Stories from Botswana (1992 to 1996) (DRAFT)

Chapter One

When, in November, 1991, I announced my intention the following year to go to Botswana to teach English, the reactions of my friends were diverse but all similarly derisive. 'You don't like the heat!' cried one. Very true. I didn't and I don't. 'You're a German teacher. You can even do French at a push. But English?' said a supportive fellow trainee teacher. I denied my inability, saying that at least it was a language, which upon mature reflection, I have realised I speak really rather well.

But by far the most common reaction to my minor bombshell was a perplexed 'Where?' followed by knowing mumblings of 'Ah' Bechuanaland' by the older friends and a repetition of 'Where?' by the younger ones.

Since then I have often been asked what made me go to Botswana. After all, didn't I teach there for four years in Government senior secondary schools? Did I not follow this feat by a three year stint in South Africa? Time after time I have muttered something about feeling too young to teach straight out of university in Britain, or the U.K. as we professional expatriates grandly call it. I mention the vague desire to see something of the world. However, the truth is that I applied for various jobs and was offered [along with about 40 others] the chance to teach in Botswana. I can still remember the advert in TES, which said something like, 'Come and teach in this hot, dry, country where the people are friendly and the pupils keen to learn, where you will receive a warm welcome...'. Two years later as a friend of mine was leaving Botswana, she wrote to one of our bosses in the Ministry of Education applying in writing for her warm welcome as she had not yet received one.

I say this because it is necessary to make it clear that I was not driven by a bold desire for doing good, offering the hand of friendship to my fellow man, or other such naive expressions of goodness and charity. That I drifted into Botswana and stayed there, did the same in the new South Africa for three years and am now writing this in Hamburg is perhaps proof that one does not need to plan everything, that going with the flow is still possible in the nineties. I am neither noble nor a do good‑er.

Botswana was a far cry from Leeds University where I was learning the considerable art of teaching. There our wonderful tutor, Gary Chambers, had drummed into us the ideas of pace, variety and challenge, getting the biggest boy on your side on day one, using the overhead projector and flash cards and learning a new language so that we would be able to empathise with our students. I chose Danish: Fru Hansen het en bil is about as far as I got. His wise advice to us if we had a problem had often been to 'suck it and see', and for a slightly youthfully impetuous trainee teacher this is advice I followed and continue to follow gratefully.

When I told Gary that I was going to Botswana, he said, 'But we need you here. Then, he winked at me and continued, 'Ah, but they need you there, too.' [504I

Chapter Two

After my arrival in Botswana in August, I992, I took stock of the previous months. Late in May, I had arrived at Farnham Castle, a centre which specialises in induction courses for those intending to live and work overseas. There, I met up with the other intrepid travellers who were also to go to Botswana. No clear pattern has ever emerged as to the type of person who was there other than that none of us seemed to fit in completely in life in the U.K. Several of us were new out of college, and we were joined by youngish couples who took the opportunity of Botswana's cheap and plentiful child care to produce an alarming amount of offspring. These many children born in Botswana were clustered around the town on Molepolole. If you are of childbearing age and do not want to have children, you should definitely not go anywhere near Molepolole. There were also older single people and a smattering of lovely semi retired couples. It struck me once we had arrived in Botswana that if anything held us together it was that there were things about home which we could no longer face and we hoped for something better. This, I believe, was the reason for so many of my group not feeling fulfilled in Botswana, as they had neither been fulfilled at home.

Life was certainly more arduous in Africa and several of the souls I met at Farnham and became friends with later in Botswana found their experiences to be coloured by negative feelings. In the literature which we received on the induction course, we were warned about the sense of dislocation which we would feel. We were leaving behind us everything solid and personal, and we would have to assimilate into a new and very foreign environment, where few of our norms would be valid. We were warned that a sense of purposelessness was a symptom of this disorientation and we were to guard against staring into space. At the time, I rather scoffed at the idea of not fitting in. Had I not been a socialist at the vuppie Loughborough University? Had I not lived for a year in Germany? How bad could Botswana be? How different could Africa be to Europe?

How naive could a twenty‑something be?

Several incidents are worth mentioning from the induction course. I met Gwen Kgabi, who was studying in Britain and was later to become my field officer and later still a great friend. We were also introduced to Kevin Shillington, a historian and author of many books about southern Africa. He appeared at breakfast one morning in what I found out was a safari suit [there were not many of them about in Newcastle where I grew up]. Like a true peasant, I gaped at what I thought was a man wearing his pyjamas, and wondered what I was letting myself in for with this Africa lark. During one of our induction meetings we were told by what I can only describe as a well meaning but misinformed British Council official that our arrival in our villages would be marked by meetings with the chief or headman and expressions of welcome from young and old. That we believed this is a sign of our naivety. Certainly this had been the case many years before when European teachers had been a rarity. The lack of celebration upon our arrival was the cause of some needless bitter resentment, and I have often wondered what our experiences would have been had we been told the simple truth: that Botswana was like any other country in the world, and we were simply there to do a job.

But perhaps I am being too harsh on Botswana for it is indeed not like any other country in the world. Perhaps if I, if we had done our homework properly we would have been better prepared for Botswana.

Several years before, as the first in my family to go to university, I had been hopelessly ill‑prepared for my arrival at college. My prior impressions swung between mortar boards, Dracula outfits and saying matins to the other side of the spectrum to demos, drugs and dithering academics. So it was with my preparations for Botswana. I of course bought a map and comforted myself with the fact that there was a reliable petrol pump in most of the large dots that went for towns. The Macmillan Botswana Traveller's Map also has idyllic pictures of elephants on Chobe river and a Kalahari Bushman in mid‑hunt. Is this what I would be assailed by on my entry into Africa? I am still asked warily by those who have never left Europe whether one looks out of the window in Africa to see antelope pronking and wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain. You see, they do not know either/ I laugh now and point out the the most one usually sees in Europe is the odd sparrow and perhaps a wren or robin, a squirrel if one is really lucky. Oh yes, I laugh now, but did I have such questions on my lips years ago?

It was decided that I should try and get used to the heat. Teenage prickly heat was an unpleasant memory and if I had known that I would once experience the oddness of teaching Macbeth on a day when the temperature peaked at 45 degrees, I would have gone to Greenland instead. Hubble bubble indeed. I was dispatched on a package holiday [my last] to Tunisia, and boy, was it hot. I sunbathed, and went from pale and interesting to a fair impression of Tunisia's only red herring. I also watched a ballet performed by the Egypt State Ballet Company and fell swooningly in lust with Carole the Thompson's rep. I was also introduced to non‑European stomach complaints which are indeed different to the European variety. Let me only say that they creep up on one, and give the sufferer only a matter of seconds to seek facilities... I was introduced to the drug Immodium and am pleased to say that I have used it only twice, once when my work came before my health and once while hitchhiking along Namibia's Skeleton Coast.

So far, so good. I managed to get my hands on some Botswana schools' syllabuses which were housed inexplicably in the Leeds University library, a superb building. They seemed quite straightforward. There used to be a three year Junior certificate [Forms I to 3I followed by a two year course in forms IV and V, leading to the overseas '0' level. This had recently be reversed and was now two years followed by three. Fine. Since I left Botswana, this has been reversed again, but what of that? The syllabus was similar to the old British '0' level. I was hoping to teach in a Junior school, thinking that my lack of experience in [a] teaching and [b] teaching English would mean that I was not in great demand. Wrong again!

