What I can do

As I write this, I'm sitting outside the library in Kanye, enjoying the shade, coolish weather, and free wi-fi.  Four girls that were sitting in the grass near me for a while finally came up to me and starting asking me for money, not an uncommon occurrence.  On a whim I decided to use the reverse psychology I’ve heard friends here discuss.  Give me 2 pula.  You give ME 2 pula.  What?  It completely baffles them that I’m asking THEM for money.  They were persistent though, and part of me wanted to tell them to bug off, I’m not going to give you money.  But then they asked me where I was from, and I managed to steer the conversation towards them: What form (grade) are you in?  What is your favorite subject?  What do you want to be when you grow up?  We had a laugh when I gently correctly one girl’s pronunciation of pilot, because I swear she first said pirate. (Which is doubly funny because there is no coast here; Botswana is a landlocked country.  I told her she’d be stealing boats in the Okavanga Delta.)  They are at junior secondary school, which is like middle school in the States, and what I’ll be working in at my site in less than a month.  They said I should come to their school, they have bad teachers that don’t teach them and beat them when they don’t know their lessons.  I asked if they had books that they could study on their own, and they said they weren’t good, etc.  There is corporeal punishment in schools here, but I have no idea if they are studying or not, who is actually getting beaten, etc.  So I told them that in a few years, they get to run things.  They get to make the decisions about teacher training, and corporal punishment, etc.  And if they don’t like the way things are, they should change them.  Because they would be in a better place to do that than me as a volunteer, because people will just assume I’m a crazy lacoa (white person).  That made them laugh, and although I’m not sure if they believe me, I think I at least gave them something to think about.

During our conversation they kept saying I want to go to America, everyone’s rich in America.  (So as I’m talking with them, I now have the song ‘America’ from West Side Story playing in my brain.  If you’ve seen the movie you know what I mean.)  And I’m trying to explain a few things like: America is big, more than 150x the population of your country.  So no, I have not met Beyonce or Obama.  Also, not everyone is rich in America.  Yes they might have more money than people here, but things cost more there.  Also, there are poor people in America.  And bad teachers.  And people that can’t find jobs. Etc.  And I said, you guys want to be pilots, nurses, and teachers.  Why don’t you make Botswana so great that people want to come and move here? And they were like, huh?   The conversation sort of dwindled after this and they started asking me for money again.  So I told them I was glad to talk with them, but if they kept asking me for money I was going to leave.  That sort of startled them, and they left a few minutes later, saying they would see me again.

This might not sound like a great conversation, but it actually was.  Because I made them think.  And I think they were surprised I would take an interest in them, asking them about school and their goals and such.  And it really solidified for me something I can do here as a PCV.  I can engage with students, as much as possible, and rock their world a little bit.  Care about them, help them dream, show them a point of view they’ve never thought about. 

There’s a lot that I’d like to do in my two years here, and much more that I can’t change.  Hopefully at my site I can build long term relationships with them, and help them problem solve, and tutor each other, and start some clubs and other programs.  But even if I just hang out with students for two years, I think that will be the biggest difference I can make, teaching/mentoring/after school programs aside.