped the car, backed up, and told him he might be arrested for public indecency. Oo-la-la. Also… armpits. Sometimes they’re ok, sometimes not. I can’t figure out which is when.

2. Techknowledgey. Few people at the district health office know that turning “capslock” on and off is not the only or most efficient way to capitalize a single letter. Few people realize that saving a document saves you the trouble of retyping it every time you want it printed. Also true: I am the only one in my office who doesn’t own a smartphone and doesn’t know how to use WhatsApp. Facebook is the easiest way to contact almost everyone. Many people go for specialized IT college training, but only the bravest will tackle Mavis Beacon teaches typing.

3. Cleanliness standards. Maybe it has something to do with cleaning ladies taking their jobs very seriously and something to do with who is responsible for and who benefits from what. I don’t know. Here is what I can tell you. Once, I walked into a public hospital restroom to find feces smeared on the wall…this is not the worst of it, but that might be blog-inappropriate.  Outhouse pumping before it all overflows is not necessarily a priority. And yet, almost every time I visit a store (during normal business hours), there are several women mopping the floor, and several other women fanning the floor with cardboard or with plastic “Caution” signs, presumably to help it dry quicker than desert air already does. These women will yell at you, tackle you, smack you with their signs- really they will go to any lengths necessary to keep you from touching their freshly mopped floor. If it is the whole aisle, room, store, etc. –well, you’re just out of luck. Go spend your money elsewhere, we don’t want it.

4. This same paradox seems to apply to personal hygiene. It is customary to bathe twice a day. Lets be honest, Americans are all disgusting hippies to even question that necessity. Batswana might be absolutely correct on this one though. 1.) It’s hot here. You’re always sweaty no matter what, so bathe people! 2.) We don’t bathe in very much water, so just do the math: the ratio of bird-bath clean to full shower clean is about 6:1. 3.) Have you smelled the combis? (and they are full of twice-bathed people) 4.) You never know when you will lose that water. Drinking water should take priority, so take your baths whenever and as often as you can when the water is on! It is also customary to wash everyone else’s hands before you eat (picture Jesus washing the disciple’s feet). It’s a beautiful way to treat guests. However the custom usually involves a few tablespoons of water and never any soap. A nurse friend told me that it’s really the friction that does most of the cleaning though, so maybe not so paradoxical after all. I would still want my surgeon to use the soap though.

5. Gender norms. I might argue that these are a little paradoxical in every culture, and it’s really not a funny one. In Botswana, women hold a lot of financial power; they dominate the workforce; and are more heavily represented politically than women in the U.S. They still experience little power in relationships though. 1 in 3 women face gender-based-violence. Passion killings are still a problem. Please pray for this one.

Hard Things

What’s the hardest thing about not driving a car, being a walking facet of the environment, and relying on the community? It’s not the loss of spontaneity, options in an emergency, independence, convenience, comfort, or dignity (although those are all true). It is living life on display. It is the inability to cry in private. Crying in public is a humiliation that is amplified by the fact that it is culturally taboo (not just awkward, like in America). But what can I do? I'm not a happy or sad crier. I cry when I'm frustrated, and I can't get angry at anyone or escape anywhere to be alone. If work is terrible and I’m asked to do things that make no sense at all or that I consider unethical, but that I am not allowed to ask questions about; if I spend the morning wading through bureaucracy, power trips, and corruption; if young men shout observations about my body and small children shout “Lekgoa!” at their friends when I pass; if coworkers remind me that I’ve gotten very fat and my face is ugly and old looking; if people mock me, interrupt me, laugh at me, and it all gets to be too much....I can’t just bawl on my way home.

Here’s what crying does when you’re in public. It’s hot. Crying makes you hotter and more dehydrated. It draws attention (which I have more than enough of already). It attracts flies. So many flies- the hyperactive, dive-bombing, masemo flies. It makes it very hard to look anyone in the eye and greet him or her the way you’re supposed to, which further strips your dignity. As a friend once told me, “I only cry in the rainy season so no one can see the tears.”

Kuru Dance Festival

Thanks to our friend, Peggy and the Kuru Development Trust for inviting us to be involved in the rare full-moon dance festival near Ghanzi. We would love to share more photos in person, as most of them cannot be posted on the internet.

Friday night healing dances.

Learning about TB and HIV at the DHMT table.