In the final weeks before my departure, I decided many times over what to pack. We had been awarded a baggage allowance of 75 kilos, which is about what I weighed at the time. Four suitcases. If only my allowance had been what I weigh now. What I did take was a kettle, a pan, and a one each of plate, bowl and cup. A pillow, sheets. My favourite ten books. This was an agonising choice. I took Die Wolke [The Cloud] by Gudrun Pausewang, Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, a dictionary of African mythology [a leaving present from my parents], the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot and a I945 edition of Le Silence de la Mer by Vercors. I also took five other books which have failed to leave a lasting memory. I packed a small collection of tapes, a pair of binoculars and an idiot proof camera, which survived gross abuse for four years before biting the dust, well really the sand, on a trip to the Kalahari. I took tea towels. Not for drying dishes as it turned out. Placed under a running cold tap and then wrapped around a bottle placed beside an open window, they chill wine very nicely. I did not take any of the following: a good torch, a Swiss army knife, a recipe book, a bottle opener, or any culinary treats like kidney beans, chocolate and good coffee.

On the day that I left, I had packed exactly 70 kilos and had a small bag containing 5 kilos of cabin luggage. I had been as ruthless as I get. I had sacrificed the second set of cutlery. Don't think for a moment that I intended to take two sets of cutlery. Two knives, two forks and two spoons would have been nice, though. Too heavy. I would not be having any dinner parties for a while. I had cut many of my favourite tapes and books. The batteries were taken out of my little, inadequate torch and packaging was removed from everything. The term ,non essential item' took on new meaning as I honed down my belongings to the requisite weight. It was a heartbreaking procedure, as my life was shaved and cut and finally slashed to the barest minimum. However, when I arrived at Heathrow, after a heavy trip from Newcastle via the London underground [an experience to be missed at all costs to one's sanity] I reached check in where other Botswanaward teachers were having grossly overweight suitcases passed by obliging British Airways staff. Thus transpired my next lesson in life. Get streetwise, and play the system like everyone else. I had my Anglo Saxon obedience intact, but to this day I would rather have had luggage and a great sense of shame. This memory was with me when I left Africa. In the space of seven years my 75 kilos had swelled to a house full of, well, stuff. The car, washing machine. pillows, cassette player, gas stoves and detritus of civilised living were jettisoned. A transport company packed my life into I4 boxes of various sizes and a lorry trundled off to Durban. My baggage allowance of 20 kilos was ignored in a most un‑Anglo Saxon like manner and I hauled 35 kilos to Hamburg. I smiled and flirted with the ticket agent and flashed my Lufthansa Miles and More card and got away with it. On the flight, which was half empty [half full if you're an optimist] I asked to move to a row of five free seats and, reader, I slept. Africa had at least taught me something.

The flight to Botswana in August, I992, was long, and later became dreary. It even later became longer and more dreary. There were no highlights and no high jinx. Twelve hour flights when flown economy class ‑ World Traveller is simply too romantic a description for so awful an experience ‑ are truly horrible. As a six foot two hater of enclosed spaces I have no more to say.

Chapter Three

The next two weeks were a haze of virtual reality. We landed in Botswana's capital city, Gaborone, on August I2th, and were ferried to the Sheraton Hotel for our second induction. Stuck in the hermetically sealed confines of a hotel which could have been anywhere in the world, we felt no closer to our goal of working in Botswana. We had air‑conditioning, wall‑to‑wall hotel food consisting of various dead animals cooked in sauces, for disguise, I fancy, rather than for sublime gastronomic enjoyment. Most tantalisingly, there was a huge swimming pool with polished sides, dive boards and a paddling area. And no water. Not a drop. The world's biggest skip could not have looked more incongruous.

Officially, there were language courses and seminars. Now I am a linguist for what it is worth and the teachers we had were indeed very pleasant people. However, that we never passed the most basic phrases of greeting and self description attests to the lethargy of both teacher and student. A typical conversation would consist of:

Teacher: Dumela rra Stuart :Dumela mma Teacher: 0 kae, rra? Stuart :Ke teng. Wena, o Kae Teacher: Mosadi ya gago, o kae? Stuart: Ga ke na mosadi,:

Teacher: Ao! Bathong ba modimo.

