zebras 4 life

I went to my first ever national soccer game in Africa this past weekend. Well, actually, my first ever national soccer game, period. After defeating Namibia on Saturday, the Zebras (Botswana's team) went on to play Angola on Sunday. Angola and Botswana were pretty well matched, and so it wasn't until the end-of-the-game very nerve-wracking penalty kicks ('till that point no one had scored), that Botswana managed to pull off a win!
It was very exciting, and despite despite soccer fans' reputation around the world for drunken rowdyness, it was a whole lot of good-spirited fun. Guys came around selling peanuts, ice cream and sweets (just like ball games in the States!), everyone--and I mean EVERYONE--was dressed up in Botswana's baby blue and white colors (a few even sporting zebra paper mache heads), and my section of the stadium especially led the crowd in various cheers and songs. And man can Batswana SING!! They really put us to shame, the way everyone in the audience could burst into beautifully cadenced song, practically moving the stadium, in harmony and everything. It was quite something to be in the middle of. And once I caught the words of what they were singing (well my friend Thata had to tell me actually), I tried singing along too, much to my neighbors' amusement. But the whole event was really really fun, and a great way to experience some local culture in the quirky little city of Gaborone (which, by the way, also happens to be the current filming location of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency forthcoming movie!!). Now I head to Moshupa, to be immersed in village life for my last 3 weeks before I head back to the States...

bringing home the biltong*

an addendum to my last post:

i can't decide if i feel guilty about eating my way through my quite large supply of wild game biltong, originating from those very impala and kudu i felt so unhappy to see killed. I have so say though, as I sit here eating my lunch of dried wildebeest strips, with some crusty pumpkinseed bread and butter, I'm not at this very moment feeling all that remorseful. In fact, there is a certain kind of satisfaction to grawing away at this tangy, chewy substance. I can't really explain it, but its as though I am Really Eating Meat. It's not like the packages of unidentifiable Fosters Farms frozen meat you get at Alberton's, filled with boneless skinless (flavorless) chicken breasts or hormone-injected beef steak; this stuff requires use of one's incisors and needs no condiments, not even mustard (this coming from the girl who has eight different types of mustard lined up in her refridgerator door at home). It's got texture--somehow I'm very aware that I'm eating muscle fiber, a thought which doesn't normally occur to me when I'm eating my rosemary grilled chicken breast at home--and is full of gamey flavor. My TZ friends have made it themselves--spiced the meat, hung it to dry, and given me a hefty portion with each piece still on its little silver drying hook. Like Michael Pollan, or Alice Waters, I love the simplicity of this sort of food supply chain. The meat has gone from the bush to the small butchering room on the game farm to my friends' backyard in Gaborone (with its wintery dry, dessicating air) straight to my belly. No preservatives, no overly inhumane crowded animal pens, no carbon emissions from supply trucks burning through petrol as they cross the I-80.

So...no guilt?? I'm still not totally over the jolt of the "happy pretty oblivious impala prancing and grazing" to "dead bloody impala folded over itself on the back of the truck" image transition, but maybe I just need to try a little harder. Otherwise what is the use in waxing on about the importance of "sustainable use" of wildlife and natural resources? Research dedicated to pursuing that elusive and nebulous term, "sustainable development" doesn't really mean much of anything, on either a personal or professional level, if I don't put my money where my mouth is...or perhaps more specifcally my biltong where my mouth is!


*biltong being the South African highly superior version of American beef jerky, for those of you unaquainted with the culinary delicacies of this region of the world.

ethnography in the bush

More than a handful of my preconceived notions about what a holiday in the bush should entail were jarred, or at least somewhat shaken, this past weekend. It was a long holiday weekend in Botswana (Presidents Day, I think), and I was invited by some Tanzanian friends of a friend who all now live here in Gaborone to join them on a trip to the Tuli Block, to a privately owned game ranch where they would be doing some hunting. Eager to get into the bush in the name of "research" (i.e. im contemplating conducting a comparison study of game ranching in Botswana versus South Africa), I was excited to accept the invitation. And I'm glad I did, because not only was I reminded yet again of the magic of the Botswana bush, especially those fleeting, just-before-sunset minutes when the light is just so, and everything and everyone looks golden and timeless and really, well just perfect (its true no matter how corny it sounds), but I also was also able to experience those very moments in a much different context than I have before.

To be blunt, this was the first time I went on safari with people who weren't white. This trip, I was with Tanzanians (of middle eastern origin) as well as South Africans (of Indian origin), most of whom now live in Botswana (some who have for 3 generations) and some of whom were visiting from TZ. And all of whom are Muslim. That in itself was a cultural experience (read: safari without sundowners. Not something I had ever done before...and yes, I know I'm supposed to be learning about "Motswana" culture not about Tanzanian muslims, but really who cares if you are learning something new anyways, and plus I'm learning that the term "american" is not the only one with elusive connotations, being "Motswana" isnt so straightforward either).

