Gabs week six. Freshers Ball and the birth of Krishna.

I have officially recovered and as promised my victory over African bacteria was celebrated in fine form with my Choc-o-Holic** Spinner and a viewing of Top Gun.

It seems I healed at the right time because the heat has arrived in full force and I think that would have been an especially unpleasant addition to my bathroom time.

It is 33 degrees Celsius at this exact moment, (convert that)!*

The heat has also brought the bugs and the bugs have brought the bats. SO many bats. Playing soccer at night, you literally have to dodge bats every where. Some people think it is gross, I think it feels cool. exotic. 

The teachers have not gone on strike yet but our fingers are crossed, skipping school feels equally good abroad.  Otherwise academics have been relatively run of the mill, minus a build up of work prior to mid semester break (Spring Break). (Spring break culture is the same Tofo, Mozambique = Cancun.) I'll be in Zambia then South Africa! 

In addition to UB classes, our program requires a series of lectures and seminars as part of our cultural immersion, this week we had a lecture on the Evolution of Setswana culture, really we just got to ask questions and talk about the culture we have observed for a couple hours with Dr. Pearl Seloma. Dr. Seloma is a population studies specialist with an emphasis in the impacts of folklore on society. Super interesting. She lived in Los Angeles for 12 years while she got her Ph.D. at UCLA.

I liked that she defined culture shock as "realizing you are different from other people, not that they are different from you." It seems very true to me. 

Dr. Seloma formally confirmed that time in Botswana is utilitarian and not based on our very abstract concept of time. Centered on completion of tasks,  it is odd when you think about how seriously we regard time that is just a number on a clock in a day; after all time is nothing.  It was really nice to have this openly explained and I am not only appreciating but embracing the difference now.

What was less nice was our discussion on gender roles.

I, as well as my fellow international student female friends (and I am fairly sure most women in Botswana [but who am I to say that]), am pretty wiped out from being verbally harassed when ever I am outside of my room. Today a car kept honking at Monica and I; we were trying to ignore it, but I could hear it pulling up, I got really tense and was ready to send whoever on their way- then I realized it was Batsi (!) he just wanted to give us a ride. :/  It really wears on you, especially when the expectation here is that you do not say anything back. You smile and stay silent.

I (probably too flippantly) asked about the gender dynamic and feminism in Botswana.

Dr. Seloma responded, “I do not call myself a feminist, it is a very unattractive word.” (Yikes.) 

I read in a delightful blog (Pura Vida, by a delightful Annelie Day) that an instructor in Costa Rica was expressing the dangers of city, and the importance of not walking alone, saying “Ladies, now is not the time to exert your feminism...” Dr. Seloma used more or less the same phrasing to say this is not the country to be in if you would like to exert your feminism. Don’t live here if you have a problem with patriarchy. I am trying to navigate this in a culturally suitable way, in the confines of a developing nation but I know that it will be the greatest challenge.

Despite not holding feminism in very high light and mentioning something along the lines of men should have equal rights too (basically that feminism in oppressive), Dr. Seloma somehow concluded her presentation by saying she, personally, wished she had not gotten married because she “could have gone much farther in life.”    

This reality here has made me more than a bit grumpy this past week.

My mind has felt like a scramble of trying to understand what is happening here, why and what “should” be happening (but then I feel like reprimanding myself for even the slightest imposition of my “should be happening’s” for the nation.)

Clearly, there are and will continue to be huge conflicts over the most appropriate way to develop, but there are such extremes here. It feels like this large majority of society is making every effort to project idea’s of the “American dream”. They actually even link it to Obama being Kenyan, “A Kenyan is now President of America-that has taught us we can do anything.”  Lots of people want to suggest you have complete agency, there is always a way, it is all how hard you work and failure is your fault; any errors in development are because people are not trying. 

But progress is struggling, so am I suppose to think people here don’t try?

After six weeks of a course in Economic Development and one in Sustainable Development, a professor on Thursday for the first time acknowledged that this view and the adoption of modern/western values may be the wrong choice for Botswana, or at least may need to be approached differently.

I have the sense there is a lot of systemic oppression that is working against Botswana, but it has been hard to find and I don’t know if that idea is present.

 The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper (which we discussed in my mad-rad African philosophy course) theorized (?) suggested (?) implied (?) that African’s have no vision of alternative.  Historically, the African world  depends not on natural law but on human whim (there is no objectivity.)  I guess here, there is a lot of causality in explaining what is happening in the world -like Kharma (i.e. it won’t rain because the youth of today are immoral.) This dependence on magical belief as the way of explaining reality makes Africa a ‘closed society’ resistant to change (no alternatives).  Popper asserts that countries in the west embrace a fluidity of ideas so are ‘open societies.’ This theory was used to delegitimize Africans as competent people.