Which brought up the interesting cultural comment that as a red blooded 23 year‑old I really should have a wife either at home in the U.K. or as an accompaniment to Africa. Women without husband or [gasp] children were similarly looked upon with a mixture of curiosity and sympathy. I'm now thirty‑something and still a bachelor and the curiosity continues.

I bought a phrase book published by the Pula Press. It has many wonderful expressions, amongst which are the two following gems: under 'General Expressions' we have the memorable Ngwana wa go kganisadiaki o sule' [my sister's child is dead] and under the section of 'On a journey' the expedient 'E sole, e mohuhutso thata' [Rub it down, it has a good deal of sweat]. Answers on a postcard, please, for the noun relating to 'it'.

Like a bus load of gawking tourists we tried our new Setswana [the main language spoken in Botswana] on amused reception and bar staff. They promptly fell about laughing. Our teachers had failed to tell us about the correct pronunciation of high and low tones [Setswana, like Chinese has a tonal quality]. For instance the Setswana word mabele means either sorghum or breasts depending on how it is spoken. Similarly the word koko means either chicken or is used to announce one's arrival at somebody's house or compound. What fun several tipsy British teachers can have with Koko. Dumela mma, ke kopa [I would like] mabele. It must have been hilarious at the time. I wonder if the Botswana Ministry of Education knew what it was letting itself in for. Still, Setswana is a beautiful and lyrical language without the harsh guttural sound and the clicks of other Bantu languages. The word for the month of June is Seetebosigo or 'don't visit at night'. The reason for this is that June is the coldest month and there will not be enough blankets to go around. Nice.

We were also taken on short tours to local places of interest. The Oodi weavers is a cooperative venture which produces beautiful blankets and wall hangings, depicting scenes from rural life. My own wall hanging shows women pounding sorghum into meal and a young girl carrying a baby on her back, set against a backdrop of brightly decorated thatched rondavels. There is also a man sitting under a tree doing nothing. As I say, it is a typical rural scene. We were also taken to the large village of Mochudi which was to be my home for the next two years. [2289I

Chapter Four

First of all, I was one of the lucky ones. Our direct employers in the Ministry, Teaching Service Management [T.S.M.I had arranged in the person of Beauty, an education officer, to transport all of us on several large buses to our schools. The stories I later heard of break downs [mechanical and emotional], loss of belongings, teachers being taken to the wrong school, indeed to the wrong villages, one bus load having to sleep overnight in the bush [i.e. the middle of nowhere], read like the script of a farce, and for years, we referred to a visit to T.S.M. offices as vying with the forces of doom. However, I was lucky. As it turned out, very lucky, for I was collected from the hotel by the incomparable Adam Letham, described in one of the Botswana newspapers as a 'likable little Scot'. Not only likable, Adam is a wise man and nobody's fool, and for me, a great source of solace in the months that were to follow. If, when we left the hotel, I had known what was to befall many of my colleagues on the way to their schools, I would have looked more smug, but as it turned out, I was merely happy to be finally on the way to school. My months of planning were over and the adventure was to begin.

It was not a journey of many days, over sand dunes, rivers and hour upon hour of thorn bush. It was not likely to find a parallel in any part of the Bible. It was not one man's duel to the death with the elements. It was a journey on the main North‑South highway of about 40 minutes, followed by a right turn and another ten minutes. Disappointing? Not for me. It felt like a great trek into the unknown for me, however, and I remember staring at all of the 'sights' as we drove into Mochudi.

The village of Mochudi has a population of about 20,000 and is the administrative capital of Kgatleng district. It is the centre for the Bakgatla tribe, whose totem is the monkey. The Bakgatla are a dispossessed people, coming originally from the Transvaal in South Africa from which they were forced to leave by the Afrikaners in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It boasts two important buildings from the start of this century, firstly the Dutch Reformed Church, built in I903 and the Mochudi National School which has now been converted into an impressive museum.

