A Notable Discrepancy

A recent report by some international agency listed Botswana as among the countries in the world with the largest income discrepancy between rich and poor. That is something that has been strikely evident to us since we arrived. In Gaborone, you see a lot of Mercedes, BMWs, and Jaguars on the road - definitely more per capita than in someplace like Fort Wayne. But these expensive "status cars" drive right by some incredibly poor looking areas where people clearly struggle to even meet their basic needs. Below is a brief video clip of one of these areas that we took from the car. It goes quickly - you may need to watch it more than once to get the full effect.

There are obviously very rich and very poor people in every city, but for some reason it stands out so much more here. As best we can tell, there are two main reasons for this. First, the money in Botswana is very new relative to some other places. Before Botswana gained independence in the 1960s, it was one of the 10 poorest countries in the world. Then, they found the diamonds. This money has generally been invested well in both people and services. Botswana pays for students to go to college, and sends people to other countries to get advanced degrees. The government provides a lot of other services to its people, and the government itself is also one of the biggest employers in the country. (Actually, I think it is the biggest employer but I am hesitant to assert that since I can not verify it. I need some sort of fact checker for this blog. Hey George, how about it?).

Anyway, this leads to point number two, which is that since the generation of people with money is new, the people with money are not removed and disconnected from those without money. There seem to be big income variations even within families. In Botswana, people generally identify their "home" as the village they were born in. Since Gaborone was built up to be the capital, no one is really "from" Gaborone. People with money in Gaborone still go to their home villages regularly, where the family may still be quite poor. Even in Gaborone itself, the town is not completely segregated between rich and poor areas, with a few exceptions, like the area in the video above. There are not a bunch of suburbs where all the people with money flee too, leaving an abandonded inner city for the poor (although there are signs that this might be coming). So, it seems as though those with and without money interact more regularly, making the income disparity stand out more.

On another point, some of you have asked how you could help support S.O.S. - the orphanage we posted about previously. We actually made a trip out there several weekends ago and while we were there I asked about this. I was told we had to check at the main office in Gaborone, so I will try to find that office and visit soon. When I do, I will post info about how you can donate to them or otherwise support their work.

A Series of Random Events

There is no coherent theme to this post, just a bunch of random things.

Random Topic One: The Weaver Bird.

We have all been fascinated by the range of bird life here. Ted has been doing his best to turn the backyard into a bird sanctuary, and high on his list of things he hoped to attract was a weaver bird. They are very fascinating creatures. We first saw them when we were staying at the Sun Hotel when we first arrived in Gaborone, before we were able to move into our flat. We saw dozens of nests there, which peaked Ted's interest.


Pictured above and below is the Masked Weaver (there are several kinds throughout Africa). They craft these intricate hanging nests, with the opening in the bottom. We still aren't sure how the eggs manage to not fall out. Sometimes they build a new nest hanging from the bottom of the nest from the previous year.

And finally, we succeeded. Below is a weaver bird nest from our own back yard.

Random Topic Two: Thanksgiving.

We have seen virtually no turkey of any kind the entire time we have been here. There is no turkey in any deli section of any grocery, and no turkey on the menu at restaurants. So, we assumed we were not going to be able to have a turkey on Thanksgiving. Then, the Sunday before Thanksgiving we went to the grocery store, and much to our surprise there were two freezers full of whole turkeys. Apparently there are enough American ex-pats here to justify the importing of a truckload of turkeys each November. We bought one, and planned an impromptu Thanksgiving celebration with our familyand my mother; Charles, my Fulbright colleague from California; Julia, another professor from the U.S. who happened to be here for a week doing some research, and Keb, a Motswana professor of political science who is a friend of Charles. We ate at Charles' place because he is here by himself and thus has much more space in his flat. On the menu:

*Turkey (see the photo below)

*Dressing (made by Mom - almost like home except the only sage she could find also had rosemary in it - not too bad)

*Scalloped Potatoes (not mashed because we had nothing to mash with)
*Sweet Potatoes (which are white here, not orange)

*Green Bean Casserole

*Cranberry Relish

*Apple Pie (made by Julia)

**Corn on the cob - This was Ted's contribution. He decided he wanted to buy some corn from the street vendors and grill it and serve for Thanksgiving dinner. He worked on this project most of the afternoon. Depending on who you asked, this was either a huge success (Ted) or an unfortunate failure (everyone else). Something was off. We are not sure what, but it didn't taste like corn on the cob in the traditional sense. Charles suspected maybe the corn the vendor was selling was meant for cattle feed not for human consumption.

