Am I really in Africa?

Sometimes it is difficult to believe I am in Africa. We watch American films, the BBC, Sky news; we eat the same kind of food we would eat at home- maybe less stodge and more salads but just the same. Mainly cos I am cooking it so it is what I know. We live in a house with running water and electricity. We get newspapers and we have internet. It is certainly nothing like the scenes we get on TVs at home about Africa. There are no huge squatters’ tents; there are no refugee camps, no torn limbs because of land mines and I don’t look out onto a dusty plain full of giraffes and lions as you see on that African vet TV programme whose name escapes me. We live in a town that looks a lot like Glenrothes. It has shopping malls; street lights, roads, housing estates and roundabouts, there are traffic jams at rush hour, car dealerships, bars restaurants and nightclubs. Mercedes are ten a penny. Lots of people drive four by fours.

Then something happens to remind you. Like people come to the electric gate everyday to ask for piece work or food. Or you find a snake in the garden, or you see a bush baby in the trees at night, or you go to the petrol station and they have run out of petrol. There are street traders who sell sweeties and biscuits singly. (I remember being able to buy a single cigarette from shops at home a very long time ago). There are street phones where someone with a phone lets you make a call for a price. You get offered impala stew or crocodile strips at the local restaurant as a speciality. You can briaa (barbecue) every day, not just twice a year when the sun shines. People hold ‘bring and briaas’ here (and no I haven’t made a typo this has nothing to do with church fundraising. It is briaa at someone’s house where you bring your own food.)

Some of the women still wear traditional clothes, especially on a Sunday (but not the men or the young women. They wear western gear.) You see women pushing wheel barrows full of scrap metal they have found to sell. You see women cutting down reeds to make makeshift roofs for village houses. Women carry all sorts on their heads often very heavy loads. Children do run barefoot. In the villages most people have outside toilets. Donkeys pull heavy loads.

One day I was reading the paper, I realised that there was both capital and corporal punishment here. Flogging on your bare buttocks seems to be a favoured form of punishment. One young man was sentenced to 10 lashes on his bare buttocks for being a peeping tom in the student residences at the university in Gaborone (the capital city). This was I suppose slightly shocking for me but what was even more surprising was that the judge said that the young man rather than doing this kind of thing should use the internet to find porn sites to satisfy his need to watch. I laughed out loud. Can you imagine a judge saying that to a felon in Britain?

Another thing you see in the paper is lots are adverts for doctors who use ‘traditional methods and medicine’. They claim to cure all sots of things: making your heart’s desire fall in love with you; providing you with good luck in gambling; improve your erections and help you find work.
A wonderful mix of worlds and cultures.