Where and How I Live: My Ward, Kgosi Ward

Hello everyone, sorry to be a day late, but here is the second part of Where and How I Live.  Today we will be focusing on my ward, the Kgosi Ward.

 

First things first, what do I mean by my ward?  Well, Gumare and every other villages, town, or even city in Botswana are broken into different wards that represent their historical chiefdoms.  For instance, Gumare has seven wards (I don’t know them all so will not attempt to name them) and seven corresponding sub-chiefs.   All of these sub-chiefs are born into their positions, which are passed down from generation to generation for that specific family living in that specific chiefdom.  Today these chiefdoms and chiefs act as more localities and local elders who have the final authority on traditional matters.  But legally they also have the power to sentence criminals to traditional punishments like lashings or fines.  This traditional punishment can be in addition to a formal court ruling, so in essence if you say steal someone’s property and get caught you could get lashed (yes, when I say lashed I do mean being hit in the back or buttocks by a stick) by the traditional court and then sentenced to jail time by the formal court. 

Now, as their name suggests the sub-chiefs are under the purvey of one ruling chief that has the final say in all the traditional and social matters of Gumare.  Finally, I tell you all of this because my ward, Kgosi Ward, houses this one ruling chief.  Thus, the Kgosi Ward literally translates into the Ward of the Chief, and this fact is one of the more interesting things about my immediate surroundings. 

Almost weekly, I walk past the Chief's office (see picture on Flickr next week), which consists of a five-roomed one story brick building, an outdoor community meeting space where the chief hears cases and complaints, and the main Krall where cattle is bought and sold.  As you can imagine, this is a hotbed of activity and it is not unusual for me to walk past while traditional court or community event is being held.  In fact, with my work here in Gumare I have helped organized and put-on some on these community events.

Other than the chief’s office, the Kgosi ward’s next biggest attraction is the hospital, which is just a five minute walk from my house.  It is the only hospital in all of the Okavango Sub-District and services residents from up to 200km away, though there are clinics in every village in Botswana.  With this said, Gumare Hospital is not what I would call a hospital.  It is small and under resourced compared to many of the hospitals in Botswana.   Yet, it is does have things that the clinics don’t like a maternity ward, which makes an invaluable health asset to the Okavango Sub-District. 

Moreover, the constant flow of people has enticed some entrepreneurs to open up little stands and a butchery/restaurant right next to the hospital.  So it is here where I get some of my lunches like meat-pies, beef, chicken, and bread (again, all included on Flickr and I will explain more about the food in the next chapter of the blog).    

And it is also at these lunchtime stops where I get a sense of my integration.  For example, at first when I walked into the butcher by the hospital the owners would look at me like any other foreigner and ask what I was doing there.  Fast forward to today and now they not only know me but comment if I have not come by to see them in a while or joke with me about my language skills.  Like a wise person once said, you truly feel like you’re part of a community when the local butcher knows you by name. 

Other than the hospital and the Chief’s office, Kgosi ward is mostly made up of a mixture of compounds like mine that have some brick houses intermingled with the more traditional mud hut rondaval.  I know this was short, but I’ll post pictures next week of everything I wrote about here so you can get a better understanding of what I mentioned.

As always, I hope everyone is doing well and please feel free to drop me an email to let me know how you are doing (jefflyle30@gmail.com).

Where and How I Live: My Compound

Hello again everyone, I am going be switching up the theme for the next probably three posts and will be talking about where and how I live.  This will include everything from seeing into my house to the surrounding delta around me.  I have mentioned these places before in some of the earlier posts, but with this theme I hope to go into more detail. 

First things first, let us start with where I really live, sleep, eat, and do some of my works: my house and my compound.   As you can see in the picture, my house relative to some other Peace Corps countries is pretty nice.  It has two bedrooms, a full kitchen, bathtub, toilet, sink, pretty large living room, running water, electricity, and internet hook-up.   Also, all of my furniture is taken care of by the District Aids Coordinating office and as you can see in some of the flickr pictures not that bad.   For instance, my bed is a queen size and probably one of the nicer beds I have had in my life. 

With all of this said, there are some things to get used to because it is still different than what I am used to in the U.S.   Take, for example, the bathroom.   In the U.S. we are used to the toilet, sink, and bathtub being all in one room.  Here in Botswana about every house I have been to the toilet, sink, and bathtub are usually in separate locations.  Like in my house, as you can see in the pictures on flickr, the toilet and bathtub are in their own separate small rooms and the “bathroom” sink is between the two.   That’s probably the biggest difference but their other subtle ones too like here my whole house is made of concrete and has a corrugated steel roof, which keeps thing cool in the winter and hot in the summer. 

