Buses, ghosts, and combi sprints

A few weeks ago I went to the lovely town of Kanye (yes, I was incredibly excited about the name) with my neighbor Lorato as my counterpart so that the two of us could attend a GrassRoot Soccer training. What is GrassRoot Soccer? It’s an NGO that uses the popularity of soccer to teach young people about HIV. That sounds a little bit counterintuitive, but the program actually works really well. There are 12 different lessons and you use different games to teach anything from the risks of having multiple concurrent partners, to the fact that you cannot tell whether or not a person has HIV just by looking at them. I loved this training because our Batswana counterparts were just as invested and enthusiastic as the volunteers. Anyway, I had been struggling to find a way to broach these uncomfortable and very serious topics with young people in my village and I feel like this method is a good place to start.

The journey home was quite the saga. I ended up taking 4 buses and traveling for 10 hours total to get back. I love that I can hop on a bus in Botswana and go anywhere for a reasonable price, but those long rides can get old fast. Whenever I get too grumpy and feel like complaining, I try to remind myself how much harder it would be if I was six foot four like my brother Steve. On one of these buses, a woman across the isle from me was sharing a two-seater with her young daughter. The bus was pretty packed at this point. Then, a mosadi mogolo (a respectful term that literally means old woman) clambered into the bus with a toddler and a baby. Suddenly, that two-seater was now struggling to accommodate for five people. I felt so bad for them that I offered to let the toddler sit on my lap and the old woman gratefully handed the child over to me. The second she was in my hands, I knew I had made a stupid mistake. The little girl suddenly started bawling, screaming, and scrambling with all her might to get away from me. I keep forgetting that with children under five there is pretty good chance they will be terrified of me. We hastily traded children and I was now holding a slightly squirmy, but calm baby girl. She spent a few minutes staring at my hands before tentatively petting them and playing with my fingers. I get pet surprisingly frequently by children (and sometimes adults), I guess the novelty of the color of my skin never quite wears off. I always find it interesting to watch little kids prod my arms and pet my hands as if to make sure I’m real and not some kind of ghost. And my hair, of course, is just too much fun to pass up. If I sit for too long in front of little girls in my village I’ll end up with a dozen braids in a few minutes.

Anyway, when I finally, finally, FINALLY got to my shopping village to wait for my fourth and last bus of the day, I got to participate in one of my least favorite rituals. If by some misfortune I happen to be in my shopping village on a busy Friday or a holiday weekend or the end of the month when everyone gets paid, I get to take part in what I like to internally call ‘combi sprints’. A combi is like a van that is used as a small bus when traveling short distances. Since there’s a fair amount of travel to and from my village, our combis tend to be a bit bigger than the norm, but are still rarely large enough to accommodate all the passengers. Since I arrived in my village almost six months ago, I have tried to figure out when the buses come and go, but I get a different answer from every person I ask. So, when I finish my shopping or traveling and am ready to go home, I sit and I wait.  While I’m waiting, I do my best to position myself and my bags so I have a good shot at getting a seat on the combi. It never seems like it will be much of a problem, since there are only a few people standing around, but it must be some kind of optical illusion I haven’t gotten the hang of yet. I’ll be standing there wondering if I should put my backpack down because my shoulders are aching, when someone at the other end of the parking lot will whistle. Suddenly, everyone jumps into action and dozens of people run over to get in line as fast as possible. There’s a lot of jostling and angling for a better spot, but eventually people settle and we wait for the combi to arrive. However, once the combi does arrive and opens its doors, any pretense of order falls apart. There’s a mad rush towards the door as everyone tries to squeeze in as fast as possible. Some of the people at the back of the line will give up and rush to the open windows to drop a plastic bag of groceries on one of the seats. (In Botswana, all you have to do to mark a seat as yours is to leave something on it.) If by some stroke of good luck I manage to get onto the bus in time, I try to find a seat and begin awkwardly trying to decide where to put my gigantic backpacking bag. Eventually we all cram in and, when no one else can fit, the combi starts easing out of lot with the door gradually sliding shut. I sit there and greet the people around me and then reassure myself that this last ride of the day will only be 30 minutes long. When I get to my stop, I launch my bag out of the combi and clamber out after it. I’m sweaty, exhausted, and relieved to be back in my quiet home. I greet my neighbors as I walk to my house and am overjoyed to find my kitten waiting for me inside. I put my things down and congratulate myself for successfully making it through the combi sprints again.