I live on the edge of the community, it’s about a 20minute
walk from the clinic and about a mile away from the library. This isn’t an
issue to me, because I really enjoy walking, but for some reason I am just out
of the radius of how far people are willing to walk to come visit. Where some
Volunteers get lots of people “checking” on them on a regular basis, I don’t
really have that. For the most part I don’t mind that so much because I’m
really only home before 7:15am and after 5pm, and on the weekends and the
greater portions of those times are times I want to be alone, or I think I want
to be alone.
Anyways, Saturday I had a visitor. Her name is Pelo (“heart”
in Setswana) and we met on the bus and struck up a fun conversation. She has
come to check me a few times, and usually we just end up talking about the
differences between the US and Botswana. This was the first time she had
actually been inside my house, so the plethora of pictures and letters that
plaster my walls were very much a fascination to her. What ensued was a two
hour conversation that ran the gamut of emotions. I got angry when she insisted
that her perception of the US was more accurate than mine, i.e. “It is easy to
become famous in America, you are wrong.” I was agitated and also slightly tickled
at some of her broad sweeping statements, “All white people do look alike, you can’t tell the
difference between any one of you.” I laughed when she was perplexed by how
much grass carpeted the outdoor scenes in my photos, and promised that if she
came to the US to visit that I would show her snow.
Then we got to the part of the conversation that I knew
would come. She asked to see, and this is exactly how she phrased it, my “what.”
She asked a few times to see my “what” and refused to elaborate more than that.
I finally figured out that she was asking to see a picture of my boyfriend,
which I don’t have. I do have a picture of my ex, so I showed her that, while
explaining that I didn’t think it was necessary for someone to have a boyfriend
or a husband in order to be happy. This concept was so foreign to her that she
began to insist that I must still be in love with my ex. I tried to convince
her by saying that my ex has a new girlfriend, and that we talked a few time
while I was here, and that I wished him well, but am very much not in love with
him.
“So you still talk with him, and you have a picture of
him...I understand” she said with a knowing smile that made me want to wipe the
condescending smirk off her face with a frying pan. I told her that she didn’t
understand, and she insisted that she did. I have had enough experience with 17
year old girls to know this was a fight I wasn’t going to win, so though I was
incredibly frustrated I let it slide and moved on to a new topic. I asked why,
in this culture, people were not okay with someone not having a boyfriend or
girlfriend? She said that people who say they don’t want someone must be
sleeping around. Those are the options, case closed; you either want someone or
you want everyone, wanting just yourself is not an option.
At that point a taxi driver I had exchanged contact
information with called me from Palapye. I got this guys number and gave him
mine because it is always good t have a few cab numbers in your phone. When it
became clear that he was calling to flirt I cut the conversation short and hung
up the phone. Her first reaction: “that is your Motswana boyfriend?” I told her
“no”, and that I had no interest in having a boyfriend in Botswana, or America.
She started to tell me about her boyfriend, and how he was pressuring her into
sex, and that she had told him “no.” I gave her a high five and told her that
she had EVERY RIGHT IN THE WORLD to refuse to have sex until she felt like she
was ready. She said he told her he would find someone else to be with. She told
me that she thought she was going to have to leave him soon, because she didn’t
want to have sex with him.
It wasn’t until after she left that the true weight of the
conversation we had, had really hit me. This culture, or how she had experienced
and lived within this culture, was one where she was required to have a
boyfriend in order to avoid the label of being a lose girl, the type of girl
that sleeps around and gets pregnant. Within this relationship she was required
to have, she was being pressured and threatened with sex which, would again put
her at risk for pregnancy. Now, we have talked about using a condom, so I hope
when she is ready to have sex she will use one. But I can also imagine there is
probably a correlation between boys who pressure their girlfriends to have sex,
and boys who pressure their girlfriends to have sex without a condom. I have no
data to back this up, it just makes logical sense to me.
It was an enlightening conversation, and keyed me into the idea that no matter how much time you spend in a place you still have a lot to learn. More thoughts on this later.
Claire
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