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.

 

Walking along the Thamalakane River

This morning, I left Jump Street at 7 am, and walked along the Thamalakane River that flows lazily through Maun.  The sun was just rising over the trees along the river at that time, turning everything into an orange glow.

I had been looking forward to stretching my legs this weekend.  Normally on Tuesdays and Thursdays back home, my BFF and I go for walks at Stanley Park after work.  I sorely miss those walks along the seawall, uninterrupted by traffic.

The walk along the Thamalakane River in the cool morning air was so pleasant.  The path was well worn by foot traffic and tire tracks.  Cows and donkeys grazed along the path, and hundreds of birds chirped and chased each other.  I took a detour into the educational park, but only saw some impalas. 

Then I walked into town to wander around taking pictures.  Two policemen came up and said I shouldn’t be taking pictures of buildings without proper authorization.  I had this image in my head that I was going to be thrown in jail in Botswana.  I chatted with them and they eventually left me alone.

Everything in the Old Mall fascinated me.  Local people set up little stands selling everything from candies to telephone services.  I looked curiously at everything, and all the vendors all looked at me with curiosity.  I greeted people with “dumela”, and that always make them looked surprised that I said hello in their language.  They always turn to each other and either giggle or say something in Setswana with a big smile.

I wandered over to a table covered by this leafy green plant in bundles.  I asked what it was and bought a batch of rape leaves for 5 Pula.  The lady told me to cook it with some tomatoes, oil and salt.  The rape leaves became a part of my dinner later and they were delicious!

By the time I walked back to the lodge, I had been walking for 3 hours.  I occupied the rest of the warm day indulging in reading a riveting book (The Book of Negroes).  It always blows my mind how humans can be so cruel to each other.

In the early evening, I walked back down to the bank of the river to stretch my stiff legs.  Two very friendly young men were fishing and I chatted with them.  They let me take pictures of them, and I shared my trail mix.

Here come more random thoughts completely unrelated to the walk along the river.  On the walk back to the lodge, I thought about the difference between my visit to Tanzania 8 months ago and Botswana.  In Tanzania, our activities consisted of climbing Kilimanjaro supported by porters we rarely talked to, and a safari drive with a guide who spoke perfect English.  We were surrounded by Canadians the whole time.  I never had to cook a meal for myself or figure out where supplied came from.  I was spoiled rotten, and no wonder I felt so at ease and so in love with the country.  It was probably more like a teenager’s crush.

This last week spent in Maun gave me many opportunities to live like, or close to, that of a local person.  Aside from my accommodation in a lodge, my day-to-day life is not so different from others in the WAR office.  I had to be at work on time, abide by the office rules, get my own groceries, cook most of my meals, and walk everywhere if I wanted to save the taxi fare.  It certainly doesn’t make me love this continent any less.  It just made me more aware of the reality that people live through everyday.  Being this close to the Okavango Delta—a world-renowned safari destination—most residents of Maun cannot afford to go visit the Delta.  While the country boasted rich with its diamonds, 33% of the pregnant women are HIV positive.

I don’t have any profound conclusions of these thoughts.  I am just grateful for the opportunity to learn about Botswana in more depth than I did with Tanzania.  I am also very glad that I’m doing a tiny bit more here than just spending money as a tourist.  At the end of the day, I think I will still walk away with more gained than given.

Sun rising over the Thamalakane River:

A very nice house along the river:

A young man fishing: 

A poler pushing his boat across the river:

The revolving door at the educational park:

Animals along the river:

Goats around a giant termite hill:

Interesting Things about Maun

This posting is a list of random things I found interesting about Botswana, but some may only apply to Maun rather than Botswana as a whole.

 

Donkeys

There are donkeys roaming the streets of Maun everywhere.  They are not tagged, and have no saddles.  Apparently they are branded or marked somehow, but I haven’t gotten close enough to find such evidence.  They just meander around the streets, eating garbage, taking dumps, and blocking traffic.  

The donkeys are used to pull heavy carts or plow the fields, but these carts or fields are outside of Maun.  The donkeys walk into town on their own and roam the streets.  Apparently the owners let the donkeys forage for their own food.  When the owners need a donkey to pull a cart, they walk all over town looking for their donkey.