Apart from the lack of alcohol (which actually was fine with me because there was a copious amount of Cadburys chocolate which in my mind totally made up for it), the thing that struck me the most was the meal-time seating arrangement. I wasn't surprised that when we arrived at our campsite, the guys did the unloading and the girls got started on making lunch in the kitchen tent (that generally seems to be the gender division when you are on safari, no matter where you are from). What caught me off guard was that once the food was already, I cued up, got my plate of food, sat outside in the sun around the big outdoor table, started eating, chewed a few bites, and then suddenly realized that there was something not quite right (at least in my head at that very moment) about the picture in front of me. I was suddenly very aware that I was the only female outside. Where were all the girls/women??! I glanced back into the mess tent ( a dark tent, overly hot by this point in the day), and there they were, sitting around the indoor table, also eating their lunch, but very clearly separately from the guys. Hmm. So I moved inside and joined them, because really, what else was I going to do other than sit where I guess I was supposed to? SO that happened, and then a few other things happened throughout the day to get me really hot and bothered about what I thought must be a totally backwards gender relation set-up. Like why could a brother, who is perfectly capable of standing up and helping himself to seconds, instead ask his sister to go fetch him more food? Or when the guys went off hunting the first afternoon, why did they tell the ten year old little girl that she should stay behind for that day (when she desperately wanted to go, had been talking about it all morning), and bring instead the bratty 10 and 12 year old boys instead? I had pretty much made up my feminist mind about what I thought about all of this, when a funny thing happened. The guys came back from their first afternoon of hunting, all jocular and energized, and instead of asking, 'where's dinner?', as I had expected, told us girls to get out of the kitchen, and proceeded to plop down at the table and start peeling potatoes! It seems they were going to get dinner ready, and we were sent to go relax around the fire. Huh!! I won't go into all the details of the rest of the weekend, but suffice to say it didn't leave me with a hugely clear picture of anything. There were elements that bothered me, but then something seemed to inevitably happen that would throw my judgements off-balance.

The fact that this was a hunting trip too, and not just a photographic safari trip as I've always experienced, also made my feelings towards my fellow safari companions complicated. The thoughts that churn in my head about the relationship(s)that should/do exist between people and wildlife only got more muddled, as I tried to rationalize it all. People go hunting all the time, americans, africans, japanese, arabs, its a conservation "tool", it pays for wildlife to remain on this planet in this day and age, its been happening for eons anyways, yada yada, all these thoughts ran through my head. And yet when the truck stopped and I could see this impala, grazing so quietly and gracefully, the curve of its elegant neck, and the clean lines of its two-toned belly, I just wanted more than anything for the guys to miss the shot. Which they didn't. And regardless of everything I know about conservation, environmental management, and that at least the meat would get eaten, I still just felt...well very sad. And even sadder when everyone, including the kids, hopped down to take a look at the dead impala, all crumpled now, and to get their photo with it, its limp head jerked up by the successful hunter to show off its horns. The two year old toddler forming a gun shape with his hands, making pretend bang bang sounds, and saying "shoot pala!", everyone laughing at his antics. I mean I was forcing myself to try and be culturally relativistic, but it was hard. The crazy thought that ran through my head was, maybe its like racist grandparents. You know they are good people, it's just they were brought up so very differently. Raised in a time and place light-years away from me. Not a very good analogy, I know, but there it is.

Anyways, that was the trip. Or part of it at least. I was once again treated to the kindness and generosity of very new, unexpected friends (including so much delicious Tanzanian food, yum!), and was lucky enough get out of city life and experience the wonderfulness of the Botswana bush yet again...this time though, in a much more thought-provoking way than usual. Never a dull day in the field!

Setswana 101

You don't really expect to learn vocabulary for your 'unmentionables' on the first day of a language class. Yet, there I was, diligently writing down the day's lesson on body parts, when the instructor launched into an explanation of the way in which Setswana is a "conservative" language, a language in which you don't just go around talking about your penis or your vagina to anyone (at this point I wondered if I was supposed to tell her that we don't exactly toss those words around in our classrooms either, except maybe in sex ed), and that instead in Setswana one refers to one's "front" as mapele, and one's behind (literally one's bum) as marago. This is much more polite, she says, than saying penis or anus. I nodded my head and debated whether she was about the make the body part diagram on the board anatomically correct. which she didn't.

So that was my first Setswana lesson; tomorrow is on transport. Hopefully then I will better equipped to figure out how to take the combis (ie minibuses) around town! It's just me in the class, and the instructor is very friendly and very animated, and has decided that because I'm going to be doing research in rural villages most likely, she is going to take me on a "cultural lesson" once a week to nearby villages, to practice conversing there. And apparently my Setswana audio tapes were not half bad because I actually know more than I thought I did, which is nice. Although still not enough to have any clue what people are saying on the telephone, on the radio or at normal conversational speed--I'm lucky to catch one word every few sentences!