My new discovery: Flora Grubb in Gaborone?!

I have discovered a little bit of paradise in this otherwise dreary, dusty town of Gaborone. What I have stumbled upon is an oasis, quite literally—a native plant nursery next to the Gaborone dam with the most lovely tea garden that I delightedly found myself in today. It’s called Sanitas, and it happens to be a stone’s throw away from where I am currently staying. I’d seen signs for it on the road, but somehow hadn’t gotten around to stopping by until today, which happens to be a holiday (in the middle of the week?!) in Botswana, meaning that my regular coffee shop, Café Dijo (see post below), is closed. Thank goodness, or I might never have discovered this place!

It’s a little like Flora Grubb in San Francisco, only better. There are all sorts of native succulents for sale, as well as an incredible assortment of ornate pots, planters and other garden decorations. There’s a small farm stand in front selling fresh home-grown produce like red lettuce, tangelos and Mexican limes (mm margarita anyone?), though this place is so big I haven’t exactly located their vegetable garden yet. As you wind your way through shaggy palm trees along a brick and stone pathway, you suddenly arrive at…the tea garden. Today I couldn’t believe how busy it was—apparently all the families who are in the know come to this spot on holiday days and, I would imagine, lazy Sundays. It was also a window onto a very culturally diverse slice of life in Gabs—a group of ladies sat playing Mah Jong gabbing away in Chinese, several Indian families (including one celebrating a child’s birthday) were enjoying pitchers of freshly made lemonade with their lunch, a Batswana family munched away on delicious-looking burgers, and an elderly white couple quietly sipped their coffees in the corner. And then there was me!! The most content, happy American girl to be found in Botswana today!! I have got two weeks left in Botswana, and as I wrap up my interviews, I would really like to use my last days here to transcribe them all from audio tapes to word documents so that I don’t have that pesky task hanging over my head when I get home. And what better location to do this boring task that a tea garden with all sorts of greenery, homemade juices, numerous espresso drink options, absolutely delicious food (lunch today was a creamy sweet potato garam masala soup with a huge fresh green salad straight from the garden accompanied with home-baked whole wheat giant bread roll, yum!), and NO wireless to distract me?! I have found my little piece of heaven here in this boring, Phoenix-like city, and I think it will keep me sane as I count down my last two weeks here in Botswana!

Another foodie interlude: Cafe Dijo and others

Want to know my biggest current fear? Apart from my recent one of Drew getting chomped on by a hyena in a fight over who would get his nicely grilled T-bone steak for dinner (see next post for details)? It’s that I have more fodder for writing a dissertation on expat coffee shops in Botswana than I do for my actual thesis topic on rural-urban socio-economic linkages in Botswana. Yikes. Let’s not let my advisors hear that one. But the fact is, I’ve spent a lot of time in coffee shops here, and when it comes down to it, the majority of customers at these venues are foreigners, whether they be South African safari operators in Maun or US embassy officials in Gaborone. I think I’ve gained insight for better or worse from listening in on their conversations, but I also worry I’ve alienated myself from my actual subjects of study, most of whom have no idea what an “espresso” is.

I frequent these coffee shops despite my reservations for a number of reasons—they make a decent cappuchino; they generally provide a comfy, vibey place to sit, put headphones on and transcribe my interviews; they usually have wireless; and most importantly, they have delicious food. Here is my discovery—while each place I’ve lived (Kasane, Maun and now Gaborone) might not have a lot of options on the coffee shop front, the ones that I manage to find are generally far superior food-wise to any coffee shop I might visit in Berkeley or even the Mission. I’m not making this up! And it’s not just because I’ve been deprived of California foodie culture—even after a week of eating-out extravaganza in London I was psyched to get back to the Kasane coffee shop menu—though I’ll admit their coffee doesn’t even begin to compare to London’s Monmouth coffee. To me, this is further evidence that more options most certainly does not equal better quality, a theory that stems from my firmly held belief that menus with lots of choices are bad and menus with a few items offered are good (case in point: Cheesecake Factory versus Cheeseboard pizzeria. Need I say more?)

