Rotary Visit

Rotary Visit

I finally got a chance to go to the Rotary Club of Gaborone that meets Friday’s at lunch time at the fancy hotel in Gabs.  Since I have been here, Botswana has lost one of its clubs, the other Gabs club, which has effectively now become part of the Friday club.  It just got too small to be sustainable. Our Lobatse club is hovering on sustainability as well in terms of numbers, but we have a new energy and a good group of active members, so I am hoping we will turn it around.

I took a 20 year old friend of mine with me to the meeting. His name is Omphile and I met him one day in the combi from Ramotswa after visiting my friend Tom who is the PCV there.  Omphile was so polite, so friendly, and still so without real options in life because he didn’t do well in his finals in high school.  He is interested in performing arts – music, media, radio. Basically he likes to talk and meet people, he says. But not in an annoying way – he is friendly and engaging.  Imagine that if you don’t do well on your finals in high school in your last year, you miss out on going to college. No community colleges to find your way or make up for that inattentive hormonal senior year.  I had already hooked him up with Tom’s Lifeline group – a group for out of school youth to stay out of trouble, basically – and he has been going gangbusters ever since, showing real leadership skills, maturity, kindness and respect to everyone he meets.

I wanted to have him see a Rotary Club in action and have us both learn about what might be available in terms of youth exchange and development. There is a very new youth exchange program for kids in their 20s which I think would be great for him, but it is so new no one has really figured out how to run it and when I met and spoke to a fellow from a Johannesburg club this weekend about the new program, he was concerned about “how you would control them once they are adults.”  I guess if they are exchange students in high school, at least you know where they are supposed to be and you have some pull as the host “family.”  25 year olds running amok is his version of this program I guess. Frustrating, but maybe with some time it will get sorted.

Omphile and I had a good time in the City. We talked about his interests and brainstormed ideas for how he might be able to do some volunteering or interning if we could find him the right connections. It’s all about who you know here, but I guess that is true wherever you go. We ran errands I needed to run shopping wise. But before we did that, since the shops didn’t open until 9 a.m., I took he to have his first ever cafe mocha, which he enjoyed immensely. . I introduced him to peanut M&Ms and he wanted a picture of him eating them.  He enjoyed these immensely as well.

Then we headed to the hotel, which is very posh by both Botswana and Humboldt County standards. I took his picture at poolside, lounging in one of the lounge chairs. He was in heaven. Then we went to meeting and he got to speak to various business people, a professor at the University who was very encouraging, and others who made him feel very welcome.  He enjoyed the buffet and went with the professor to get dessert when they saw I was busy talking with the guy from Dublin to bother with dessert (that was a sad realization for me later).

I got to meet a lot of the Gabs club members – quite an international group – and they invited me to attend a social event that was happening with the Rotary members from the district who were interviewing youth for this next year’s exchange.  They were all very friendly and welcoming, just like my Lobatse Club. I realized again that being a member of Rotary is really a world-wide club, where membership makes you welcome at whatever club you visit.  It’s nice to have such a big family so far from home and wherever I go.

It got me thinking that on my trip to Germany in a couple of weeks, I could look up a couple clubs there as well. Sitting in a comfy-cosy German restaurant will be a nice way to spend a few hours on a cold December day, to be sure. I wonder if the German clubs have any distinctive customs unknown outside their borders….We shall see.

Meanwhile, I will continue to try to find opportunities for Omphile to get some exposure and experience in the media field. He is willing to do anything, just to learn and make connections, and that is a good attitude to have.