snakes, homesickness, and regional brew

I neglected to list savanna dry hard cider under coping mechanisms. Anthropology? Alcohology.

As it turns out, savanna is made in South Africa. I had been harbouring fears that it was really made by Coors or something.

Yes, that's h-a-r-b-o-u-r, folks. I switched my computer to U.K. settings after having to globally replace "program" with "programme" in my IRB application. I have also begun to switch the settings in my brain. I will now phone you, not call you; my speech is more colourful; I will switch on and off a wide range of electrical appliances; I will fill my car with petrol at the garage; and if you really piss me off, I'll show you two fingers rather than just the one you might expect.

(A friend recently clued me into the whole myth of this sign having its origins in the Battle of Agincourt. Snopes, on the other hand, says it's not so.)

Anyway, all the adjustment notwithstanding, homesickness has run me over like a truck -- pardon, a lorry -- this weekend. It's not actually so much homesickness as loneliness. I don't really mind being in Gabs; I mind being in Gabs without my peeps. Or any peeps, for that matter.

I can't really complain. I've been here a whopping five weeks and, as my boyfriend pointed out, I'm not even officially on the clock. And social lives don't grow on trees -- or at least they don't burst into full-flower in five weeks. But I got damn cranky, and my mood was not improved by the bar behind my house pumping out rave-quality decibels at 6pm last evening. I fled my little hut, and drove around for a while, randomly finding stuff in Gabs the location of which I'd only vaguely known. I wound up at my local mall -- naturally -- around 7:45pm, and wandered up to the cinema (movie theatre -- or theater -- ye Americans). I found, to my surprise, that it was the opening night of 'Snakes on a Plane'. This really made my night. I bought a ticket, and then went to the bar downstairs to have a quick savanna before the film.

I settled myself at the bar, and was joined by a guy who almost immediately bought me another savanna and started chatting. (I'm rather loathe to hang out at bars in Botswana -- or bars in general -- solo, but this particular bar is at a mall and very well-lit and very public, so offers few opportunities for, shall we say, unwanted gestures, whether they consist of roaming hands or missing cellphones.) Turned out that he knew that there was a bachelor's party at the bar behind my house (which also turned out to be his neighborhood bar), hence the late afternoon rave beats.

He seemed nice enough, and, as it turned out, he was considering seeing the movie, so we finished our respective drinks and headed upstairs. The movie really was amazing, though, in retrospect, it's probably a good thing I did have two drinks or I would have screamed my bloody head off. That said, the movie is really well-paced: there's such a wonderful mix of comedy and horror and character interaction that it never just degenerates into gore. Samuel L. Jackson is also one of those characters who could entertain me just by reading the phonebook.

That said, I spent a certain portion of the film jumping around in my seat and hollering expletives. I did not take my companion up on his offer that I could grab him if things got too scary, but he seemed cool with that state of affairs. It was really nice to just hang out and watch a film with someone. He headed back to the bar when the film ended, but also seemed cool with me calling it a night.

So, when's all said and done, I had a really good time, and made at least a new acquaintance. And to top it all off, when I got home, the rave behind my house had disappeared. Miracles do happen.

makin' copies

Some of you are more familiar than others with the saga that my attempt to gain research clearance in Botswana has become. To bring the rest of you up to speed, let's just say that I began this process last November, and it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride. As the situation currently stands, the ethics board in Botswana needs to approve my research before I can receive my research permit. My funding is also at stake here: I can't access my grant money without the permit.

Why exactly this is so, and whether there were other ways this might have played out, are longer stories than I'm prepared to tell here. Suffice it to say that I turned in 14 copies of the application last November, and eventually received some feedback. The committee reviewing my application meets next towards the end of October, but they need my application five weeks in advance. (Not even my dissertation proposal got turned in five weeks in advance! I hope this doesn't give my deparment any ideas...) This meant that the whole kit & caboodle had to be turned in yesterday.

Now, we're not talking a measly little 4-5 page application. We're talking about:

• one 16-page application;
• one 20-page protocol;
• 25 pages of consent documents in English and Setswana;
• 12 pages of interview guides;
• a whole bunch of other supporting documents, such as an introductory statement summarizing how I'd responded to the committee's criticisms, my award letters, my cv, statements of various kinds, etc.

