I Will Try Again Tomorrow

I had a really shocking moment or I guess few hours I should say. It’s really crazy how I get so caught up in living here and preoccupied by the projects I’m working on and things I’m doing that I forget sometimes where I really am. The thing is, when I was in South Africa in Kurland everything hit hard because it was my first real time to see the hardships first hand and I was a visitor…I was only there a few months and knew I was leaving. In Botswana, this time around, it just feels like this is my life…cause I mean, it is. I’m here for two years I live the same as everyone else and I’m totally immersed and grassroots so I get caught up in my routine that sometimes I can’t fully see what’s next door…literally!
I finished at school this afternoon and was hanging out with the teachers when my school head asked me to come with her and the deputy head of my school and guidance counselor/standard 1 teacher and got to one of the school cook’s mother’s house because she is very ill. I agreed because I felt badly and didn’t really know how to say no to that even though I didn’t really know what to do. So, we went over to her house and to greet the family and sit and pray with the woman that was so fragile and sick and lying on a tiny thin pad on the cement floor of their house. She was so nice and very quiet and the teachers all prayed for her in Setswana and I just sat there in silence because I felt to so badly and didn’t really know how to communicate with her. I smiled a lot and she would look back at me and smile a little. Being white here is a “beautiful” thing! I kept saying to my school head that maybe I should go because I don’t this family and she is ill and may not want some random white girl in her house. I kept being told that the women and family would find it an honor if I went there. So I think that’s partly why I went. Feeling weird knowing that I did absolutely nothing yet am seen like a beautiful amazing person for walking into this sick women’s home just to smile at her….but I figured it’s the least I could do.
We left after we prayed for a bit and went back up to the school to find out that one of the children in the school is an orphan, his mother passed away a while ago but he is not registered an orphan because of the stigma that orphans often have which is that they are an orphan due to HIV. The family doesn’t want others to think the mother died of AIDS so they haven’t registered him and therefore haven’t been getting the food baskets from the government that orphans get. Its just so sad. This family is trying so hard to keep their families name clean but in turn are suffering for it.
After we tried to deal with that for a bit and are still in the process my school head, guidance counselor and one of the chiefs of my village went o a girl in my school’s house. I’m still not entirely sure what the primary reason for going was, but we quickly found out that the child has been eating. There is no food in the home and all she ate today was the little lunch that the kids all get at 11am from the school. That’s all she has eaten all day. My school head was hurt by that, I was trying so hard not to cry in front of the family. It was the final blow that just took it out of all of us. Each one of those things individually is hard and painful…it just so horrible for anyone anywhere to have to go through these things…but its just to common here in a way. People are upset by death but it happens a lot. People have learned how to laugh anyway and move on. Which is good, but it just feels quicker than I’ve ever seen before. Children lose their parents, its awful, but there are so many orphans here….so many…too many! AND the kids aren’t eating…certainly not regularly and sometimes not at all. I couldn’t believe it! It was that moment that shoved me back into my “place” in life. Yes, I’m grassroots….but not really. Not to that extent. Living without electricity and running water is hard and a big adjustment for me….but I have never had to go a day without eating if I didn’t want too…that’s a pain that I can see these people and children, but I don’t really know what that feels like.
I just kept looking at the girl as everyone kept talking in front of here about how the family and girl can’t eat and I started realizing that since I have been here, for months now, I have never seen that girl smile. Not once! I started to tear up as I was sitting there, I had to look away from her to keep myself from crying at her house. It makes me feel so selfish and just horrible for them. I went home and I hadn’t eaten that much that day and needed to make dinner but I couldn’t do it. Every time I went to try to make food I started to cry. I couldn’t eat if she wasn’t going to…I couldn’t do it. I felt sick over the idea of any of it. I felt so selfish going back to my real bed that and not a blanket on the cement floor. Its those moments when life slaps you in the face with the realities around you that it’s the worst feeling in the world, but also reminds me why here. I’m going to start that breakfast program if it kills me! I’m going to help this village anyway I can and do everything I can. As much as I want to run like hell, and cry all the way home, I have to make this work. I have to do something!!!
On a little lighter note, cause all of this is just sad! English Club started this week! It’s cool! The schedule is that I do it from 3-4 pm which is study time with the STD 2 and 3’s on Monday, STD 4 and 5’s on Tuesday, STD 6 and 7’s on Thursday, and then from 1-2pm on Friday for the little STD 1’s. Last week with all the classes we played “Simon Says” and then with the older kids we played “Guess the Animal” which all the kids have to act out or describe an animal and the class guesses. All of the classes are still really quiet and shy because they just don’t totally know what to do or think of me and I think I really shy with their English ability which makes sense. It’ll get better. Then with all the classes I had the kids all draw a self portrait and then write 3 things they either like about themselves, or think they are good at, or want to improve on. Obviously the younger kids got less writing and the older ones had to do all of it. It was really cute to see all the little crayon drawings and see the kids write that they like themselves or apples or math, or the shoes, etc… it was really sweet! The drawings are adorable!!!! It’s the first time those crayons have ever been used in the school I’m pretty sure. They all worked so hard on their drawings and tried to make them look so perfect. I told one child that their picture was amazing and he did a good job and after that every one of them lined up to show me their pictures in hopes I would say it to them too…which I did and then they would run off giggling. Praise is not really done here in Botswana…really not at all. The kids fine it so crazy when I give them praise for anything, but they love it.
Also, the kids and some of the villagers started plowing and clearing out garden plots so that we can start 4B soon and start getting the kids excited about it. Those kids worked so hard shoveling and clearing land it was amazing! I’m going to start working harder than ever on the food program now. OH! And also my school head and I made the official invitations for the STD 7’s farewell (graduation) and also guidance and counseling seminar. We’re asking people to come in for a career fair on October 9th. That’s the STD 7’s final examination day. In Jan they will all go off to Junior Secondary School in another village about 80K away. They’ll be at boarding school. We’re asking the police commissioner, District AIDS Coordinator, Guidance Counselor for their new school, social worker, and educational officer to come and talk to the kids and tell them what they know about their jobs and life and whatnot. I think it will be good and then I’m going to make a cake for the kids and also teach my school head how to make a cake. Its too expensive to buy a cake but I want these kids to get some sort of “good job” out of this whole thing. We’ll see how it goes! It’ll be good!

“Courage does not always roar, sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’” -Mary Anne Radmacher