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!