On Monday I started my first day at the Botswana Network of AIDS Service Organizations (BONASO) where I'll be spending three weeks working and learning about it's role in the efforts of NGOs in Botswana to combat the AIDS epidemic. BONASO serves as an intermediary between the government and smaller local NGOs and helps funnel money to organizations who need it. They also provide capacity building training for their 150 member organizations and helps them write proposals to seek funding from outside sources. Their office is right in the heart of Gabs near main mall and up on the third floor with a balcony where you can get a pretty good view of the city.
We met with our supervisor, Chandni, who is actually a Peace Corps volunteer from DC and has chosen to extend her stay in Botswana for a 3rd year. I'm working there with Ellyn, proof that age should not prevent anyone from pursuing their dreams and that you're never too young to see the world. We met Cameron, anther volunteer about to start medical school at UNC Chapel Hill in the fall who found BONASO on his own and made all the arrangements to get to Botswana and work here. It was really interesting talking to him, he had come to the country as part of a study abroad in January and was pulled out early because of student protests that were threatening to become violent. He then made some calls, raised all the money to come back himself and was able to set a budget while he was here. Talking to him just gave me a lot to think about as far as my options in the future because I tend to think I have things all figured out, but it's always a good idea to have a plan B and be open-minded.Our assignment for the three weeks we are here is to contact member organizations and set up appointments to meet with their directors and discuss what their current projects are as long as challenges they face in achieving their goals. I'm really excited about the project because it gives me the opportunity to travel outside of Gabs (short for Gaborone) and learn about a number of NGOs to see what role they play in the whole AIDS crisis. The first day was really frustrating though because there wasn't any work for us to do and we were left to our own devices. It was the first time I got to experience "Botswana Time" and it was really frustrating for me because I am very task-oriented so being told to wait and bide my time made me very uncomfortable. I think I annoyed Chandni by popping into her office and ask for something to do because after 2 years here she's grown accustomed to people not doing things unless they were told to and even then to take their time on it. Talking to her, she really has been taking on responsibilities of some of the senior directors at BONASO because if she didn't do them then they wouldn't get done. It's just something I'm going to have to get used to, or at the very least put up with until I get back home.
For lunch we went to Africa Mall and had Thai food, which was very strange to get Thai food in Africa. We met one of Chandni's friends who is here with the UN and it began to set in how many people from outside of Botswana are actually here. We also ran into the two Swedish guys we played soccer with, just showing how even though Gabs is such a big city, you run into the same people all over the place. They are actually here interning for Forum Syd, a Swedish company that is one of the 5 main donor organizations for BONASO, which further demonstrates how everything is interconnected. After lunch we finally got a list of organizations that were within a reasonable driving range and decided to start making phone calls on Tuesday to schedule appointments.
After work I went with Karabo and Titus to the bus rink to go to one of the very few Stanbic Bank ATMs in all of Gabs, because it is the only type of Bank that takes Mastercard. As soon as I get home I'm going to switch to Visa because it is so much more convenient everywhere else in the world and it's terrifying being in a foreign place and feeling like you're going to run out of money. To get to the bus rink I got to take my first convey ride, which is essentially a giant van that drives people around in the absence of real buses. The process is really sporadic, you jump into this van along the side of the road and every so often it pulls off to the side of the road and someone from the inside of the bus shouts out the last stop and waits for other people to pile on. Then at some point you pay the 2 pula and 70 thebe into a giant bucket and hold on for dear life as the convey darts through traffic, passing cars at speeds that can't be legal. When we got to the bus rink I was finally able to get money and then we waited for Meredith and Lauren to join us because they too wanted to do some shopping. That meant that when we got a taxi to go back to UB we had to put four of us in the back of this tiny car. I'm pretty sure sardines in a can have it better than we did, there was an elbow digging into my ribs, Meredith was pinned between Lauren and I and really could only wiggle one arm and Karabo was pretty much pressed up against the window as we all held on for dear life. I occasionally had to lift myself out of my seat just so Meredith could breathe. Titus, as the largest member of the group sat in front with all kids of room and mocked us by stretching out and dancing to the music on the radio. We countered by shifting back and forth as a group, the closest we could get to dancing in our current state. The most relieved I've ever felt was getting out of the car and getting to stretch my legs.
On Tuesday Ellyn, Cam and I spent the entire day on the phone and we're amazed at how many numbers in the directory were wrong. Chandni had told us that because the office was so understaffed they really didn't get a lot of chances to go out into the field, and it became very clear as we called wrong number after wrong number how poorly BONASO kept up with its member organizations. We we're able to schedule a few appointments and write out a script with questions for the organizations. For lunch, Cam took us to Main Mall where we got meat pies from Pie City for 6 pula (equivalent to $1). Cam has budgeted living on P70 a day and so he knows the cheapest places around Gabs. The food was really good and Main Mall is really cool because street vendors line up all along the main strip and sell everything from shoes to artwork, woodcarvings, and all sorts of cool African trinkets. While I was sitting there eating my lunch and taking in everything there was to see a young boy came up to me and asked for money. I told him I didn't have any (which isn't entirely true, I just tend not to give money to beggars) and he just laughed and said "you are white, of course you have money" and it was really unsettling how persistent this kid was and how he wouldn't leave me alone after I told him I had no money. It was the first time I really felt targeted for being white and it left me feeling very uneasy.
