My Host Family

I haven’t been able to post as much as I would like. When we do have a chance to get on line at school I don’t always have the time to compose anything or the blog page is down for some dumbass reason.  So I have been remiss in telling you about my great host family. I want to say I have been lucky because some of the volunteers in my group have had hard times for one reason or another with their families. Mine is pretty cool, and I am not struggling all that much with living with a bunch of other people. Thank you to Jamie and her kids and Gail for getting me ready for this!

So my “mother” is Lenah Tutuwe, a widow of about 6 or 7 years who is 52 years old and works as a housekeeper at the town’s hospital. I am pretty sure she looks much older than I do at 49. She has had a harder life, to be sure and is also diabetic.  Lenah named me Katlego, which means “achievement"in Setswana. No pressure.  It has been an achievement just to say it correctly, but at least she didn’t give me a name with any “r”s in it because they roll their “r”s here like you wouldn’t believe. She is very kind and the first few weeks when I was on my way out to school she would stop me and say a 5 minute prayer for my safety. So far, so good. She has five children, the oldest is her son Phemelo (“Protection”) Joseph who is about 35 or 37 or something. He lives here but travels to Gabs every morning (about an hour or so on the bus) where he works as a driver.  Lots of government and other groups have drivers to take employees to various meetings and such, because everyone doesn’t have a car here like in the US. His girlfriend, Lorato, who is 22, lives here at the house with us and their two kids. Lawrence Tao who is almost 15 months old and Alicia who is almost 2 ½ years old.   When I figure out how to put photos on my blog, you will see. These beautiful babies are so much fun, though I can’t understand them at all. When I have had a stressful day at training or just adapting to life here, a few minutes playing and laughing with them is all it takes.  One of my first lasting memories at my host family is dancing with Alicia on the porch and trying to keep Tao from crawling off the edge and dropping the 3 feet to the ground (no porch railings at this homestead).  Fun times which later expanded to them bouncing on my bed and me trying to keep Alicia from bouncing right onto Tao’s head or him off the bed.  They slobber on everything, have snotty noses when they are sick, and pee on the floor with startling regularity, but I love them and little Ali said to me the other day “ke rata mma Kattie”  which means I love mama Kattie (my Setswana name is Katlego which is Kattie to the kids).  Their mom, Lorato has the most beautiful laugh and a singing voice to match. As the main person doing the cooking, she took me “under her wing” to teach me how to cook correctly.  I have humored her since they do things differently here and only had to tell her once when she told me how to chop the carrots for the “soup” which is more like a stew sauce they use at every meal to go with the bread or phaleche (more on that later), that I have been chopping carrots longer than she has been alive.  Now she tells me when to chop carrots, but no longer how to do it.  Progress.  I know she gets bored being at home with the kids and waiting for Phemelo to come home each night around 8 or 9 p.m.  She said today she wished she could work to help him with money. 

Lenah also has four daughters, three living and working in the capitol – Gaborone – we say Gabs, and one living in the opposite direction in Jwaneng, basically a town built for mining purposes only and full of male workers and prostitutes. Well, and government workers like my sister.  The oldest sister, Madgeline Malebogo (“Gratitude”)works as a secretary and is the mother to Lucia, a 13 year old who lives here at our house full time.  She has been my language teacher, speaking the best English of any of the permanent residents here. She is very funny, loves to speak English, watch English movies and shows on tv, and is your typical scatterbrained teenager.  She helps take care of the kids when not at school and is supposed to help with laundry and cooking and cleaning, but gets so distracted sometimes, it takes her forever. I have been teaching her card games, including solitaire, which she is enjoying. I showed her my book of 150 ways to play solitaire, but took it from her when I saw her eyes rolling into the back of her head. That isn’t for beginners.

Next comes Boikanyo (“Faith or Trust” I am not quite sure which) Amelia, who is a hair stylist, also living in Gabs, then Tshegofatso (“Blessing”) Sophia, who works at a government job in Jwaneng and is the first of my sisters I ever met, lastly the baby Khumo “Wealth” Sinah, who is a police woman in Gabs.  I remember the day I met the first one. She came home for a weekend and greeted me with such friendliness and sisterliness. She told me, “when I come home I take care of momma, and you are my big sister so I will take care of you!”  I almost burst into tears because I was expecting to have to chop carrots, onions, green peppers, cabbage and potatoes just so for yet another soup and just wanted to crawl into bed! I loved her from that moment on and forever. 

All the sisters came home for Easter and it was a hoot. Nothing special happened for Easter. I was blessed to be with a family that doesn’t spend the entire Easter weekend at church, as do others here. Then two came again for mother’s day, although so briefly I was in school most of Saturday and barely saw them on mother’s day before they had to leave.  I am so happy that I will be living near them and Kanye so I can see them and know I have a place in country to come “home” to if I need to get away without being able to truly get away.

Lastly, there is my uncle, my deceased father’s older brother, who comes into town once or twice a week from the cattle post.  Here in Botswana, cattle ownership is very important. The more cattle you have, the wealthier you are. When you marry, the groom pays lebola “bride price” to the bride’s family and the number of cows varies from community to community. Here in Kanye area it is set at 8 cows.  Up north, there is an area where it will cost you 12 cows for your bride.  Weddings are a topic of another post.  At any rate, uncle blows in, blows out.  He speaks very little English but seems kind enough. When he is here, I can often hear him and mom late into the night talking and maybe playing some kind of dice game. I just hear the sound of what sounds like domino pieces and their low voices. 

This brings me to tell you about our house.  First, it is pretty decent by comparison to some of the other places volunteers are staying, but not the best of the bunch.  We have a compound, with three older buildings on it besides the current house. It appears each of the older buildings were previous houses –  each having two rooms attached but with their own entries, metal roofing and no running water.  Our current house is a three bedroom, with a large living room, smaller kitchen with no built-ins or cabinets except a double sink.  The bathroom situation is a toilet and sink in one room, a huge deep bath tub with small sink in another, and a shower room. The shower doesn’t work and has no door, the tub has no real water pressure so we still have to haul hot water from the kitchen sink. For the first week I was here the tub room’s door wasn’t attached and I had to move it over to block the opening.  The first time I used the toilet, I ended up locking myself in because there was no door handle on the inside.  Phemelo came home that weekend and fixed these two things for me!  The house has a great tile roof that looks well built. I know this because I can see it, along with all the cross beams, when I lay on my bed because we have no ceilings.  Which is why I can hear mom and uncle whispering away.  Last week Phemelo was gone in Gabs all week so Lorato and her kids and Lucia and mom all slept in the room next to mine.  They sounded like girlfriends at a slumber party, laughing and giggling.  It was nice.