Independence Day

Independence Day

I celebrated my first Botswana’s Independence Day here by doing laundry.  I wasn’t intentionally being my typical anti-nationalistic self. My Rotary club here is working on a project collecting clothing to give to poor and/or disabled people. One of our members – the one with the washing machine – thought it would be a good day for it.  He is from Austria originally, so I guess it wasn’t his Independence Day either. The physician in our club from Zambia joined us with his wife, along with a young woman from Botswana who needed the money we would be paying her more than she needed to celebrate her independence.

All the other members apparently had to celebrate, so it was just us.  The Doctor and his wife had to leave before lunch to track down a young male family member who went on an all-night binge and was unaccounted for. And then we were three.  What we hoped would just take a few hours turned into a 10 to 5 job, mostly because the washing machine was so small, but we had a nice lunch for it.

Afterwards, I headed home and as I walked slowly towards the village it seemed like all of a sudden, it was spring.  I was noticing all the trees in bloom, especially the big huge trees with purple flowers, of course. What was that tree?? I started to wonder if and hope that it was the same tree that had been dropping its leaves and big dead seed pods on my patio and walkways for the last 4 months. It would make it all worth it if that were true.  There were trees with orange blooms, yellow blooms, white blooms, all seemingly to have bloomed that very day, because I certainly would have seen them yesterday if they had been there, right?

Although I missed the big celebration at the Kgotla (which as far as I can tell was lots of speeches, dancing, more speeches and eventual food under a very hot sun), I stumbled upon more dancing in a general grocer’s parking lot on the way home.  There I ran in to my two young teen age friends and all their friends.  I also met an older woman who kept telling me, “This is our culture. You should take pictures.”

I pick and choose when I pull out my camera and looking around at the audience, time of day, and due to the fact that there were no other cameras around, I decided not to bring mine out either.  She introduced me to the priest who was there with one of the dancing/singing groups from Gabane, a town near Gaborone.  I kept asking people what the groups were actually singing, beyond “this is our culture,” and didn’t get much, until finally the older woman said that the one group had been singing about how they were the best choir around and all the other choirs were scared of them.  At about that time, the other choir was up again for their turn. Guess they weren’t all that scared.  Understanding now that it was primarily a choir pissing contest, and my feet really ached from being on them doing laundry all day, I made my way home, walking with one of my teen aged friends.

We came upon another celebration – this one was for a young woman’s 21st birthday.  It was just down the hill from my house, if you turn left at the shebeen, and they had a tent up with a DJ blasting dance music.  She ran into the yard and I walked slowly past.  An 8 or 9 year old kid was throwing stones at a 4 year old. The 4 year old ran up to me and grabbed my hand. I told the bigger kid “nyaa! No more lenstwe!” (rocks)  He smiled but stopped. The 4 year old didn’t let go of my hand, but used his other hand to feel my skin on my arm, rubbing and touching my freckles.  He was very serious.  A young girl joined us and I asked her what his name was. “Omogole.”  I asked her what it meant, because mogolo means old person, and I wondered if it was some derivative of that.  The child was certainly acting wiser than his years.  He ran to me, a stranger, but someone who would protect him. 

He was quietly examining my skin and when I ran my fingers over his forearm, just as he was doing to me, and said, “we are the same, it feels the same, just a different color,” he looked at me and nodded infinitesimally and wise-like. He couldn’t have understood the words, but it seemed like he understood what I was saying. He held my hand for a few minutes in silence as I talked to the other kids.  The bigger kid had gone off elsewhere and gradually Omogile felt safe to venture back towards the party.  And so he did.

I could have stopped at the party, walked in and introduced myself, and probably should have.  I keep forgetting that when people have parties here they don’t send out written invitations, people just go if they know the person involved.  This goes for weddings and funerals as well.  It makes it interesting to estimate how much food to make, because every party feeds people.

As I work to integrate, I realize that I sometimes hold myself back from doing so, and possibly for the wrong reasons. Part of me is constantly trying to weigh and balance the real vs. perceived dangers of interacting with others. I am pretty clear I am not going to go to the neighborhood shebeen and sit for an evening of drinking. Yet in the day time, this neighborhood shebeen has kids who live and play there, and they are my neighbors who I should be friendly with, right?

And there are the young men who belong to the local theater group who are active in HIV prevention work in their community and seem to be good kids, who I want to support. But when I run in to one of them near the choir dance off, and he is overly friendly and seems like he has been drinking, and wants “just five minutes” of my time, and I am tired and want to go home, I wonder how open and friendly I should be. I mean, I am certain that these guys all see me as an old lady and that they aren’t coming on to me. It is more my concern over their perception that I have money or special powers to get them whatever it is they need that makes me back off from them. I think the younger volunteers have different issues in terms of interactions with their communities and I wouldn’t trade my issues for theirs, but I am often wondering if people want to get to know me because they think I have money to give them, or because they just want to get to know me. So it makes me hesitant.

When there are these big groups of people having parties, who I don’t really know that well, I get a bit shy about just putting myself out there. Even though they all know me, at least as the “white lady who lives around here somewhere” I still feel like I would be just barging in.  Yet in this culture I may be in fact acting more rudely by not “barging in.”  But being sure to behave appropriately for a woman, and a woman my age, is critical. So are their women my age at these types of things or not?  I guess the only way to find out is to just barge in. Note to self: barge next time. Free myself from the tyranny of uncertainty. Or maybe not?