Angela in Botswana

This is my last night in Botswana.  I left Maun this afternoon to fly to Gaborone, where the WUSC head office is.

I had already completed my work report.  All there is left to do is my debrief meeting with the WUSC coordinator.  We had our meeting over dinner tonight, and that marks the official end of my contract with WUSC.

This assignment through the "Leave for Change" program has been very rewarding.  It's the perfect combination of getting to know a foreign place and culture, traveling, and doing something good.

Tomorrow is the start of my personal vacation.  I will be flying to Windhoek, Namibia, to rejoin Cliff.  Then we are taking a 10-day road trip through Namibia.  We're really looking forward to spending some time together.

I have posted my trip journal and pictures from the Okavango Delta on my personal website HERE.

Thanks for following this blog, everyone.  Sala sentle!

Cliff and I eating seswwa before my flight to Gaborone:

Leaving Maun:

For the Love of Food

Growing up in Taiwan, one of my all-time favorite things to do is going to the night market with my dad.  We put on our sandals and shorts, and head out some time between dinner and bed time.  My mother is not in favor of the night market, because “everything is unsanitary” there.  In my little mind, dad = fun, mom = sanitation.  (That is not totally true.  That was just my impression when I was little.  Don’t worry, Mom, I think you are fun too.)

The night market is a truly magical place.  Before you even see the market, you smell the fried stinky tofu and see the smoke of roasted corn.  Despite the dinner you had a few hours ago, you start salivating.  Then as you walk closer to the entrance of the market, you see bright lights and colorful merchandise displayed all the way down a busy corridor.  As you walk through the corridor, you also find stands where you can play a marble game.  Or you can scoop small tiny fish with a flimsy net to take home.

The night market is a combination of sight, sound, smell, and taste.  It makes use of all your senses and you want to stay there all night, drinking everything in.

My dad and I spend the most time in the food section of the market.  The food stands sell anything from steamed pig blood rice cakes dipped in crushed peanuts and cilantro, to noodles in rich broth paired with thinly sliced shark meat drizzled with a tangy sauce.  Sometimes we get fried oysters cooked in a corn starch sauce and eggs until everything turns into one flat pancake.  In the summer, we get shaved ice with various toppings like sweet beans or jello drizzled with condensed milk.  My favorite is deep fried stinky tofu served with Taiwanese style preserved cabbage.  Oh it smells so bad but tastes so good.

Sometimes we wander around the night market and come upon things we have not seen before.  My dad is never shy about asking the vendor what they are selling.  His interest in food runs deep in his blood.  He would strike up conversations with vendors about the food, and more often than not we end up trying whatever he asked about. 

I also remember my dad peddling my aunt’s bicycle when we visit my mom’s family in Ping Dong, with me sitting on the cargo rack in the back and legs dangling on either side of the back wheel.  We would ride through small roads with farmland all around us.  He would always stop and ask what the farmers are harvesting, and whether we could buy whatever they are pulling out of the ground.  One time we came across some farmers harvesting soy beans, and they ended up giving my dad a big bundle of the plant for free.  I held onto the bundle while sitting on the cargo rack, and it made my arms and legs itch for hours afterwards.

My mom always says that every time my dad and I go out, we always come home with food (or books, but that’s a story for another day).  It’s true.

All this early childhood “programming” stayed with me.  I’m curious about food, and I’m willing to try anything.  To me, it’s what makes life interesting.  Without variety and new things, I think my taste buds would shrivel up and die.  And luckily for me, Cliff has a similar philosophy about food.  Our TV at home stays on the Food Network all year round, and we get excited about our collection of spices.

Friday last week was Cliff’s first full day in Maun.  We got up early this morning for a stroll from Jump Street to the tarred road, and caught a taxi to Old Mall.  The Old Mall has hundreds of small stands and lean-to’s that are made up of some basic posts and corrugated tin roofs.  Each stand has a folding table to display the goods, and a plastic chair for the vendor to sit on.  Merchandise sometimes hang from screws in the tin roof, or spills over to buckets in front of the folding table.

