"You can't tie a bell around a cat's neck"

This morning I woke up at six am which as most of you probably know, is very very early for me. But I hadn’t been able to get out to Kachikau yesterday (the ambulance that was supposed to be our ride in from Kasane was full), and I had a meeting in Kavimba (the next village over from Kachikau) at 10 am and I was determined to be there. Kara had said combis (mini bus taxis) headed out there all morning, and given that it was about a two hour ride, if I was at the bus rank by seven in the morning, I should be totally fine. So I was standing there, on a chilly winter morning in a weedy overgrown parking lot in a back part of town with a Spar cinnamon bun in hand, at 7.

Fast forward three and half hours. At 10:30, the packed-full combi slowly crept out of town. This in itself is not a particularly unique story; I’m pretty sure anyone who has taken public transportation almost anywhere in Africa has dozens like it. But what was interesting was the conversation that took place between myself and some of my fellow passengers who had also arrived significantly too early in anticipation of the combi’s departure. The topic, not surprisingly, was the demise of Zimbabwe’s intended upcoming elections, given Morgan Tsvangirai recent announcement that because of the violence and corruption surrounding the elections, he would be withdrawing as the opposition candidate to Robert Mugabe. A young gentleman from Gaborone whose car had broken down and who also had to get to a meeting in Kavimba at 10 (for both of us, read: fat chance) debated the goings-on with a Zimbabwean seamstress who came to Botswana every two weeks to stay with friends, sell clothes and buy basic foodstuffs (a necessary tactic given that a loaf of bread in Zim costs roughly a billion Zimbabwean dollars). She insisted that politics was a dirty game and that as a Christian, she just wanted to stay out of it. He in turn, said that that mentality was part of the problem; that people were just standing by while atrocities happened, and that people needed to act. He disparagingly remarked that that when given the chance to register to vote, most Zimbabweans had not done so. This last comment was one the lady jumped on, pointing out that she knew exactly why this was the case—because when young Zimbabweans went to go register (the age demographic officials knew would vote for Tsvangirai), they were told that their omang (identity) cards were invalid, and thus that they were ineligible to register. So why bother? She said, we in Zimbabwe, we are all praying for peace. The young man voiced my sentiments, saying yes, praying is good, but what about in tandem with action of some sort? She didn’t answer this question directly, but I got her point. She basically said, what am I, as a woman with kids to feed, going to do to make change in the face of escalating poverty and violence? Isn’t it enough just trying to survive? What does this call to “act” really mean on an individual everyday-person level, in such a context? Especially when many people (I’m thinking she meant such as herself, since earlier she said she was part of the Freedom Fighters) have feelings of ambivalence; torn between attachment to a party that liberated their country from colonial rule, and its’ now corrupt leader? Ah, and you can’t tie a bell around a cat’s neck, she concluded, as the conversation came to a close.

And this was the phrase that I mused over on the (very very) bumpy ride to Kavimba, every bone in my body rattling the whole way. Is Mugabe the cat in the scenario? Sneaky and hard to catch? And is she basically saying that it is impossible for anyone to whistle-blow and really call out such a creature? This might explain why SADC has done so little to intervene—many of the southern African countries were helped out by Mugabe in the days of liberation and are now somewhat hesitant to turn their backs and speak out against him, especially since they might be wary of what tricks he has up his sleeve. Is that what she meant? I’m really not sure. But I did make it to Kavimba in one piece (barely), and the Zimbabwean lady wished me well, as I stepped off the bus and she continued on to the village of Parakurungu, another two hours of dusty corrugated dirt road farther.

"Ah Modimo wa me"

The pharmacist from the travelling ARV dispensary muttered “Ah, Modimo wa me” as yet another patient tried to explain why she had missed so many pills and I thought how funny it is the way that some phrases do in fact directly translate. “ Ah Modimo wa me” means “Oh my God” and seemed to me a pretty apt expression for the situation. I was sitting in on the regular Wednesday dispensation of ARV (anti-retroviral) pills for HIV patients from Kachikau (the village in which I’m staying) and the four other surrounding villages. The pharmacist, his assistant, and the several boxes of drugs that accompanied him were coming from Kasane, about an hour’s drive away on a dusty corrugated dirt road.