We're talking about 90 pages for each application.

I toddled off to my local Business Support Centre on Wednesday, hoping to print out a copy of the thing and proof-read it (or go blind trying). The Support Centre's little ink-jet printer spat out about six pages before the text began fading beyond recognition. So much for that. I sent off a desperate SMS to a friendly fellow researcher with a laser printer (which he drove all the way to Jo'burg for the purpose of purchasing), who let me print the monster at his place later that evening.

Thursday morning, I reappeared at the Support Centre, print the one page I hadn't printed the night before, and ask for 14 copies of the whole thing. Now, I don't know whether their copier simply can't collate, or whether they don't know how to make the copier collate. Either way, I wound up with 14 copies of each page. I had to collate the whole thing by hand. In the copy shop. It took maybe 1/2 hour to copy the whole thing; it took two hours to collate it.

The folks at the Support Centre were actually wonderfully helpful. They helped me collate it bit by bit, found bulldog clips to hold each 90-page copy together, found a box for all fourteen copies, and helped me carry the boxes to the car. They have earned their little crowns in heaven, god knows. Meanwhile, the Support Centre itself earned almost P700 for that little job. Yes, P700. P6 = $1, folks. Ouch. There's no application fee for the research permit application, but one shells out in other ways. Some of you might remember me mentioning the cost of printing and shipping to Botswana the 12 lbs. of paper that was my first application. I still wish I had photographs.

I carted all however-many-kilograms of paper over to the relevant Ministry Office. I think the guy in charge was somewhat amused to see me haul two boxes of paper into his office. All I can say is that I'm glad I don't have to read it. (I've already found at least one embarassing typo, so I think it's fair to say that, in the interest of my sanity, I shouldn't read it.)

Now I have nothing to do with it but wait... and reward myself for getting it in. Rewards include hard cider, a trip to the gym, and a new knitting project.

And, as a complete non-sequitor, here's a delightful photo of my nephew. The eye on his right (your left) is the false one. Pretty amazing piece of work, no?

coping mechanisms

A friend and I were chatting via the internet last night, and she commented that I don't really seem homesick. I don't really feel homesick, either. Admittedly, I have only been here a month (as of today, actually), and that's not really long enough to make me whine. Living in Gabs, as well, is pretty easy when compared to, say, Togo -- at least, au village in Togo in 2000. And while that's partly to do with the level of infrastructure (e.g., electricity, water) and available commodities (e.g., Woolworth Food's gypsy ham), these kinds of conveniences don't account for the entire difference. I was a lot more homesick in Togo, but, frankly, I was also being interpolated into the Peace Corps as an institution, and that was enough to make anyone sick, whether for home or anything that looked remotely like sanity.

OK, it wasn't that bad. But I don't take interpolation well, especially when performed in an uncritical, ahistoricized, rah-rah, pseudo-patriotic manner. Let's just say that living as an independent researcher and forming my own affiliations and associations is far more pleasant to me, and, I think, helps ward off homesickness. Strange that being independent should be so much more comforting (and comfortable) to me than the cozy nest of Peace Corps Togo. But I had a hunch, even back in 2000, that this would be the case.

That said, I do indulge in a few coping mechanisms to help myself adjust to living here.

1. The internet. I did not expect to have internet access in my living quarters in Botswana. It's expensive, it's not widely available, and I only have it because my landlady works for Botswana Telcom. It has made all the difference, as noted below.
   
2. Skype. I love skype. Not only does it keep me in touch with family and friends (via my unexpected but warmly welcomed internet access), the makers of skype apparently also helped sponsor a recent conference in Vienna at which my stunningly intelligent boyfriend presented a paper that, to put it colloquially, rocked the house.
   
3. Buffy. I don't watch television (though my boyfriend has gone some distance in convincing me that it's not an instrument of evil). If everyone is raving about a show, it's hard to get obstinate me to watch it. The result is that I'm usually about three years behind. The last show I watched regulary was The X-Files, but I only got into it around season 3. Too many people I knew were telling me to watch Buffy and The West Wing for me to actually watch either of them. Naturally, this obstinacy only hurt me in the end; I always wind up getting deeply involved in a show three years after it was actually good. I started watching the first season of The West Wing when I badly needed something to do between drafts of my dissertation proposal last January, and I loved it -- and not just because it was something to do other than write my proposal. What's keeping me going these days is season 6 of Buffy, but I'll take any episode I can get.
   