You can buy a donkey for about C$50 to $80.  A lot of office employees would own donkeys but allow their farming family members to use their donkeys.

Traffic swerves around a donkey crossing the street:

 

Donkeys hanging out in town:

Driving

Vehicles travel on the left side of the road in Botswana.  It’s similar to most countries in Africa.  Speed limits serve as guidelines but not reinforced.  Pedestrians do not have the right of way.

 

No bicycles

There are no bicycles anywhere.  I initially thought I could get a bike and ride to/from work.  But nobody here rides a bicycle!  They either walk, or take a combi or a taxi.

 

Dogs

There are lots of dogs wandering around, and they are all skinny.  It’s hard to tell if they are pets or strays.  I haven’t seen one with a collar on.

Dogs scouring the garbage for food:

 

Milk

In the supermarkets, there are shelves full of "long life milk" in tetra packs that does not require refrigeration.   I find that disturbing.  What kind of milk can just sit on the shelf for 2 years?

Fresh milk is available in the refrigeration area.  But there is only one type—full cream milk.  I have not been able to find skim milk.

Sour milk is very popular.  From what I’ve heard, you just let good milk sit long enough and it turns into sour milk.  In my discussions with someone, they insisted that letting milk go sour makes it taste better.  She was appalled that I would throw out milk that has gone sour because it is a waste of perfectly good sour milk.

Long life milk at the supermarket:

 

Cell Phones

Not many people use land lines.  Everyone has a cell phone with prepaid minutes.  To buy additional airtime for cell phones, you can buy a prepaid card with a PIN you enter.  

Or, you can just walk up to someone wearing a cell phone company's bib, hand them some cash, give them your cell phone number, and they enter some codes on their cell phone, and your airtime is refilled right on the spot.  You get a text message confirming that your airtime has been refilled by $x that you just gave the person.

Hair Extensions

You can get hair extensions done for about C$15 flat fee.  They do not charge by the hour like in Canada.  You only have to get it re-done once every 2 or 3 months. 

A typical hut for barbers:

Foreigners

Regardless of your skin color, foreigners are assumed to be rich.  Most of the hotels, charter airlines and safari companies are owned by Caucasians.  I have not seen a single Chinese person here in Maun, but I hear that Chinese people own a lot of the small shops in Gaborone.

As a Chinese person, the locals still refer to me as “white”.  When I tell them I’m not white, they just dismiss my comments.

Real Estate

To rent a 2-bedroom house, the cost is roughly C$170 a month.

A plot of land goes for 5,000 Pula, which is just under C$850.  To build a 2-bedroom house with all the labor and material is about C$5,000. 

If you want to be fancy, you can spend C$8,000 and buy a very high end home.  Or you could splurge on a mansion with style for C$15,000.

 

Time

For 2:30 pm, nobody says “two-thirty”.  They say “half two”.

 

Cattle

Cattles are prized possessions.  The more cattles you own, the more you are respected as a rich person.  Anyone can own cattle and hire a head boy to raise the herd at the cattle post.  The cattle post are generally a few hundred kilometers out of town where the pasture is.  You can pay the head boy per month (about C$80/month) and buy them food.  Or, you can strike a deal with him to work for no pay, but each year you give him one animal from the herd.  The latter generally works better, as you are essentially giving company shares to an employee to work harder.

One of the ladies in the WAR office owns 8 cows.  Another lady owns 12 goats.  The lady with 8 cows is considered well-off.  She told me I could join her wealth by purchasing a cow, and she promised to send me pictures of my cow on FaceBook.

People love buying cows because they reproduce.  But bulls cost more to buy.  You would generally buy a cow for about 1,500 Pula, and sell them once they are fattened up at about 4,500 to 5,000 Pula.

For holidays, some people take their family to the cattle post.  They would slaughter a cow or goat, and feast on the meat during the holidays.  The cattle post can act much like a vacation home for familied.

If someone is caught for stealing cattle, they can be sent to jail for a long time as a severe punishment for this cattle-loving country.