We got to Old Mall before 9 am, and only half the vendors have their stands set up that early.  We walked around Old Mall checking out the stands at a leisurely pace.  This is the official start of our vacation together.

I spotted a little stand with pots and pans lined up on a table, and reckoned it was food.  My dad has trained me to look for food in a crowded place like a hawk.  Cliff and I walked over to ask what the lady sold.  She showed us a variety of teas and coffees, but I kept my eyes on her lidded pots and pans.  Ha, jackpot!  She sold my two favorite things in Botswana—seswwa and fat cake! 

Seswwa is beef boiled in water and salt for a long period of time, mashed with a fork or spoon, with oil and fried onions added to it.  I never knew that over cooked beef can taste this good.

Fat cake is flour, salt, sugar, oil formed into a ball of dough, deep fried in oil.  It’s like a cross between a homemade donut and Chinese donut.  It’s often eaten as a snack with tea.  The ladies at WAR introduced me to fat cake, and I end up eating one everyday with my tea as breakfast.

We got a little Styrofoam plate of seswwa and a fat cake, and stood in front of the stand eating it with our hands.  Most people eat with their hands here (unless they are in a restaurant or a more formal setting).  It is quite liberating, I must say.  Cliff has listened to me talk about seswwa and fat cake for a few weeks now, so he was quite excited to try them.

We had our fill and walked around some more.  We went to run some errands like sending postcards and uploading pictures at an internet café.  Then we check out some of fresh fruit and vegetable stands in the Old Mall.  We left Old Mall loaded with some incredibly fresh produce.  Tonight’s dinner will be rape leaves with onions and tomatoes, seswwa, and yellow patty pan pasta.

Cooking with a gas stove when Jump Street had no power for 3 days:

 

My groceries:

My first Setswana meal:

Fat cake!

Old Mall:

Fat cake and seswwa:

Stella goes with anything:

For Future Volunteers

If you are a future volunteer coming to Botswana, I have listed some things you may wish to consider.  These are the things I learned or found useful for my assignment here.

1.     US$ and Euro are the easiest to exchange.  Don’t bring Canadian dollars.  You can also draw Pula directly from the bank machines here from your Canadian bank account.  I didn’t try that myself, but I know many other volunteers do this.

2.     Most lodges and safari companies will accept VISA cards without additional charges.  I believe many restaurants in Gaborone accept credit cards.  But in Maun, I mostly bought my own groceries and ate at cheap local restaurants, so I can’t comment on the use of credit cards in restaurants here.

3.     If you are working in an office, bring pieces you can mix and match to get through the week.  Don’t bring your fancy LV purse or Manolo shoes.  I brought my work clothes and shoes that I don’t wear anymore that are still in good shape (we all have those), wore them through the assignment, cleaned them, and gave them to ladies in the office.  They loved it.

4.     I brought stationary items as gifts for the office.  Those were much appreciated.  It’s amazing how people love receiving pens.  One lady proudly showed me a pen someone gave her over a year ago.

5.     I felt very safe in Maun.  People will stare at you if you are not black, but that’s only because they are curious about you.

6.     It’s very convenient to have a cell phone and buy pre-paid airtime.  When you receive calls, it is free.  So don’t go crazy with buying too much airtime.  For the 3 weeks I’m here, I only used about 10 Pula worth of outgoing calls.  SMS’ are cheap, so many people prefer to send you a message rather than calling you.

7.     There are taxis everywhere in Maun.  A standard trip is P3.20.  If you go far, or go off tarred roads, it’s called a “special” and you should negotiate your rate first.

8.     Grocery shopping is very easy.  You can get almost everything you normally eat back home in North America.  I did not find any tofu or organic oatmeal, but I looked for those things on purpose to get a feel of selection.  Oh, diet soft drinks are not widely carried.  I found one store that sold diet coke in Maun, so I stick to that store.  The vegetable selection is decent, and whatever they do have is very fresh.

