No Love

Anothter something posted against my better judgement...
She doesn’t love me. This sounds dramatic. It is dramatic. She only tolerates me. I’m okay but I’m more work. In the same fashion I always use when I’m emotionally flustered—feeling emotions, confused emotions that I can’t easily pinpoint, I’m just asking myself the same question over and over again. This isn’t a productive approach. Why doesn’t she like me? I can’t quite figure it out. It’s like turning into a complicated heady movie in the middle but you can’t figure out what’s going on. The characters seem strange and foolish. The plot doesn’t make sense to me, although it makes perfect sense. I just hadn’t been paying adequate attention. It all started, rather, I began to notice when I somehow finagled a way to get my counterpart to take me with her on assessments. We would go from house to house of the people who signed up for assistance and see if they qualified for government assistance. We stopped to assess a house and I asked the old lady who lived there with a big dog for a piece of her succulent growing in the garden. She gave it to me. Months later on an average day when Julie came to visit, my counterpart joined us. It was sunset and Julie and I sat on the porch talking while we watched the sun descend. It’s a big red hole in the sky that creeps behind the 5 canisters and then dissolves into clay colored sand. Everything is washed with shades of pink. Keitumetse never joins me when I sit in solitude watching the sun die. Never.
Keitumetse looked at my plant. It was the only thing I’d planted and it was tucked in the right hand corner of the dirt before my porch. She walked into the gate and pointed to the plant.
“Your plant. It is growing.”
It’s a light green succulent with rounded leaves on the bottom and pointed at the end—all of it fat with stored moisture and dusted with a natural white powder of some sort. She was right. It was growing. I’d hardly noticed. Tall stalks sprouted up from the center of each collection of fleshy bloated buds. From each stalk hung muted orange chandelier droplets that weren’t quite flowers but were very pretty. They deliberately drooped. Keitumetse, my counterpart, asked me in an uncharacteristically enthusiastic and friendly tone to tell Julie how far we had to go to get the plant. It was like an old friend cluing in a new one on our past escapades--remember the time when...?
That’s when I noticed it; Keitumetse was capable of being more than polite. With Julie on my porch Keitumetse took it a step further and was genuine. She just chose not to be that way with me although she was always polite. She always asked how my day was, as I stood by corner where our chain link fences meet. I would water my cilantro patch, and she’d stand on her side as I spoke. When I’d ask her how her day was, she’d reply “it was fine” and then head in the house. This is the extent of our social interaction and she was content with that. I'd finish watering my plants and think of schemes to make her like me.
But isn’t this what I wanted. I remember talking to a volunteer about how I didn’t want an “overbearing” counterpart. We were at a lodge in Moleps and my hands were curled around a lukewarm cup of tea. It was during training when I was still new to the Peace Corps and thought reckless debauchery beneath me. “I just want to do my thing” is what I said. And I meant it too, but when I can’t get my counterpart to even take me on assessments, I wonder. I wonder why God listened this time. Why doesn’t she like me? Find me amusing, at least? Is it because I’m black or is it just me? Both are viable options. Both are plausible. Maybe it’s just me. I’m not gregarious or particularly witty. The contrary. I’m socially awkward, especially in Botswana. My awkwardness isn’t charming here. I can’t bath in a bucket. This makes me dumb, not funny. I can’t hand wash clothes. This makes me doubly dirty, not out of my element. I’m borderline social retard and my counterpart holds me out at arms length. It’s probably just me. But she never liked me. She never disliked me. She never displayed any feeling for me—neighborly or professionally. It’s as if she received a numbing shot, an epidural that was delivered before I came and that’s what saves her from the pain of Peace Corps workshops or meetings. Until the Peace Corps came to her, she’d skillfully managed to be too busy reading magazines in the office after the morning rush. She has always displayed the same anbesol indifference; numb and only feeling textures but with Julie, she feels something.
Weeks later, I walked to the office at 8:45 in the dark with my cell phone flashlight, a candlestick and a box of matches to call Ebony and then Lawrence. I can’t remember the catalyst to my late night black people phone calls but I was troubled; troubled that my counterpart only tolerates me. All was well with Ebony, it seemed. I think Lawrence mostly wondered why I was calling at 9:20, and possibly, how he could get me off the phone politely.
The next (and last) time my counterpart took me on assessments it went like this: we left with a team of social workers. There were 3 vehicles. Around time for lunch she asked “Gomolemo, aren’t you hungry?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“I guess. I could eat.”
But in fact, I wasn’t hungry at all. I was thrilled to be out in the field and in the thick of action; sitting in the back of covered government vehicles, bumping across the village to assess people’s living situations and determine whether or not they qualified for government assistance. There was dust in the air and for the first time, I didn’t mind. Ethusang had bought everyone soft drinks as we waited in the office for the 3 vehicles to arrive that morning. They all laughed and joked in fraternity. They ate biltong. Now, it was 30 minutes before lunchtime and Keitumetse signaled the driver to take me home for lunch. She and the other social workers would stay behind.
“You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you.” This was a statement, not a question.
