SMS decoding guide

What some of you know as "texting" is called "SMS-ing" in Botswana. "SMS" stands for "short message service." What you may not know is the lengths to which people will go to abbreviate their SMS's.

Cell phones are very popular in Botswana. Landlines are difficult and expensive to install, and the installation process, from what I've gathered, is not generally accomplished expediently. While some cell phone companies offered pre-paid contracts, they all seem to offer the more popular pay-as-you-go option, whereby one purchases a phone and a SIM card, and purchases units of airtime as needed. Networks sell units by means of scratch cards, which are available for purchase in a range of denominations, from P10 cards to P100 cards (that come with a P20 bonus).

SMS-ing is popular because it tends to be cheaper than calling, and therefore one uses one's store of minutes more slowly. But, since one is charged by the length of one's message, this urge to conserve units also leads some people to configure their written messages so as to use as few letters as possible. I've become accustomed to the rather predictable "b4" and "2morrow," the "r u there?" and "c u later."

Yesterday, however, I received a message that, at first glance, threw me for a loop. It read:

Ok. No prblm. U wl let me knw wen u r free nd c f m fre.

Admittedly, I was driving when I glanced at this, and it looked like a jumble of letters. Given a few moments to study it, it became clear that the author meant: "OK, no problem. You will let me know when you are free and see if I'm free." The fascinating part is how many letters one can let fall out of any given sentence and still get the point across.

right back atcha

So, I've been sitting in on a Beginning Setswana course at UB. It meets three evenings a week for four weeks. It's a little disorganized, but not horribly so, and the teacher is both very good and very sweet.

Now, I don't really need Beginning Setswana -- at least, I don't need to go through the greetings for the umpteenth time. We haven't really covered material that's new to me, although I must admit the review has been quite helpful. I've found the course's real utility to be in the fact that it seems to encourage me to at least try out my broken Setswana in everyday situations.

This has led me to the following observation. When I manage to say something in Setswana, at least half the time the Setswana-speaker to whom I've spoken repeats back to me exactly what I've said, and then chuckles.

Example:

A: O tswa kae? (Where do you come from?)
B: Ke tswa kwa America. (I come from America)
A: 'Ke tswa kwa America.' Ha, ha, ha...

Sometimes the conversation continues in Setswana. (More often than not my Setswana breaks down mid-conversation; Batswana speak quickly, and it's hard to keep up.) Sometimes this happens more than once in a given exchange. I really don't take it personally -- it's not malicious, or even mocking, laughter. It's more the sort of laugh you give when your five-year-old manages to use a four-syllable word, or when your cat dances on its hind legs: a mixture of appreciation, amusement and dismissal.

That said, I really don't mind, because I get enough positive feedback for even attempting to converse in Setswana, however feebly, that it rather rolls off my back.

adrenaline

So, before I got Methodius, I had noticed that there was a tortoiseshell-looking cat that roamed our yard from time to time, slinking along the walls and napping under my or my landlord's cars. I was a therefore a bit leery about letting M frolic unsupervised in the yard for the first few weeks, though he eventually figured out how to get out through a window I generally leave open at night for a breeze. That said, I would still shut the window and essentially lock him in the house while I was gone, partly because I didn't trust him not to get into trouble, and partly because he didn't know how to get back in through the window. I'd been told by the friend who gave him to me that M doesn't always flee when it's in his interest to do so, and this tortoiseshell-looking cat didn't exactly look like the forgiving type.

M's a smart kitty, and he figured out pretty quickly how to get back through the window via an upturned bucket I had placed beneath it. He tends to stay in at night, I think, since he generally wakes me up. But what do I know? He has generally been coming and going as he pleases these days, though I don't think he has left the compound (for which am grateful). And though I've been keeping my ears peeled when he's out, he hasn't really gotten into trouble...

... until tonight.

M was outside, prowling around, and I heard a noise. It might have been the noise of two cats making angry noises at each other, but I couldn't tell. I went outside, listened, and called for M. Nothing. He doens't always come immediately, and I couldn't know whether he hadn't just come in through the window. I heard more noises, which turned out to be someone showering in the next house. Still no M.

