This was written on June 10th. June 13th is my first official day at the office. The power was out, so no internet. The power has been out a lot these few days. We get power from South Africa it seems so when they need it, like when it is cold, then Botswana gets less of it. So when this finally gets posted, you will know it is warmer in South Africa. Anyway…
It’s been an eventful few days. The day we were sworn in (June 8th), I and three of my now officially PC VOLUNTEER friends went out to have lunch and a glass or two of wine to celebrate. The place we happened to go was right across from where the government workers do their daily picketing, which has been going on since about April 18 – longer than any strike ever in Botswana and frankly no one knows what to do to end it. On that momentous day, they had taken to throwing large rocks into the middle of the road, followed by large branches, looking to block traffic and maybe start a small bbq. They were dancing and chanting around this pile as Tom and I made our way to the bank to get some cash for lunch. Returning to the restaurant, a seemingly nice enough fellow kind of pushed me away from the sidewalk near where the pile was accumulating. I don’t think he was doing it maliciously – it felt more like, “heh white lady, we are about to cause trouble and since we never do this kind of thing, we don’t want you to get the wrong idea or be hurt or confused about what we are doing and so please kindly go that side.” Well, I certainly moved along back to the safety of the restaurant. By the time we finished our meal and left the restaurant, everyone and everything was gone from the center of the road and all we had left to deal with was a torrential downpour which abated long enough for us to walk to a store to do some shopping, get a taxi from Tom’s host family cousin and head home. I was the last to be dropped and walked into the front door at my host families just before another torrential outburst, this time in the form of hail, thunder, lightning, etc. Was quite exciting being viewed from inside a house. My host family uncle arrived about 30 minutes later finding it all and all much less exciting than I did. But then he spent those 30 minutes actually walking in it.
I spent that evening finishing my packing and letting my host family niece Lucia, who will be 13 in September, watch Twilight on my computer for the second time in two days. Apparently I now need to find the sequel(s) as she is hooked. I also discovered that my mp3 player no longer had any music on it, but instead random animated movies of bugs doing various songs, dances, and other fascinating exploits. I was totally not amused. Suddenly, more bereft than ever, without my music, it became an even sadder evening, saying goodbye and being too cold to venture into the bath. Always hoping for a warmer day on which to bathe, I went to bed and had a plan to be picked up by my NGO between 9:30 and 10 a.m. the next morning. They were also going to maybe take my friend Tom to his site which was 30 minutes north of mine, because his site had no drivers due to the strike.
All seemed relatively on schedule that next morning and after various strategizing and coordinating of bags and rides and pick up spots in ways you won’t really understand unless you have been here, Tom, our driver and I set off for the 1 hour drive to Otse. The plan was that we would pick up the keys to my house and the driver would drop me and my stuff there, then take Tom up the road since he had a delivery of sorghum to take there anyway and Tom could be the person to help him offload it (assuming we first loaded it into our vehicle, or changed vehicles or something.) At any rate, when we get to my NGO the driver disappears, there are no keys to my house and we wait around until we decide we might as well eat lunch.
I talk to my landlady and have what is sure to be not the last lesson in speaking English, not American, with someone who speaks English, not American, as their second language. She says in a non-question type statement, “The driver is coming to get you.” To which I respond, “He is coming to get me?” She says, “okay, I am on this side, in the village, and I have the house key. I will come meet you.” So I hang up thinking she is coming to get me or the driver is, or they are both coming together. After lunch, I call her again, since neither she nor the driver has come. Now it is more clear. She is at the house waiting for me. Her statement “the driver is coming to get you” was in fact a question. My answer, “the driver is coming to get me?” was in fact an answer telling her the driver was coming to get me. By now, the driver was certainly not coming to get me and is already in Tom’s town, unloading sorghum, but without Tom or his luggage.
So now my poor counterpart Victor, who is frantically planning a workshop for the next morning, drives me to my house, where we offload my stuff then head with him south (opposite direction of Tom’s town) so he can get quotes for food for the next day. Tom and I, ever hopeful, think maybe after that he can drive Tom north again, and at least I can do some shopping for dinner, although my house was at this point without gas or electricity, so we were talking fruit and power bars.