9.     There is a brand new hospital in Maun (just opened in 2009).  The facility is apparently very advanced.

10. I was in Maun for most of June, which is winter here.  I brought malaria pills with me, but eventually stopped taking them because I did not get even one mosquito bite.

11. The water here is safe to drink out of the tap.  However, I don’t like the taste of it.  So I boil it first just to be safe, then squeeze fresh lemon juice into it.  That took care of the taste.  Also, my stomach grumbled for the first 2 days for unknown reasons, but settled down once the effect of the Dukoral set in.

12. If you come in the winter, it does get cold (5 or 6 Celsius at night).  Bring warm clothing.  Bring a hat and good sunglasses.  The sun is so bright here.  I wear my glacier glasses and they are perfect.  It does get warm during the day, so dress in layers.

13. The power outlets are quite different.  You may not be able to buy the correct adaptor in Canada or the US.  But go ahead and buy the 3 flat prong ones from MEC or REI while you’re at home.  When you get to Botswana, stop at an electronics store and you can pick up the special adaptor for less than C$4.  You put the 3 flat prong ones onto these special adaptors, then plug it into the outlet and you’re in business.

14. There are a number of internet cafes in Maun, but their high speed connection is not very fast at all.  I did bring my MacBook, which requires yet another adaptor because of the three-prong plug.

15. Botswana makes the St. Louis beer.  I didn’t care for it.  There’s also beer from Namibia and South Africa here.  There is a small selection of imported beer.  I was happy to find Stella in that selection.

16. I brought some snacks to share.  People here loved the spicy roasted almonds and my trail mix (almonds, candied ginger, peanuts, chocolate chips, dried mango, cashews).

17. Bring a small digital camera, and you will make a lot of friends.  People, especially kids, love having their pictures taken and seeing them on your LCD viewer.  Don’t take unsolicited pictures without asking first. 

Back in Maun

Cliff and I just got back to Maun after spending four wonderful days in the Okavango Delta.  I'll process the photos and post some up in a day or so.

We had a great time in the Delta.  It was just one stunning place!

That's a Wrap

This fantastic time at WAR has come to an end. I had my "training" session with the Coordinator and Finance Officer today to go over the financial policy. There were some additional changes I had to make, but the policy is ready for the Board to approve.

Towards the end of the training session, I was getting a little antsy as Cliff was suppose to be arriving in Maun. As soon as the session is over, I bolted down the street to the airport to pick him up. It was so good to see him after being apart for 3 weeks!

We had a potluk lunch at WAR with all the staff. I made spicy Chinese noodles which they enjoyed. They gave me a very nice hand woven purse, a bracelet and earings with Botswana flag colors, and some keychains with my name stamped on them. It was a very nice gesture. I gave everyone their gifts. I just sat and enjoyed the joyful chatters in Setswana, trying to savour the last couple of hours I have with these wonderful people.

Cliff and I will be hanging out tomorrow, and going to the Delta on Sunday. I will make a few more postings later next week with the pictures from the Delta.

Stay tuned!

The potluk lunch:

Annhara, the lawyer:

Pajti, the head councellor's daughter:

Babsy, the safe house staff:

Alice, the finance officer:

Neo, one of the counsellors:

Almost there

This posting is more of a logistical update.

It is my second last day at WAR today.  The plan is to have a meeting with the Coordinator and the Finance Officer to go over the finance policy.  The meeting will serve as the training session for management to understand the policy.  The policy I drafted has some things that WAR already does, and some new items that will help them segregate some financial duties and allocate responsibilities to the right task owner.

I will also be spending some time with the Finance Officer today about the errors I found in the donor report so far.  This is a big job that may take another volunteer to finish reconciling.

Tomorrow (Friday), I will come to work and wrap things up.  Cliff will be flying in at lunch time (yay!!).  I’ll pick him up at the airport and bring him to WAR.  It just happened that the last Friday of every month is a potluk lunch to celebrate birthdays and departures, so Cliff will join us for the potluk and meet everyone here.  That would take up most of the afternoon.

After that, here’s a brief outline of our travel plans:

June 27: Official start of our vacation.  Relax, show Cliff around Maun.