The culinary prowess of these out-of-the-way coffee shops might also have something to do with the fact that most of these places were started by individuals who had been excellent cooks and appreciators of delicious food back in their home countries (England, France, etc.) and for whatever life reasons suddenly found themselves in Botswana with a dearth of edible options (for all the reasons I love Botswana, local cuisine is not one of them—it’s just not good). These individuals have then poured all of their love and nostalgia for their home country’s cooking into their own enterprises here in a sort of Like Water for Chocolate fashion (minus the tears and puking guests), which has resulted in homey yet unique dishes that have a tremendous amount of flavor and soul in them. They may not be the most health-conscious—buttery, flaky quiche is a recurring theme—but they are satisfying and leave a girl with a warm, happy feeling in her tummy that just doesn’t happen at the more chain-y restaurants that are also cropping up here in Botswana.

For any of you who may be visiting these places, I’ll give a quick run-down on the highlights. In Kasane, there is the Gallery Africana coffee shop. There is only one coffee shop in town, so you can’t get confused about which one it is! Plus its housed in the same space as a lovely African art gallery with jewelry and artwork sourced from all over the African continent, which makes for nice browsing before or after one’s meal. Basically everything on the menu is delicious, but the sweet woman who runs it reeeally knows how to make pastry crust, so I suggest the quiche and/or pecan-date tart, both of which make use of this scrumptious recipe. And if you’re going to splurge on a milkshake, make sure to get either the mango or banana—the only two made with real fruit (yum yum) as opposed to a syrup base.

In Maun, your options are Hiliary’s or French Connection—I personally much prefer Hiliary’s but then that might be because I’m a brown bread not white bread (even if it’s a French baguette) kinda girl, and Hiliary’s makes hands-down the best homemade country brown bread I have ever tasted. Her creative sandwiches are served on extra-thick slices of this addicting bread, as is the assorted salad lunch plate. And I’m a sucker for a daily special/sampler salad plate! She also happens to make the best fruit crumble ever, next to my mom’s that is. Well actually, I think she must use the same tried and true British recipe for her crumble as my mom, because hers tastes exactly the same, only she uses apricot instead of banana filling. Lastly, and you can ask Drew, she makes a mean cappuchino—again with a lot of love in it given that she uses a hand-pump to make the frothed milk rather than an espresso machine!

Next we come to Gaborone (we are skipping Francistown because there is nothing and I mean NOTHING of note in that town). I will admit that until a few days ago, I marched like a lemming to Mugg and Bean (a South African chain that is sort of a cross between a Chili’s and a Pret a Manger if that makes any sense) for my daily espresso fix and oversized underwhelming muffin. That is, until I discovered Café Dijo, just around the corner. First, there is the name—Dijo means food in Setswana so the place is essentially named Café Food. Hmm. A little funny but here’s the thing—it has some of the better décor/ambiance than any café I know anywhere. Again, seriously! Long pine communal tables, Persian-style rugs and low-lying antiqued white wooden coffee tables (think Garnet Hill style) with patterned sofa chairs give it a rustic-living room feel, while the chalk board menu and broad kitchen counter where you order at the front remind you that you are indeed in a busy breakfast/lunchtime spot. And then there is the food and beverages! First of all they serve chai tea which I find very exciting. Second of all, their baked goods selection, invitingly displaced at the order counter, is phenomenal. I am going to go out on a limb and say that they make possibly the best morning glory muffin in the world. For those of you not familiar with this muffin beyond muffins, I will tell you. A morning glory muffin is a “health” muffin, but not of the bran variety—it is generally a brown-flour based muffin stuffed with any assortment of fruit, nuts and seeds—carrots and sultanas usually being staple ingredients. The one at Café Dijo is pure perfection—crisp crunchy on the outside, yet moist and spongy on the inside (nothing for any Seinfield characters to complain about here), and choc-full of carrots, zucchini, plump juicy raisins, millet seeds (my personal favorite) amongst other seeds, and most importantly, NO WALNUTS (I absolutely detest walnuts, fyi). I ordered one after my lunch of roasted vegetable salad with hummus and feta and a chicken roll, thinking I would take it home as an afternoon teatime snack, but it never made it home. In fact, it didn’t even make it into the to-go bag. It went straight into my belly where it resided there happily (well no, actually, I resided at the coffee shop happily; I don’t know how the muffin felt).