**Watermelon (also Ted's contribution - from the same street vendor. Ted wants to say that he redeemed himself with the watermelon. It did not get eaten on Thanksgiving because we were too full, but when we did eat it, it tasted just fine.)

Random Topic Three: Belated Halloween and other Care Packages

They do not celebrate Halloween in Botswana, so that evening we went to see High School Musical 3 at the theater instead. We just didn't mention it much, and the kids didn't seem too disappointed. However, when Ted returned from his trip back to the States in November, thanks to the thoughtfulness of his colleague Gina, he came bearing three pumpkins FULL of halloween candy. The kids were thrilled (Thanks, Gina). It actually worked out well. All of the sugar rush, none of the hassle of costumes and the whole trick-or-treating thing.

Thanks also to everyone else who sent gifts and treats for the kids back with Ted, and/or have sent care packages. They have all been a welcome touch of home: Alice, Abbey (and the entire PDS department), Debbie and the Kennedys, the 2402 Nitzas, Aunt Heidi and the Cripe family, and Grandma Kathy.

Random Topic Four: Caterpillar in Botswana (Will, this is for you).

The city spent the past couple of months re-paving the road next to our house (the one between our house and Choppies and the old prison). Ted and the kids had fun watching all the big machinery - although much of the work was also done by hand with pick and shovel - I have no idea how they managed to do that in the intense heat and sun on the blacktop. The pictures below are of the big machines. My brother Will is a long-time Caterpillar employee who was - well - let's just say less than thrilled with the idea of me taking his nieces and nephew to live in Africa. See Will, this place can't be that bad...

Hope Trivia

A quick guessing game: Before you scroll down any further, can you guess what is depicted in the photo below?
a. Ted's new blue sledgehammer that has toes
b. An ancient Tswana artifact we found in the back yard
c. Hope's broken leg
(now scroll down)




If you guessed (c), you are correct. I got a call a week ago from the school nurse that Hope had fallen from the jungle gym and bruised her leg, asking permission to give her Tylenol. By the time we got there to pick her up, she would not put any weight on the leg, but there was still no actual bruise to be seen. By the next morning she was still in a great deal of pain, but still no bruise. We took her to the doctor who ordered an x-ray. We were told there was no fracture and she would be walking on it by the end of the weekend. Five long days (three of which we had sent Hope to school encouraging her to try to walk on it) and five almost sleepless nights later (because she would continually wake up in pain), we called the doctor back. He sent us to an orthopedic specialist who examined Hope's leg, looked at the EXACT same x-ray, and said "Of course it's broken" and pointed to the spot on the x-ray that we were told was a blood vessel the first time. He immediately put her in a full leg cast for six weeks. She picked the blue color herself - see below. Thank goodness the pain is nearly gone, as you can tell by the smile on her face. However, her frustration with the limitations of the cast is high. I have to say she has been an absolute trooper given that she went almost a week on a broken leg without the cast. She went back to school today for the first time with the cast and did well, but was thoroughly exhausted when she got home, and slept the rest of the afternoon. School is out for the year on Friday, so fortunately most of the six weeks will take place over Christmas break.


Despite the major diagnostic error, we have been very impressed with the medical system here through this process. We called, got an appointment the same day, waited in the waiting room for about 5 minutes, and the doctor himself came to call us back to the exam room. He later sent a text message to my phone asking how she was. When I called back after she was not getting any better, the receptionist said the doctor wasn't in so I should just call him on his cell phone. I think I responded by saying something like "Are you serious?". And, I should add that for the WHOLE experience, office visits to two different doctors, x-rays, putting on the cast, buying crutches and pain meds, and everything else, cost us a total of around 300 dollars. I have no idea what the right answer is to the health care situation in the States, but the simplicity and low cost of the experience here suggests to me there has to be a better way to do it.

Scenes from "The Village"

We thought we would give you an idea of what our neighborhood looks like by taking pictures of what I see on my walk to work everyday. Photography by my husband.

Starting in our front yard, below you will find a lizard at the base of the tree. Lizards are everywhere, like squirrels in our yard in Indiana. We have not been too successful in learning what types of lizards they are, but there are many kinds. (Since the rains have started there are also lots of frogs; sometimes when it is raining they come out so heavily that it is hard not to step on them).



Below is another shot of the corner of the front yard; Grandma Cheryl, Eden and Hope are looking at the lizards. You can see the fence and gate behind them. At night we pull the car up into the front yard and lock the gate behind us. Not sure why, other than that is what everyone else does, so it seems like a good idea.