I entirely disagree with Popper but this idea is the best way I can encapsulate how development is being handled currently. The nation is divided and no one can embrace the other’s alternative. When I ask people why this is happening  they say, “what do you expect?...T.I.A.” ***

I think now, it is just trying to understanding why because it is a very sad mentality, My professor said, “Botswana must stop focusing on the tree and start looking at the forest,” I like this idea but like I said, my minds a bit scrambled after the week.

All grumpiness was cured by the discovery of Linga Longa Breakfast. They have a glorious outside patio and its full of relatively high speed wireless internet, breakfast all day, a very yummy (especially by African standards) eggs benedict, their own bathroom and bottomless coffee (!) (That’s the real shocker- things like ‘free refills’ are not present in Bots- I made my self sick off the coffee I was so elated.) Our waitress is even named Perfect. How great is that!?*****

There is a huge population of both Indian and Chinese people. They are taking advantage of (maybe even exploiting) "economic opportunities". It is a big problem for the Batswana, but it is also something I haven’t quite wrapped my mind around yet. Needless to say we have made some Indian friends here.  They are all Hare Krishna-a type of Hindu and they have some really neat philosophy, ideas like each one of us is not our physical body but an eternal spirit soul, part of God -Krishna- so we are all interrelated. They are also know for lots of delicious food. 

Rachel and I got invited by a new friend Aki (Aw Kee) to a party at the temple last Thursday. Though Aki seemed a but awkward :) initially and we were avoiding giving him our numbers (I actually did avoid it) he turned out to be great! Picked us up at 8:30 and took us to the temple. The temple is super grandiose; all white carved marble with tiny detailing, it looks like a baby Taj Mahal (or something that you would imagine as very typically Indian) but in the middle of Gaborone. It was crazy to see.

There were three hours of dancing and some dramas performed to celebrate. It was put on by the temple youth group and similar to say, an American school play -very charming and a bit silly.

At midnight Krishna is born,  (surprisingly in essentially the exact same scenario as Jesus- they actually refer to Janmashtami as Indian Christmas.) They remove the curtain from the alter in the temple, to show the shrine which is this amazing ornate statue covered in fruit and flowers and peacocks (not sure about the peacock but it looked sweet). 

There were 413 (according to Aki) dishes, the idea is this; on your birthday you should eat your favorite foods, but Krishna is a fickle god so they just make everything.  There are huge buckets of naan, rice, dahl and paneer then literally hundreds of bowls of food and you take a little of what ever you like. All vegetarian. mmmm Yumsters. (I think it has been my greatest meal in 7 weeks.) Weirdly they also had the best birthday cake I have had in a long time (I just didn’t really think of Indian celebrations incorporating cake-but no expectations right?!)

The weekend stayed cheerful since Friday night was Freshers Ball, it is an all night concert from 6pm to 6am, it is a university sponsored concert and party (To SUers this is African Quadstock.) It was really(really really) nuts, LOTs of drinking, dancing and hot dogs. The music was so fun, traditional beats meet hip-hop explosion. Monica and I also learned how the dangers of our campus, i.e. holes, water canals and thorns should be very carefully minded post an evening that was as...festive...as freshers ball. The early morning wake up to move to the village, however, could have gone better.

I am spending the next ten days living in Mochudi, a village about 45 minutes north east of Gabs. 2 hours by public transport.

My family is so great and greeted me with boxed red wine mixed with grape fanta. (another Yikes).

I have a mother named Tshepo (Say Po- though you need to make a little tst sound at the begining), a father from Kenya named Peter, a little brother named Geoff- he is 8 and super excited and a Grandma Mariri (Ma reeree).

They named me Masego (Ma Say HO), it means the lucky one.

It is a rural homestay and they take me in as their daughter for the week. I do all the things a 20 something daughter would do. Cleaning, serving tea, wearing village appropriate clothes i.e. ankle length skirts, really just nothing to scandalous. I cooked dinner last night. I asked Tshepo what to do, as she handed me, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, chilli peppers and about ten pounds of beef.  She said “Just do what you think you should do.” Everyone liked it and congratulated me.  I didn’t properly de-vein the chillis so it was super (super super) hot, Peter and Tshepo thought that was funny but I had to make Geoff a bologna sandwich. 

I woke up at 4:30 am this morning, to take my first bucket bath, cook breakfast, and commute into Gabs for school. I am excited to see my status at the end of the week.

Found a snake in the bathroom. Both scary and cool.****


Miss miss miss you
love from far away

Jackie




* if you feel annoyed converting that it is 92 degrees Fahrenheit (and this is Spring. whoa)
** I cringe every time I have to say that when I order, and if you try to call it the # 10 (which it is) they insist you clarify, SO you must say “I’d like the Choc-o-Holic Spinner.”
*** This is Africa, in case you forgot.
****More scary.
*****Also they have played Sweet Caress by Breathe every time I am here, I am both very curious as to who is making the Linga Longa playlist as well as why I have not listened to this song more in my life before time here.