I’ve now waxed on about the food at these coffee shops and left no room to discuss the various strands of conversations I overhear at these places, while I’m supposed to be diligently transcribing audio interviews. Maybe that’s okay. Who needs to hear/read more about eager-beaver aid volunteers or closed-minded expatriates? Suffice to say I have heard enough gabby South African women discussing their calorie intake for a lifetime (is is possible that South African women are an even more obnoxious group of people than South African men??! Forgive (or don’t) my egregious over-generalizations, but really...) I will say that Café Dijo is a pretty interesting place. Because it’s the only coffee shop I’ve been to in Botswana that while predominantly frequented by Caucasians, actually has a relatively diverse clientele. I saw a group of Batswana businessmen lunching at one of the communal tables, two Chinese ladies enjoying their chicken wraps at the next table over, and another group made up of a hodge-podge of ethnicities crowded round the sofa seats—a sight you would never see anywhere else in Botswana. So as boring and drab as Gaborone may seem to be, perhaps there is something to be said for what appears to be its cosmopolitan edge! Clearly money and class factor into this “melting pot” dynamic, but I’ll save that for another blog…for now, this is Botswana’s urban spoon, signing off!

A brief interlude: some thoughts on the phenomenon of food blogging

In my mind, when I look at the world of professional chefs, celebrity chefs, and channels like the Food Network, I don’t see much of a gender imbalance. For every Mario Batali you’ve got a Barefoot Contessa; we recognize Gail’s face just as much as Tom Colicchio’s; and I ‘d venture to say that Alice Water’s protégé isn’t another female bohemian foodie, but more likely…Jamie Oliver? The point is—the faces of the foodies, gourmands and cooks that we see on T.V., in the news and on the cover of cookbooks in Borders are just as likely to be male as they are female, and furthermore, of a pretty wide spectrum of ages.
Then why is it that almost all of the food blogs that I follow (which are quite a few) are written by women? And more specifically, by women mainly in their twenties and thirties who frequently make side references to the husband who despite initial grumblings just loooved the experimental quinoa dish, or the boyfriend who couldn’t get enough of the hearty black bean burgers and even helped with the patty flipping in the process.

Most of these women actually don’t seem that different from me (which is probably why I read their blogs)—interested in nutritious yet delicious tasting food and a healthy way of living based on using fresh and real ingredients (ie butter no marg!), sharing their food experiences with others, and taking pretty pictures of it all. But still, there is something that strikes me that I cant quite put my finger on in terms of how much the “voice” in a number of these blogs sounds quite the same. And how in a weird way this female culinary blogging phenomenon seems sort of a throwback to the 1950’s housewife, baking the perfect cake to serve to her husband when he gets home and then sharing the recipe with all her friends. Women and men may get equal airtime on t.v. set kitchens, but when it comes down to just regular old daily cooking at home, it seems like this is still mainly women’s domain. And now we just have a new outlet to show off, share and compare our culinary notes—the food blog!
(photo = case in point: me with the bf taking a picture of the best coffee and yummiest thing i ate on my recent trip to london)

a visit to the ngaka ya setswana

Today I had what felt like my first real “anthropologist-in-the-field” experience—I interviewed a traditional doctor ("ngaka ya Setswana"). In a number of my village interviews, the interviewee had brought up issues relating to jealousy, fear of bewitchment and the like, and drew connections between migrants’ relationships to their home villages and their fears of witchcraft. Namely, the notion that if you do well for yourself in town, you may be scared to return home to jealous neighbors who might betwitch you or your parents or other recipients of your newfound wealth. I’d done a little bit of reading on the subject but decided I needed to know more. On front number one, I ordered a slew of books from Amazon relating to African anthropologists accounts of witchcraft, traditional medicine, and modernity (all anthropologists today loooove to wax on about modernity—the main thesis relating to witchcraft being that witchcraft is not some sort of cultural holdover from the past, but in fact is a way of dealing with the disruptions brought about by modernity and capitalist development such as wealth differentiation, etc.). On front number two, I remembered that last summer I had met a guy from Botswana doing his PhD on the history of the Chobe area and that he had given me some tips on key people to interview—one of whom happened to be a traditional doctor living in Kasane. So I dug up his number, called him up, and suddenly had an appointment to meet him this Friday morning.