4. My informal little research network. This is hardly a formal thing; it's just a little network of folks here doing research, most of them working on Ph.Ds. It includes a British geography student, another woman from my institution who's also here doing social science research, a Fulbrighter on her way to public health school, and a med student with a strong interest in medical history. It also includes my advisor in the Population Studies Department at University of Botswana. It will eventually include an American historian. Some of these folks know each other, and some don't. It's really lovely to be able to "talk shop" with people.
   
   There's a seminar in the Population Studies Department next week to which I've been invited, and I've been invited to attend the History Department's semianars as well. These aren' t organized on the weekly basis to which I've become accustomed at my institution, but they do seem like they would be useful fora in which to meet people, learn about what kinds of research folks at UB are doing, etc. I'm also bound, by virtue of my grants as well as my research permit (if it's ever granted), to present my work in venues such as these, and I'd like to know what they're like before I show up in a year or two to give a paper!

rent

Somewhere, I think in the front matter to The Nuer, Evans-Pritchard makes some rather off-hand comment about the poor slogs whose job it is to carry his packs around on their heads. His servants are scared of the Nuer, and the Nuer won't help him move his camp to drier ground. Poor E-P didn't exactly have an easy time of it. Nevertheless, his complaints can be read to fit within a loose genre of white colonials complaining about their black/'native' servants' inepititude.

Of course, if one is clever -- or one is Marshall Sahlins -- one could read the entire encounter as the reproduction and transformation of two cultural systems. In a truncated kind of way.

But me, I'm just trying to deal with my landlady. Who is Ghanaian. Who is absolutely not my servant. And who is making my life rather difficult lately.

(Marshall Sahlins, where are you when I need you? Nothing is quite as trying -- or quite as tempting -- as playing ethnologist on your own life.)

We have done a lot of misunderstanding. We have misunderstood that cleaning was included in the rent. (It was, she has insisted, not included, and I am now paying P100/month for twice-weekly cleaning and laundry. Although much of her argument rested on her maid having too much to do, and the P100 being compensation for additional work, the P100 goes in with rent, not to the maid. Make sense to anyone else out there?)

We have also misunderstood whether underwear is included in laundry. Granted, during Peace Corps training in Togo, we were made to understand that one did one's own underwear, period. I didn't actually find this to be the case in practice, but I do respect the principle. So my landlady made it clear that in her African culture, one's washed one's own underwear. Fine, I don't mind a few panties, especially since I'm not hauling the water from pump or creek, and there are a few items I would prefer to wash myself. That way, if anything happens to them, I have only myself to blame.

(I did my panty laundry today, and the maid, Christine, seems rather confused by all these goings on. I think it's all bullshit, frankly, since I see an awful lot of undies on the line that, I don't think, can possibly be Christine's. I think Christine thinks it's all bullshit, too, but I don't expect her to say that to me.)

Ag, god, ok, so there's the maid thing. Yes, the middle class in Botswana has maids. To quote my Setswana teacher from last year: "So, you know that Botswana has this culture of maids..." To be fair, some maids have their own maids. (Eat your heart out on that one, Arlie Hochschild...) But the domestic service economy here works differently than it does, for example, in the United States. Francis Nyamnjoh has written a book on xenophobia in southern Africa that includes material on maids. I am trying to decide whether it's worth international shipping.

So, in the next episode of a long chain of stupid arguments that have taken place far too much via SMS (text messages, ye North Americans), we are disagreeing about the lease. I have been pushing for a lease since I moved in here in mid-August. (I have been pushing, apparently, the wrong person: my landlord. I have a more amiable relationship with him, but it's becoming pretty clear to me who wears the pants in that household.) I have been pushing, and pushing... and I finally sent an SMS to them both, asking if it could be done before the rent is due on 16 September.

So today, my landlady's 13-year-old son brought me a sheaf of paper. (No, of course not, this couldn't be handled in person!) It is a two year lease --- two years!!! --- wherein the lessee (that's me, folks) must present "valid and sound reasons" for early termination of the lease to the lessor, who is then at his/her -- most likely "her" -- discretion to decide whether the reasons are indeed "valid and sound"!!! Should I break the lease prematurely, I am liable for the rest of the the rent included in the (two year!!!) lease.