Tuesday night we played soccer and were joined by two guys from the US. One actually graduated from Einstein High School (a rival to my high school and where my brother currently goes) and lives on Dale Avenue in Silver Spring. He also is really good friends and went to Vanderbilt with a girl I graduated high school with. It just goes to show how small the world really is.
On Wednesday we began our interviews starting first at the Marang Childcare Network, an umbrella organization responsible for overseeing 84 childcare centers in Botswana. There is a definite structure in place in Botswana where there are connections between the government and NGOs (BONASO) and then further networks down the line, but it seems that the biggest problem facing these NGOs isn't lack of structure, but instead resources are trickling down from the top like they are supposed to in the given structure. We met with Ben and Godffrey, two directors for Marang and they said that one of the biggest problems they are facing is maintaining volunteers. Our western notion of a volunteer is someone who has the time and the resources to do something outside of their normal life. Here volunteers are mothers and grandmothers who see orphans and vulnerable children (kids who have sick parents or are in abusive households) and decide to open up these childcare centers as a place for kids to go. They are passionate about their work but often don't have the resources necessary to protect these kids and also are usually illiterate and therefore cannot write proposals to a standard that outside donors require to provide support. These women aren't getting paid and also usually face abuse at home from their husbands for working at these centers and not getting a job and bringing in income to already poor houses. It's really upsetting to think about how hard these women work and what they go through for these kids and yet they are unable to seek help because they lack the professional skills to write proposals. Marang works to assist in propsal writing and training because they feel that the passion these women bring is important and that we can't let it die off.
Next we visited the Child to Child network, a local branch of a global program to help children. The problems facing the network were exactly the same as those described by the Marang Network, where the overall challenge universally is funding and from the issue of lack of funding a number of other problems come up. The Child to Child network was at the point where they were at risk of losing their plot because they could no longer pay for the training of teachers and were losing volunteers who left for jobs that actually pay them. The group is planning to meet with the President of Botswana to appeal to him to be a patron of the organization, but with so much need out there I can't help but be skeptical about the President's willingness to accept being a patron for one organization. With the general problem of donor fatigue and the issue of money set aside by the government for AIDS work not actually reaching NGO's there is an air of pessimism everywhere we go.Wednesday night we stayed in and watched the US beat Spain in a thrilling 2-0 victory and, watching the game, I couldn't help but wonder why soccer isn't a bigger deal in the US. For the first time in years we were poised to win an international championship, something we have never done, and maybe, just maybe, by demonstrating that we can be competitors on the world stage soccer will get the support it deserves in the US. There is this drop-off of interest sometime in our lifetime that I don't really understand because every little kid I know (I included) played soccer growing up, but at some point start playing other sports or just become disinterested. In any case I will be rooting full-force for the US on Sunday.
On Thursday our first stop was Nkaikela Youth Group, an organization that reaches out to sex workers who are driven to that type of work because of poverty and are responsible for further spreading HIV/AIDS. Sex workers is a particularly complicated issue because a number of sex workers are illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe who fled the country when their economy crashed and face discrimination from Motswana. To try and combat the issue Nkaikela provides alternatives for generating income and counseling to help rehabilitate them back into society. It was interesting because up to this point sex workers hadn't been mentioned by the NGOs we've contacted (kids have been the major focus at this point because they are a key part in achieving Vision 2016 of having 0 transmissions of HIV) but they are another sociocultural factor in the disease, another piece in the overall puzzle and they can't be ignored because for every sex worker who will take more money to not use a condom there's the risk of infecting a whole new group of people and so the disease continues to spread.
The second stop on Thursday was the Batlang Jehova center in Tlokweng, a suburb outside of Gabs. Driving out to Tlokweng there is a complete change in scenery, from a very urban area to dirt roads and goats crossing the road (they are actually really smart, they look both ways and cross together). When we reached the center it was essentially what was described at Marang, a group of women renting a house and teaching kids about AIDS with very little resources and without the means to get the sick kids to the Baylor Clinic where they can get the ARVs that will help keep them alive longer. The women were illiterate and couldn't write grants to get more funding and all of the kids were jammed into one classroom. The kids were really cute, but just looking around the room you could tell some of the kids were HIV positive and already very sick. Some could not even stay awake. The visit got me thinking about Mother to Child Transmission of the disease and how upset it makes me. These kids have done nothing wrong, but have to live with a disease that will cut their lives short because their parents made a mistake and then did not take the proper precautions during the birthing process to make sure that their kids are born HIV-negative. When we left I felt really angry and upset and sat silently in the back of the car just trying to think of how you combat a problem that is so entrenched in society at every level and that is still a problem despite millions of dollars being funded towards it.
Thursday night we went to Linga Longa, a bar at Riverwalk, to watch South Africa take on Brazil and were heartbroken when Brazil decided to score in the 85th minute to go to the finals. South Africa is definitely a contender and I definitely will be rooting for them when it comes time for the World Cup in 2010.
Friday started off on a strange note when I heard Michael Jackson had died. Everyone talks about how they remember exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot and when John Lennon was killed, and years from now when people ask me where I was when I found out Michael Jackson was dead I'll say I was in Botswana, getting up about to start my day. I've felt so distant from the US and what has been going on there and this brought me back to it and what was truly incredible was how everyone here was talking about it and how he was on the cover of every newspaper. It just goes to show how big he really was because as I continued to check news stories I read about how there were vigils all over the world. We had two visits, first to the Tirisanyo Catholic Commission, a faith-based organization that sponsors a teen club that pushes abstinence on the youth. I have trouble with the teaching of abstinence in general over a more comprehensive sex education, and here it particularly doesn't make sense because sex is such a cultural thing and men are encouraged to have multiple partners and have sex starting at a very young age. To tell kids who grow up in this atmosphere to be faithful and wait until marriage to have sex seems like trying to swing the pendulum too far the other way and as an unintended side effect there has been an increase in "passion killings" where a girl/guy breaks up with their significant other or cheats on them after they've been faithful and out of rage they kill their partner.
Friday afternoon we got to make our first trip outside of Gabs to Mochudi and Mochumoisi, our driver, flew there at 160 km/hr (roughly 99 miles per hour). The drive out was gorgeous, with flatlands and giant hills in the distance. There we visited Stepping Stones, an organization started by a woman from Utah who married a man from Mali who was HIV negative, but had family members who died of AIDS and as a result they took in a lot of their kids. Seeing how devastating AIDS was she decided to start an organization for an often ignored group by the international community, teenagers (little kids get a lot of attention because they are cute, and adults have a lot of resources, but teens often fall through the cracks). The center provides after school studying and tutoring, brings in professionals to teach the kids about job opportunities and the kids also get counseling. I really appreciated how blunt the lady was when talking about the lack of services provided by BONASO, especially when it came to writing proposals. BONASO supposedly has told them over and over that they would get feedback on grants that need to be written a certain way, but they are ignored over and over again. It definitely gave em a lot to think about when I write my paper looking at BONASO's effectiveness. While we were there I got the opportunity to interview one of the girls in the program named Tshepiso, age 16. I asked her about what she wants to do when she grows up and she told me she wanted to be a Geologist (the director mentioned how a lot of kids come in either wanting to join the military or be a nurse because they just don't know the options out there, and by bringing in professionals from various fields it really opens up their eyes to the vast possibilities they have). I then asked her about how Stepping Stones has helped her and she told me that she sued to get bad grades, and Stepping Stones helped her with counseling especially when she lost both of her parents to AIDS. At that moment, I just wanted to cry and to hug her and just let out all of the emotions that had been building up all week. I have no idea what it would be like to lose my parents, especially being that young and I would not wish that grief on anyone. You hear about how AIDS tears families apart, but putting a face to it, especially the face of a child, really drives it home and makes it real. That interview, and the fact that that girl was able to open up like she did was the most intense emotional experience I've had on the trip and helped me reach one of the two goals I've set for myself: to feel overwhelmingly sad during the trip. I'll let you know what the other one is after it happens. On the way back we drove through Phakalane, the wealthy suburb of Gabs and I was shocked at how different it was from anywhere else, if I hadn't known any better I would've though we were in Bethesda with all the mansions and luxury golf courses. We also drove through a military base where monkeys and warthogs roam around like squirrels do in the US.
Friday night everyone wanted to blow off a little steam so we went back to Linga Longa for a night out, but I will refrain from posting any pictures of that evening to prevent self-incrimination (especially because my parents and grandparents follow this blog). Afterwards we watched the Hangover, which was hilarious. When I finally got home I ran into Titus, who I hadn't seen all day. Titus is originally from Zimbabwe and has a Zimbabwe passport and apparently when he was at immigration he was only given four days in Botswana, even after describing in detail the goal of the program and that he as here as a volunteer. There is such a negative stigma against illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe that the immigration officer sabotaged his passport. In an effort to get it resolved he ended up going from police station to police station because the international office at UB refused to help him. At the police stations he got threatened with jail time and interrogated in Setswana, a language he didn't understand at all and was treated like a criminal for a mistake that wasn't even his fault. He told me all about this just to talk to someone because the whole experience was really scary for him and left him feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome here. I felt really bad for him and wish I could relate to what he was going through, but I couldn't. I know if it were me having passport issues and I went to the office to complain they would take care of it right away because they don't want to deal with the wrath of a pissed off American who has no problem calling up the US Embassy to get the problem resolved. The whole conversation just gave me some perspective on how differently it is to travel to other countries if you aren't from the US.
All in all it was a busy first week. I'll keep you posted on other events as they happen.
Ke a go rata thata, go siame!
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