Street Cred

So let's talk about all the amazing sights I saw from Sunday to Wednesday this past week! 

They include: 

1) my bed 

2) the bathroom 

Yes, sadly I was afflicted with both the most pedestrian yet somehow most embarassing of all travel conditions: gastroenteritits- aka traveller's sickness aka Montezuma's Revenge aka WHY do I share a bathroom with six women?? 

Somehow, I was the first of us to fall. Perhaps it was the water, perhaps it was that I didn't properly wash my produce, perhaps it was that meat pie that sketchy looking Zimbabwean immigrant gave me on the bus to the village (...what? it was delicious). 

Whatever it was, I was out of commission for nearly four days and my flatmates had started claiming my possessions when I gave in and took my Cipro. 24 hours later, I was a new man. Not even in Bangladesh did I get so sick so quickly. Africa is not messing around. 

My friend here who worked in International Development before going back to school kept telling me that this was just the normal process of earning your "developing world street cred". I hope I have enough built up to last the rest of the trip. 

First Day

So lest you think that all we do here is go to brunch and swanky embassy parties, we do in fact have jobs. My two colleagues and I are splitting our time between two centers which cater to at-risk youth. One of the sites, Stepping Stones International, is outside the city in a traditional village called Mochudi. In a car, it takes about 45 minutes to get there from where we live. 

It took us three hours. 

First, we have to walk from our flat to the main bus depot- an experience I won't soon forget. Perhaps the only place in Gaborone that is at all crowded, the bus depot is an inpenatrable maze of taxis, food stalls, shops, and hawkers selling everything from apples to dried caterpillars (apparently they're a delicacy?). Once we finally found the right bus, we boarded the 1950s relic and said a  few Hail Marys that it wouldn't explode en route. After spending an hour getting to Mochudi, we disembarked to find that we were still 20 minutes walking from our site. Since we were already running late, we hired a taxi to drive us over. In one of my finer moments, I began bargaining with what I thought was a female taxi driver, haggling over the price. Only after a few minutes of this back-and-forth did I realize that she was sitting in the passenger seat (this driving on the other side of the road thing is really throwing me for a loop). There are no pictures of this escapade as I certain that any iphone or camera I would take out would immediately be snatched. 

We finally arrived just as the after-school groups were settling in for homework time. I sat with one girl who was studying "moral education", which as far as I could tell were lessons on how to recognize and report things like child abuse, sexual assault, cruelty to animals, etc. Pretty cool for a 14-year-old to be talking about these issues, I think. For a pretty complacent society, the rate of domestic violence here is nearly 80%. Another girl asked me to help her with her sex ed homework in which she had to list common myths about pregnancy and HIV and dispel them. I was floored that the education system here is so progressive as to start teaching kids about these kinds of things in middle school- something I'm sure would never happen in a lot of US states. 

Finally, we did an interactive activity with the kids to judge their baseline knowledge about legal and illegal drugs. We observed as the facilitator drew two circles in the dust- one 'agree' and one 'disagree' and asked them to questions like, " is addiction is an illness?", "marajuana is a legal drug", etc. 

One thing I kept coming back to was that the issues facing these kids are not dissimilar than those facing kids in many parts of the States. A lack of supportive parents, poverty, bullying, peer pressure, substance abuse at home, and parents' mental illness were all mentioned as reasons kids might be recruited to Stepping Stones. Some issues the kids mentioned they specifically wanted to know about were how to clean themselves, how to brush their teeth, and how their body works. It's amazing that I can travel more than 8000 miles only to find that so many things are universal. When you boil it down, kids just need to feel safe. 

Africa not-so-light

*FYI- the internet was down when this was written and is just now beingublished-out of order. The original date it was written was 7/3/14*

Ok so maybe I jumped the gun a little.

Today was our first day "on the job". My two colleagues and I are working at two different centers which cater to out-of-school or vulnerable adolescents. Our first site is in a neighborhood of town with a bad reputation. The center, which opened about a year ago, is a brightly-colored collection of buildings smack dab in the middle of Gaborone's oldest township.

The woman who runs the center is from Botswana but has spent the last 13 years in St. Louis. She is impossibly energetic and optimistic about how the center can turn around the lives of some of Botswana's poorest kids. The participants range from six to 19 years old, and aren't attending school for a lot of the same reasons kids skip school back home: unstable living situations, substance abuse in the home, poverty, lack of parental involvement, bullying, etc. etc. One thing I learned: while school up through university is free, all schools require uniforms which must be purchased. No uniform, no school.

