Fun with Setswana

As part of our PST we have 120 hours of language training. Setswana and English are the national languages of Botswana and life is easier if we know both. Being confident in our English abilities, we get 120 hours of Setswana. I won’t try to go in depth and tell you about the language; I’m still untangling it myself. I will tell you some things I enjoy about Setswana that also help give some perspective on the culture here:

1) Dumela. It would be un-Motswana of me to start with anything but dumela. Dumela is the greeting here: THE greeting. Everyone must be greeted. You are considered very rude if you pass someone (unless maybe in a city or large town) and don’t greet them. If you want to ask someone a question in the supermarket, or an office, it’s important to greet them first. As one Motswana speaker put it in training: “greeting someone is acknowledging that they are not a tree”. This belief is tied in with the word:

2) Batho. Batho literally means: I am because you are. The culture of Botswana is extremely communal.  By greeting someone you’re acknowledging them as being: as existing.

3) Monna and Mosadi. Monna: man/husband. Mosadi: woman/wife. If you say “my man” you’re saying “my husband”, and vice versa. What fascinates me about this is that it speaks to the culture. In Botswana you are considered a “youth” until you’re 35 years old. In the language you cannot be what we would consider an adult (man/women) until you are married. Before then, you’re still considered a child.  This also is interesting to me because if gives insight as to why some young women have struggled to be treated as professionals here: technically, we’re still children.

I’ll try to post more “Fun with Setswana” when I riddle more out. . .

Interesting Sights (First month and a half)

1) A goat’s head in my kitchen. (I was not nearly as phased as I thought I would be).

2) A chicken go from clucking… to dinner. (Chickens are stupid and cannibalistic. One walked right by where her friend had been murdered seconds before, then later another tried to eat feathers plucked from the dead chicken. It was also really interesting to see the inside of the chicken. You could see what would have been the next day’s egg inside the hen. There were round yolks of different sizes that you knew were eggs to come.)

3) A cow folded up in the back of a minivan like a beach towel. (I saw two legs sticking up, but otherwise it was folded really nicely. I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture of this.)

4) An official school function where a dog sat down in front of the table of speakers, and started cleaning its boy-bits.

5) Two styles of traditional dance. In one the men wrap their calves in (what looks like) animal skins, hairy-side in, and during the dance hit their legs in a way that it reminded me of step dancing.

6) An albino spider the size of my palm (now deceased).

Tshepo (pronounced Tsepo)

Two days after arriving in Botswana we were matched with our host families who we are staying with throughout the ten-week Pre-Service Training (PST). We had a matching ceremony and everything was very official. My favorite part was at the beginning where the Batswana present sang the national anthem, then they started playing our national anthem and after some confusion we all joined in. (I should mention that one person here is called Motswana, two or more are Batswana. There is no such thing as “Bostwanan”. It even causes some confusion, because an American accent pronounces Botswana as Batswana.)

 

All the host families are different, which means we’re all having different experiences. I am lucky to say though, that my host mom is awesome. My dad is a police chief and works and stays away from home, occasionally coming home on the weekends. My host brother lives and works in Gaborone (pronounced Ha-ba-ro-nae), the capitol. They are all wonderful people, but most of the time it’s just me and mom. One of the first things she did was give me my Setswana name: Tshepo. Tshepo means ‘hope’ or ‘trust’. Most people’s names here have meaning. Mpho: gift. Masego: blessings. Dineo: gifts. etc. A lot of the names we got mean ‘gifts’ it seems. I really like my name. Most volunteers go by their Setswana name at site and I plan on doing that too. Although Elizabeth is an easy name for people to say and remember, there’s just something nice about having the Setswana name. It’s also really entertaining for me to introduce myself, because nine out of ten times I say Tshepo as my name, I get raised eyebrows and a friendly laugh in response :)

Me in front of my host family's house

Peace Corps Botswana: Pre-Departure, the Flight, Arrival.

As many of you know, I have been applying to the Peace Corps for a long time. I submitted my application March 2010. After being told I’d depart June 2011 then getting delayed for a year for the death of an immediate family member; in May 2012 I finally received my invitation to serve in the Peace Corps. The country: Botswana. I’ll admit that my knowledge of Botswana before was entirely from my International Corruption class. Botswana is a shining example in the world of a country with a very low level of corruption. Knowing only this, I was excited to get Botswana as my country of service; it was in Africa (which I was hoping for), and it’s a safe enough country to mollify the folks worried about me going to Africa.

On September 11th I flew to Philadelphia for a day of training called Staging. There I met the other 34 volunteers that would make up my group: Botswana 13. We are the 13th group to serve in Botswana since the Peace Corps went back. Staging was good although I can safely say that I was not at my best. It could have had something to do with packing last minute – but really it could be anything right? Some might ask what was I doing my last week if I wasn’t packing? The answer is eating. Based on previous traveling experiences I could safely predict that cheese, meatballs, and cookie dough flurries would not be in my future anytime soon. So adopting the same philosophy that a squirrel does when it’s getting ready for winter – I ate like it was going out of style. No regrets.

On September 12th they woke us up at 2:30 in the morning to board a bus to JFK (no one could reasonable tell me why the wake-up was so early). We got to JFK with about four hours to spare until our flight. I got to see my Aunt Claudia in the airport right before I went through security and though it was a short visit, it was nice to see family right before I left. I also have to mention that when I was leaving Albany, the lady checking me in for the flight to Philadelphia gave my mom a special pass to go through security, and sit with me until boarding. That was definitely a nice way to start this Peace Corps journey.

To put it mildly: the flight was a beastly 15 hours. Luckily I was in the center four seats and there were only two of us, so I was able to lie down for a while; I watched four movies. We arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, September 13th and caught our flight to Gaborone, Botswana. We touched down in Botswana in the afternoon, and were met at the airport by Peace Corps staff. They took us to a lodge nearby and finally the luggage lugging ended.

Welcome to Botswana.

This is my group: Bots 13.