June 28-July 1: Okavango Delta boat trip.

July 2: I fly to Gaborone to meet the WUSC coordinator for my final debriefing.

July 3: Cliff flies from Maun, Botswana to Windhoek, Namibia.  I fly from Gaborone, Botswana to Windhoek to meet up with Cliff.  Pick up our rental truck.

July 4-13: Road trip in Namibia, visiting Sossuvlei, Seriem canyon, skeleton coast, Damaraland desert, and Etosha National Park.

July 13: Return rental car.  Fly from Windhoek, Namibia to Johannesburg, South Africa.  Stay in Jo’burg for the day.

July 14: From Jo’burg, Cliff flies home to Vancouver (via Amsterdam), and I fly to Taiwan (via Hong Kong).

July 15-17: I visit family in Taiwan.

July 18: I fly home to Vancouver.

For this 7-week trip, I have started in Vancouver, flew east to London, then south to Africa, then I will fly northeast to Taiwan, then east to Vancouver.  That makes a complete circle around the world!

I will make a few more postings in the next week or so.  But if I don’t respond to your e-mail or blog comments timely, it could be because there’s no internet connection where we are (eg. Okavango Delta).  

I Think I'll Go Eat Worms

"Nobody loves me, everybody hates me,

I think I'll go eat worms.

Big fat juicy worms,

Itty bitty squeensy worms,

look at them wiggle and squirm.

Chop off the head, squeeze out the juice,

and throw the tails away.

Nobody knows that I survive,

on worms three times a day."--Nursery Rhyme

I am a big believer in trying local foods when you travel.  In Peru, I ate a guinea pig.  So in Botswana, I must worms.

The mopane worms eat the leaves of mopane trees.  These trees are all over Maun, so there's an abundance of mopane worms in the area.  They are not in season right now, so I've only seen them dried, stuffed in little clear plastic bags, sold by ladies in the Old Mall.

These worms are quite thick.  When they are dead and dried, they are still the size of my thumb.  They are boiled in water until softened, and fried with onions and tomatoes.  I bought a serving of it today at the local restaurant.  It took a lot of courage to pick up a worm and put it in my mouth.

My co-workers cheered and clapped as I chewed and swallowed the mopane.  The texture and taste are not so bad.  I would describe it as reconstituted dried meat cooked with onions and tomatoes.

Hey, let me know if you want me to bring you a little bag of 'em mopane worms!

Financial Policy Revision

This is the last week of my assignment with WAR. The speed at which things move along here is...not very fast. After waiting a whole week, I finally got some feedback on my first draft of the financial policy today.

For the rest of the week, I'll be working on a few things:
1. Work on the financial policy revision according to the feedback
2. Write a report to WUSC outlining the work I have done here
3. Continue to help with donor report reconciliation if time permits

In a way, I am looking forward to wrapping up this project. My terribly short attention span is demanding to be entertained. On the other hand, I feel that there is so much I can do here that I really want to stay longer.

Stop and Stare: Do you see what I see?

"Stop and stare.  I think I'm moving but I go nowhere...do you see what I see?"--OneRepublic

More than a decade ago, I started volunteering at the children’s class at church.  I would teach the kids songs, do crafts with them, and tell Bible stories.  They are all in the 2- and 3-year-old age group.

Vancouver being very multicultural, I always had a good racial mix of children in my class.  For a while, I had a beautiful little black girl in my class.  Her skin was deeply and richly dark. 

One day, the little black girl came in to class and she was sobbing, because she fell and cut her arm in the parking lot.  As I tended to her wound, I remember my quiet surprise of seeing her pink flesh underneath the dark skin.

When I caught myself with that thought, I was ashamed of thinking it.  Of course her flesh in pink!  Have I somehow thought she was different because of her skin color?

I’ve been in Maun for 2 weeks now.  Every time I walk down the road, or wander the isles of a grocery store, the local people stare at me as if I have 3 eyes and 2 heads.  It’s just a curious stare, so I’ve always just greeted them, and they always smile and say hello back.