The first woman to come in had missed one of her pills since her last visit to the pharmacy, and after she sort of giggled out this admission, the pharmacist gently chided her, joking in between, that she really must take these pills. I was surprised at how light-hearted the interactions appeared, given the gravity, at least to me, of what they were really talking about. The routine followed about the same script for the next patient, but when the third patient walked in with a container rattling full of untaken pills, the tone in voices suddenly changed. The kindly Malawian pharmacist suddenly was not smiling any more, and the translator (for those who spoke only Setswana and no English) sat a bit more forward in her chair. He had missed four pills since his last dispensation, and this meant that his body could have built up resistance to the drugs (much the way we are always reminded to finish a prescription of antibiotics, even if we start feeling better right away). If this was the case, then they would have to move him from Line One drugs to Line Two, the pharmacist explained. And this was not good, he said, leaving out the explanation as to why. But what was clear was that missing pills on a regular basis was like shooting oneself in the foot. WHY, I wondering, would you not just take the damn pills on the proper daily basis?? How hard could it be, especially when the stakes were so high??

This question was answered in part by the next patient, a woman who looked about fifty but might have been barely forty, and skinny as a rail. She had been skipping pills too, and this time the pharmacist wanted to get at the cause of her neglect. Why wasn’t she taking her pills at the prescribed hour of the day, each day? Well, for starters, it came out, she wasn’t working and neither was her daughter, her only family member staying with her. So it was hard enough just to get food to eat, let alone keep track of her medical schedule. Second, the watch she had been using to ensure that her pills were taken at the same time each day had been taken by a family member to Francistown (about 500 km away). So she had no way, except roughly by the sun, to know when to take the pills. On top of that there was some debate as to whether the woman even would know how to read a watch, if the clinic gave her one. And here I have to admit that even though I have spent a fair amount of time in Botswana, I was stunned. I honestly had never really thought about these seemingly minor details that become gargantuan when a person doesn’t have access (or enough money) for basic items like a watch or clock. I was reminded of the feeling I had after reading an article for Louise’s class about some of the overlooked reasons why homeless people have a hard time getting a job—one factor being that what would you do with your cart, holding all your possessions, while you walked inside for an interview? What if it got stolen? The feeling I had then, and which I had after listening to the watch discussion at the clinic, was one of guilt mixed with shock and wonder for never having thought of these logistical issues, for always assuming there had to be larger more “weighty”, so to speak, explanations for such social phenomena. It was an eye-opening experience today, that is for sure. And while I’m not exactly sure how it relates to my intended dissertation topic (natural resources? the environment?), it certainly was a significant introduction to village life in the Chobe Enclave.

ele encounters while power-walking

I’ve only been in Kasane for a day and I’ve already had one of those surreal “this can’t really be my life right now” moments. It started off pretty inauspiciously—a group of ladies goes power walking on the main road around sunset and one of them (a friend of a friend of a friend of mine—seriously) invited me along. We had gotten about half a mile out of the main part of town when the subject of wildlife in the area came up. Not surprising, given that this is the safari launching center of Botswana. My new friend Jane mentioned that in Kasane, elephants outnumber people by four to one. Four to one! She asked if we had elephants in the States and I said only in zoos, and that while I’d seen elephants in zoos and from the comfort of the car in Botswana’s national parks, I’d never encountered one on foot. Famous last words. Literally as the end of my sentence was still hanging in the air, an elephant suddenly emerged out of the bush and stomped onto the main road. Right in front of us!! Thankfully it didn’t really seem to notice us, or if it did it couldn’t be bothered with us, but still I have to say that my heart started racing at a much faster pace than the power-walking had induced. And as much as I had been hoping to get a nice long exercise session, I was glad when the two ladies I was with promptly turned around and announced that we wouldn’t be going any farther. Instead, we walked back to town, the Chobe river sparkling under the sunset on the right, and cars whizzing by on the left. Kasane really is quite indescribable. Where else in the world do warthogs go marching in a line through downtown, passing internet cafes, a big chain grocery store, and the hospital? Hopefully I can post some pictures that will do justice to this funny bush town.
OH, and I’ve been invited to go to the BDF (Botswana National Defense Force) to do aerobics tomorrow afternoon too. What this could possibly entail (military boot camp I’m thinking??) I have no idea. I’m intrigued…and I’m sure I’ll have something to write about it after, if I survive it that is!

Things I had Forgotten I Love about Botswana

1) mourning doves making noise in the morning
2) the hot dog stand sign that offers hot dogs with tomato sauce, chili sauce or “mustered”
3) the light about an hour before sunset
4) rain on tin roofs (technically I should not have experienced this; it is winter, but there was a freak rainstorm on my day of arrival)
5)thirty cent soft serve vanilla ice-cream cones