I told my landlady the lease looked good, but it lacked a thirty-day no-fault release clause, wherein I (or she) give thirty days before the place will or (or must be) vacated. She balked, I told her no deal, and it went swiftly downhill from there.

She wound up calling my friend who had found me the place to begin with, and went down that friend's throat with her boots on. Said friend, who I had already SMSed about the situation, calmed my landlady down and explain a few things to her that, I only hope, got through. Friend and I strategized, and I think the best thing for me to do is to try to negotiate the lease to one year, with a 30-day notice provision, and a clause wherein the security deposit less documented damages must be paid back to me within 14 days of the termination of the lease. We shall see. I called and arranged to meet my landlady here around 6pm this evening. It's now 6:12pm.

Landlady has, as my friend pointed out, the upper hand because she actually has the security deposit in cash. I may wind up choking (as friend put it) on the security deposit. Either way, as soon as I saw which way the SMS conversation was drifting, I put in a call to an estate agent (realtor, ye North Americans) so I can find a better situation. P1900 is a ridiculous amount to be paying for servant's quarters --- I was nearly scolded like a child about this over dinner on Saturday -- and I don't like being someone's cash cow if I'm going to have to have a stupid fight about every bloody detail.

paperwork, part 2

So, among all the paperwork I've been collecting over the past two weeks to apply for a residence permit that had, unbeknownst to me, been granted to me months ago, I needed a medical form. The man in the international students office was afraid I'd be sent to the major hospital in town for an x-ray, which would take forever. I toddled off to the student clinic anyway, where the doctor attested, on my good word that I'd had a physical in the past six months, that I am "not suffering from any of the disabilities referred to in Note 1." Note 1 reads as follows:

Note 1: The disabilities referred to in paragraph (1) are:

1. being an idiot;
2. being an imbecile;
3. being a feeble-minded person;
4. being an epileptic;
5. having had a previous attack of insanity;
6. suffering from constitutional psychopathic inferiority;
7. suffering from chronic alcoholism.

I told the doctor that I'd probably been accused of being at least one of the above, but never in a clinical register. She didn't laugh.

paperwork, part 1

So: I have a residence permit.

Actually, I have had a residence permit for months now. This permit was issued on 2 May 2006. I wasn't even a doctoral candidate then.

A long, long time ago, back in January, I sent a lot of paperwork (including the only official copy of my birth certificate I possessed) and $107 to the Embassy of Botswana in Washington, D.C.

I never heard from them again.

I went on with my life, and came into Botswana under a 90-day tourist visa. Then I met up with a bunch of really helpful folks at UB, who told me that if I affiliated myself with the University, they could push through at least a residence permit for me, if not the research visa.

So I have spent the last two weeks or so running around and collecting all the documents I would need to apply for a residence permit -- again. I figured that my first application was lost, or hung up with my research approval application, or still lying on someone's desk in D.C. Perhaps it had moved on to another life as a paper airplane.

This morning, I arrived at the office of the woman in charge of international student visas with all my paperwork, plus P500. She looked through it, and asked me why I didn't have more than a simple photocopy of my birth certificate. I explained that I had sent the official copy with my previous application. (Yes, I know, this was dumb. I didn't think it would be that much of a hassle to get another one. Besides, Botswana makes a big deal on paper, at least, about how you can't convert from a tourist visa to another kind of visa, and so I was in a hurry to submit the application last winter. This business about not being able to convert from one kind of visa to another is, I think, absolute rubbish.)

"You can't apply twice!" she said. "You've already paid P500 or its equivalent?"

I meekly explained that yes, I had applied in January, and had never heard one way or another about it. (I had thought maybe someone, somewhere would be happy enough with another P500 to push my paperwork where it needed to go.) She then goes sifting through the plastic baskets on her desk and, lo and behold, my research permit appears. Issued in May. Lying in a basket and waiting for me to find it four months later.

She explains that she never really knew who this permit was meant for, or which faculty or department it ought to go to. (None of this is listed on the permit, naturally. It reads: "This permit authorizes [name] to reside in Botswana for the purpose of being a researcher." I absolutely didn't expect anyone to take "being a researcher" as a legitimate reason for residing in Botswana, but, apparently, it worked.)