It turned out the guy I called and met was not actually a traditional doctor. But his neighbor and good friend was. So I trekked over to his house through the dusty, gusty wind (the seasons are changing!), and found an old man inside a traditional thatched structure, tending a pot over a large fire inside. He came out, almost tripping over what has got to have been a) the tiniest kitten I’ve ever seen and b) the skinniest dog I have ever seen alive, and led me into his cement block house. I had heard that traditional doctors made quite a killing off patients’ fees, but this appeared not to be the case here. The first house I’d visited (of the wrong guy) had been large and spacious with overstuffed furniture and a lovely veranda. This house was…well, decrepit. Houses here in general are not as fancy or big as ones at home in the States, but even by Batswana standards this would not be considered a “nice house”. But he gestured for me to sit down in a chair and so the interview began.

I won’t transcribe the whole interview but just note some highlights. He said he had been a traditional doctor since 1971, and when I asked how he learned his skills, or where he did his training, he said, no I have not done any training. It’s just that ghosts visited me in my sleep and told me I was a traditional healer and about my powers. Hmm. Here is where my cynicism and doubt in anything occult had to be temporarily suspended. The interview then got really interesting (and surreal) when I finally asked him what exactly it was that he did when he received a patient. I was surprised to find out that patient did not tell him about the nature of his/her illness or complaint—it was up to him, the doctor, to divine it. Just as I was wondering how exactly he did that, he said, well, I consult the items, and do you want to see them? I of course said yes and he went into a back room, only to emerge a minute later with a dirty colored cloth bag in his arms. He took out a cloth bundle and gently, carefully, un-wrapped it. In it was several strands of beads—some thick round wooden ones and some small colored ones like we use at home to make bracelets—and a small black horn of some sort about 8 inches long with a tassel at the end. Lastly, he pulled out two tins cups each in a little tin bowl, connected by a strand of the thin beads and each cup containing a little rock. Hmm. I waited for him to explain, but in fact he didn’t offer up much, beyond saying that he asked these things what the illness what about and they told him—anything ranging from a backache to “impure blood”. The funny thing was that he kept referring to the horn object as “the man”—as in, I ask “the man” what the patient’s illness is and then “the man” tells me. The items also told him the cure, which he then could set about preparing in his thatched hut outside (where I had seen the big pot on the fire brewing). He was a little vague on what went into the cures and I didn’t want to press too much, but he mentioned gathering various sorts of herbs (from both around here and his village of Parakarungu) and even going as far as Zambia if he was out of something to ask for it from another traditional doctor over there. And for this he charged anywhere from around 300 to 600 pula (fifty to hundred US dollars)—the reading costing 30 pula and the rest for the cure. Interestingly when I brought up witchcraft and patients coming in concerning about having been bewitched, he made sure to tell me that while he could tell a patient if he/she had been “witched”, he would not reveal the name of the person who had done it. I’m not sure why—maybe to avoid retribution by that supposed witch? After I had finished my questions, I had hoped he would keep talking a bit, but he stayed quiet. A sudden last question popped into my head and I asked him if he ever saw any white patients. I’m not sure what answer I was expecting—no, I guess—but he actually said yes! It sounded like not many, but he clearly stated that he had had whites come in who had had business problems, for example. Intriguing…I’m guessing none of the expats I know here would ever admit to that!

I left his house and his tiny kitten and skinny dog still thinking about the bundle of divining items. What to make of it all?? I really have no clue, but I do at least feel satisfied that I had my yes, clichéd, but still noteworthy classic Africanist anthropological moment.

good days, bad days

In my experience so far, a really bad day here usually seems to be rewarded by an amazing one soon after. Maybe that’s just my Zen belief in some sort of balance of good and bad, crappiness and happiness in the world speaking, or maybe it’s because things here always seem to happen in the extreme (a bad day is really bad, a good day is incredible), but so far the theory has pretty much held up.