So far though, I have really been comfortable in my house.   I do, on occasion, have to deal with the water and/ or electricity not working for maybe a few hours or even sometimes a few days, but you get used to that and prepare by having candles and bottles of water stored away.  In fact, I actually enjoy when the electricity goes out sometimes because then the whole village becomes dark and the sky at night is as clear as it would be if I was camping.

Now that is just my house, but really I am not living in just a house.  No, I live on a compound with about three to five other people living in separate living spaces that drastically differ from one another.  For example, the structure closest to me on the right is just a one room thatched roof hut made of clay.  Yet, in this hut my landlord’s son has a fridge, a T.V., a bed, and a hot-plate.  The farther structure on my right is a little bit bigger than the hut.  It has three rooms and one common space where the tenants share a hot-plate, fridge, and T.V. Neither structure has a bathroom, so they use an outhouse at the far corner of the compound (shown in flickr). 

I mentioned in an earlier post the kids who were living here but a few months ago they and their sister who was taking care of them moved to another compound.  Replacing them was a group of guys working at the construction company updating the roads around Gumare.   There is one girlfriend who stays with them and is home usually most of the day.  This new group of people has been really nice and we get along fine.  In fact, it’s at the point now where I feel safer because they are here.  I even ask them to take of the dogs when I am gone. 

That’s pretty much it for the first chapter of Where and How I Live, in the next I will focus more on Gumare as a whole.  Hope everyone is doing well! 

Where I Work and What I Do: Voices of the Community

First things first, the answer to last posts riddle: The horses name is Sunday (i.e he left on Sunday the horse and came back on the same Sunday the horse).  I don’t know how many of you got that, but if you didn’t, don’t feel bad because no one really gets it either, including myself. 

Okay, so now that the riddles are over, let’s move on to what I think is the fourth and concluding chapter of Where I Work and What I Do.  The organization that I will be highlighting for this final chapter is a brand new NGO that a crew of past and present Peace Corps volunteers have been working with for the past year called Voices of the Community or Voices for short. 

This group all started with one of the Gumare Peace Corps volunteers before me who recognized the need here for a group that specifically dealt with issues of gender based violence and children’s rights.  So with this understanding, she started to recruit members from the Gumare community who wanted to help start this group.  Initially, a small group of women met weekly to offer support for anyone facing abuse in Gumare as well as to plan for ways to become formalized.   This all started just as the previous Peace Corps volunteer was leaving, so they asked Dave and I if we would like to continue on helping. 

We both agreed that we would and first met the four-five initial members probably within just a few months of being in Gumare.  At first, Dave and I were just helping with the administrative chores of getting registered and drafting a constitution for the group.  Once we became official, it was obvious that we were going need help in training and planning for how to be an effective gender group so we asked for other local volunteers to assist.

 Fortunately, two local Peace Corps volunteers had experience working with gender groups before and were more than willing to help.   After these two Peace Corps joined the group, they organized trainings for the ladies and walked them through all the gender basics like what is the difference between gender and sex and the different types of gender based violence and abuse (i.e. mental vs. physical, etc.).  Dave and I again helped more with the administrative details like getting the word out about the trainings and making sure people would attend.   

These trainings took maybe two to three months to finish, but it was perfect timing because immediately after the local government office dealing with HIV sponsored the Peace Corps in the Delta to organize youth camps targeting teenage pregnancy.  These camps were the perfect venue for the initial members to get practice talking about their group, gender issues, and facilitating group activities. 

Those camps ended a few months ago, and since then a few more members, including some men, have come aboard, but not enough.  So right now we are going forward trying to grow the group and host events to spread awareness about abuse and gender based violence in Gumare.   

The first one of the activities was actually today.  We organized a Kgotla meeting (pronounced Kota and is kinda like a town hall meeting with the local village chief, a picture explaining what I mean will be included in flickr very soon) with government representatives talking on topics like the relationship between gender based violence and HIV, frequency of rape and other gender based crimes in Gumare, and the status of orphans and vulnerable children. 

With this being the third attempt at holding this meeting, I would consider it a success.  We had in attendance over thirty community members, twelve representatives from local government departments, the chief, and one local politician.  More importantly, people eagerly listened to the speakers and were interested in learning more about our group.  At least, twenty people signed up as wanting to attend our next meeting.    

That’s where the Voices of the Community stand right now.  It’s going bit by bit, but it is a group I am very much interested in continuing to help.   Finally, check on Flickr sometime next week for pictures of the Voices of the Community. 

Next week I’ll be changing the topic, so check back in two weeks for something different.  With that said, I’ll continue to update how things are going with the different projects.  Also, always feel free to email any questions or comments @ jefflyle30@gmail.com.

Hope everyone is doing well!