As I walked along the river yesterday, everybody stared at me until I walked past him or her.  I was in a foul mood, so the staring finally annoyed me yesterday.  It made me want to say, “I’m the same color as you underneath too!”

We choose how to interpret what we see with our eyes.  Throughout history, we have used that interpretation to impose our wills on each other, or thought of ourselves better or worse than someone else because of it.  How often do we stop and question whether our interpretation reflects the truth?

 

The Luxury of Living

"One must be poor to know the luxury of living."--Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

One of the ladies in the WAR office is 5 months pregnant.  I just found out this morning.  I had no idea she was pregnant because her belly is barely visible.  I have never seen her eat lunch.  When I ask her why she doesn’t eat, she tells me she is not hungry.  But if I brought snacks to work to share, she is not shy to eat.

Today I brought a small block of cheddar cheese and some crackers to work.  She pointed to the cheese and said that is very expensive food.  I was a little bit taken aback.

I paid about C$4 for the small block of cheese.  I didn’t think twice about putting it in my shopping basket last night at the supermarket.

Here’s someone who is carrying a baby in her belly, and she won’t buy cheese or any dairy products to supplement her calcium intake because it costs too much.  I wonder if she skips meals just to save money.  It broke my heart.

I have noticed a few other indications of the living standard.

If a roll of toilet paper is sitting in the washroom, someone will unroll it and take it home.  To prevent this, there is just no toilet paper provided in the washroom.  You either bring your own, or ask the receptionist for some each time you use the washroom.

If I gave someone a piece of candy, then everyone else wants to know if I have some for all of them.

A few of the ladies live in houses that are fairly standard in this country.  That means there is no hot water in the house.  You have you boil hot water on the stove to take a bath.  One lady lives in a house with no running water at all.  She has a large plastic tub at home to store water from the public tap a mile away.  The water jugs are hauled home on top of her head, or on the donkey cart.  They use pit toilets about 20 or 30 feet away from the house, because there is no indoor washroom in a standard house.

I don’t know what to make of these observations.  I’m still in shock that the thin-as-rail lady is pregnant.

Silent Killer

WAR is an organization focused on gender equality.  For the purposes of WUSC classifying the volunteers, WAR is slotted in the HIV/AIDS sector.  Here are some of the things I have learned about HIV/AIDS in Botswana.

The Botswana GDP per capita is much higher than many other countries in Africa.  Because of the discovery of diamond in the country, the government has the ability to provide plenty of assistance to its citizens.  The infrastructure of the country is very good compared to other African countries.  It is politically and economically stable.

Despite the wealth of the country, HIV/AIDS spreads through the country like wild fire.  The most recent statistic released is that 17.5% of the population is HIV positive.

17.5%!

That’s the second highest infection rate in the world (after Swaziland).

Life expectancy is only 36.3 years at birth.  The baby boomer generation is almost entirely missing, and this is mostly an effect of HIV. 

There are far more women who are HIV positive than men.  This is because one male would have multiple female partners, driving the female infection rate much higher.

Over 33% of pregnant women are HIV positive.  That means there’s a great chance that the baby would be infected as well.

The Botswana government provides assistance to their citizens for antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for free starting in the late 90’s.  This has slowed down the number of deaths per year, but has done nothing for the number of people getting infected.

HIV is highly stigmatized and people avoid talking about it.  ARV allows people to live with HIV and appear healthy.  ARV has made HIV more hidden, and in a way, more dangerous.

I think Botswana is a country with significant potentials to become a leader of economy in Africa.  But with a HIV rate of 17.5% and the same percentage of government spending on health care alone, growth is crippled.  It would take some major and sustained campaigns for the message of prevention to reach all corners of the country.

The Art of Socializing

Working at WAR has been one of the most fun jobs I’ve had.  Learning about the work culture here is learning the art of socializing.  This posting is to show you a typical day I would have in the office.

Alex, my driver, picks me up from Jump Street at 7:40 am and drops me off at WAR around 7:55 am.  I ask Alex all sorts of questions such as Maun real estate or cattle investment.