Below is a shot from the outside of our gate, looking down the street to the right. The entire right side of the street is university flats like ours. The entire left side is a big field that is the property of the Thapong Visual Arts Center.

Below is the Thapong Visual Arts Center. It is what we see when we look out our front door. Besides these different statues and such, there are a number of bigger works throughout the property, including a life size elephant made of rusting metal. There are all different types of artists working all the time, and you can just go in and wander around and watch them work. There is also a trailer on the property that is a secretarial service/internet cafe. For a while I stopped there daily on my way to work for printing of class notes and such, because for quite a while I could not print or copy at my office or at home.

I should add here that our neighborhood is called "The Village" because it is where the British headquarters were located when Botswana was still a protectorate. When Botswana gained independence, they located the capital around this existing area, so our area is really the oldest part of the city. Gaborone was really not in existence until it was built up for purposes of being the new capital. I am told that Thapong sits on the site of the actual original British administration building.

Below is the most interesting building to me. It is the old prison. It sits to the southeast corner of our flat. We were told that the tower was used for hanging people. The spot does not appear to be actively used, and is starting to be quite run-down. I wish I had more of the history, but you now know everything I know about it. It would make a great museum.

Moving north, you get to Choppies, our neighborhood grocery store. This little stand is in Choppies parking lot. They sell the African version of hot dogs, and drinks. These stands are everywhere around the university, and for all practical purpose they take the place of vending machines. There are NO vending machines on campus, but if you walk outside the university gate in any direction you will see many of these stands. Actually, if you go in any direction outside any place where a lot of people work, you will find many of these stands. Most just sell candy, drinks, and cell phone minutes. Some sell hot dogs like the one below, and a few sell full Botswana meals: beef seswaa, pap (like mashed potatoes made from sorghum), and chicken and rice. None sell coffee. I have gotten used to a lot of things here, but I still struggle with not being able to get a cup of coffee during the day when I need one.

About a 10 minute walk from Choppies, I arrive at my office building. Block 244A/021. It is one of the "portacamps" in an area they refer to as Siberia, because it is on the remote edge of campus, where administrators never wander. Many of these "temporary" buildings were put up quickly when the university separated from the joint university with Lesotho, which was located in Lesotho. I am not sure the reason for the split, but Botswana had to come up with its own university facilities rather quickly at some point (in the 1970s I believe, but this might not accurate). There are now of course some much nicer facilities on campus, but many of these original building remain.

And, my office. Not bad, actually. Very big - at least twice the size of my office at IPFW, with more book shelves than I know what to do with. I have my own window heating and air conditioning unit, which I would not survive without. It can get kind of quiet, dark, and lonely at times, because everyone keeps their office doors closed almost always, so you never know if anyone is actually around. I keep mine open mostly, because - well I don't know why - habit I guess. So, I get a regular influx of students who are lost, or in a panic to turn stuff in to their professors and can't find them, DHL delivery guys trying to find someone, and people asking to borrow toilet paper. (They provide you with a supply, but it is brought to your office by the cleaning lady. There is none to be found in the bathrooms themselves.). I digress, but my point is that keeping my door open has allowed me to meet all kinds of interesting people that I would not otherwise meet, and they generally seem very greatful if I go to the trouble to look up an office number for them or something.

A Post by Eden

MOKOLODI FIELD TRIP
For our unit of inquiry on plants and the ecosystem, we took a field trip to Mokolodi Game Reserve for two days and one night. I only took one small bag; one girl took six. All the 5ht grade girls slept in one big dorm. I slept on a bottom bunk.

The first thing we did was see some snakes. I was sitting so close that the man asked me why I was not scared of snakes. I was one of only three girls that were not scared of them. I asked if we could hold them. The man said "weird girl" to me. I loved holding them. We learned that they have almost the same organs that we do. I asked if we could disect one, and everyone laughed.

While we were out, a warthog got into our dorm. It ate one person's bag of marshmallows. I couldn't find my water bottle after that either. I had no water for the nature hike up the mountain. It was fun though because we got really close to the elephants. At night we thought some of the girls were teasing us by saying "whooo" to everyone. It kept on going on and on and people were screaming. In the morning one of the teachers told us it was probably a barn owl. Everyone laughed.

At the game drive we saw most of the animals they have: eland, impala, giraffe, blue wildebeest, waterbuck, red hartebeest, and lots of ostrich. I really wish we could do it again.


During our free time, we went to the pool. It is very hard to fit 44 kids in a 10 ft. by 4 ft. pool. We really didn't have room to swim, we just stood there laughing. We still did cannonballs and had fun landing on each other.

