lifestyles
I have several ambitious new entries planned, but for the moment I think I'm going to let them lie and instead relate some peculiarities of white life in Botswana (tongue-in-cheek, don't take me too seriously).
Exhibit A:
THE MUKWA LEAFS
Botswana's only roller-hockey team, the Mukwa Leafs, play in Maun and have their very own rink (“Mukwa Gardens”) which hosts the annual “Tequila Cup” tournament. This amazing Kalahari phenomenon was started by S, who is the partner of R, a woman who works part-time for Kuru... which is how I found myself chasing two small blond boys across a patchy cement roller-rink, trying not to injure them or myself as I charged along on roller blades for the first time in about 10 years. The game, sadly, was not “tag” - it was “you chase us! And then you chase us again!” I am familiar with this game from my time as an elementary school teacher.
The Mukwa Leafs are currently seeking funding to resurface their roller rink with some kind of synthetic tiling – total cost estimated at $20,000 US, each tile $1.50. Please let me know if you have any wealthy hockey fanatics as friends. It's for a good cause – I almost tripped and smashed my face in on a roughly-patched crack in the cement.
Exhibit B:
GHANZI DISTRICT DEBUTANTES
Not really. If only there really was a debutante ball. However, nearly as good, there was the 18th birthday party of the daughter of a prominent local landowner, for which purpose her parents rented out a local safari lodge and invited all of Ghanzi district. “In Ghanzi, if you don't invite someone, you will never hear the end of it,” her mother sighed theatrically, as I watched her double-check the computer-printout pages of invitees and their phone numbers, with RSVP status noted carefully beside each name.
I had been invited somewhat by accident, and managed to snag a ride with some other Kuru employees. What to expect? I had no idea. Not dresses and white gloves and waltzing; Africa is never formal. Drinking, definitely. We pulled up and I stepped out of the car. The parking lot of the lodge was packed to capacity with pick-up trucks and battered land rovers, and the path to the bar wound through thick-trunked palm trees festooned with fairy lights. When I entered the bar itself I had my answer to what constitutes a rural-Botswana debutante ball: not dresses and white gloves and waltzing, but instead belly-baring shirts, pink-sequined bunny ears, and the “sucky-sucky,” a strange Afrikaaner two-step that (for some reason utterly unfathomable to the non-Afrikaaner) they all love to dance.
I milled around looking for food, and quickly realized the strict divide between adults and children. There doesn't seem to be much of a twenty-something stage in Botswana, be it white farmers or Batswana (not sure if this is due to less of a university/intern period – or less of a philosophy of needing to “find yourself,” which I suppose is the rather pointless activity that most of we twenty-somethings spend our time on). People are fond of saying “You're youth till you're thirty!” and indeed, the party was divided into two groups, which I am going to title Pink Sequined Bunny Ears, and The Price of Cattle.
The youth, whether they be 15 or 25, were dedicated to dancing, drinking, and making googly eyes at each other, generally sans conversation. The adults were dedicated to discussing their children and the finer points of maintaining a cattle ranch and associated cattle-rancher lifestyle (“Jim is having his 50th soon – I'm wondering, how much meat will we need for the braai? And if we use Sarah's campsite, I don't know, it's five hours drive and we'll have to bring all of the equipment...” “So you're trying ___ cattle? I had a friend in Namibia who tried those, it didn't work out...” “Oh I know, repairing fences is a pain...” “I loved the last Dan Brown novel!”)
All of which was very interesting, but gave me little hope for my social future at this sort of party. Then I found a twenty-something who was going to university in South Africa and seemed equally out-of-place among the pink sequined bunny ears, and I spent the rest of the night chatting with her in a corner, drinking wine which her father had kindly purchased for us – really, who am I to ignore the benefits of extended childhood?
Exhibit A:
THE MUKWA LEAFS
Botswana's only roller-hockey team, the Mukwa Leafs, play in Maun and have their very own rink (“Mukwa Gardens”) which hosts the annual “Tequila Cup” tournament. This amazing Kalahari phenomenon was started by S, who is the partner of R, a woman who works part-time for Kuru... which is how I found myself chasing two small blond boys across a patchy cement roller-rink, trying not to injure them or myself as I charged along on roller blades for the first time in about 10 years. The game, sadly, was not “tag” - it was “you chase us! And then you chase us again!” I am familiar with this game from my time as an elementary school teacher.
The Mukwa Leafs are currently seeking funding to resurface their roller rink with some kind of synthetic tiling – total cost estimated at $20,000 US, each tile $1.50. Please let me know if you have any wealthy hockey fanatics as friends. It's for a good cause – I almost tripped and smashed my face in on a roughly-patched crack in the cement.
Exhibit B:
GHANZI DISTRICT DEBUTANTES
Not really. If only there really was a debutante ball. However, nearly as good, there was the 18th birthday party of the daughter of a prominent local landowner, for which purpose her parents rented out a local safari lodge and invited all of Ghanzi district. “In Ghanzi, if you don't invite someone, you will never hear the end of it,” her mother sighed theatrically, as I watched her double-check the computer-printout pages of invitees and their phone numbers, with RSVP status noted carefully beside each name.
I had been invited somewhat by accident, and managed to snag a ride with some other Kuru employees. What to expect? I had no idea. Not dresses and white gloves and waltzing; Africa is never formal. Drinking, definitely. We pulled up and I stepped out of the car. The parking lot of the lodge was packed to capacity with pick-up trucks and battered land rovers, and the path to the bar wound through thick-trunked palm trees festooned with fairy lights. When I entered the bar itself I had my answer to what constitutes a rural-Botswana debutante ball: not dresses and white gloves and waltzing, but instead belly-baring shirts, pink-sequined bunny ears, and the “sucky-sucky,” a strange Afrikaaner two-step that (for some reason utterly unfathomable to the non-Afrikaaner) they all love to dance.
I milled around looking for food, and quickly realized the strict divide between adults and children. There doesn't seem to be much of a twenty-something stage in Botswana, be it white farmers or Batswana (not sure if this is due to less of a university/intern period – or less of a philosophy of needing to “find yourself,” which I suppose is the rather pointless activity that most of we twenty-somethings spend our time on). People are fond of saying “You're youth till you're thirty!” and indeed, the party was divided into two groups, which I am going to title Pink Sequined Bunny Ears, and The Price of Cattle.
The youth, whether they be 15 or 25, were dedicated to dancing, drinking, and making googly eyes at each other, generally sans conversation. The adults were dedicated to discussing their children and the finer points of maintaining a cattle ranch and associated cattle-rancher lifestyle (“Jim is having his 50th soon – I'm wondering, how much meat will we need for the braai? And if we use Sarah's campsite, I don't know, it's five hours drive and we'll have to bring all of the equipment...” “So you're trying ___ cattle? I had a friend in Namibia who tried those, it didn't work out...” “Oh I know, repairing fences is a pain...” “I loved the last Dan Brown novel!”)
All of which was very interesting, but gave me little hope for my social future at this sort of party. Then I found a twenty-something who was going to university in South Africa and seemed equally out-of-place among the pink sequined bunny ears, and I spent the rest of the night chatting with her in a corner, drinking wine which her father had kindly purchased for us – really, who am I to ignore the benefits of extended childhood?
posted by Jenn at
8:08 PM
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