My daughter Rosa arrived last Sunday. We had fun exploring tourist haunts in Gabs (Main Mall, Parliament, 3 Dikgosi Monument, Daily Grind, No 1 Ladies Coffee House, Botswanacraft, Kgale Hill, Cafe Dijo, Sanita's ... ). She joined me as I made goodbye rounds at Gaborone Senior Secondary School and UB on Monday and rode the combi with me to Gabane on Tuesday to help record videos of the ICT Club learners at Nare Sereto Junior Secondary School for the global dialogue with Stillwater on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
We had a bit of a glitch as the internet at Nare Sereto that day was not strong enough to record directly to Flipgrid, and not all of the learners were prepared. So, we came up with a work around of recording videos on our phones and then I uploaded those videos to Flipgrid once back in Gabs. My hope is that Tebatso will follow up in the coming weeks and facilitate the recording of those that were not ready this week and possibly their responses to the Stillwater videos. My official Fulbright program ended on Tuesday. On Thursday Rosa and I flew to Kasane, in the northeast corner of Botswana. In Kasane we took in a Chobe River cruise, a day trip across the border to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and a full day safari in Chobe National Park. We saw lots of elephants, crocodiles, hippos, giraffes, buffalo, waterbuck, impala, warthogs, baboons, kori bustard (Botswana's national bird) and one elusive leopard. Chobe is teeming with elephants and the issue of human-wildlife conflict is front and center. The President of Botswana recently hosted an Elephant Summit with the Presidents of Angola, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe in attendance and just announced the lifting of the 2014 ban on elephant hunting. Our host at Nxabii Cottages, Irene, told us stories of Kasane residents that have been trampled by elephants. Tonight we are back in Gabs regrouping before heading to Maun and the Okavango Delta, in the northwest corner of Botswana.
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I made my last official school visit on Monday to St. Joseph's College on the outskirts of Gaborone. St. Joseph's has a reputation for excellence with exam scores consistently among the highest in the country. The School Head was warm and welcoming and began the day by calling together the senior teachers of History, Geography, Social Studies and Development Studies to discuss how I should spend my day. The teachers whisked me off to visit three classes and chat with them in their offices. Classes at St. Joseph's were the largest I've seen in Botswana (all 40+ learners) and despite additional funding provided by the Catholic Church, still wanting for basics such as chalk and student chairs. The Modern World History and Social Studies classes were mostly lecture and note-taking. At one point in Social Studies, as part of a discussion of the impact of globalization on culture, a group of students was invited to demonstrate a specific ethnic dance. The class came alive! The teacher stopped the dance before it was finished, "so the learners wouldn't get too excited." The Geography class worked on a hands-on map reading activity with topographic maps of the Mochudi area. Between classes the teachers were handling logistics for an upcoming school trip to Cape Town, available to those learners who can afford to pay the fee. Before I left they insisted on feeding me lunch - a huge plate of pap and seswaa. One of the cleaning ladies passing by saw my leftovers sitting on the plate and asked to come in and finish them. My Advisor at UB helped me make a connection to Veronica Leburu, Chief Health Officer in the Sexual and Reproductive Health Division at the Ministry of Health, to discuss reasons for Botswana's relatively high maternal mortality ratio. I thought I was interviewing Ms. Leburu. Instead, I found myself in a division meeting with about ten people sitting in chairs lining the perimeter of her office anticipating a formal presentation and proposal for future collaboration. Fortunately Katherine, the U.S. Peace Corps volunteer I had interviewed a few weeks ago, was also in the meeting and helped me smooth over the misunderstanding. On Tuesday I was fortunate to have the opportunity to interview Julianna Lindsey, Country Director for UNICEF Botswana. Julianna helped me better understand the scope of UNICEF's work in Botswana, which falls into five broad categories:
After the Ministry of Health and UNICEF Botswana interviews on Tuesday I headed to a Panel Discussion at UB on "The Anticipated Impacts and or Benefits of Implementation of SDGs". This is the first of several United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) public discussions that UB will sponsor. The panel was excellent and the discussion that followed lively. The consensus of the panelists and attendees was that the SDGs must not only be localized but contextualized so that sustainable development in Botswana "leaves no one behind". My last full week as a Fulbright DAT found me back at the library for the SDGs Seminar for kids. I led the first part of the session (Tebatso is in South Africa until late May as a participant in the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Centre Cohort 17) and was joined for the second half of the session by his Banabakgwale Association colleague Motheo. We watched We The People for the Global Goals, read the Heroes for Change comic out loud, completed a Global Goals Word Search and explored colorful maps of Botswana. Kids that participated put their name in a raffle for an inflatable globe. On Tuesday I will return to Nare Sereto Junior Secondary School in Gabane to hopefully finish our first Flipgrid global exchange activity with Stillwater.