THE PUPPIES NEXT DOOR

The female dog next door gave birth to 8 puppies. They were born a week or so before we arrived here. Hope and I adored them. We would go to the owner's house sometimes and hold them. Their little eyes just stared at us. We gave them names: Pugface, Dark One, Blondie, Little One (the runt), Little Man, Light Spot, Wrinkles, and Maple. Five were females, 3 were males. They seemed like our only friends when we first got here. The owners didn't feed them and kept them outside at all times. We would feed them all our table scraps by throwing them over the fence. I worried about them a lot. I pulled one tick from Little One's ear. They were so thin you could count their ribs sometimes. Just a couple weeks ago we went out of town and when we got back all of them were gone except one, Dark One. He is still the only one there. I miss the others a lot and I wish I could play with them when I am bored.

That is all I have to say.

Giraffes and Half-Term at School

1. We successfully uploaded our first video. This was taken during the Khama Rhino Sanctuary trip a while back. It is a little rough, but it is a video. The content is self-explanatory.

2. We have reached the mid-term of the semester for the girls. The assessment system is so different here; they are much less focused on testing and grades. In general I love this approach, but on the flip side, I don't have any objective feedback on how they are doing.

Eden continues to love school. They just finished up their unit of inquiry on the human body, where her assessment was to make a model of the nervous system out of recycled materials. The unit of inquiry for this new half-term is plants and ecosystems. I do not know what the summative assessment will be, but she is doing some sort of creative writing project about plants, and had to design her own ecosystem on paper. She seems to be really catching the international education bug. She spent the entire morning this morning on the website of Cambridge University in England, (where Jane Goodall got her Ph.D.). She sifted through a big list of descriptions of the different colleges within the Cambridge system. The enormous history of the place seemed lost on her - some of the colleges were founded as far back as the 1400s, but that history and the related old architecture that was fascinating to me just bored her. I am not sure exactly what her actual selection criteria were, but she settled on one called Murray Edwards college, which is an all women's college with an environmental emphasis. She then started looking at admission criteria and everything... If anyone knows where I can borrow a WHOLE BUNCH of money to send my daughter to college, please let me know.

I have to add how proud I am of Eden and her after-school activities. She chose perhaps the two least popular activities, at least for girls her age, but has stuck them out with integrity. She does developmental swimming on Mondays, which is non-competitive swimming practice. She does this purely because she realized she was behind the other kids in swimming and wants to catch up. She is the oldest kid in this activity, no friends her age, but she gives it her all every week. She also chose science club, which turned out to be her and three high school boys. This has not gone as she had hoped. The boys, and even the instructor, have been irregular in their attendance. The project the boys chose, before they started not showing up, was to build an electric generator. This was not what Eden was hoping to do, but she felt too shy to say anything. I have offered her the opportunity to drop out several times, but she refuses. After last week where she was the ONLY one there (not even the instructor showed up) I had had it, and went to the principal and was pretty angry about the situation. So... this week the instructor showed up, but no other kids. She sat there with him anyway and worked through the steps to making the generator, including making a list of materials, and having to quickly try to convert to the metric system to estimate measurements and quantities of these materials. I watched this from outside the room, and it felt painful to me as a mother... I again said she could quit and hold her head high that she gave it her all, but she still insists she is going to stick it out. Given that we have rolling blackouts here due to electricity shortages (our scheduled outages are Wednesday evenings; they happen at other unforeseen times as well), her generator-making abilities may be a very practical skill. Now that I think about it, maybe she could start selling generators to fund her Cambridge ambitions...

Hope just finished a unit of inquiry on transport, which concluded with a "wheels day" in which they were all to bring their bikes or other wheeled transport to school for a big celebration on the tennis courts. This required an emergency trip to the store the night before, as we brought no wheeled riding devices with us. At the weekly assembly later that day, she got up in front of the whole primary school and showed a picture she drew of her "transport" and talked about sharing it with her friends on wheels day. I was very proud of how she handled this presentation. She didn't seem to flinch a bit, and said she did not feel nervous at all. Her new unit of inquiry is also plants, and they have already had a field trip to Sanitas (the fancy nursery/restaurant we wrote about several weeks ago) to draw pictures of plants and have a milkshake. She does struggle with separating from us some mornings, which started immediately after her teacher left for a week or so to visit her daughter's new baby in Hong Kong, but didn't go away as soon as her teacher got back, like I had hoped. It seems to be slowly fading... She does seem to still love everything else about school, it is just that 5 minute period between walking into the classroom and watching us leave that is hard.

Hope chose "Mad Science" as her after-school activity. This is different from Eden's Science Club, and is a for-profit organization that comes and does different science activities each week. She comes home each week with a whole set of materials for further activities at home, and the environment in the room is clearly designed to be really fun in order to get kids excited about science. But, they seem to be really doing some good teaching at the same time. Hope has explained to me what an eclipse is and how it works, and last week they built rockets. Ted is really excited about this program also, and has talked about how he would love to try to bring the program to Ft. Wayne. Hope does not seem as naturally interested in science as Eden is, but she really gets excited about the stuff she does in there, so I would definitely call it a success.

Trey may love school more than the other two combined. He is still quite focused on the lunches, and starts talking about what he is going to pack in his lunch for the next day as soon as he gets home each day. He also loves monkeynastix, and asks every day if today is monkeynastix day. For those of you wondering, when I stayed to watch the other day, monkeynastix was a bunch of very low trampolines covered with jumping children. They are supposed to perform the "big finish" when they jump off of them, which was very funny to watch. He also loves his art projects, and is very, very proud of them when he brings them home. Finally, he clearly loves his teachers, but in a clear pecking order. He walks straight through the gate each morning looking for "Auntie Natalie", but as soon as he sees "Auntie Eva" he will quickly bail on Natalie, even mid-sentence, to run to Eva. He also loves the third one "Auntie Tiny", but only after the other two. This is not to say that Tiny is not important. Earlier last week he asked if he could take his new Spider Man phone to school because "Auntie Tiny is goint to love this!" Once he has hugged the three of them, he is completely done with me or Ted, and has to be reminded by one of them to say goodbye to us. Ultimately that feels good, because he clearly feels comfortable, safe, and loved there.

For me, there are two weeks left before the end of the semester. All in all, I feel good about both my courses, especially given where I started: I taught two courses instead of the one that we had agreed on, neither course was the one I had been told I would teach (and therefore brought none of my materials for), and I took on one of the courses three weeks into the semester, with the students having no instruction at all during that first three weeks. Given all that, I feel good about the outcome. I think I have taught some good content and ideas, prompted some new thinking, and offered some good mentoring. The informal mid-term evaluations I conducted seemed to reflect that my teaching is style is different from what they are used to, but that they have appreciated it and maybe learned something from it. The main complaints were that I keep them too long and have too many assignments. In other words, I work them too hard. (This is very familiar feedback to me; I am not sure if these students were somehow able to consult with my students at home or something...)

On the down I think I may have failed to effectively grasp the British assessment system and the specific things that are required of me under that system. I can't tell conclusively yet, but I am getting the feeling that I may not have done my assessments and finals correctly. Therefore, I am dreading the upcoming faculty meeting where apparently we have to report all our scores for our students on all our assessments and have them "approved" by the rest of the faculty. Or something like this. This is a completely new way of doing things for me, and I am not looking forward to finding out I did not do it right. I guess the good news is I have next semester to redeem myself?

S.O.S.

S.O.S. is a children's organization that runs orphanages throughout the country, including one in Tlokweng, which is a small town or suburb of Gaborone, sort of. There are over 270 kids in this one orphanage alone. They hire women full-time to serve as "mothers". However, the child-mother ratio is very high, and there is a great deal of turnover in the position. This is of course very bad for the kids from an attachment perspective, and they are therefore less likely to develop a good relationship with the next mother, which makes that next mother's job even more stressful, and the cycle continues.


A week or so ago a group of really good students from my undergraduate class came to me to ask for ideas for a field experience they were doing for another class, in which they were to spend a Saturday morning with the younger kids (ages 2-5) from the orphanage; their assignment was to create activities that would promote resilience in the kids. I talked to them about some possibilities, and decided to sponsor the purchase of supplies so they would have something to work with.















In exchange, I asked them to come report back to me on how it went and what they learned, and to bring me pictures of their experience, which they did. I was proud of what they came up with, and it was interesting to hear them process the experience. They primarily talked about how difficult the kids were to manage, how angry many of them seemed, and how cruel they were to each other. They also found some of them to be very distant, detached, and withdrawn, including the little boy above.


We talked about why this might be the case and what it might mean.











They also talked about how sneaky the kids were to get what they wanted, like extra snacks. I proposed that they consider this might be a coping mechanism, developed as a survival skill to get their own needs met in the midst of the chaotic environment of having 200 other kids around competing for what is available.

It seems in terms of material things, they are provided for to a satisfactory degree. The government here has a reasonably effective process for registering orphans and making sure they can stay in school and such. The lucky ones have sponsors who send money to care for them, and those kids get put in the better schools and seem to be getting a decent education. My students commented that the kids seemed intelligent despite their environment.

Where this system falls short, from my persective, is in meeting the kids social and emotional needs. Not that they are not trying, but there is just no way to help kids develop a healthy sense of attachment, which is really the cornerstone of healthy development, and no sense of social competence. A person probably does have to get somewhat manipulative in order to get your needs met. That kind of skill will help them survive in the short term, but they will pay a heavy price for it later. I am not sure what the answer is, but there are SO many kids like this who really need us to figure out an answer.




The picture below stands out to me. The students said that the older girl at first told them she worked for the orphanage, which the students found hard to believe because of how young she seemed.

They later found out that she is actually one of the orphans herself, but has taken on the role of caretaker of some of the younger ones. I am not clear if this is an official position or simply a self-appointed one. In either case, it seems like she has been able to maintain a degree of empathy and connectedness to others, and found a sense of purpose. Perhaps she will make it.

Ft Wayne meets Ft Wayne in South Africa

Since before we came, we have been following a blog called "African Daylight" that is by a couple, Brandon and Rachel, who are serving in the Peace Corps in South Africa. They are nearing the end (in December) of more than 2 years in Africa. Brandon grew up in Ft. Wayne, and they both went to school at Taylor. So, during our recent school break, we took our longest road trip yet to pay them a visit. This was a 5 hour trip (one hour of which was the very cumbersome border crossing process). But, it was well worth it. Brandon and Rachel (who we had never met except through the blogosphere) are great people doing great things there. The experience of interacting with the kids in this very poor village was a good way for the kids to see a part of Africa that is starkly different from the game drives and such (although we did see some warthogs on the side of the road along the way). And... Ted and Brandon were able to swap stories about their glory days in Wildcat Baseball.

The village (see the name on the sign below), is about 1200 people or so, and was just down one long strip of very bumpy, dirt road. Ted says the Google Earth coordinates are: 23 degrees 16' 57.89" S, 28 degrees 00' 21.73" E.



If you look at a map of S.A., the nearest town you may see is Ellisras - almost an hour away, which is where we spent the night. Brandon and Rachel live in a tiny out-building of a village lady and her two granddaughters (side photo is their bedroom/living/office/storage area). They work in the village school, running after-school programs and supporting the work of the teachers. I won't be able to do their work justice here; I encourage you to check out their blog to read about all the work they have done:


http://www.africandaylight.blogspot.com/


They also have an Oct 5th post about our visit and many more photos of us and the kids in their village in their 'Gallery of Photos'. Look in the upper left part of their page. While you are there, check out the aprons shown on the website. They are made in the village by some of the teachers in a program organized by Rachel to help fund the girls' after school programs.

When we went for a walk around the village, Rachel told the kids that they were the first white kids the village children had ever seen, and that Hope's hair would be the first blonde hair they had seen. Sure enough, as we started to walk, we soon had a large crowd of kids, some as young as two I think, following us around. They were hesitant at first, but by the end of the walk they were holding hands with our kids, running, chasing, having a blast. It was a very neat experience. They all wanted their pictures taken, and then wanted to see the pictures.



There is no running water in the village, but there have recently been some new bore holes installed nearby. What would a Nitza family blog be without a good picture of our children by some water-related device? Ted note: this is a 'standpipe'. Several standpipes serve the village and are all connected by underground piping to a nearby borehole (groundwater well). In America, standpipes are instead large (thousands of gallons), storage tanks shaped like a cylindar standing tall. These village standpipes are simple faucets that generally serve a surrounding 6-8 homes. If you need water in your home for any reason, you need to grab a bucket/pail/jug and walk to the standpipe. Imagine how much more you could do if you didn't have to spend time fetching safe water to drink? Back to Amy:

You may be weary of reading about how dirty my children get here, but Trey absolutely set a record this time. The dirt there was much more red than in Botswana, so it showed up in an almost alarming way. Rachel commented that he was truly the dirtiest kid she had ever seen, but on reflection she realized the dirt just probably showed up more on his white skin.


We have seen people using donkey carts in several places in Botswana. (In Hope's unit of inquiry on "transport" at school, she had to make some form of transport out of clay, and she chose to make a donkey cart, which I thought was awesome. She did a great job with it). However, this was the first time we had seem them in use really close up. This man drove by while we were on our walk:

There were some heartbreaking moments to this experience. Rachel took an informal survey of her students and found that 40% of them live without their parents for various reasons. The family right next door to Rachel and Brandon is just three children. No adults whatsoever. The parents live and work in Pretoria (about a 4-5 hour drive from this village), and come home once in while to bring some money. I am generally pretty open-minded and can accept a wide variety of life choices, but I have to say I struggle with this one. I am sure the parents have their reasons for doing so, and I can not begin to put myself in their position. They must have some very difficult choices to make. However, I simply can not get myself to imagine what circumstances would make me leave my children at home to raise each other. It brings me to tears thinking about it, and about those three children. Of course, there are lots and lots of kids living like that for various reasons in Africa, but largely because they have lost their parents to AIDS. In the literature they are referred to as OVCs (orphans and other vulnerable children). But meeting them and walking around the village with them brings it home so painfully. I gave the little boy a juice box and opened it for him. It was the most motherly gesture I could come up with.

There are, of course, organizations that support OVCs. Some of them do great work, others keep the money for themselves and give the kids virtually nothing. If you have the opportunity to donate to a trustworthy organization that supports OVCs in Africa, please do so.

Monkey!!!!!

Ted post: We had a visitor to our flat last week.



It was about 9am and we were getting ready to go on with our day. School was out (Botswana Independance Day) and we were planning errands and other shopping to get ready for the arrival of Amy's mom.

We imagine the Vervet Monkey came from the nearby riverbed. We have noticed a monkey along the roadway nearby the past couple of days. Otherwise, our neighborhood is very urban and it is hard to imagine the monkey surviving long.

It began its visit by raiding our mulberry tree. Eden and Hope enjoy picking several berries a day and so do the birds. Our monkey visitor started by sitting in the tree for several minute and taking all the good ones. Then it saw the apples and oranges on the ledge. It scampered across our backyard (over the Aloe Veras we planted) and up to the ledge. It quickly tossed aside the oranges and spent the rest of the time eating apples. We all watched from the backdoor until he left. Here are our other thoughts:

Amy thought its backhair looked like a nice shawl.
Ted wanted to know if it could do the dishes.
Eden feared the monkey would eat the puppies (8) next door.
Hope was amazed at the length of the tail (see below picture).
Trey waved hi.

We also have some video and we hope to post that footage later.

Happy Botswana Independance Day (October 1). Botswana turned 44 years old.

Of Vultures, Mental Institutions, and the Open Baptist Church

Seriously, this was our weekend. On the recommendation of Charles, my Fulbrighter colleague (the one that is not also Ted's Professor) we headed for a day trip to Lobatse on Saturday. Along the way we stopped at this village called Otse, to see the Mannyelanong Cliffs, which are home to the very endangered Cape Griffon vultures. According to Lonely Planet, Mannyelanong means "where vultures defecate" in Setswana, but I have not been able to confirm this with any native speaker yet. It is hard to make it out in the picture below, but the side of the cliff is almost completely white. Hence the name...



This place was just one giant cliff with many, many vultures resting, nesting, and flying around. I really don't know why, and I didn't expect it, but this was actually one of the coolest things I have seen in a really long time. They seemed to fly in pairs, and you could see them take off from the cliff, circle around overhead for a while, and then go back and land in the cliffs and be completely hidden immediately. The pictures don't do it justice, really.




Some vulture facts from Ted: These birds are huge, with six foot wing spans when fully grown. The cape griffon vultures are more rare than most other types of vultures. There are between 70-100 nesting pairs at this site, with only a few other sites known in the country or the world (we are not sure which). Their habitat needs include remote, south facing cliffs. The remoteness is important because they are very sensitive to noise. Even quiet noises, like donkey carts going by, can startle the birds, knocking babies and eggs out of the nests to their death.

The picture below is my favorite. At several points the sky was just full of the birds like this, maybe thirty of them or so.

We have also included some pictures of the surrounding terrain and village, just to give you a sense of it.

Note the donkey in the picture below. The instructions said to register at the wildlife office, but we didn't really find any such office, despite the sign. Just a teenager in a house - I think we woke him up - and no actual registering took place.

In the picture of Otse village below, you can make out a couple of the traditional round houses or huts with thatched roofs on the left.



The kids sitting on a giant boulder next to the cliffs. Can you make out the inch-thick layer of dust on them? It has become semi-permanent at this point.

Besides the vultures, we drove on into Lobatse and had lunch at the Cumberland hotel (which to me sounds like it should be in West Virginia instead of Botswana. I couldn't find anything to tell me why it had that name.) There was truly little else to see in the town, but it does boast the country's mental hospital, which I was very curious about. We found it, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it didn't look much different, at least on the outside, from something you might find in the States. It had several small buildings and all the doors opened directly to the outdoors. It seemed to be visiting day, and there were lots of cars coming and going, which I was also pleased to see. I was hesitant to take pictures of the actual place, just out of respect or perhaps in fear of a HIPAA violation, so I am representing it with a hastily taken picture of the roadsign pointing to it (the sign says "Mental Hospital").

Lobatse's other claim to fame is the meat processing plant. Seriously - it even says so in the guide books. Here it is: the Botswana Meat Commission.

Aaahh, the ride home. This is actually quite deceptive, as the sleeping only came after Ted insisted on complete silence because they were picking on each other so much and so loudly...

On Sunday, we were invited by my friend Lesego (who I have known since Bloomington; she was in the States doing her Masters at IU the same time I was doing my Ph.D. there) and her family to attend their church: the Open Baptist Church. We had a lovely time, but it was also full of interesting contradictions. It was a very multicultural place, with a big row of flags outside representing all the nationalities of the congregation - there were over twenty at least. Below each flag was a list of needs and prayer concerns of that country (poverty, corruption, AIDS, war, famine, etc). The sanctuary had one entire wall of glass that overlooked this giant wooden cross set in a waterfall outside- beautiful. The pastor was a white man from South Africa, named Norman. Here is where the contradiction came in for me... Honestly, if it weren't for the South

African accent, this pastor could have been preaching at any small protestant church in the middle of Kansas. The sermon had some pretty conservative messages in it that rubbed me the wrong way, but for some reason it felt very comforting to me - like sitting in church in Concordia Kansas, or Hunter Kansas for that matter. So here we are in the middle of Africa, in a church that clearly strives to be multicultural and multinational, and yet I felt like I was 10 years old again, sitting in church in small town Kansas. Interesting.

The kids loved it and said they want to go back every Sunday. This probably had to do with the donuts the church ladies insisted they eat several of; I don't think they realized the donuts were reserved for first time visitors only...

First Day of School Pictures.

A few pictures of the first day of school. The hats are a requirement when going outdoors because of the heat and sun. No hat = no recess.

The skirts had to be purchased at the school. For the shirts, we were told to go to Woolworth or PEP and by white school shirts. This didn't seem like enough info for me, but sure enough, along the wall at both places were rows and rows of "white school shirts" in little packages, for the equivalent of about $2.oo each. It is a good thing, because we have already ruined two of the four we bought for Eden - one was stained when she decided to climb a mulberry tree during recess, and the other I burnt a big hole in while ironing it...

The look on Eden's face below represents our entre into the world of middle school. She really wanted to get the picture thing over with, and was more concerned about just getting us out of the way so she could start her day.

Below is the giant wall-size world map in the administration building (which is the building in the background in the picture of the girls above). Note that Africa is in the center of the map - surprisingly, the United States may not actually be the center of the world... Ted really wants to point out how small Greenland is on the map. I have no idea why this is relevant, but he insists that I include it. So, please take careful note of Greenland.

The school campus is very large, with all the classrooms opening directly to the outside. Eden was disappointed to find out that despite that fact that there are no hallways to speak of, there is still no running allowed. She doesn't think this is right: how can you have a "no running in the hallways" rule when there are no hallways???

Not to be outdone, below is Trey walking out the door with his lunchbox in hand for his first day of preschool. Check out the big boy haircut (where did my baby go???). The lunchbox is hands down his favorite part about preschool, but he did come home singing "Row Row Row Your Boat" and they have an old golf cart the kids can play on in the playground, so they apparently do more than eat. He is also signed up to participate in "Monkeynastix" (I can not think of a more appropriate name for a Trey activity), and a music program similar to kindermusik.

The playground at Buzy Beez is below. Trey is at the top of the slide, looking at his teacher "Auntie Natalie". It seems to be a nice and well-run place with very nice people. However, he is still not completely comfortable there. Over the weekend he asked several times a day if he had to go to school today... But as best we can tell he does fine when he is there - he doesn't seem upset when we get there to pick him up, and he likes to show us the pictures he draws for us every day. This seems to be the thing that he focuses on (other than the lunchbox). He has never done anything other than a home daycare with the same woman his whole life, so this is a big adjustment, but I think we will get there.

The girls continue to do well. Hope seems to be making some friends and is able to relax and be herself. Eden continues to love it. Tonight when I was tucking her in she said that she would like to just stay here and have her family and friends move here and attend this school with her. She stated she wanted to start by getting Lyra here, and decided she would start saving money to buy Lyra a plane ticket...