Pedicures.

An action shot.

Some of the spectators.

Friends.

Kids prepare to enter the arena.

Owen making friends.

Working and Playing

Owen screening STEPS films at the Junior Secondary Schools with the District AIDS Coordinator 

Dipsy at our new favorite hiking spot near our house- Segorong Gorge. In other news, this one is about to become an American. We made a video for the occasion that you can find here:
 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=16822237

The ladies of DHMT (and Mma Chibana, out District AIDS Coordinator) at a USAID consultation meeting in Ramotswa.

Guys weekend at Mokolodi (Kago, Wendell, Owen, and Phenyo). A girls weekend happened at the same time, but CJ and I took zero photos.

Phenyo escaping an ostrich.

Our Close of Service Conference on the Chobe River.

Conference Attendee.

Kubu Island birthday and COS trip.

Kubu Island- one of the most strikingly beautiful, yet starkest places on earth.

We Need Your Help!

As we near the end of our service, there is one project that (due to long internet outages, and the size of our village) threatens to remain a loose end, so we are again humbly soliciting your help!

Please help us finish mapping Ramotswa to improve health care for everyone.

1. Click here and log on to Open Street Map.

2. Create an account, login, and search for Ramotswa, Botswana.

3. Click "Edit". An image of our village will appear. Zoom in so you can see individual buildings.

4. Click "Area". Trace around each building by clicking on the corners. Double click when you finish. Save your work. It will look like this…

To learn more about the project or how to map, watch our video here.

We have a team of Ramotswans building on your work by identifying major landmarks. With your help, we can get this thing up and running! Please share, get your 4-H club or class of 3rd graders into it. Every little bit helps!

Things I Have Learned from Long Water Outages

Monday, Thursday, and Saturday have been water rationing days for our entire two years in Botswana (I recently learned that in California this means no watering the lawn. Here, its more straightforward. It just means the water is turned off on these days). However, as the weather turns cold and dusty, and the dam has now reached 0% capacity, water is scarcer, more unpredictable and the empty pipes have taught us a few things. These are a bit hard to describe daintily. You have been warned.

1. If you don’t have a pit latrine you are wasting your time. You know those time management calculations of the total years of your life that you spent doing x? Well, I don’t want to know the percentage of my life I’ve spent attempting to flush a modern toilet without running water.

2. Math. 6 liters will flush a toilet once...or it will provide 2 baths, teeth brushings, face washes, pajama laundry, 3 cups of tea, and cook an entire pot of beans. Choose wisely.

3. More math. Storage and gray water sufficient for 20 flushes will last you one week if you conserve. It will last you one afternoon if somebody has a bad tummy. While your first instinct may be to curl up at home if you are tied to the toilet, in this case, your best option is also the most dangerous. Dress up and go to the capital. Try to reach a public toilet before its too late.  Then hang out there while people stare at you until you feel better.

4. Wet wipes make a very nice shower.

5. Living on the edge of town is a gift. Pooping in the lands is highly preferable to going on the sidewalk near the “don’t urinate or defecate here” signs.

6. Living on the edge of town is a curse. If you have to go while at work you have three options: go in the yard, keep a “special bowl” behind your desk, or start walking. If you are on the bus, and you arrive at the bus stop in the center of town, 40 minutes is a long ways to walk.

7. 27,000 people require infrastructure. Infrastructure can be built and it can fall apart. Pit latrines contaminate ground water and get banned. Indoor plumbing is not sustainable in a desert in drought, but you have to have one or the other. This is why the ancient Mesopotamians, Great Zimbabwe, the Romans, and the Aztecs engineered sewer systems for their highly populated areas. They were also located near water. It is hard for 27,000 people to live without water.

8. Access to water is highly political.

9. Popcorn makes a great, waterless dinner. Don’t wash that pot!

10. This one is from a friend in the southern Kalahari Desert: If you need to stay somewhere all day, plan ahead and don’t drink water in advance. This is also very dangerous. If you start to lose feeling in your head, scrap this plan immediately. Drink water with oral rehydration salts :)

11.Love is finding that someone has hauled and lifted to prepare the bathroom for you with the toilet tank full when the water is off.

12. Love is waking up at 3am to the sound of ominous gurgling (a sign of water returning to the pipes), cleaning, and refilling while your loved one sleeps until morning.