This week started a bit slowly with work in my office at UB, but the pace picked up on Wednesday when I observed the first Youth Achievers meeting of the new term at Naledi Senior Secondary School. Youth Achievers is an after school leadership development program run by the 2017 cohort of Mandela Washington Fellows. 30 Form 4 (equivalent to grade 11 in the U.S. system) learners were chosen through an essay application process. They will spend an hour on Wednesdays through November being mentored on a variety of topics including communication, community development, health and nutrition, environmental issues and business and money. The culminating activity is to make a business pitch to the group. As this was the first session, there were intros and an ice breaker. Learners were tasked with lining up, without talking, in order of birthdays. The Fellows leading this first session (Koketso, Ditiro and Peo Neo) generated a lot of excitement in the group about what is to come. On Thursday I spent the day at Livingstone Kolobeng College (actually a Senior Secondary School), observing Geography and Development Studies classes. The Geography class was having an interactive lecture on Coastal Processes and the Development Studies class was discussing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (precursor to the Sustainable Development Goals). The principal at Livingstone Kolobeng chatted me up for an hour plus on personal educational and cultural observations she has made here in Botswana. She is from India, but has lived here for more than 40 years. Thursday I also interviewed Dorothy from Young 1ove. Young 1ove is an NGO working hand-in-hand with several Botswana government ministries to deliver two evidence-based programs using trained peer educators. Zones focuses on HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy prevention while Teaching at the Right Level focuses on closing the gap between educational access and educational quality. Dorothy herself has a compelling story. She first came to Botswana at age 4 with her family as a political refugee from Uganda and spent several years living in a refugee camp. While attending university in Namibia, basketball became her physical and psychological outlet. Today, she's not only an international basketball referee, but an international activist holding a Master's Degree in Social Work. Read more about Dorothy in this NPR article. I spent time on Saturday with Lesogo from the Gogontlejang Phaladi Pillar of Hope Project. Lesogo explained her volunteer work with two GPPH projects, one focused on educating young women about the age of consent and the other, SIMI Movement, on the mentoring of young girls. Their age of consent work has similarities to the work of Young 1ove, but with a particular emphasis on self-esteem. The "sugar daddy" phenomenon is alive and well in Botswana. Younger girls, especially girls with low income or low self-esteem, date older men in exchange for money and gifts. Those "gifts" may include HIV/AIDS and/or pregnancy. Friday was the World ICT Day event at Nare Sereto Junior Secondary School in Gabane, with a special theme of Girls in ICT. Gloria, the ICT teacher Tebatso and I have been collaborating with, picked me up before 6 a.m. We dropped her husband Ernest off at his communications job with the Botswana Defense Force (BDF) and headed to school. The school was already abuzz with activity with the sun barely up. Teachers bossed learners around, per usual. Sweep the tent, carry chairs out of the classrooms and line them up and so on. I kept trying to help and being told no, the learners do the work! I was finally allowed to help the teachers cut small pieces of colorful fabric to make special VIP pins.
Soon the VIPs began to arrive and waited patiently in the computer lab while the DJ's catchy tunes blasted from the tent area. Finally (more than an hour late), the VIPs were escorted to their seats in the tent, looking out at learners, staff and parents assembled in front of them in chairs. This event, like all I have attended in Botswana, had a long, formal program with lots of speeches and began and ended with a prayer. The overall purpose was to excite the learners, especially girls, about career opportunities in the ICT field. We heard from the School Head, Gloria as the chief organizer, officials from the Ministry of Education, representatives of two of the companies exhibiting at the event (including one that recently donated the first SMART Board to the school), and a female Computer Science professor from the University of Botswana, with an intermission provided by a student musical group (video below). After the formal program, the new SMART Board was demonstrated in the computer lab, all were free to visit a handful of technology related exhibits in the school hall, and a traditional lunch buffet was served to the VIPs, school staff and select learners. Most of the learners received the normal school lunch before undertaking all of the clean-up duties. The "feeding" was one aspect of the program that Gloria has been worried about for weeks. The school had no budget for the event, so everything needed to be donated. She finally found a donor for the food just this past week. If Batswana come to an event like this, they expect to be fed! When Tebatso and I first started coming to Nare Sereto, it was because he and his NGO, Banabakgwale Association have "adopted" the school and assist with the ICT Club on Thursdays after school. He believed that the school would be a good location not only for me to conduct a survey, but also to engage learners in a global dialogue with Stillwater students, all related to my Fulbright Inquiry Project. Our hope was that the Nare Sereto ICT Club learners would record their contribution to the global dialogue (we are using Flipgrid) at this World ICT Day event. Well ... as you can imagine with the long formal program, and it starting late and the general hub bub of the day and Gloria being overwhelmed with preparations, this didn't happen. So ... I hope to return to Nare Sereto this coming week to seal the deal, but my time is getting short. Early this week I met with two UB Population Studies professors about my Inquiry Project, journeyed to Gabane with Tebatso to meet with Gloria at Nare Sereto Junior Secondary School about our plans for World ICT Day, interviewed Babedi of Botswana Youth Talent Expo and finally received a 90-day extension on my tourist visa. This process began March 22, involved compiling lots of required documentation, multiple trips to two different immigration offices on opposite sides of Gabs, several hours waiting in queues and offices and significant intervention on my behalf by Human Resources Assistant Mr. Osupile at UB. So, now that I have the piece of paper I can legally exit and enter Botswana for a few more months.
It’s astonishing how much time, effort and stress have gone in to procuring three pieces of paper that have had a huge impact on my life here: research permit (which I have been asked to show ONCE), letter of permission to visit schools from the Ministry of Education and the visa extension. On Thursday, visa extension in hand, I caught the Flight Connect bus from Riverwalk Mall near my apartment to the bus terminal at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg. It’s a six hour trip, with a clunky process at the border crossing. Get out of the bus, go through Botswana passport control, declare laptop at customs, walk across the border, go through South Africa passport control, pick up luggage from bus, have luggage scanned, present customs declaration for laptop, present passport one more time, back on the bus. On the way back in to Botswana you are required to wipe your shoes on a mat treated with disinfectant to reduce the spread of foot and mouth disease. The bus hostess pleasantly informed us that if for some reason we were not able to clear immigration at the border they would have no other choice than to leave us there. Comforting! The Johannesburg metropolitan area has roughly the same population as New York City proper (~8 million people). Joburg’s reputation for grit and crime persists, but today it’s a vibrant, high-energy city with a compelling history and lots to see and do. I spent three nights in Maboneng Precinct, a day in Soweto and a day exploring inner city Johannesburg. Too short! |
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
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