Tatum's Adventures in Bechuanaland

Today my 12 year old neighbor and I hung out as usual. It was a nice day. For me, it was completely lazy and unproductive. Its been overcast lately. Clouds hide a hot truth and its warm, but not too sunny. There were no UV rays to sting me so I sat outside to wait for Tebogo. He should have gotten out of class soon. When he came, we talked, he skipped rope, and then we baked a cake. He slipped away to run home for a while as I put the pound cake in a loaf pan and placed it in the oven. By the time Tebogo came back, he sat at the coffee table in the sitting room and wrote a letter to his mother. He wouldn’t let me read it but he said that he was running away and leaving her. “I can’t stay in this situation any longer” he said. Parenting is hard, I’ve told him. Being 12 is hard. Tebogo is confused on the difference between discipline and abuse. I didn’t take him seriously and continued in the kitchen. Eventually, I sat down on the couch to read a book and chat with Tebogo, who is very obviously middle class and privileged. Once he finished his manifesto, he folded it, handed it to me and said “please give this to Neo.” Neo is his mother and he always calls her Neo. They’re on a first name basis which is strange in the United States. This is just as bizarre in Botswana. Then, Tebogo walked out of the door, went home and gathered his bags (that had already been packed) and started off down the dirt path. I read the letter and it was melodramatic and peppered with misspelled words. In short, the letter said “I hate you, I’m running away, don’t try and find me or I’ll kill myself and you’re no longer my mother.” Oh, and he also said “you abuse me.” Tebogo and I have had the abuse conversation before. He knows his rights although he doesn’t understand his responsibilities. I made a quick phone call to Julie to ask what I should do. Tebogo wouldn’t talk to me as I chased him down the road with everyone in my ward watching attentively. Julie and I deduced that chasing after him was probably a good idea. Tebogo himself was giggling and he wouldn’t tell me where he was going. I have reason to believe that I looked ridiculous but I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually I let him walk off with a huge duffel bag over his shoulder, a plastic bag in his hand, and a scraggly dog named Tiger trailing after him. He walked down the train tracks into a flat sunset all the colors of cotton candy and newborn babies. When I got home I called his mother who is nice but really laid back. She wasn’t too worried. If she was worried she didn’t’ sound worried. She said he was upset (obviously) because she yelled at him for not doing his chores. She told him that if he didn’t do his chores, she would beat him. His school uniform had steeped in a bucket for two days, now marinating in its own dirt. He was supposed to wash it. His other uniform has been on the clothes line for two days. “He’s going over a friend’s house over that side” she said. I halfway expected her to sound concerned, distressed, angry, to say “off with his head,” but she didn’t. So here I am sitting at my desk writing this with a half baked but all the way burned cake in my oven, and a runaway 12 year old on my mind.
Tebogo’s mother came to my house that night. We spent the evening riding around the village in a boxy white four door car that looked strangely similar to a Volkswagen Rabbit, trying to find her son. Maybe it was the mefloquine, but I swear a saw a Cheshire cat materialize, grinning against the black night. The darkness swallows people, cars, cows, donkeys—everything. All matter is absorbed into the blackness, but I saw a wide toothy grin in a thorny acacia tree and that was him laughing at my American notions in Botswana, laughing because the needle on my compass no longer points to the N. The N now stands for normal, not north.
The longer I’m in Botswana the more I feel like I’ve stepped through the looking glass and slid down the rabbit hole because this is opposite world. To say “I’m coming” means I’m leaving. Rather than “I’ll be right back,” or “I’m coming back,” people just show you their backs and say “I’m coming” as they walk out the door. Opposite world. Cars drive on the opposite side of the road. The white rabbit holds a pocket watch, running. Late. Always late, only to get into the office by half 7 and drink tea until tea time. Productivity isn’t judged by how much work you do. It’s based on attendance; on sociability. Ironically, if you don’t participate in the social activities, you can’t get anything done. You’re blacklisted. You have to participate in a never ending tea time. Stuff the pocket watch with butter, jam, and a lump of sugar, so you can get things done efficiently. Wind it up, dip it in tea, and bite into it. I walk into the main office in Good Hope and there is a dormouse, milliner, and hare, sipping tea, chatting, punctual. These are necessary pleasantries.
Mud hut living would be easier. Tradition and modernity wouldn’t cross paths. The point where western culture and Batswana culture intersect is the crossroads that leaves me confused; a Cheshire cat points in opposite directions with that mischievous mouth spread wide in a toothy grin. The Cheshire cat smiles devilishly. He smiles because sometimes I’m larger than life, arms and legs poking out of the white rabbit’s house—the Lekoa knows everything—and other times I’m miniscule, generally in domestic tasks and the social arena. In Botswana, I’m nothing short of a social retard. Situations are trivial yet somehow they’re serious, profoundly serious, like the pre tea time party in the main office. Coming to work late is unacceptable. Punctuality is important, but productivity isn’t. Politeness is paramount. Drink your tea. This is cultural. Traditional Batswana culture in an office setting. This is the way it is. This is the way it works. This works. Deep down the rabbit hole. Like Alice, anytime I ask “Why” (Ka gore eng?) I only end up more confused. Don’t ask. Just observe. Participate. Your gut will tell you why things make sense. I’m just waiting to stumble across the hookah smoking caterpillar lounging on a mushroom to ask “who are you?” because I don’t know. There’s a strange chrysalis going on. I hope I come out pretty but right now I’m gooey at the core, half baked, like my pound cake; wet and mushy in the middle. Unfinished.
I remind myself that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland weren’t just folly. They were philosophy cloaked in absurdity. Philosophical folly. Deep and superficial. Deep down a rabbit hole and the sequel was through a mirror, a completely shallow surface that reflects opposites. In America, I’m black. In Africa, I’m (Lekoa) white. Opposite world. No matter how bizarre things get, they’re always profound and so I’m careful to offer insight. I am careful to offer a solution because I just may end up cuddling the wailing baby that turns out to be a squealing piglet, or chasing the bratty 12 year old down the road and through the black night in a white VW Rabbit. We found Tebogo at close to 10pm that night over his friend Edward’s house. Tebogo told Edward that his mother was out of town and he needed a place to stay for two or three days. 12 year olds are cognitively half baked the world over, they think they’re smarter than they really are. Dumb creatures, turning into adults but not quite there, wrapped in a cocoon and all mushy inside. Likewise, I’m mushy and gooey on the inside, confused as to why this 12 year old has broken the mold, run away, disobeyed his mother, wrote her a fowl letter, put me in an awkward position as the disruptor and bearer of bad news. Is it my influence or just his bad decision? The caterpillar asks me the hard questions, “who are you,” “what are you doing?” “what is the impact of your influence?” The Cheshire cat disappears but those grinning teeth are ever present and I can’t bear to ask “why?”