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.
2 Comments
Anne Damon
2/18/2019 01:37:35 pm
Nice post! I hope your leg/knee is doing better. And I enjoyed reading about the challenges/opportunities facing you and your colleagues. Great photos too..love, Anne
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Gretchen
2/23/2019 02:35:23 pm
The guy with the treats, so interesting. . . hope your knee is getting less colorful!
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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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