pula

Cultural Lesson #3:

In Setswana, the word ‘pula’ means rain and rain is a symbol of health and happiness for the country, as life here is traditionally dependent on receiving adequate rainfall. Fittingly, the currency in Botswana is the ‘pula’. Also, when a people visit Botswana, locals will ask them to ‘bring us the rain’, which figuratively means ‘bring us good tidings’. As chance would have it, it was raining on the day we arrived in Botswana, and that physical manifestation of such an important symbol made our arrival that much more poignant.

So throughout this trip my ceiling has had a small leak. I had a bucket underneath it and it didn’t seem to be a problem.  On Monday night, however, there were torrential rains here in Gaborone (Gabs, for short) and the leak grew exponentially and instead of harmlessly falling in the bucket it was now hitting my bed and most of the floor. In retrospect I should have considered myself fortunate because I was getting ‘pula’ brought right to my room, but at the time all I could think about was finding a place to sleep. Luckily there was an empty room in my flat so I brought my pillow over there and slept for the night. I went back in the morning and my room was flooded. The bucket I had put down was filled to the brim (which meant that about 12” of rain had hit it) and anything I had left on the ground was soaked (luckily nothing valuable).

I explained the situation to my resident assistant and she helped me do the paperwork to permanently switch to the new room. It appears to be a minor problem but it really highlights some of the bureaucratic shortcomings at the University. My flatmate is a student representative for the Office of Student Welfare and he says that he has known about the leaks for sometime and the person who had my flat before me had moved out because of them. He says that the problem should have been fixed long ago, but the Student Welfare Office doesn’t consult its student representatives. He lamented the lack of communication and I felt his pain because the international students have dealt with multiple setbacks already on account of dismal interdepartmental communication.

The day got much better from there, however. Derek and I had made contact with a local medical center and they asked us back this morning to begin volunteering. The clinic is a small private practice with one general practitioner and one physical therapist. They don’t have any nurses and so Derek and I will be helping to streamline the flow of patients by taking vital signs and patient histories. We spent most of the time today practicing taking each other’s blood pressure and meeting the secretaries. It was more or less the ideal volunteer setting Derek and I had pictured. We will get to interact with local patients and learn about the intricacies of medicine in Botswana and how it may differ from the U.S., while getting hands-on experience. The two doctors said they could use us as much as possible, but that our hours don’t need to be set in stone, which made the position that much more attractive.

From the clinic Derek and I went to our Human Physiology course, which yet again lacked any actual course material as the professor had to spend half of the hour reading off our ID numbers so that we could yell out which lab section we were in. You would think it would have been easy for the registrar office to provide that list and prevent the wasting of a class period, but then again the bureaucracy here is truly mysterious.

After our Setswana course, it was Robin’s and my turn to cook for the gang again. Robin came up with the great idea of doing breakfast food for dinner, because American style breakfasts are nowhere to be found on campus. I was on the eggs and Robin was on the potatoes as we fried up some country-style goodness.

Cheesy eggs mixed with onions, green peppers and smoked ham, served with fried breakfast potatoes and bread (we don’t have a toaster) for dinner…

p.s. I wanted to acknowledge Emily Prazak who was one of the girls I lived with last summer. She introduced me to peanut butter on apples and it has been a mainstay of my diet here in Bots.