There were innumerable details, last minute changes and organizational issues. The “lead body” was the Emmanuel Counseling Center youth with a very liberal amount of oversight by our office since most of the 15-18 y.o. youth had never been involved in putting on such an event. The office felt like Grand Central Station or the Gaborone bus terminal on a holiday with the phone ringing, people coming and going, teenagers talking and laughing and piles of equipment and food taking up much of the floor space in our little caravan (trailer) office. Like so many events in Botswana, despite months of planning, much seems to be relegated to the last minute, and just because someone says they will do something, it doesn’t mean that it will happen!
Predominantly headed by our Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Nthami Chilisa, (see her picture below) whom I thought might have an apoplectic fit about 4 PM on Friday we did manage to pull it off and it was a huge success. I thought that starting an event for several hundred teenagers which begins with a one-mile walk at 7AM on Saturday morning was a tad ambitious. We all had to be up at 5:30 on Saturday to see to the setup. Not surprisingly, it started an hour behind schedule, but no one seemed to notice. In America such a project wouldn’t have been even scheduled before noon!
This event emphasized to me the incredibly important role that transportation plays in virtually all aspects of African life. Unlike America or Europe, perhaps only 3-5% of the families have cars and you can’t just ask your friends or neighbors to drive you somewhere because they don’t have cars either. Some are too poor or reluctant to spend money on the bus. Many walk, but if it is far, as it was in this case, there is a sense that the government should provide transportation or people don’t come. Getting 400 people to one place 25 kilometers away with vehicles that don’t always run or drivers that are occupied doing other things is a challenge to say the least. All that being said, we had between 300-400 people, mostly teens and children, but many adults came as well. The weather cooperated and a good time was had by all.
The guest of honor was Semaiyer Marope, the reigning Miss Botswana, who is incidentally from Ramotswa. I was drafted to write her remarks, which, if anyone is interested are posted in a separate post. She is a university student and scheduled to compete in the Miss World competition in Johannesburg in December. Her aunt works in the office close to ours
Some of the crowd on hand
From left to right--Amy Pappajohn BOTS 8 from Washington state, Karen LaFlash BOTS 7 from Cape Cod, Nthami Chilisa our Monitoring and Evaluation officer, Miss Botswana Sumaiyer Marope, a real Kgosi (Kgosi Tsetse from the host village of Otse), Kopo, Fake Kgosi from America
Some of the entertainment
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