Preparations for the Botswana Day celebration began Thursday, though the holiday was not until Sunday. I helped peel and chop carrots, potatoes, and pineapples. The pineapples were added to a large plastic garbage can (like "take the garbage out to the curb" big) full of liquid, to become a "drink" for the party here this Saturday. Mmmmm exciting.
Last week in class we tried to learn how to click. Though there's no clicking in Setswana, there is in Sesarwa (language of the Basarwa bushmen, which are Botswana's equivalent of the Native Americans, as in they were here first but we were here stronger.) I think I can pronounce Xhosa well enough to impress an American, but not well enough to be coherent to a local. Luckily, I haven't learned enough to know whether Starvin Marvin is speaking a real language.
(Editor's Note: If you want to understand all the literary-ish references I make, I suggest watching the first eight seasons of South Park, reading everything written by Douglas Adams, reading mostly everything written by Orson Scott Card, and listening to pretty much all Broadway soundtracks. I think that should cover it. Beyond that it's really random. Oh, and join a co-ed literary fraternity.)
Friday evening, my classmate's host brother was celebrating his 2nd birthday and we all attended the party. We played with a frisbee the whole time. We're thinking of starting Otse's first Ultimate Frisbee league.
Saturday, the party was at my house. We already had some cousins over (young children, crawling all over me, it's like they've never seen a white person...but they live in Gabs, and I'm sure I've seen some white people there...I think...at restaurants, at least). I may never know what it's like to be black in America, but I sure as hell know what it's like to be white in Botswana. Everyone stares. Little kids are amazed when we talk; they look at me as if to say, "It speaks!" And everyone asks for money. Or my hand in marriage. If I had a pula for every time someone asked me for a pula, then I'd have a lot of pula...and the world would be pretty damn ironic.
I'm in the process of putting together a mini English-Setswana dictionary. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about the Setswana-to-English part because I don't understand Setswana well enough to decipher individual words from a slew of native speech.
Mefloquine dreams are fun. I recently dreamed I was out to dinner in Botswana with my classmates and I was eating a bowl of half-sour pickles from Ben's. I also had a dream where I kept saying, "I know I'm dreaming, I keep expecting to wake up," but I didn't believe myself enough to try flying or anything cool like that. Am I dreaming or am I awake? Sometimes I'm not too sure. Some of this trip is so surreal; I can't believe this is really happening, let alone believe that this is supposed to be school.
They listen to music so loudly here! They'll turn on the CD player, then turn the volume up all the way so they can hear it in the backyard. Even hiding in my room with the door closed, I could still feel the bass of a very interesting remix of Josh Groban's You Raise Me Up. I'm not making that up. And the music usually starts at 6 AM.
Saturday morning, we climbed the tallest mountain in Botswana. It's not that high, but I'm in such terrible shape, I had to stop every once in a while and refill with peanut butter and the last of my tofu jerkey. It was a beautiful hike, though, even if I was the back of the line always. And all trees and bushes in Botswana have thorns. My legs look like they were mauled by a cheetah. It's okay though; to hike, we wore shorts (instead of a skirt, which I kept in my backpack and put on before walking back in the house) for the first time since arriving in Otse. Skin heals, but a torn skirt is forever.
The tallest point in Botswana, briefly:
I don't think I'll ever learn to not anticipate things. Here, it's always different than I expect.
I returned from the hike just in time to help chop the vegetables for the pary, which I didn't learn until the end was Babae's Confirmation party (I was to embarrassed to ask earlier. Picture a long table surrounded by women chopping everything from beets to peppers to carrots. Or rather, look at my picture of it:
Double double toil and trouble...and so much food:
Some cousins:
More cousins:
Some of the food:
I learned that my chopping and peeling skills are inferior, which makes me less of a woman, apparently. I kept asking what I could do to help because I didn't know what to do, and I felt bad just sitting there, which reminded me of an excerpt from a piece we had to read a couple of weeks ago, that's taken from an information packet given to people who move to America:
"Americans routinely plan and schedule an extremely active day. Any relaxation must be limited in time, pre-planned, and aimed at 'recreating' their ability to work harder and more productively once the recreation is over. Americans believe leisure activities should assume a relatively small portion of one's total life. People think that it is 'sinful' to 'waste one's time', 'to sit around doing nothing', or just to 'daydream'."