Anyway, it's mine. It has lots of pretty pink stamps all over it. Now perhaps I can use it and the other paperwork I've collected (such as my authorized letter of admission from the Graduate Faculty with its own pretty blue stamp) to bolster my next application to the Ministry of Health's IRB.

a love/hate relationship

Things I like about here:

1. Long life (UHT) mik. I love this stuff. Maybe it's total nostalgia from being in Germany as a child, but I really think it tastes better. Even the 2% stuff tastes better. And you can stock up on it when the price is down, and it just sits there until you're ready to open it. No more realizing at 11pm that there's no milk for tea in the morning! Why don't they sell this stuff in the states? Anyone?
   
2. Lunch on the side of the road for P10 (appx. $1.66). A guy I met yesterday called this "African McDonald's", but that simply doesn't begin to do it justice. (There's not a single McDonald's in Botswana, by the by. KFC is the only American chain that has been allowed in. All the others are South African or local.) Anyway, around 11:30am, ladies arrive with their pots of food, which they lay out on folding tables. For P10, you get an enormous amount of food -- even more enormous if the particular lady serving you is tickled at having a lekhoa (white person) purchase food from her.
   
   It seems to be your choice of starch, two pieces of meat, and a small helping of perhaps three salads. The meat seems to be chicken most of the time, fried or in a curry. The starches include rice, corn porridge (pap or paletshe), a sorghum porridge (bogobe), and samp (corn & beans). The salads range from grated beetroot to potato salad to cooked greens (merogo ). You also get gravy (called "soup") and chakalaka. Yesterday's meal even included dessert, which was canned and fresh fruit in yogurt, but that's the first time I've found that.
   
   Your food is dished up for you, generally, into a styrofoam box. You can have it wrapped in a plastic bag, if you like. You pay your P10, take a plastic fork, and go on your way.
   
3. Unsweetened juices and other fruit products. You pay through the nose for these in the states. Not so here.
   
4. Greeting people is a serious business. I screwn this up out of habit all the time, but I rather like the practice of asking after people when you meet them, even if you've just seen them recently, if you just need a moment of their time, or if you don't know them from Adam.
   
5. Radio. I only hear it when I'm in the car, but I rather like listening to the radio in Setswana. I can't understand much -- really, just a word or two here and there -- but I like how it sounds, and I like to be able to listen to Setswana being spoken without worrying if I'm eavesdropping (or worrying that the content has anything at all to do with me).

Things I really don't like about here:

1. Early mornings. Batswana wake up early. OK, perhaps they really don't wake up any earlier than anyone else in the working world, but four years of graduate school has turned me into a night owl. Around here, I'd fit in better in the world if I got up at 7am. This means seriously curbing that late-night computer-game habit.
   
2. Honking. The combis (minibus-taxis) will honk at potential passangers. It's a way of saying, "Hey, need a lift?" As you can imagine, this leads to a lot of honking. It's part of the acoustic atmosphere of Gabs, but it still makes me jump, especially since I'm still accustoming myself to driving on the left, and particularly sensitive to signals from other drivers that I'm doing something I shouldn't.
   
3. Being asked to marry someone. This has actually happened only once so far. It happened at the University as I was waiting for the lift (elevator to you, Americans). The lift doors opened, a man came out, stopped the conversation he was having, and offered his hand to me, introducing himself as he did so. I shook his hand and told him my name. Then he asked me to marry him. I can take this all in good humor -- I had to haggle with the luggage handlers in Lagos who wanted to give me a husband instead of my suitacse -- but I hope this doesn't forespell a trend.
   
4. Spiders. Some of you heard about the spider as big as my hand that appeared on the wall of my toilet when it rained a week or so ago. Not my idea of a good time, but, I'm told, Botswana has few poisonous varieties of spider. Nevertheless, there are more of them inside my house from time to time than I would prefer.
   
5. No Grape-Nuts. I'm not going to pout too much about my breakfast cereal of choice. Pro-Nutro's not bad, and the back of the box serves as a reading lesson in Afrikaans. I do miss the crunch, though, and I found boxed cereals in southern Africa are far, far sweeter than anything I want to eat in the morning.