This week had some reminders of the fragility and strength of both humans and animals. Gofa, Atamalang and Agang met me to talk about their efforts as members of Green Habitat Botswana to promote environmental education and resource protection and restoration. Green Habitat Botswana has about 20 active members, all young professionals, from a variety of career fields. They partner with primary and secondary schools on litter picking and tree planting campaigns and share conservation info through social media. This year’s goal is to plant 3000 trees. We talked about Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her autobiography, Unbowed, details her work not only to plant trees, but to work for gender equality, democracy and peace. When I first met UB Population Studies Chair Dr. Rakgoasi, he mentioned that a member of the department was very ill with cancer. As it turns out, Dr. Bainame was a key contributor to the report that forms the foundation of my research and had previously been the instructor of the course I am auditing, Demography of Botswana. Dr. Bainame passed away this week. The love and respect that his family, colleagues and students had for him overflowed at his UB memorial service. The service alternated between spontaneous hymns sung a capella in Setswana and moving testimonies. Poignant for me were the words of a PhD student, Moses, whom Dr. Bainame had mentored through his work on three degrees at the university. I first met Moses at a department meeting convened for the purpose of planning the memorial. Moses was not sure he would be capable of speaking at the service, as he was so emotionally devastated. Dr. Rakgoasi encouraged him softly, saying, “It is o.k. to cry. We are human. We cry when we are sad, and we cry when we are happy.” Somehow in the next 24 hours Moses found the strength to speak, and to speak in a way that had everyone wiping their eyes. We learned that he is South Sudanese and has endured the horrific deaths of family members and friends through years of conflict there. He said he had never cried tears over those losses. His eyes had remained dry. His tears flowed for three days for Dr. Bainame. For me it was a touching convergence of my experiences with South Sudanese Lost Boys and this current reality in Botswana. Friday I met several of the other Americans who are here in Botswana on various Fulbright programs at a dinner party at the home of a U.S. Embassy staff member and her husband, who works in international development. The group included college professors, post graduate students and a former Fulbrighter who originally came to Botswana five years ago and stayed on, co-founding the NGO Young 1Love. I discovered Young 1Love in 2015 when I read the article What Botswana's Teen Girls Learn in 'Sugar Daddy' Class. It was a fun night of conversation about the ins and outs of Bots and lots of good Mexican food.
I spent Saturday with Andy from Heritage Adventures exploring some rural areas and villages around Gaborone. Our stops included the Matsieng Footprints, the village and kgotla of Mochudi and the Manyana Rock Paintings. As the legend goes, Matsieng, ancestor of the Batswana, was a one-legged giant who emerged from a hole in the ground leaving a hand and footprint. He was followed by his children and animals. The hours in the car with Andy provided lots of time to talk about his experiences building a small business, Botswana's rural-urban divide and history, culture and social norms. In both the rural and urban areas of Botswana, one sees lots of cows (and goats and donkeys) on the side of the road and in the road. The animals present a real hazard to drivers, especially at night. The owners of the cattle bear the legal responsibility for their meandering. If you hit a cow with your car, the owner has to pay you for the cost of repairs to your car. As we pulled in to the Matsieng Footprints, a cow crossed the road slowly in front of us. As she passed, we were startled to see the head and face of a stillborn calf, hanging from the back of her body. The mother and the baby, one still strong and one so fragile.