Those silly Americans.
The party started with, surprise, a prayer service. The priest had come to the party to lead the service. Religion is interesting here; it's not that they are unaccepting of non-Christians, but they assume everyone is Christian. Religion is woven into their lives so seamlessly that I'm often taken off guard. For example, this (awkward) conversation between me and one of Babae's (male) friends involved a combination of lying, acting, and confession on my part:
(Following a discussion of school)
Do you believe in God?
Uh, yes.
Do you want to go to Heaven?
I guess, sure.
So you believe in Heaven?
I don't know, but it can't hurt to believe in it.
But the Bible says there's a Heaven.
It's not very clear on it.
But you believe in God, so you should believe everything the Bible says.
The Bible has often been misinterpreted.
Do you go to church a lot?
Uh, no?
Why not?
I, um, don't like praying in front of people.
So you talk to God on your own.
Yes.
Will you always be like that?
I don't know. My parents go to church a lot [sort of], so maybe when I'm their age...
What do you think about abstinence?
What?
I hear Americans like to have sex with lots of people outside of marriage and it doesn't mean anything.
[I'm not repeating my answer here, I just wanted you to appreciate the awkwardness. Hi Mom and Dad.]
What age do you want to be married by?
I don't know, when I find the right person.
What do you think about homosexuality?
Uh,um, I, erm, [oh, shit]
You know, like gays and lesbians.
Yeah, uh, I think that we were all made in God's image, so he wouldn't have made people like that if he didn't approve of it. (Whew.) I'm going to go get a drink.
I had some less uncomfortable conversations as well. I spent a lot of time discussing astronomy with a 12 year-old boy. He explained to me how the sun doesn't actually move, but the Earth moves around it. I then tried to explain that the sun does, in fact, move, within a big disc-like collection of stars. It was kind of like when someone tried to explain to me the different degrees of infinity. (There are an infinite number of integers. There are also an infinite number of real numbers. If all the real numbers were put into a hat, the probability of pulling out an integer is zero. Therefore, the sets of integers and real nhumbers are described by different degrees of infinity. I would like to know where to get a hat that big.)
Most of my classmates came to the party for a little bit, which was very nice of them. I got to share with them some of the best drink ever. (Put lots of ground ginger, sugar, and sliced pineapple into a garbage can full of water. Let it sit for two days. Then mix it with sweet red brandywine, unless you're a woman; it's not nice for women to drink.) It's pretty delicious. I'm going to have to make some at home/school. Without alcohol, of course. After that, there was dancing.
Sunday: Independence Day! All the white people met at the kgotla (town hall) to help set up. While there, we met a really cool guy from Francistown who went Florida State University to study forensic science and is not teaching criminal law at the Botswana Police Academy. He got to spend time with the CIA learning how they work.
The ceremony was pretty boring, especially because it was all in Setswana. The president of Botswana sends a copy of his speech to each village chief to read on Independence Day, which is an interesting alternative to a television broadcast. Fortunately, a man summarized the speech in English for us. I learned that Botswana's literacy rate is now 90%. Pula!
Then there was so much food, and a traditional dance. A bunch of boys stamped around with what is clearly the precursor to rhythm tap. They wore dozens of little sacks of beans tied to their ankles. Kind of like taps, but cooler.
Dancers:
This is Botswana's 41st birthday. That's young. It's younger than my parents. Botswana gained its independence after the Beatles came to America. Botswana makes Israel look old. But for 41 years, it's a pretty nice place.
Following the celebration was another meeting of Otse's Ultimate Frisbee team. Now, I can catch a frisbee almost consistently and sort of throw it in the general direction of another person. Fortunately, I don't think we'll find another frisbee team to compete against in Botswana any time soon.
Oh, and I did laundry well this time! Ah, the sweet smell of success, not sweat.
Last though: everyone who knows me well should be amused to discover that the first phrases in Setswana I mastered are: Ke lapile (I'm tired) and Ke Robala (I'm going to sleep). Old habits die hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment