The Final Adventures

The last month has gone by quick. I’m now left with two weeks in Gaborone, a week of classes and a week of finals. I sometimes get moments of realization that my study abroad experience is almost over and it’s hard to believe. I still feel like I just got here.

March was full of adventures, probably the reason it went by so quickly. My group took a weekend trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, the first time we had been out of the country all semester, and it was an experience, to say the least. After we crossed the border, and I began to watch the South African landscape unfold before me, I wondered how such a beautiful country could once support such a brutal and oppressive government.

Most of our time in Johannesburg was spent learning about its history. We visited the Apartheid Museum, which was one of the most intense three hours of my life, as well as the site of the student uprisings in Soweto. The same street that the first students were shot for protesting against the Apartheid government is the same street that Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu lived on. I could feel the history coming off the pavement.

I think my whole experience in South Africa can be summed up by something my professor, who did her doctorate in South Africa, said to me over lunch. We were at a McDonald’s, and I commented on how much razor wire was up all over the city. She replied “This country invented razor wire.” After spending two days immersed in its history, I couldn’t argue.

The following weekend, some of us took a trip west to the Kalahari Desert to a town named Ghanzi. This region of the Kalahari is the home of the tribe the Tswana call the Basarwa, also known as the Bushmen or the San. The Botswana government is currently in a legal battle with the San after forcing them to relocate several different times off their lands, and many human rights NGOs have formed in the region to help resist the oppression of the San. We went to a museum about San culture in the village of D’Kar, where many San have been relocated to, some through force. D’Kar was described to me as a “big refugee camp” by a Fulbright scholar here studying cultural tourism and the San.

Besides the museum, we also went on a guided bushwalk in the Dqãe Qare Game Farm (pronounced with several clicks), owned by the tribe of Ncoakhoe (also pronounced with several clicks.) This game farm is actually now the only lands the San can live on in their traditional hunter-gather way, and the Batswana government only allows this because the game farm was a gift to the Ncoakhoe from the Dutch government.

However, only the staff of the Dqãe Qare lives on the farm, and none practice hunting or gathering. Mostly it serves to house tourists, although it does host cultural events put on by the San community. We went on a guided bushwalk with the Ncoakhoe, where we followed around an old woman with a big stick, who would point to different plants, say something in Naro (the language of the Ncoakhoe) and then wait for another one of our guides to translate for us. We learned about lots of different medicines, tried a desert potato and a Bushman salad, and learned about how the San find water in the dry season. (They burry empty ostrich egg shells filled with water during the wet season and come back when they can’t find other sources of water.)

Another exciting event was our private meeting with former President Masire. Masire was president of Botswana from 1980-1998 and wrote an autobiography with the help of a former president of Carleton, which is how ACM was able to arrange our meeting. In his retirement, Masire does a lot of peacekeeping work and the most interesting part of the dinner was talking with his personal secretary. They had just been in Kenya, trying to stop the post-election violence and form an agreement between Odinga and Kibaki. They also were recently in Rwanda, and it was incredible to hear about the continuing impact of the genocide.

I also got to watch two Botswana national soccer games, one against Zimbabwe and one against a club team from Brazil. They lost both times, but it was still entertaining to watch. This week, we went to the Jwaneng diamond mind, one of three in Botswana and the wealthiest in the world, something my Motswana roommate referred to as “our lifeblood.” Botswana has used much of its diamond revenues for good, like free universal education and healthcare, so I can understand why my roommate referred to it in that way. To me, it looked like a big hole in the ground.

Now, as I end my third to last week in Gaborone, I cannot believe all my adventures are coming to an end. I still have one last big trip to go, after finals. Three other Grinnellians and I are going up to Victoria Falls for a week, and then over to the Namibian coast for another week, then I’ll head back to Grinnell for Blockparty and graduation. If all goes well, I’ll be spending my 21st birthday on the shores of the Chobe River, on the border between Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It’ll be a great end to a wonderful semester abroad.