The center gives the kids a safe place to hang out rather than being on the streets. There is a health clinic, life skills classes, financial literacy classes, basic education, hot meals, and the ability to interact with kids their own ages. Where we come in is at the health clinic. We will be working with the nurse who comes in once a week to do health screenings, checkups, physicals, and whatever else she needs. There also seems to be a big issue with sniffing glue. It's cheap and easy to get. It also kills your brain cells. So we hope to develop some sort of interactive module that the center can implement to teach kids about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

I saw a side of Gaborone that certainly doesn't constitute "Africa Lite". I am so excited to learn from the center and the kids, and I hope to be at least a little helpful to them as well. 

Africa Light- Part II

Botswana is about the size of Texas wth the population of less than the DC metro area. Basically, it's extraordinarily empty. Its capital, Gaborone (pronounced "Habaroney") has fewer than half a million residents. At first glance, it doesn't look that much different than the States. There are shopping malls, cafes, highways, streetlights... all the trappings of a modern economy. On the road from the airport to our apartment building, I saw  billboards promoting supermarkets, new homes, and wealth management services. It certainly doesn't look like what might spring to mind when you first think "Africa"

Our flat, as they say, is quite nice, really. It's got running water, wifi, and even a pool. After Bangladesh, this place feels like the Ritz. However, there are moments when I remember this is Africa after all, like when there is an electrified fence and a six-foot wall of concrete separating us from the street. But then I look down the street at the KFC and I get confused all over again.

The first few days were spent getting to know Gaborone and adjusting to Botswana. We went grocery shopping and snickered at the funny chip flavoUrs (beef stew Lay's, anyone?), exchanged money, and  did touristy things like the national museum, parliament, and a game drive at the local wildlife sanctuary (I saw giraffes!). Before Botswana was a thing, it was a British "protectorate" (NOT a colony, which is important to know, lest you piss off someone here). The few people who lived here were San, or bushmen, who lived (and still do) a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. Botswana only became a country in the '60s, and there was no war for independence. There's been no wars at all actually- civil, foreign, or otherwise.

 No joke- almost the day after independence, the new government said "oh, hey England, this is awkward...but the largest store of diamonds in the world is somewhere over here....so, sorry". However, unlike some countries which might hoard the income at for a select few, Botswana uses the diamond income for development, education, and universal healthcare- they even provide expensive HIV drugs to anyone who needs it free of charge.

All in all, this is Africa "lite" so far. This isn't to say Botswana doesn't have a lot of problems to deal with- just as any country. When we start our work in earnest on Monday, I am sure I will have a chance to see much more than just the shiny exterior. 

Africa Light- Part I

So so far, the hardest part about Africa is getting here. The distance is more enormous than I could fathom. I mean, everyone knows Southern Africa is really far away, but it is difficult to appreciate just how far 7,694 miles is until you've traveled it. So. many. movies.

Once I landed in Johannesburg, though, it was hard to remember I hadn't just conked my head and woken up 27 hours later. Granted, we stayed in the nicest part of the richest city in the richest country on the continent. I am told by an American friend here with whom I had coffee that 75% of the continent's money flows through this area of Johannesburg- and it shows. I seriously could not afford to walk down the street, let alone buy anything at one of the enormous malls or five star restaurants. We did see, if not directly experience, a good bit of the city en route to and from our various activities. I felt (and my friend confirmed through relaying her own experience of living in South Africa) that adjusting to living here would be no different than moving from one city in the US to another. Well, except for the whole driving on the other side of the road thing.

We (two of the classmates and I) spent our 47 hour layover visiting the Apartheid Museum and downtown Johannesburg, which has recently seen a revival from its reputation as a crime-ridden cesspool. The museum, though, was one of the more sobering experiences I've had. It never ceases to amaze me to see the animosity one group of people can have for another based solely on the amount of pigment they happen to have. It is amazing to me that South Africa is still a country, let alone the most affluent on the entire continent. However, it's also one of the world's most unequal societies, and they seem to hide all the gritty just out of sight of most tourists. It is, however, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and I guarantee this won't be my last visit.