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...

School, and a Terrible Loss

The two aspects of the title of this post are not related at all. I know some of you are curious about how school is goingfor the kids, and it is going well, but before I post on that I want to share about the loss. Earlier today Pinkie Thlabiwe, who was the coordinator of the Counseling Program in the Dept. of Educational Foundations (where I teach) was killed in a car accident. This is a terrible loss to everyone around her. I had only known her since I arrived here, but she was clearly a wonderful woman who worked very hard and gave a great deal to the department. As the coordinator she had been a great help to me and was very supportive; I had definitely come to think of her as a friend. In addition to being notified by the department chair, I have received phone calls from two students and my teaching assistant already this evening, so it was clear that she was cared about by many people. From the details that these people have shared, it seems that she was in South Africa today, registering for a Ph.D. program (she had received her Masters from Ohio University some years back). Apparently she had taken public transport (which I take to mean some kind of combi or small bus) that was involved in the accident. Pinkie had shared with me several days ago that both her mother and father had passed away in the past few years, and that she was an only child. I have asked about her children and apparently she has three grown or almost grown children, who now have no mother and no family on their mother's side at all. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

This is a scary phenomenon. AIDS and car accidents are the leading causes of death here, and in the month and a half that I have been here, the university has posted death notices for 4 students and two professors, 3 of the students from "illness" and one student and the two professors from car accidents. I am not sure how this compares to death rates at other universities, but it seems incredibly high to me for less than two months time.

Ok - on to school. The tone of this may not be as positive as it should be because of my sadness over Pinkie's death, but school is going very well, better than I had hoped, I think. Eden is very happy. She loves her teacher, Mrs. Van Nikeirk (or something close to that) from South Africa. She seems to have made several friends and fit right in. There is one other American girl, from California, one girl who Eden said was from "Wales, Mozambique, and South Africa" and a girl that just started today who is from Canada and speaks only a bit of English. She doesn't know yet where the other kids are from. She told me that several of her classmates are fasting for Ramadan, which is a whole new experience for her, coming from Catholic school. She takes French in addition to "cultural setswana"; she said the French teacher spoke exclusively in French, which of course Eden had no clue about, but she just seemed to go with the flow. She hasn't really found anything she doesn't enjoy about it yet, other than the potential of being embarrassed by her parents... I am delighted with all the multicultural exposure, and mostly just delighted that she is happy.

Hope is doing well, better than expected. Given that her very first day of school was about a zillion miles from home, and that it was not the first day of school for anyone else (this is the beginning of the third term of the year here; the new school year starts in January) I thought she handled it like a champ. Her teacher is Mrs. Moss, who is British. There are 15 kids in her class, a pair of twins from India I met; I'm not clear on the other nationalities yet. There have been no tears, and she wakes up in a good mood and ready to go back, which is a huge relief. I think Eden's excitement about it helps a great deal, but I also think she is feeling genuinely comfortable there. Last year in preschool it seemed like she never did come out of her shell all year, like she just never really found her stride. So far, it seems like this will not be the case this year. She does ask interesting questions about how to start being someone's friend, so she is trying to figure out how to engage people socially, which I think was the problem last year. But as I said, this seems to be coming along much quicker this year. She stated she did not like P.E. ("the teacher was mean"), but seems fine with the rest of it.

School starts at 7:00 a.m. and dismisses at 1:00 except on Fridays when they dismiss at 12:15. This means we get up at 5:30 to be out the door at 6:30. The kids have adjusted to this much better than Ted or I. Ted stated this morning that he doubted he and I would get adjusted to the time schedule all year. They pack snacks and have two snack breaks during the mornings. In the next couple of weeks the after school activities will start, which are optional extracurricular things. All in all I am just incredibly proud of both of them. What we have asked them to do - leave their home and start the school year in a completely new place within a totally different culture and totally different school structure, and jumping into a new grade level 2/3 of the way through the year - they have just been amazing in their ability and willingness to adapt.

We have pictures of the kids in their uniforms which I will have Ted post later. He is in class right now, and the professor (Dean Kashiwagi, who is another Fulbright) has gone back to the U.S. for a few weeks. Dean and Ted have become friends, and he actually asked Ted to run the class tonight for him, which is a review for the exam next week. I am anxious to hear how it went...

We hope all is well with all of you there. Thanks for reading this - it means a lot to us.