“No! I’m not trying to get rid of you.” She translated it into Setswana and then there was an echo of laughter from the other social workers. “Ethusang will go with you. He has to go to the office.”
The driver dropped me off at home and Ethusang at the office. The driver never came back for me but I knew he wouldn’t. The team of social workers would have moved on by the time I walked back across the village and so I didn’t bother. I don’t know where Ethusang went when he finally left the office, but that was when I admitted it to myself: Keitumetse doesn’t like me. The rare times she has taken an interest in me is when she needs or wants something, like aspirin or fresh baked cookies. She never comes in the house, but stands outside the door on the other side of the closed metal burglar bars. I try to invite her in, but she politely declines so the conversation is held while I’m in the house clutching the burglar bars of my front door as I talk to her through the bars. It makes me feel like a curious monkey. The other times she takes an interest in me are when she asks cryptic questions like: can you tell who is destitute by looking at their house? Or, how do you have weddings in America? They never feel natural but like they’re something she’s been thinking about for a while, or like they’re asked out of a cultural self consciousness—can you just look at some poor person’s house and tell they’re poor? Do you find Batswana weddings, primitive? I never get the impression that she wants to know the answer. These are nothing more than impressions on my part, impressions that become more realistic as I answer the question(s) and she stops paying attention or abruptly changes the subject. Impressions that have become bruises and scabbed over sores that I've picked at until they become sore and eventually numb.
Maybe it was that I just wasn’t personable enough. I claimed I didn't drink or party. I was afraid that people would get the wrong idea about me. I wasn’t friendly enough. Not laid back enough. I was the self righteous goodie two-shoes that nobody really likes being around. Someone who's strictly business. That’s a possible option. Yes. That just might be it. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like me and was never interested in me. Because I was a monkey on her back that she never wanted; a monkey that’s only cute when caged or kept at a distance. When she talks to me, it’s for practical purposes, propriety, or just to ask about Julie. She doesn’t get to see Julie often—once a week generally. She seems to relish those encounters. Julie is without a doubt more upbeat, personable and spunky. She’s also white but I can’t tell if she likes Julie because she’s upbeat and personable or if it’s because she’s upbeat, personable, and white. This is the question. This is the tick that’s latched on and is sucking me dry. Perhaps its that she sees black people every day so there’s a bland indifference to a black American living next door. There’s nothing particularly special about a foreign black person living next door but a white person? Now that. That’s something, especially when it’s a white person who takes an interest in what you do. I understand that intellectually, but emotionally, I don’t. I feel like she seasons me with a little Julie but there’s another part of me that’s afraid I’m using race to excuse the fact that I couldn’t win my counterpart over. Another piece of me wonders when I started caring so much about what others thought but the Peace Corps does something to you. It makes you want people’s approval, more so than that, their respect. There’s a sliver of me that regrets my initial professionalism. Was that the deal breaker; my khakis and loafers? Did that make me unrelatable? It could be the same way that I think of another volunteer named *&%#. She’s nice. She’s studious and focused in an admirable yet unrelatable way, a way that somehow makes fun feel like frivolity, almost like sin. Maybe I was to Keitumetse what *&%# is to me. I find the prospect disgusting and infuriating. Thinking of *&%# and her situation, her far more blatant situation, is what makes me suspicious about Keitumetse’s profound love of Julie. I got a ride with *&%# and her counterpart to Pitsane which is on the way to her village. I remember her counterpart’s faux elation at not one, but 2 black Peace Corps volunteers at the initial counterpart workshop! She embraced us in what felt like a headlock but must have looked otherwise because our APCD stopped and took a picture at the sheer cuteness, our heads nearly in her armpits and buried beneath her bosom. Both *&%# and I got an impression she wanted real Americans. Mind you, *&%# is nice but we don’t have very much in common—still we agreed on this. We couldn’t place why but it was there, and we both had it. Neither of us was going to point it out and use it as a crutch, but somehow it came up, and we knew. Jason later confirmed it was true. *&%#’s counterpart wanted a real American, preferably male and single. I chose to think the best because optimists live longer happier lives and I was only 1 month into my service. *&%#’s counterpart spent the first 6 months avoiding her. Our counterparts are friends, by the way. I don’t particularly enjoy *&%#’s company either but I realized that it wasn’t a black paranoia when Julie and I hitched a ride home with an ambulance. *&%#’s counterpart saw us sitting in the back. We were waiting for a driver. It was then that she pulled Julie out of the back of the car and pulled her aside. “When will you come with me to do assessments?” She asked. *&%# had been trying to get her counterpart take her on assessments for months. I don’t think it’s just that *&%#’s a proverbial stick in the mud.
I realize that Keitumetse probably didn’t like me much because she never wanted another responsibility. I took the computer that she never should have had, and didn’t know how to use. She was chaffed by my tensions with Mokwaledi. I however taught her how to use various computer programs to make her job easier. I turned a blind eye to the things she stole from my house like my previously full propane gas tank and my floor rug. I tried to like her. I tried to find good things about her: she took in her sister when her mom died; she took in our neighbor when his mom was transferred to the Kalahari Desert so he could finish Senior School in Lobatse. She’s done noble things. I never considered her a particularly bad person. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt; I tried to understand why. Maybe I didn’t ask her the right questions. Maybe I asked too many questions, none of them personable. Maybe I was too desperate? Each story has a flip side. Keitumetse could tell her side and I’d realize why she was the way she was and/or how she perceived me, but I could never got her to talk.