Take this past Friday for example. It was a TOTAL DISASTER. It was party preparation day—the thank you party I was throwing for the village of Kachikau was to be on Saturday, and so Friday was the day that all the shopping had to be done, logistics finalized, and everything transported from Kasane out to the village. I should have known it was a bad sign when I woke up to heavy rain, the kind that seemed like it was going to stick, rather than the usual thunderstorm that quickly passes through.
Prince and Kaelo (my assistants) arrived in town and sent me a message saying “we are wet and shivering”—it was only when I saw them that I realized that they hadn’t just gotten wet running from the mini-bus station to the grocery store, but that they had instead gotten a lift in from the village in an open bed of a truck and had spent about the last hour completely exposed to the driving rain! No wonder they looked absolutely miserable—Kaelo had a scarf over her head and was insisting she needed an emergency trip to the hair salon, and even the ever-upbeat Prince had chattering teeth instead. Not a good start to the day. What next? Let’s see: Sefalana (the Kasane equivalent of a whole sale Costco) said their credit card machine was down (thus draining all my cash for the day), Chobe Farms had no produce (what kind of farm only has pickled onions available??), and then…the car broke down. Again. I had had high hopes of getting to the village in time to check on all the party helpers (i.e. cooks, the guy collecting firewood, the guys responsible for slaughtering the cow we had purchased, etc.), but with the car in the shop and an ETA of 2 hours for the repairs to be done, we were totally behind schedule. Ahh! I bought us all lunch, made tea and we warmed up in my little cottage, a much needed respite before venturing back into the terrible, wet, no-good day. This time, the problem was cabbage. No cabbage at Choppies, and by the time I got to Spar, all the cabbage that had been piled up there in the morning was gone. The guy working there says, hold on a sec, I’ll go to the back and get some, and what feels like an hour later emerges with two heads of cabbage. No, I need like EIGHT huge cabbages, I feel myself impatiently (and probably rudely) say. Oh. He goes back and now after what feels like two hours later, I storm back into the warehouse area shouting for the cabbage man. The manager comes out to inquire and I feel like a very silly lady. But a few minutes later, eight cabbage appear and I get them out of the store in a “borrowed” shopping cart (you aren’t supposed to leave the store with the carts but do they have any idea how heavy eight large cabbage heads each the size of a basketball are??) I retrieve the car in working condition (thank god), Kaelo finishes fixing her waterlogged hair at the salon, we pick up Prince at Choppies with the last of the groceries, and we are on the road. Finally! Nevermind that when we get to the village we still have to drive around looking for the person with the key to the storage room containing the large cooking pots. I am just relieved to have actually gotten out of Kasane with the three of us, the groceries and the car still intact. My head is pounding and I shell out gold foil-wrapped chocolates as some sort of consolation prize for the day.

And then Saturday happened. And somehow it totally made up for the hectic and stressful and “I hate Botswana” previous day. Yes, there were little hiccups—the dancers went missing just before they were supposed to perform, there was no electricity for the music, there was a huge truck with diesel parked dangerously close to where the cook had set up an open fire for cooking—but somehow it all got resolved. Well actually Prince resolved most of it, miracle worker that he is—stalling the opening ceremonies ‘till the dancers showed up; running home to get his generator and siphoning petrol out of my car to run the stereo system; literally moving the cooking fires, amongst many other things. I had been so nervous about all the preparations that when I suddenly found myself enjoying the party and having a bit of fun, it almost felt unexpected. Like I had forgotten that it might actually work out alright. And not just for me—according to the general sentiment, that party was a grand success!! Namely because there was a TON of food (we had slaughtered a big cow for this affair), enough so that people could fill up their Tupperware containers (it was BYOB—bring your own bowl), eat plenty and still have some to take home. But also the dancers performed smashingly (captured on video), the DJ was on point (and it was hilarious to watch old grannies dancing to his hip-hop remixes), and the speeches were just the right length. Prince delivered his eloquent introduction of me, I stumbled my way in Setswana through a brief thank-you speech, and the elders gave a couple opening and closing prayers. As the last of the guests started towards home with their rice and meat filled Tupperware, and the cooks began the arduous task of scrubbing out cast-iron pots big enough for a person to crawl inside, a sense of contentment and relief washed over me. The party had gone well, and I felt as though I could now leave the village knowing I had expressed my gratitude and appreciation to the best of my abilities. And even though Prince’s research assistant position would soon be ending, I also realized that I couldn’t think of a better person to recommend as a Batswana party planner! I drove back to Kasane exhausted, but finally enjoying the view out my window—the thick blue band of river, spotted with half-sunk palm trees surprised by the recent floods, the late-afternoon sun making the acacias and green grasses and munching cows look soft and warm, and a few lone cattle posts and roadside homes where elderly folk finished up their daily chores while small children glanced up as I drove, drove, drove on by.