Contrary to my expectations, and therefore perfectly natural in Botswana, I had been sent to a senior secondary school rather than a junior secondary school. The school, called Molefi Secondary, was, at the time, one of about 25 senior secondary schools in the whole of Botswana, and I joined the English department, which was responsible for teaching I200 students in Forms III to V. It is hard to describe the school. During the holidays it was an empty shell, a scruffy, almost derelict mass of single storey classroom blocks, with specialist rooms for agriculture, science, home economics, technology and a library. Notably, it was also the only senior school with facilities for the visually impaired. Thus it was linked to a local junior school and the Deborah Retief Memorial hospital, Botswana's centre for eye care. The average general classroom housed 40 students and had its share of metal and wooden desks. Curiously no matter how large or small the number of students in a class, there were always too few desks. An enigma for all teachers to puzzle out. There were also chairs, a scratchy chalk board and tattered notice boards. Ventilation in summer was provided by spaces where windows were supposed to be. This was refreshing in summer but desperately cold in winter, when students and teacher would wrap up in defiance of uniform rules in order to keep warm. Surprised that it is cold in winter? So was I. I had thought that Africa was hot. Another example of my lack of planning. I had packed one sweater in the U.K., a present from my friends Jason and Anne which I had believed to be particularly thoughtless. It came in handy, however, when winter came and early morning temperatures dipped under freezing.

In term time, however, Molefi Secondary School buzzed to the sound of students and their teachers. The students were the cream of their peer group, who had passed the junior certificate and were, therefore, entitled to a place at senior school. If they passed at this level, they would have the chance to go to Polytechnic or the University of Botswana, paid for by the government. For many of them this was enough to ensure hard work. For those whose families lived in poor farming areas, this was a chance to escape the toil of subsistence agricultural life.

I moved into a school house with a man who turned out to be a dispossessed South African on a United Nations refugee passport, who had been a courier between freedom fighters in apartheid South Africa and Libya. Such people do exist. He was also highly volatile and aggressive and our three months of enforced cohabitation were one of the lowest points of my life. During the day he was an impressive, garalous individual, a good teacher and well‑liked by the staff. However, few people saw him after dark. Whatever he was afraid of or felt embittered about clearly assailed him after sunset and he became a different person. I am, physically, rather a gentle soul. Mistake number one was lending him money. Mistake number two was asking him to pay me back. Mistake number three was expecting to talk him around to my point of view. Mistake number four was not ducking the blow. As I limped [metaphorically] to the end of term three months later and threatened to up and leave unless I or he was moved, I was able to reflect with a sense of humour which rarely deserts me, that I had undergone my own personal, made‑to‑measure baptism of fire, and surely things could only get better. I moved, they did and I stayed.

The up side, however, was that in those first three months I had met many kind and generous people, several of whom remain great friends. Professionally, I was helped in particular by two wonderful mentors. The first was Naomi Mnthali, a Malawian based more or less permanently in Botswana. She was and is warm and friendly with a laugh known by the whole school. In her late twenties when I met her, she had been teaching for several years and was working part time on her Master's degree. She taught me at first the basic and later the more subtle aspects of teaching English as a second language and explained patiently several times the demands of the examinations. Her methodical approach and readiness to nurture inexperienced colleagues explain why she is now the head of department at a Gaborone private school. The second of my mentors was Tom Bartlett, the deputy head at Molefi, and, gulp, one of my heroes.

From Tom, I learned a great deal. If Naomi showed me the way to teach English language effectively, it was Tom who did the same for English Literature. He demystified the whole process of studying literature at school level, and proved time and time again that it was all a question of PSQ or point, support and quotation. This is the method which I have followed for six years now and it has allowed my students to do very well. This method, which allow students to give their own points of view within the confines of having to prove each point that they make in their essays is so successful that between us, Tom and I achieved some of Botswana's best results in '0' Level English Literature.