senepes

i've added "senepes" (means photos in Setswana, get it? like "snaps" with an accent?!) to some of my previous posts (below) which i couldn't do from the gabs internet cafe...here's one of me and little Peo!

busride musings

On the hour long bus ride from Moshupa to Gaborone yesterday morning, my ever-jumping thought process landed me briefly on Antonio Gramsci, the intellectual who grappled with the question of why communism didn’t work out as Marx predicted and who might best be recognized as the guy who coined the (now much over-used) term “hegemony”. His writings were later published in “The Prison Notebooks”, excerpts from which I read in my Development Studies class this past spring. Gramsci talked about the need for “organic intellectuals”, in contrast to Marx’s vanguard class. Unlike the vanguard class which was supposed to use its intellectualism/enlightenment to lead the workers in revolution, organic intellectuals, according to Gramsci, were not supposed to “lead” anything, per say. From what I can remember (and its a bit hazy), organic intellectuals were instead supposed to facilitate and foster what organic mass social movements already existed within the People. These individuals should arise from movements themselves, not create movements.
Anyways, WHY was I thinking about this?? Because on my bus ride I had the somewhat cynical thought that the priorities of the people on the bus had very little to do with the focus of my own research in this country—wildlife and community-based resource management (CBNRM) programs that attempt to create benefits from wildlife for local peoples in order to incentivize conservation. The mamas on this bus were thinking about what shopping had to get done, the twenty-somethings were sms-ing their friends in Gabs, and the handful of kids in tow just looked happy that it was Saturday and they were taking an outing into the big city. I’d just finished reading a book that mentioned some of the environmental movements that have started among indigenous Amazonian communities fighting oil companies and their destructive practices, and I thought about how passion, anger—emotion in general, really—seems to be the driving force behind these grassroots place-based environmental organizations. I couldn’t help but contrast those movements to CBNRM programs here, which have been started by foreign conservationist academics and basically placed upon communities. And it’s not like all of these communities are resentful of the programs—many in fact hold out great hope for the benefits intended to result from CBNRM. The thing is though, that a sense exists that a small group of ‘enlightened’ outsiders are leading (or in very unsuccessful cases dragging) these communities by the hand. There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of energy, passion or sense of purpose created within the communities involved in CBNRM, and perhaps its a result of the fact that they haven’t started any ‘movement’ themselves as have groups in the Amazon; instead they’ve had a model presented to them by those who claim to “know” how it should work out. In Gramscian terms, perhaps what’s missing are the organic intellectuals.
Anyways, those were my brief musings of the morning, until I got to Gabs and indulged in an afternoon of watching the new Harry Potter movie on the big screen, eating ice-cream, and paying for a two-hour wash and dry laundry service. Oh, Gaborone, what a big city you now seem....

My name is Neo

I’ve moved out to a village about an hour outside of Gaborone for my last three weeks here. After realizing how little Setswana I was speaking in the university setting (most students at UB would rather converse with me in English), my Setswana teacher Janet organized for me to do a homestay at her older sister’s house so that I could be immersed in Setswana. I have been here a week now, and despite the village’s proximity to Gaborone, Moshupa stands in stark contrast to Botswana’s capital city. There’s no wildlife here, but it feels remote, and sits against a beautiful landscape. It’s a village nestled amongst a cluster of hills made up of giant boulders, reddish-brown in color. In the distance I can see larger outcroppings rising up from the otherwise flat-as-flat earth, and there are, as always, many acacia trees and various other dry, scrubby bushes. A now almost-dry river runs through the village, and with cows and donkeys grazing and various beat-up trucks passing through, I sort of feel like I’m in an African version of the Wild West.

Janet’s sister Lillian is relatively well-off (she’s a teacher at the local school), so they have electricity and their house is constructed of cinder blocks and a tin roof rather than a traditional thatched-roof mud hut. But there is no running water inside and definitely no space heater as there was in my UB dorm room! It’s an experience that to be honest I haven’t really had in Botswana yet—bathing with a bucket of water and tin tub, eating local foods (so far madombi is my favorite--its sort of like a steamed dough-y dumpling--though I’ve also eaten lots of bogobe which with milk and sugar is quite nice but without can be likened in my mind to what Oliver Twist ate in the orphanage), and getting used to being very, very noticeable as the only foreigner in this entire community. I’ve gone jogging a few afternoons, and either had the usual experience of kids yelling “lekgoa, lekgoa!” (“white person, white person”) at me, or had the more embarrassing experience of accumulating a line of kids running behind me, resulting in me feeling a bit like the Pied Piper.

Despite the stares, it’s amazing (or actually maybe to be expected) how much a little Setswana goes a long way—people seem so pleasantly surprised that I know more than just the usual “Dumela, mma!” greeting. So that’s a lot of fun, even though it can be rather exhausting at times. I feel as though my brain is in constant exercise, as I try to translate and create sentences with my limited vocabulary. I’ve also been given a Setswana name, Neo, which translated to English means gift. It’s much easier for people to pronounce than Clare, and is now what I use to introduce myself!