a canine perspective

She slowed. The farm danced about her. The apple trees bickered with the wind, clasped limbs in union against it, blackbirds and sparrows and chickadees and owls rimming their crowns. The garden cried out its green infant odor, its melange the invention of deer or, now it seemed to her, the other way around. The barn swung her fat shadow across the yard, holding it gently by dark wrists and letting it turn, turn, stretch out in the evening upon the ground but never slip. Faster it all revolved around her when she closed her eyes. Clouds rumbled across heaven and she lay beneath, and in the passage of shadow and yellow sunlight, the house murmured secrets to the truck, the traveler, who listened for only so long before its devout empiricism forced it away in wide-eyed panic to test such ideas among its fellows. The maple tree held the wash up to the light in supplication and received (bright flames) yellow jackets each day, its only reply. The mailbox stood soldierly by the road, capturing a man and releasing him, again and again.

(excerpt from Almondine's chapter in "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle", a novel by David Wroblewski)

(not so) great expectations

I’ve written before about people seeing what they want to see (though I had been writing about how people see me), and I was struck again today by how much I think that is true, or more precisely, how much I think people see what they expect to see. Not that there is some inherently “true” way of seeing, but it never ceases to amaze me how peoples’ preconceived notions (or here I think it’s fair to say their prejudices) really color how they interpret a situation, a person or group of people.

The Coffee Shop in Kasane is a bastion of expatriateness but I can’t stay away—the blueberry muffins and quiche are just too good and they make a half-way decent cappuchino. It’s a good place for me to set up shop and work on my computer, check email (wireless!), eat lunch, sip coffee and bask in the air con. Plus woman who owns the places is quite sweet to me and treats me to a complimentary dessert now and then. However, I have never seen a Motswana eating inside and the chatter around me can often border on the ridiculous.

Today I had my research assistants come into town so we could have a power meeting about their progress on the survey work they are running in the village. Since I’m in town now doing my own set of interviews, it can be a little tricky to manage them from afar, but so far Prince (my main research assistant), seems to be doing a good job of keeping things on track. In fact, he is definitely the most capable, competent, and responsible of all my past and current research assistants. For lack of a better meeting spot, I decided we would rendez-vous at the coffee shop’s outdoor seating. Over glasses of juice, he was his usual self—joking around quite a bit but quick on his feet when it came to providing me with both answers when I grilled him about missing survey pages, and ideas when I brought up the subject of planning the thank-you village parties.

Which is why I was totally thrown off when I walked inside the coffee shop after our meeting ended (getting ready to order a delicious panini for myself) to face a sympathetic-looking smile from the coffee shop owner. “Ooh looks like you were having a tough time of it out there”, she commented. I must have looked confused because she followed it up with, “I could see your helper slouching in his chair”—and here she did the typical expat impersonation of a Motswana, which involves trying to look as lazy and useless as possible—“and just looking off in all directions into space.” Usually I let the embarrassingly racist jokes and imitations slide, but given that she was just so off the mark about Prince, I felt like I had to say something. “Well actually he is really great, and very much on top of things—in fact with him at the healm I feel not too worried about leaving the survey portion of my research to run on its own in the village while I do my interviews in town.” Her eyebrows arched and she didn’t have much to say besides, “oh really? Because it looked like he was just lolligaging about over there” (sidenote: I didn’t know anyone else besides my mom used this phrase, apparently it made its way over from England to former Rhodesia back in the day). “No he is really a great assistant”, I inarticulately reiterated again, and the conversation had nowhere else to go.

I took her recommendation of the daily special (chicken and mushroom pie), still bewildered and reeling from wondering how on earth she could have interpreted the scene outside the way she did. On a literal level, Prince was not even remotely “lounging” in his chair, and if she had stopped for just a second to listen to a word of the conversation, it seems impossible to think that she would have been so dead wrong in her impression of him. But maybe she still would have seen things that way. Maybe, I wonder, she is so accustomed to thinking of the “locals” in a certain light that she now sees what she expects to see, not what actually is in front her—in this case, a smart, well-spoken and charismatic young man. Whose name happens to be Prince.

My research assistants and me on the job...