The Best of Year One: Honorable Mention

The Kids

No matter how bad a day or week I have had the kids here are an instant pick-me-up. They are in a word incredible. Some of my secondary projects involve working directly with kids and I love it. When I show up they come running yelling my name and want to be picked up or just hold my hand. The kids here generally do not get a lot of positive attention from adults and so they just eat it up. The fact that I am a strange, foreign white man just is a bonus for them.

They love playing with my watch. They grab my arm and push all the buttons they can. They are also fascinated with my hair. I think if I let them they would stand there and just run their hands through it. My arm and leg hair also enthralls most of them. While I stand there they will squat and pet my leg hair. One little girl grabbed my arm and vigorously rubbed it. I figured that she thought my whiteness would rub off if she tried hard enough.

One memory that sticks with me is of a little girl. She had to be around 2 and maybe younger. I could tell she had just learned to walk and each step seemed precarious. This particular day she was wearing a big fluffy jacket and had an open bag of potato chips in one hand. The group of kids she was with ran off to go play and she tried to follow along. Her little legs churned but couldn’t seem to catch up and she fell flat on her face like she was trying to do a belly flop in a pool. I ran over to her and stood her up. Her eyes welled with tears and then they streamed down her face. I brushed her off, wiped her tears and snot away and tried my best to console her. She took one look into her bag of chips and seemed reassured they were still there. Then she looked straight into my eyes, spread her arms wide, and hugged me. She took another glance inside her bags of chips and waddled off to go play.

Another time I made a little baby bawl simply by being there. This baby was probably around one year old and was being taken care of by her little sister who couldn’t have been more than 10. I walked over to say hi and as soon as the baby saw me, she started bawling. I tried to soothe her but she just cried harder. I finally gave up and walked away. She quit crying as soon as I left. I tried to go back later but as soon as I came into view she started bawling again. Just as before, as soon as I left she stopped crying.

My favorite little boy by far is named Zhu Zhu. Whenever he sees me he will run over, hold his hands up and ask to be picked up. He speaks no English and babbles constantly in Setswana. I generally have no idea what he is talking about but his smile always makes me feel good.

Another favorite is the little boy who I see outside of my work. His mom runs a tuck shop and whenever he sees me walking by, he will repeatedly yell “Legkoa!” (white man) and come running. I have been teaching him how to give a high five. He is slowly picking it up and some days he is the best part. He puts a smile on my face as I walk into work and when I leave in the afternoon. A highlight with him was realizing that he wasn’t wearing any pants after I squatted down to give him a high five. I laughed about that one for a long time.

I like to think I am making a difference in the lives of these kids. Many of the kids I interact with come from the poorest section of the city. They wear ratty clothing that might be filthy or have holes. Many of them are losing hair from malnutrition and all of them are skinny. Despite this they laugh a lot and have smiles that beam. One thing I am sure of is that they have left a tremendous impression on me and have been my saving grace.

Littering And...Littering And...

I think its fair to say that Botswana has a littering problem. Its a rare day when I don't see someone toss aside a can, bag, or wrapper as they walk down the street. I can walk just about anywhere in the city where I live and see litter on the side of the road or in the grass, and the path I walk to work is teeming with refuse.

Despite it being such a visible problem, no one seems to care and is disheartening to experience. It is sad to see such a beautiful country spoiled by such carelessness.

Village Voice

As you may or may have not noticed by reading through my blogs, my English language skills are slowly deteriorating. A fortunate part of being in Southern Africa is that I do speak a good deal of English on a daily basis, the downside is the ominous creep of “village voice.” I first noticed the existence of it on our first week in country. Most of the current volunteers spoke in this funny, slow way when they spoke to a Motswana. Volunteers in my group talked amongst ourselves and guessed whether we would get those same accents.

What is village voice? Village voice is a way of speaking slowly with simple words and with a bit of an accent so that people here can understand you. A lot of people here have trouble understanding the American accent, especially when I speak quickly. Batswana will tell me that my voice is high pitched and sounds “nasal” frequently. In fact, I once had a guy approach me to tell me he learned the secret to speaking English “like a white man.” I asked him what that secret was and he quickly pinched his nose and started to make noises like the teacher from Charlie Brown. We both had a good laugh and the man walked on.

For Americans, accents usually are not a problem. We are used to hearing English spoken with some form of an accent and in big cities you can meet people from all over the world and hear many different accents in any given day. In Botswana, this is not the case. Most of the people here understand and speak at least a little English, but they typically learn British English and it was most likely a second or third language for their teacher.

Writing is a poor format to try to describe speech, but take for example a problem I ran into yesterday. One of the women in the office named Vee was going around shutting off lights and preparing to lock up for the night. She came to where I sit and tried to get the blinds to go down. She pulled on one cord and one side of the blinds would fall. Then she pulled the blinds back up and tried a different cord. The other side of the blinds fell. Then she pulled them up again and restarted the whole process. After watching this for several seconds, I spoke up to tell her how to do it.

Here is what I said first in American English:

“No, Vee, you can’t just pull on one cord. You need to grab all of the cords at the same time. Then you pull down and to the left to release the catch and then while bringing the strings back to the middle, gently let down the blinds. It is not too difficult.”

Vee gave me a large smile and nodded, which I knew meant she had no clue what I just said and then she went right back to her original routine.

Then I thought about it a little and translated what I wanted to tell her into “village voice.” It went something like this (in my funny accent):

“Okay, Vee. Take this string. Now, take this one too. And now grab that one. Take all of them and pull to that side (the left). Now let them down slow slow.”

After that second set of instructions, the blinds went down nice and slow and were even. She laughed and looked at me like I had revealed some great mystery. Village Voice will undoubtedly be the death of my English skills but it sure does come in handy when you need to communicate.