0 Comments
Actually it was at the end of Week 1 that I literally fell into a hole. Yielding to pedestrians is not really a concept in Gaborone, so while attempting to cross a busy street downtown and looking both ways (the opposite ways that my mind has been socialized to look, as they drive on the left side of the road here), my right foot and leg up to my knee literally fell into a drainage hole and my left knee slammed into the ground. After climbing out, limping home, applying an ice pack and downing some Advil, what emerged was the largest bruise I've ever had, radiating yellow and blue over my entire calf and reminding me that life can change in an instant. Figuratively, I fell into a hole this week due to the challenges of cross cultural communication. It became clear that my Advisor misunderstood the difference between the Fulbright DAT program that I am a part of and the Fulbright Scholar program in terms of the formal vs. informal research called for in my Inquiry Project. It became clear that my Advisor expected me to know what I didn't know yet, which was that if someone doesn't respond to your e-mail, doesn't answer your phone call, you should go to their campus office (if you can find it), knock once, enter and insist that they help you on the spot. I scrambled out of this hole by holding my ground on my Inquiry Project, pestering the ICT office until I gained access to Blackboard for the class I am auditing, marching behind my Advisor to another professor's office to firm up a time to solicit project advice from the Population Studies Department and navigating the informal economy to print a stack of forms in triplicate for UB Ethics Committee approval so that I am able to survey students when I visit schools. It's hard to be reprimanded ("yelled at" my own children would call it, but I always questioned whether anyone had actually yelled at them) by an Advisor who is at least twenty years my junior. Thanks to my Fulbright colleague Tess for letting me vent and empathizing. Maybe it's because she has a 7 month old and 3 year old at home, child care complications and the Department Chair just informed her that she is to teach an additional class this semester. Thursday I attended a seminar hosted by the UB Economics Department entitled Determinants of Youth Unemployment and Localising SDGs: Case Study of Gabone in Kweneng District. Contrary to stereotypical beliefs about technology integration in the developing world, the community census that formed the foundation of the study was carried out on handheld tablet computers that geolocated respondents and fed data into GIS maps. Yay geography! It is clear that the most daunting challenge related to Botswana's "youth bulge" is high youth unemployment. In the community this study focused on, youth unemployment is 26%. This is commonly attributed to a mismatch in Botswana's labor market. Current employers demand low-level skills, while educational and training institutions are producing people with high-level skills. Despite the struggle of finding work equivalent to their skills, young Batswana are reluctant to emigrate. My conversation with the Population Studies professor whose article Patterns and Differentials of Migration in Botswana we read and discussed in class (he himself migrated here from India), meshed with anecdotal evidence suggests that young people just really like it here in Botswana, so they try to manage. Managing means "the hustle". Civil engineers drive taxis, social entrepreneurs trying to get NGOs off the ground sell sweets, fat cakes and mobile phone airtime on the street and the young man who greets me each morning at the gates of UB bought a generator and a couple of old desktop computers and printers. For 50 thebe a page (a little less than 50 cents) he prints, collates and staples anything you need (ah yes, those Ethics Committee forms in triplicate). He's there at 6:30 a.m. on weekdays and usually has a line of people waiting. Last week I mentioned I would be attending a SDGs seminar for youth at the Gaborone Public Library. That session ended up being cancelled, but yesterday's session was a go. Together with like-minded friends Tebatso Jokonya founded Banabakgwale Association in 2016. Their mission is to help youth gain skills so as to to be able to create sustainable businesses, particularly in the agriculture and tourism sectors. They raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals and reach out to primary and secondary schools to offer computer training to both students and staff. Inspired by Botswana's Vision 2036 and the African Union's Agenda 2063 and affiliated with the U.N. Global Compact and U.N. Youth Envoy, Banabakgwale ("birds of a feather flock together" in Setswana) connects students and teachers to things like Microsoft Digital Literacy Courses, Africa Code Week and World ICT Day. One of Tebatso's ideas was to capture the attention of Gaborone kids who spend their after school hours at the public library. Kids walk there when school lets out, do homework and read books until it is time to walk home or their parents pick them up. So, most Friday afternoons, he gathers the kids that happen to be there and shares information about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sometimes he uses resources from