The work day starts at 8 am with a staff meeting, mixing in singing songs, reading from the Bible, and announcements of various office matters.  This staff meeting can take anywhere between 20 to 30 minutes, and it takes place in the front reception area.

After the staff meeting, I go to my office and plug in my laptop.  Within two minutes, Lesiela will come in apologizing for interrupting me so she can sweep my office floor.  Five minutes later, she will bring me cup of hot tea.  She will always ask me if I want sugar, and smile and shake her head in disbelief that I don’t take sugar in my tea.

From my office, I can hear the chatters in the reception area.  The receptionist lady has a desk in the reception area.  There’s a 3-seat couch in the same area, and someone is always on the couch.  A few people seem to have no office space of their own, and they wander from office to office, or sit on the couch.  The chattering almost never stops in that area.

I get about 30 minutes to work.  Then the visitors come.  If a counselor does not have any clients to assist that week, she will not have any work to do.  One of the counselors will come and insist to teach me Setswana, or talk about how they want to go work in North America, or about their business plans, or ask to use my laptop to check their e-mails.  Then another person will come in, join in the conversation, or start a new topic about what type of Botswana food they think I should try.

At 9 am, the receptionist lady would ask me if I wanted any “fat cake”.  Fat cake is a large flour dumpling deep fried in oil.  It’s much like a homemade donut without the hole.  Fat cake is eaten as a snack during the day with tea.  One fat cake is 1 Pula (about 15 cents C$).  I’ve gotten into the habit of eating fat cakes with everyone else.  Oh it’s so bad for me!

The stream of visitors continues, and I may get about 2 to 3 hours worth of work in the morning.  Lunch hour starts at 1 pm, and is regarded as a sacred hour of personal time.  You cannot expect anyone to do anything between 1 and 2 pm. 

Sometimes I bring my own lunch, and sometimes I go out for lunch at a nearby local restaurant.  If I sit in my office with my laptop and sandwich, it’s like an open invitation for visitors.  They would buy their take-out food, and sit in my office to eat with me.  They find my spicy roasted almonds fascinating.  They ask me all sorts of questions about my trail mixes.  

Work time official begins again at 2 pm.  If a board member comes by, she would pop in and tell me what I should work on.  Otherwise, I have about 1 hour of quiet time to work while people digested their lunch.  By 3 pm, the lead counselor’s 9-year-old daughter is off school and comes to the office.  She likes to sit in my office to draw, read, look at my pictures on my laptop, or fold paper origami.

Inevitably I will get another visitor around the same time.  It could be all personal chit-chat, or a lot of discussions about what I should do while I’m with WAR that leads into personal chit-chat.  They would ask me about Vancouver, and I would ask them all sorts of questions about how cattle posts worked or what the donkeys are used for or marriage customs.

Then someone would oblige me to take pictures of her with my camera.  The ladies love having their pictures taken.  I would download their pictures and put them on their personal USB sticks for them.  They would giggle over their pictures for quite a while, and discuss what they will wear tomorrow for a different set of pictures.

Sometimes another WUSC Canadian volunteer traveling through Botswana may come by to check out the office, and we would exchange experience of different NPO’s.  Sometimes the local WUSC officer would bring by new Canadian volunteers on route to another town.

In the Botswana culture, relationship building is highly valued, sometimes more so than the work product itself.  So I have come to accept that.  I really had to put aside my habit of recording my time in 6-minute intervals.

Then at 4:20 pm, the receptionist lady would pop her head in to tell me the office will be closed soon.  I have to be all packed up and ready to go at 4:25 pm, otherwise more people will pop their heads in and remind me to pack up.  By 4:30 pm, the office empties promptly.

From there, Alex either picks me up at WAR, or I would walk over to the New Mall for groceries and then phone Alex to pick me up from there.  I’ve also started walking home (1 1/2 hour) a few times a week to get some exercise in.

I love the socializing aspect of the culture here.  It has allowed me to learn so much more about Botswana than I ever could from a travel book.