South in Lobatse, Victor finishes his work, I do my shopping, and Tom texts and calls people at his site trying to figure out if anyone is going to come save him from driving up and down this highway without ever getting closer to his site. We have by now run through Plans A-J and were creatively coming up with new and random ways for him to get his stuff and his butt to Ramotswa. I guess I was having more fun with this than he was, because as he pointed out, I had my home. We finally gave up and decided to try again the next day. We spent the evening with our headlamps on our heads, Tom trying to cheat at rummy, as we ate power bars and apples and drank juice.
The next day, Plan A was for Victor would pick us up between 7 or 8 a.m. and take us to the workshop, which was near Ramotswa and where the speaker of honor happened to be the person Tom was going to live with for the next two weeks until the volunteer he is replacing leaves and vacates his home. We figured we could move his stuff from Victor’s vehicle into her vehicle and viola. Except Victor was picking her and a bunch of other people up so there would be no room for Tom’s luggage. And I had no electrical or gas. The store with the electrical cards (one buys a card here and then enters the card numbers into the meter at the house) in Otse had been hit by a huge piece of metal during the freak hail storm and was closed until they removed it from their roof. Or wait, that was their roof that was now hanging on the ground. Either way, no electricity for sale today.
So Plan B – we decided it would be better to forgo the workshop and get his stuff and him gone from Otse. Victor arranges for our driver to pick us up at around 9 and take us down the hill to the bus stop where we can take the bus north, then a combi (smaller bus) east to Ramotswa. Tom and I figure we can only manage half his stuff this way and off we go, finally arriving at his new work site which is a small narrow trailer that just got smaller with the addition of a large suitcase, backpack and various random bags full of essential stuff. We now have a couple of hours to find electricity, get lunch, buy more serious provisions for me, and then get a ride back from Victor when he comes and drops Tom’s temporary housing host back into town. I still have to buy gas, but can’t do it in Ramotswa because gas comes in an actual gas tank, not on a nifty card. No one has responded to my pleas for a phone number of a gas vendor in Otse, so I am looking at another night of fruit and M&Ms (not a bad way to go, but still). But if I can get back to Otse before 5 p.m., it might just work.
The car was too full with people to take Tom’s stuff to his hosts home, so Plan C sees his stuff spend the night in the office, while he decided to come back to my house again to get the rest of his stuff for the next morning and also because having electricity and gas sounded like a for sure thing. Back at the house, we can’t get the meter to give us my electricity, so I go next store to my neighbor and ask the 14 year old boy to come help us. He can’t get it to work either, but meanwhile we learn that his family owns a store and bottle shop, so he agrees to walk us down to it while I await the call from the gas man. Luckily, the kid was able to talk to the gas man for me and it was decided to meet us at the bottle shop and bring us and the gas (and the bottle of wine) back to the house. So we have gas and I made a nice pasta by candlelight and headlamps. We watched Inception right up to the moment where they are approaching the huge safe in the remote mountain fortress because Tom’s computer battery died. Electricity continues to prove difficult but thanks to the bottle of wine I now have two candleholders instead of just one.
Pluses
Great house and garden will large sunny kitchen, fireplace, high ceilings and transom windows to let out the heat during the summer and a nice outdoor porch to eventually hang my hammock on, large bathroom with indoor plumbing, two sinks in kitchen, nice refrigerator/freezer combo (this also goes in the minus column, see below), gas cooking, beautiful village, neighbors are nice and own a bottle shop (that last part also goes in the minus column)
Minuses
Apparently parts of my village (but not entire neighborhoods – don’t ask) have trouble getting enough voltage during hi peak periods (like when everyone is running their space heaters now, or fans in the summer) to run the electric, which includes my geyser (pronounced geezer, as it “old geezer”) – which is my hot water supply, lights and outlets all at the same time. The outlets use the least, so I am charging things up before everyone gets home from work. I boiled water on the stove for my bath, because seems nothing will let the geyser kick on, regardless of peak time usage. I tried running the fridge, but it is so big and huge and nice that it simply tripped the circuits. So I guess it will mostly be where I store the food I wish I could cool so my cupboards will always seem bare and I will eat all of what I cook whether I need to or not. The issue may be fixed any day, week, month, or year.
Now, on June 15th, when the power and internet are both back on, all in all things are still lining up in the plus column. I mean, cold nights and mornings aside, the sun does shine here almost every day, and these winter days are beautiful. The power issue has become more problematic for the entire town, as if in solidarity the powers that be decided to shut down the power for everyone for the last two nights, not just me. I have figured out at least to turn the geyser on when I go to bed, or if I wake up during the night, so at least I am greeted with hot water for a bath in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment