Two Firsts and a Last

This week we had our first period of rainy weather. It is winter here and considered the Dry Season so this was unusual. It rained steadily for three days (think cold hard driving rain in New England in November). We all felt like damp drowned rats by the time we got where we were going and most of the buildings are not heated, so it was definitely COLD. Remind me of this when I complain about the summer heat.
I also got my first illness—nothing serious-- just a three-day head cold. We went to a candlelight vigil AIDS memorial service last Sunday attended by 150 people. Everyone wanted to meet and shake hands with the new folks. I think I probably picked it up there, but our language instructor also had a cold, so I may have gotten it from him. Fortunately it has passed and I am back to normal. The candlelight vigil was filmed and I hope to get access to that movie to post here. It was very moving and a real highlight.
It is also our LAST week of training (hear sounds of a trumpet fanfare in the background). We had our final Language test today (this is the one that counts). Our party to thank our host families was Saturday. Next week brings two more days of training, a shopping day in Gabarone and our formal swearing in ceremony as official PC volunteers on Thursday. Friday we are off to our sites with Pre-Service Training (PST) behind us. Everyone says PST is the most difficult time of the whole PC experience so it will be great to get through with it and be in our own place.


Things I like most about Africa so far:

--The children’s smiles. They are so warm, friendly, appealing and forthcoming. A single child can light up a room.
--The ease with which the Batswana laugh-- hearty, infectious and much more often
with us than at us.
--The joy that people show when we try to speak Setswana, even when we mangle it
--The taxicabs in Molepolole. They are frequent, dependable and cheap. It costs 3 Pula (35 cents) to go anywhere in town, no matter what the distance. The drivers are safe, courteous and a great source of Setswana conversation
--The sunsets. They are consistently spectacular
--The clean air, totally smog free.
--The fact that we find out that we can live quite normally with less STUFF

Things I don’t like so much about Africa so far

--Most daily activities are twice as hard and take three times as long to do.
--It seems difficult to get anything really clean—your clothes, your body or your house.
--If there is electricity, the inside of houses are so dimly lit that it is hard to read.
--Despite being able to get along with less STUFF, there are no places to put the STUFF
you do have. No shelves, no hooks, no closets and few drawers.

This last issue creates several other issues. You tend to put your STUFF in piles under or on top of other STUFF. So when you are looking for a particular item of your STUFF, you spill most of your STUFF on the floor. Therefore you begin to make all the piles ON the floor. Now when you need some STUFF, it is invariably at the bottom of the last pile of STUFF you look through or is temporarily absolutely missing. This seems totally incomprehensible since the room is small and you know that you had this piece of STUFF just 10 minutes ago.

When you are fresh and energetic, you simply keep looking through your STUFF over and over until you find the STUFF you are looking for, but spend another 10 minutes putting your pile of STUFF back together. These piles now are usually in a different sequence than any system that you used originally, so that when you next go looking for STUFF whatever sense of order you once had, has now changed, and finding the next piece of STUFF becomes even more challenging.

After a long tiring day however, you have little patience and just want to find your STUFF. This can often lead to tossing your STUFF and into new disorganized piles, usually on the bed. On a rare occasion you toss a piece of your STUFF over onto the other side of the room so that it lands on your wife’s STUFF. When she observes this, she playfully throws it back, onto your side and it may lead to a fun romp where you both laugh and start throwing STUFF at each other like a pillow fight.

This does not always occur however, and if she too is tired, she will angrily
throw your piece of STUFF back at you (usually at your head) saying”I have a hard enough time finding my own STUFF, I don’t need your STUFF on my side.” She then reminds you that the two of you made a pact, signed in blood, which created an invisible, but well-defined line down the middle of the room, so that her STUFF went on one side and yours on the other. You vaguely remember this, but thought it was never passed by Congress, or was phased out with the Monroe Doctrine.

In the extreme, your spouse has “had it” and is at the end of her rope finding her own STUFF. When a piece of your STUFF falls even a millimeter over the invisible line, alarm bells sound at NORAD and a vast number of laser-guided nuclear missiles are automatically aimed at you and your STUFF. Her index finger appears twitchy on the button marked “Fire”. This may be accompanied by a suggestion that you “Get STUFFed”, and if one more piece of your STUFF ends up in her territory, the marriage is ended. At this point she bears a strange resemblance to Lorena Bobbitt, and you rapidly look to remove any knives or scissors from the room. There may follow a lengthy period of stony silence. If your marital communication is good, the two of you apologize and decide that you never should have said all that STUFF. A productive discussion ensues, where you decide that “We both probably still have too much STUFF, and you decide to give away some of your STUFF. Perhaps we can live without virtually any STUFF at all.

What they didn’t tell you in pre-marital classes however, is that by saying “WE have too much stuff” she really means “YOU have too much stuff” and need to get rid of it. In America, this may be true since most of your stuff has an electric cord or a battery and comes under the heading of “Toys”.

“We have too much stuff” does not mean that she thinks that SHE has too much STUFF. Beyond clothes, most of her STUFF consists of jars, bottles and cans of various “Products”. You know about these “products” because they accounted for 65% of your overseas luggage weight allowance. Each of these ”Products” is dedicated to beautification of a particular body part. She insists that without the daily application of all of these “products” she will rapidly look like a peach pit. This concept is so scary that you agree not to have a 50/50 division of STUFF, and to try to live your masculine existence with essentially no STUFF. African men have been losing this battle and giving up their STUFF for centuries. I think this lead to the development and rapid proliferation of the loincloth.

Our next post will be from Ramotswa.

Kip