When she rolled up in front of my house and told me she was transferred away I stood on my side of the fence with my hands on top of the chain links. For a brief second I was upset although I tried not to show it. She was only transferred to Good Hope, which is the next village over but I didn’t want to get stuck with Mokwaledi. I regretted not being able to win her over. Back home I’ve charmed even the most unlikely audiences and so somewhere within me I was glad to be rid of her because I never got her to like me and that felt like a failure. All these emotions mingled together like the sweet but putrid smell of rot and rejuvenation from my nearby compost pile. When she began lamenting about how her sister is in the middle of her term at the Junior Secondary School in Pitsane and now she’d have to commute, I tuned out, pulled my hands off my chain link fence and tucked them in my pockets. I shook my head up and down mindlessly in an apathetic nod.
“That’s too bad” I said dutifully, and then headed into the house.
Now when I stumble into her at the grocery store or the hardware store in Pitsane, or even in Good Hope, I treat her exactly how she treated me. Not at all hostile but faintly dismissive. Polite, but the bare minimum. She notices. Neither of us cares.
***
That night I went to my other neighbor’s house, Neo. There was a party she was going to. It was for Mma Borolong who was moving to South Africa to be with her family. Keitumetse had been transferred to Mma Borolong’s position in Good Hope. Neo invited me along. Keitumetse also went. I told Julie and she wanted us to pick her up as well. It was no problem for Keitumetse who fawned over her the entire night, holding a beer in one hand, and Julie’s hand in the other. Meanwhile, I sulked and openly told Keitumetse that she doesn’t love me, never loved me. My indictment, strangely enough was not alcohol induced. It was 100% sincere and my face didn’t flinch. Keitumetse however just giggled and kept staring at Julie, her eyes like those of a doe caught in the majestic headlights of Julie’s whiteness. Julie handles it well. She somehow manages to be receptive without falling into an undertow of admiration as I sit dry on a shore of shallow working relationships. Still, she’s uncomfortable with the race card. She notices too and is uneasy, hoping I don’t take my aggression out on her—and I can’t because Julie’s become a great friend, someone who’s friendship I value, a friendship that holds weight. She’s become my rock. But as always, there’s an extra layer of understanding that comes from experience. It’s like a dermis you can’t see but can only feel, like the last and third layer that’s irreparable when burned. At the party, I sat on the porch next to the woman who would be transferred to Pitsane and live next door to me—my new counterpart. She wasn’t impressed by me. She wasn’t the friendliest. I did all the talking before she excused herself and went into the house.
I don’t get it when it comes to Botswana and Batswana culture. I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I still don’t fully get it. I know what books and research have told me. I’ve seen these things and am learning to put them into context, to understand, but there’s a deep rooted emotional level to culture that eludes me. In that sense I’m much like Julie who gets the top two layers regarding race in America but can’t see the invisible emotional sting of history’s 3rd degree burns. Together, we’re both figuring out its implications abroad and discovering the global novelty of being white in Southern Africa. Sometimes it feels like I’m discovering it more than her. Other times it feels like my view is obscured by my veil of blackness. In general, white people rarely have to grapple with their race. In America, it’s relatively rare that white people enter a situation and think “wow, I’m white.” Botswana however, is opposite world. White people are very obviously white. People like you. They’ve gotten to know you. They’ve shared food with you, you’ve drank tea together and talked. They like you because you’re you, right? Or do they like you because you’re you and interesting, and smart, and funny, and white? That’s the silent benefit, just like my anonymity. I don’t have to deal with the same harassment and stares. People aren't initially afraid of me because I'm American. I zip through bus ranks. I’m invisible and sometimes, that’s the silent benefit. Most black people seem to handle these things with equanimity and cool or with an aloof understanding. But not me. It seems that I’m the very definition of sensitive. I feel it. I really feel it and when I feel it, I can’t help but think about it. My body sits still, my mouth is closed but my mind is like a rolling field, like a VanGough painting. I sway back and forth on this like brittle grass before the rains. Maybe Keitumetse just didn’t vibe well with me but did (does) with Julie. That’s possible and very likely. The world after all doesn’t have to like me. All people don’t click. But, I wonder: had our placements been reversed and Keitumetse had been Julie’s counterpart, would she still have been so aloof? Maybe. Maybe Keitumetse would have kept Julie at arm’s length because she was an extra responsibility. Maybe Julie and I would have watched the sun die together that afternoon on the porch in Pitsane as Keitumetse passed by and gave the obligatory “hello” before going inside the house and cooking dinner. Maybe. But something deep inside me, some latent hardwiring tells me to look at the obvious: at person A’s blatant argument and blow up with her CP during a staff meeting—a counterpart who constantly tried to undermine her. I look at *&%#’s CP who ducks and dodges. I look at these things and think that I should be happy that Keitumetse kept it polite and ambiguous.