Guest blog post: vacation time!

My parents came to visit Botswana! After a few wonderful days in Cape Town, I took the parentals and two of their close friends back to my village and then on a wonderful tour of northern Botswana. I asked my Dad to jot down a few of his thoughts about the visit to get an 'outsider' perspective on Botswana and the Peace Corps life.

So here it is:

Dad - guest blogger and intrepid traveler 

"My wife Benedicte and I went to visit our Peace Corps Volunteer daughter in Gobojango, which also gave us an opportunity to explore Botswana more broadly.  It is a fascinating country.  The highlight, of course, was the game parks.  We visited the Nata Sanctuary, the Okavango Delta, and Chobe National Park, and saw a wide array of animals and birds.  Particularly impressive to me was Botswana’s success in protecting its wildlife.  While elephants are endangered in many other countries, in Botswana they have the opposite problem: too many elephants.  The game parks themselves appeared will managed, but also noteworthy was the number of animals – elephants, giraffes, impalas – that roamed freely and apparently safely outside the parks.  

The view from Table Mountain in Cape Town

In addition, we spent a memorable night in Gobojango, the village where Tiphaine lives.   The visit gave us some insights into the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer and provoked some thinking about the Peace Corps and its mission.  My first impression is that the Peace Corps asks a lot of its volunteers, especially the younger ones who may not have significant prior work experience.  I knew that life as the only foreigner in a small rural village could be a challenge.  What I had not realized was how difficult the work could be for a Volunteer, especially at the beginning.   In many cases, the Volunteer arrives in a village and, while attached to a local institution (in Tiphaine’s case, the Gobojango Clinic), is essentially asked –without any supervision – to develop a work plan that extends well beyond the institution he or she is assigned to.  In Tiphaine’s case, this has meant developing contacts with, for example, the local school so that she can introduce projects or programs for the school.  This takes creativity, initiative, cultural sensitivity, and persistence in the face of inevitable frustrations.  Not everyone is successful, but it is evident to me that those who do succeed come away with an extraordinary set of skills that will serve them well in future endeavors, especially if they continue to focus on work in the field of development.

So the Peace Corps can be very good for the Volunteer.   But how good, or helpful, is it for the village, or more broadly, for the country as a whole?  On the face of it, the little projects the Volunteers introduce in their villages look pretty small-bore.  How much impact could they really have?   My sense is that, on an individual level, the impact is greater than one would think.  Without the Peace Corps, most of the people in Tiphaine’s small village of 2,200 people would have limited, if any, exposure to the broader world (and Americans).   The little kids who wander over to Tiphaine’s compound for her Wednesday night movies would have otherwise missed that experience, and understood much less about the world they live in.  The women who learn computer skills from Tiphaine might otherwise never have had a chance to develop these skills.   Her map project at the school is opening a window to the world that the participating children might otherwise never have seen.  When we arrived in her village after dark, villagers of all ages gathered at her compound to welcome us with a traditional Botswana barbecue, or braai.  There were several small children, at least one grandmother, a group of school teachers, and many other friends Tiphaine had made in her first six months in Gobojango.  They clearly appreciated Tiphaine’s presence in the village, and wanted to extend a warm welcome to her family.  The next morning we strolled around the village.  It was evident that she was well-known in the community.  I was a career diplomat who practiced diplomacy with political, economic and cultural elites in the capitals where I served.   A Peace Corps Volunteer practices in people-to-people diplomacy at the village level.   There is value to the work of both the diplomat and the volunteer, but Peace Corps volunteers reach people at a local level that diplomats never do.   And this is an endeavor that deserves our full support."