Be the Sheep

Whew, What a Week

I had company this week; a Peace Corps trainee currently in the middle of her training. This is their week to shadow other volunteers, and the person she was going to shadow couldn’t do it at the last minute so I volunteered to help out. She is a retired psychologist and will be working with youth here as a Life Skills volunteer. They only have about a 7 week training – we had 9.5, and she was four weeks into it.

We had a good time, but I am sure she was glad to get back to training where she was within close walking distance of the training center and wasn’t quite so busy. We walked the distance to work and more each day, and a couple of days we started at 7:30 and went to 6:30. I had to leave her on her own one morning while I took Cathrine and Erto to get their passports, and she went the long way, and then got lost so that didn’t help much either, I am sure. (Oh, what we would pay for a street sign.)

It was just the way the week turned out and the things I had to do, although generally I am pretty busy and wasn’t just showing off.  And then there were the things I didn’t know I had to do that my supervisor had me do at the last minute. These things happen.

She ran 2 focus groups, I helped with one of them. We attended a grant proposal training put on in our village by NACA (National AIDS Coordinating Agency, or something), which we crashed at the last minute. They really want us to apply for a grant to get services to people with disabilities. The morning session, which went to 1, started late and covered in the time what should have been covered in 1 hour. So, while we got to listen to an excellent discussion about the factors impacting HIV/AIDS in Botswana from the perspective of the experts who live here, we didn’t get to hear squat about the actual grant application or how to go about applying. We had to leave to get to the focus group, but of course stayed and had lunch first.

After the focus group, we hopped on over to the Otse Disability Support Group meeting at 5 and she got to see what that was like. Then we got home around 6:30 or 6:45 and dealt with my erratic electrical system. I think we cooked and ate most of our meals by candlelight and waited around for there to be enough voltage to run the geyser long enough for hot water.

Thursday we went to Mogobane where I facilitated a training for that support group, then we hopped back to Otse for lunch (I had three scoops of ice cream and a ginger ale for lunch. Mom, you would be proud) and then back on a bus to Ramotswa to attend the Lifeline group that my co-PCV Tom runs on a weekly basis. The kids were getting ready to cast the various roles for the movie they will be making, so every got to practice different parts to much laughter and silly antics. After that, we spent a short time with Tom and his wife Debbie, who is visiting from the states but leaving next Friday, and then we had to leave to catch a bus  - I am sorry I have to interrupt this to say that it is way too hot for me to be cooking a bean and rice stew. Anyway, we didn’t quite manage to get back here by dark, but we did our best and had no mishaps.

Friday was another visit from our EU grant pals. Enough said. The trainee finished up some of her reports and headed out around 1 p.m. Wish I could have headed out around 1.  But I toughed it out, got thing the EU staff person needed, my desk not quite cleared but at least organized for next week’s assault, and blogs posted.

I then went over to pick some mulberries to bring home for my cereal in the a.m.  There was a nice Friday afternoon atmosphere going on with the staff. Many of the trainees had left for the weekend and people were hanging out at the pottery shop near where I was picking the berries. They had big HUGE bags (did I say they were HUGE?) of chard that they were selling for 6 PULA (about a buck). I wanted some SO bad, but not a bag that big. We joked that I wouldn’t have any left by the time I got home because I would be handing it out to everyone I passed, just to lessen my load. 

When I returned from picking the berries, one of my staff friends had left for me a small, much more reasonably sized bag, which she said she couldn’t charge me for because it was less than a kilo. Way cool.  I offered my berries around to those who were there. Most of the guys politely just took a couple. I realized that they worked within 20 feet of the tree and had plenty of chances to fill themselves. But my co-worker who is in an electric wheelchair, due to an accident of some sort quite a few years ago, was very pleased to have the chance to have these lovely berries offered to him, and I made sure he took his fill.

While berry picking, I had a phone call with the woman who is going to help transport Erto and Cathrine back and forth from here to Johannesburg to get treatment. We have been able to find a doctor in Jo’burg who will help, which means they can make the trip back and forth in one day and don’t have to go all the way to Cape Town or be away from their home and her other kids for 6 or 8 weeks. This woman had a child with the same situation and she is eager to help but also to maybe use this opportunity to bring awareness to the problem and try to get more physicians involved in Botswana in providing this important, non-surgical alternative for clubfoot. She is coming this weekend to meet me, Cathrine and Erto and it may be we have raised enough money already to get them to their first appointment and treatment, though not enough for the entire series.

Having someone who has been through it, who is Motswana, and willing to help Cathrine through this is SO critical to success.  I stopped by and saw Cathrine on the way home to let her know we had company coming and the good news. She was pleased that she wouldn’t have to be gone for so long, but seemed like a two week “vacation” from her life here would have been a nice thing.  I am sure the idea of going away, with just one of her three kids, receiving money for food and having nice accommodation sounded nice, even if potentially difficult.

My walk home proceeded nicely after that. I spoke to quite a few people, starting to practice my little bit of Setswana more and more. I spoke to a group of kids, a woman who insisted on all the greetings then told me I needed to teach her English, an older fellow in the grocery store who said he would be my tutor, my neighbor at the bottle shop who speaks no English, and all the various random people I say “dumela” to.  I ignored the young child who yelled “lekgoa” at me, because she was with adults and they know better.

I saw one of my teenage friends and we reconfirmed our meeting tomorrow. A few people, at a few different places along the way, said they would come see me “kamoso” (tomorrow). Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but it is a sign of increasing integration, so I was feeling good.

I even stopped to talk to the only two sheep in the village, who I have never seen before, but as they appeared today on my regular route home, I couldn’t just ignore them. At first I thought they were very fat goats, but they were covered in sheep’s clothing, so I was not fooled. “Where have you been all this time?” we mutually queried. None of us really had a good answer for the others, so I moved on.

And that got me to thinking how much I enjoy these walks home, with just my random thoughts, a few conversations, and generally low level but nice interactions.  I loved having my trainee guest, but I realized today that when I am expected to talk so much, I don’t get my time to just think.  And this realization set a whole set of other realizations into motion. (Like this distracting realisation– I am starting to type “s” where “z” belongs…) First, I think I am pretty good at thinking on my feet – responding to situations as they come and not needing a lot of time to think about an answer because I am thinking as I am speaking, generally. Some of my friends can attest to the fact that they also would appreciate if I sometimes WOULD think before I spoke and not at the same time I spoke. Or even prefer that I think quietly and then still not speak at all.

This week made me realize that even though I can do all this, when I am constantly being asked to speak, I start to feel like I don’t have room to think anymore. When I am on my toes, or someone is on my toes, I am way too much in my head, and not in my heart.  I want to escape to silence and emptiness. So my new motto when this happens is, “Be the sheep.” Not the goat – they really are too busy. And being the "sheep" has the added bonus of perhaps being more than one, or just one, depending on your mood.