Some tidbits

Fashion Tips

So apparently teenage girls the world over, no matter what their financial, cultural, or educational circumstances, know fashion.  I was wearing my ex officio travel pants at home one day when my two teenage friends came over.  I opened the door and they burst out laughing at ME!  Well now.  I haven’t worn the pants here more than once or so, because they are baggy and make me feel like a balloon. So at least officially now I know they actually make me LOOK like a balloon too. Actually, what my friends said about them is that they are “Tourist pants. White people pants.”  So I guess it is a kind of backhanded compliment for them to be so surprised to see me in them, and not want me to wear them.

Men Over Flowers

I was sitting at my desk at work the other day. It sits in the corner of a larger room that is used for meetings. They used to kick me out of some personnel related meetings until they realized that I wouldn’t understand them if in Setswana.  My boss no longer kicks me out of the ones he has in English related to their organizational restructuring because he realizes I can actually help them with good ideas from time to time.

Anyway, so I was in my “office” and our HR person was orienting the new driver to various HR policies at the meeting table.  Another staff person had arranged some flowers for someone for a wedding and had brought them in to put in the fridge to keep cool and had put the larger arrangement on the table with the fan blowing on it.  One of the gardening supervisors was checking his email on a computer off to the side.

The guy shows up to pick up the flower arrangements, so the HR meeting stops and the woman who made the arrangements come in.  The guy starts complaining about the price of the flowers, saying he has this stuff in his yard and he could have done it himself.  You can tell he is kind of playing around, but at the same time I can tell from the staff’s face that she is feeling a bit insulted by him implying this was easy or done without skill. 

I look at her and the HR director, another woman, and I say, “men have no idea how much something like this costs or how hard it is to do” then I walk out to make copies in the other office.  I don’t want to stick my nose too far into this, but I didn’t like seeing her insulted.  They all continue a quite animated discussion in Setswana where I can tell he is arguing about the amount and they are telling him the flowers are beautiful and he couldn’t have done this himself. I come back and I guess he is claiming he doesn’t have enough money, but he goes out to make a phone call.  When he comes back he is still bitching and moaning. I get another shot in at him, “if you could have made it yourself, you would have. But you didn’t and now you need to pay for what you ordered,” and then leave the room again.  When I come back, he is out at his car but returns and has suddenly found the money he “didn’t” have to pay for the flowers.  He pays and leaves.

While he was out, I told them all that he probably phoned the bride or groom who told him just pay the price. He had probably hoped to be able to lower the price and keep the extra “savings” in his own pocket. I suggested to the staff person that in the future she tell the people exactly what it was going to cost in advance, and provide them with an invoice when they come and pick it up, so there is no room for this kind of “confusion” in the future.

The HR director tells me that while I was gone he asked them to go find me and ask me to lower the price, thinking I was the boss. This dismays me.  There are five  of us in the room with this guy, including a creative woman who made some beautiful flower arrangements and he decides it’s the white person who is in charge. Sure, I was the only one at a “desk” with a computer, but nothing anyone said to him or to me during the encounter indicated I was the boss. I only said 2 or 3 sentences the whole time while they were all exchanging a lot of words.  Sigh.

My first snuff encounter

So I am sitting at a support group meeting and we are waiting to get started. One of my legacy’s might eventually be to encourage them to start meetings on time once they have a quorum and not wait for every Tom, Dick and Harry to show up so they have more than a quorum and start 30 minutes into a 1 hour meeting. But we aren’t there yet. Instead we are waiting when the chair pulls out a little round metal container, takes out what looks like either tobacco or the dried coffee they drink here, and snorts it into her nose. She gives some to the woman next to her.  Five minutes later, they both blow their noses and done is done. I guess it is better than smelling cigarette smoke or seeing them spit chew out.  Nice.

My Neighbor

My neighbor is about 37 years old and mentally ill. He lives with his parents, sister and her child.  He comes and visits me occasionally, but is always asking for money or food, so I tend to ward off his visits. His mental illness mostly shows in his talk about god and religion. One time it expanded to god, religion, Saturn, Neptune and pointed ears, but that was an exception to the usual religious zeal.  He usually wants Pula so he can buy cigarettes. I never give him money and have occasionally given him apples. When my teenaged friends leave the house, he will sometimes ask them if I gave them any food or money. They have decided to mostly tell him no.

The week we were starting language week he was down near Jim’s house and saw me walk with Tom to Jim’s. I dashed off to meet Tonic our teacher and her ride at the main road. When we arrived back my neighbor was in Jim’s house, along with Tom and a white English friend of Jim’s who happened to be visiting.  My neighbor seemed more confused than normal and was really pushing for money. I felt responsible for having brought him to Jim’s accidentally, but felt Jim needed to set the boundaries in his home, and not me. Later that week he to my house while Tom and Jim were there with our teacher Tonic. He was aggressively panhandling at that point and I told him he could not come to my house and ask my guests for money. Tonic finally had to tell him it wasn’t cool and he left.

But he is really harmless and reminds me of some of our clients back at ADHS. Treat him with respect, set limits and things are good.  I wonder if the week he was so pushy he had stopped taking his medications or something.  The other day I met his father but didn’t know it was his father at first. I was walking past the shebeen where I met this older man coming from another direction. We greeted one another and continued on together until we were just in front of their home. He asked me if I knew the fellow and I said yes. He told me that he had a mental illness and I said “yes, I know, and he is a nice fellow.” Then he told me he was his son. I said, “Oh, I understand. Well, he is a nice fellow.”  My saying this seemed to make the gentleman happy and at ease.  I wasn’t lying either. He looked like he carried the particular heavy burden of a parent of a person with a mental illness.  His son is lucky to be living at home and in a village that pretty much lets him alone and doesn’t harass him.

The Cutest Snotty Noses

I was walking to work, yet again, when I heard the sound of young feet running in my direction, attached to the laughter of young kids. I stopped and turned and there stood 4 young kids, two of each sex, dressed smartly in their pre-school uniforms.  I said hello, and we continued walking together. One of the girls took my hand. Then, the youngest, another girl, took my other hand.  Now I felt as cute as they were!!  Then I noticed they were all sniffling, coughing and generally showing signs of having nice cute colds.  Smiling, sweet, happy, cute little faces of snot.  And me holding those cute little hands. We got to their school and I handed the oldest child a pack of Kleenex pocket tissues. She looked at them strangely and I tried to explain how they were used on their noses and that she needed to share them with her friends and that she should wipe her cute little nose now, now. They were sweet kids.