the World's Largest Lesson. Yesterday, each child received a color copy of one of the 17 Goals, also called Global Goals. They practiced reading the goals in order, out loud. The older ones helped the younger ones and Tebatso explained the meaning of each goal in Setswana and English. During a second round, as each child read their goal, Tebatso distributed small sweets, instructing the children not to eat them. The number of sweets that each child received varied, with some receiving up to four and some receiving none. This segued to a more in-depth discussion of different types of societal inequalities. By the end of the session, every child had at least one sweet (I kept thinking of the Stanford psychological experiment on delayed gratification where they see how long kids can wait to eat a marshmallow) and Tebatso finally gave permission to eat. I don't want to make too many assumptions based on one meeting at which the kids were all aware a U.S. teacher was joining them, but I was a bit amazed that kids were so cooperative and engaged. This is not an after school activity that they signed up for in advance or that their parents paid for them to participate in. It's just a young guy introducing kids to something he is passionate about and hoping that when they go home they continue the conversation with their parents and friends. This week I'll be meeting with more NGOs including Green Habitat Botswana and YALDA Botswana, possibly connecting via Skype with Bernard Onyango of the AIFEP (African Institute for Development Policy) in Kenya, trying to arrange appointments to visit private schools while waiting for permission to visit public schools and cracking open reading material given to me by Population Studies professor Rebecca Kubanji, who serves on a committee charged with disseminating information to the public about the demographic dividend and Sustainable Development Goals. Rebecca also offered to help arrange meetings with representatives of the Botswana Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and the United Nations Population Fund, major players on the issues I am studying in Botswana.
From its independence in 1964 until 1982, Botswana was part of a larger university system with its neighbors Lesotho and eSwatini. Motho Le Motho Kgomo in Setswana (One Man, One Beast), was the slogan for a six year campaign led by former President Seretse Khama to raise money to construct the University of Botswana campus in Gaborone. All Batswana were asked to contribute what they were able, be it in the form of cash, cattle or agricultural products. This statue near the library honors the contributions by Batswana that made the campus possible. This week has been spent settling in at UB. I am now officially auditing a course on the Demography of Botswana, taught by my Advisor Dr. Ntshebe, and have an office on campus. My 50 or so classmates (who look about as old as my own Stillwater students) don't seem to be fazed by the gray haired white woman in class. Surprise, surprise, they like to sneak their mobile phones underneath their desks just like U.S. students do. Dr. Ntshebe and I meet Tuesday mornings to discuss my Inquiry Project. She is helping me narrow the scope, clarify goals and methods and identify relevant literature. She has suggested I present to the Population Studies Department for feedback and advice, so that may happen soon. She is crafting a letter that I will ultimately take to the Ministry of Education to request formal permission to visit public schools to observe and talk with teachers and learners. In Botswana, an arid country experiencing the impacts of climate change, rain is so precious that the currency is named Pula, meaning rain or blessing. Saturday was rainy. According to guide Andy, our city tour was therefore blessed. We explored cultural sites including the Three Dikgosi Monument, Parliament Building, Tlokweng and Old Naledi. Old Naledi began as a squatter settlement for laborers who built Gaborone and remains one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. The Three Dikgosi, or Three Chiefs Monument, honors the three Batswana tribal chiefs who travelled to the UK in 1895 to petition Queen Victoria to maintain its Bechuanaland Protectorate (essentially a colony), so as not to allow Botswana to fall under the control of apartheid South Africa. A situation where neither option would be freely chosen, but which ultimately paved the path for independence. Intrigued by the announcement above on the Gaborone Public Library Facebook page, today I spent an hour with Tebatso, learning about the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) he founded, the Banabakgwale Association. One component of my Inquiry Project is to identify ways that Botswana’s government, educational system and NGOs are “harnessing the demographic dividend”, specifically as it relates to initiatives to empower youth to contribute to sustainable development. I'll share more about Banabakgwale next week after joining in on Friday's seminar at the library.
|
About MeA 9th grade AP Human Geography and Global Studies teacher at Stillwater Area High School in Stillwater, Minnesota, USA, living and learning in Gaborone, Botswana from January to June 2019 as a Fulbright Teacher. Archives
June 2019
Categories |