Bread, Soup, and Motivation on the Side

*note: names have been changed

Although I was home and knew I would be home that afternoon, I left the letter we (and I am blatantly using the pronoun we incorrectly, as it should be I, but I is bitter right now) drafted earlier this week in a red folder with a blue post-it that read “MPHO.” Mpho is putting on an HIV/AIDS testing event in Dinatshana and I offered her my help. So excited to finally do something. So eager. Foolish, foolish Gomolemo. The early bird gets the worm but I got the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle when I spoke too soon.

I left the folder that held the letters outside. I secured it down with a red brick on the window ledge but in my mind, I slid it underneath the door; handed it to her hesitantly and with disgust using pliers to reach out and hold the letter, thereby blocking any proximity or an effluvium of vibes between us when she seized the letter from my cold, distant, pliered grasp. Distance. The subtle but gaping distance that you can’t place until well after you’ve accepted it politely. The distance of letters outside the house bolted down by a brick on the window ledge. That’s what I want to establish. I went for a 20 minute walk at noon, and then took a well deserved nap. Three hours later as I lay in bed reading a book of short stories fresh from a nap, I hoped I had missed Mpho. Distance. I knew I hadn’t but I read anyway and within 20 minutes I heard the creak of the metal door to my front fence and knew it was her knocking. As I laid there reading, I heard the red brick scrape under the force of her sloppy grip and I thought of the bread crumbs that spilled when she came over my house for tea two weeks back. The bread crumbs of the homemade whole wheat bread she ate with tea, as she talked shit about Mma Barolong and Lesego. I thought of how she left large nuggets of bread on my floor (I should have known then), how she scooted the coffee table closer to her on the couch. How she asked if I brought my tea set from home. How later on that day, she said “But I’m hungry too,” when I went to the restaurant and bought a Russian (Think Hebrew Nationals/ Polish sausage) and how I gave her P6—the Russian only cost P4 but she didn’t give me any change. None. She shoved it deep into her pocket past the lint and lining. I should have known. Fuck being polite. Fuck being rude. Distance. The polite, calculated, understated kind. That Batswana passive aggression.
When we went to the District AIDS Coordinators office, she roped me in with puppy dog eyes—those deeply shallow puppy dog eyes—and cried softly and whined pathetically, shamelessly appealing to Cathleen, a Peace Corps Volunteer, for money to host food at her event as if tears would soften her and get her to modify the district budget. “Bread. The people need bread.” When Cathleen left to pick up a fax, I tried to brainstorm ways that she could get bread donated from the bakery so testers in Dinatshana could have this bread that they needed so urgently. Suddenly, it went from bread, to “bread and soup. Soup isn’t very expensive. Soya Mince soup with bread.”
“But I thought you just needed Bread”
And her face changed from that droopy, barefaced pity and rumpled into prideful disgust because, as Mpho went on to say, you can’t give people bread. “Just dry bread? No. Nobody can eat just dry bread. They need soup too.” Her face imploded and crinkled up like a balled up piece of paper, at the suggestion. It was like I tried to offer the villagers of Dinatshana something that was less than; something inadequate like puppies begging at the foot of a table for scraps when these fat government employees had double decker sandwiches with tea during pointless meetings that would be followed by lavish lunches. While they factored that into the budget, I tried to offer the poor starving people in Dinatshana, dry bread?
“Well where are you going to get the funds for the soup?” I asked and her whole story melted like soft white bread in cheap MSG soup mix soup because I wasn’t going to give her shit out of my pocket. If her event was so special, she could either raise the money like Cathleen said, or she could cough up the pula for it. Cathleen suggested more sustainable approaches like encouraging people to test so they’d know their status and bringing a social worker with her so that people who qualified for assistance could get a monthly food basket. With free bread and soup, the problem in Botswana would persist. People will only show up for the food. Another one off event. Another freebie. Another message missed and eclipsed by the free food. The goal isn’t just to get people to test, but to get them talking. They can’t talk with their mouths full. Mpho refused to understand this. Her name was on the line. The villagers need bread. They also need soya mince soup and one time testing events and other villagers who are more motivated to do all the work for them. What they really need, is jobs and mobility. They need income generating projects. They need a reason to be motivated. Food is temporary. Motivation shouldn’t be the side dish but the main course. How are people’s lives better once the event is over? Their bellies are fuller, but they’ll be hungry tomorrow.
When I left the DAC office, I was emotionally spent because Mpho didn’t want to brainstorm ways to get bread, and soup, she wanted a handout from the government District AIDS Coordinator. Mpho is from Botswana. She’s from Dinatshana. She understands her village but I’m not Motswana, I don’t speak (fluent) Setswana. I don’t understand her village, but I do understand people’s emptiness, and the emptiness goes beyond their bellies. I see it at home in the inner city where its filled with 40oz of Colt 45 and metric measurements of illegal substances. In Botswana its filled with a carton of Chibuku. I see people who look lazy, but are perfectly capable. They’re not lazy. They’re unmotivated because they’ve been let down so many times. They’ve been disempowered. They’ve been served a little too much and in all the wrong ways. Handouts. A food basket here. A foodstamp there. They don’t know it, but they pay for it with their pride in a government office, interacting with a government employee smothered by work. Dragging themselves into the office to a Sisyphean ball of paperwork. No fieldwork, just paperwork. Handouts don’t give people a reason to get up in the morning—neither social workers nor needy villagers.
I wanted to get as far away from Mpho as possible, and stay away because she’s bad business but another part of me wants to show her what I see. Let her in on the secret without blaring it in her ear so loud that she becomes deaf. And so, the letters for her special HIV/AIDS testing event in Dinatshana are outside, on my window ledge, waiting for this to all blow over. Waiting for the next opportunity for improvement. Waiting to show her, not tell her, what I see.