Then I saw a cat that looked bigger than M slinking along the far wall. That started to worry me. Had M been badly hurt by that cat? Was he bleeding somewhere? I couldn't hear any hurt kitty noises, either, but did that mean he had been hurt so badly that he couldn't even cry?

As I was standing there, peering into the darkness and wondering just how bad the situation had got, M staggered into doorway, and shook himself, spattering some liquid on my foot. This put me through the roof: I couldn't see him, and I was afraid it was blood. I brought him inside, and after a thorough check (which he didn't really appreciate), I realized that it was only water. He was pretty soggy for a cat, particularly on his belly, but he wasn't wet through. He seemed annoyed rather than injured, and between my attentions with a tea-towel and his assiduous bathing, the two of us managed to sort him out. The little bundle of fur is asleep on my lap as I type this.

My guess is that he encountered the other cat, and somehow wound up in the mostly empty swimming pool that lies alongside my little cottage. The pool has collected some rainwater lately, and that's the only place I can think that he could have gotten himself so wet. And while I'm greatly relieved that he's no worse for wear, I'm glad at least that I'm a single woman in the field with a kitten rather than a single woman in the field with a child. Yikes.

plants and papers

Last week was extremely busy -- or at least I was physically occupied. Two weeks ago, I learned that a team was coming to Gabs to train health workers, and I asked to sit in on the trainings. This seriously chewed up the week, what with getting up at half six, being at the training most of the day, and then trying to take care of the rest of my life in the evenings. Is it any wonder I caught a cold?

One of the reasons I was up early last week was because on Monday, I got a call from the local garden centre. This garden centre sports a lovely tea garden. Underneath the chalkboard on which the menu is posted is usually a large potted plant bearing the sign, "You could win this plant!" The garden centre holds a drawing each month for the plant in question. Now, I don't exactly remember entering this contest, but I must have done so at some point, because the garden centre was calling to tell me I'd won.

The centre opened at 7:30am, so I had a one hour window in which to pick up the plant and bring it back home before scooting off to the training. I absolutely misheard the name I was given on the phone; the woman to whom I was meant to speak turned out to be Maikutlo, which, I was told, meant "feelings" in Setswana. Maikutlo and I had a brief chat, a good portion of which was in Setswana, and then I heighed for home with my plant.

Botswana, said a friend in response to this story, is the place where people you know actually win things. Between last month's trivia night at the pub (wherein six of us walked away with P500 to share) and the plant, I'd say I'm doing pretty well.

I've been going to introductory Setswana classes at UB. I paid for them, and there's no intermediate class being offered right now, so I figured I would go and try very hard not to annoy everyone else in the room by being that kid in the back of the room who knows all the answers. It's been mostly review for me, though some of the vocabulary is new, but it seems to have the effect of encouraging me to try conversing in Setswana as I go about my daily business. That itself seems worth the $100.

The other news that came to me while I was at last week's training was that I was scheduled to give a paper this Thursday. Yes, this Thursday, the 16th. And I only found out about it because a friend was running an errand in the History Department and happened to look at the schedule. Now, one of my local advisors is in the department, and suggested some weeks ago that I give a paper. I agreed, but told him that I would like to wait until, say, March or April whenI would presumably have some data to work with. So much for waiting... and so much for advance notice.

Saturday I was wrapped up in a brunch and a poetry slam and getting some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, I sat down to revise my masters thesis, and almost immediately my nose started running. By the time I woke up yesterday, I had a full grown cold on my hands.

Now, let me also say that finding a decongestant in Gaborone is no small task. I did eventually find one, but it has also made me a general space cadet. (You may already have noticed that from the narrative style of this post.

I mailed the paper out Sunday night, and I actually just had a good chat with a mentor/colleague about how I might want to shape it towards publication (and to which publication I'd want to submit it). She seems to think it could be publishable, and hers was the feedback toward which I've been looking most seriously. If I stay on this decongestant, though, I may have to record the seminar so I can listen later when my head is less cloudy.