Lorato

A little girl named Lorato (Lorato means "Love" by the way) came to check me as I left the house on the way to the Junior Secondary School. She often stops by and she's always disheveled and soiled any my temper is usually curt and my mood sour. It was hot and the sky was sparse, not many clouds, just clear blue with an unforgiving sun shining down on us. I don't particularly like it when she stops by. She doesn't speak much English and when she comes, she rarely has an objective. I'm never sure why she comes but this day, she looked listless. Sick. I'd blown her off the past several times she came and so I told her to come, have cold water under the shade of the tree in my yard where I keep a plastic table and chair set up.
After she sat and drank generous portions of very cold water from a plastic blue cup, we sat in silence as usual. I asked if she was alright. "yes" she said. Are you sick, "yes" she said.
"Mathata ke eng?"(What is the problem?) I asked
"Ke na le opa mo tlogho" (I have a headache) she said, and so I went in the house to prepare a small plate of food for her. I cut cucumber, carrots, and dill and mixed it with yogurt. She wouldn't eat it. She spit most of it out right in front of me. Batswana aren't shy about their culinary opinions, so I asked my neighbor for bread and I brought her jam. She devoured all of it, a quarter loaf--6 slices of bread, and I made her take half an aspirin. She went in her schoolbag and pulled out her math homework and so I called Katie to ask for help on how to find the area of a square. I called Katie multiple times, and Julie too for help. Lorato didn't need my help with her homework. She gets good marks in math and I always find her helping me with the homework as I call other volunteers to walk me through how to solve for X or find the circumference of a square or some other mathematical enigma.
Eventually Lorato said she could not see. She blinked long slow blinks keeping her eyes closed tightly for 5 seconds at a time. I sent her to go home to rest just as two women passed by. One said she was her mother, and after a lengthy speech in Setswana (she spoke fast and I couldn't understand her, nor did I want to) she asked me for 2 Pula for snuff and then Lorato trailed the two women home weakly. An hour later she was back and with a friend.
"My friend likes TV," Lorato said.
"I don't have one," I told her, and went back in my room to watch a movie on my laptop. Then I was disturbed by the sound of 10 children, all of them terrible little rascals, rummaging through my trash. The bizarre part is that I've never had children rummage through my trash before. Never. After I scolded them (and the boys ran away w/ a rancid carton of tomato cocktail), Lorato wouldn't leave. Meanwhile they boys were in the distance throwing rocks at a donkey. Lorato sat underneath the tree outside of my yard to wait for me to go back into the house so she could play on the swing I built on my tree. I came outside again to tell her to go home, and she wouldn't. Finally, she cried as she silently graffitied my tree with an old crayon. I had to pull it out of her unsympathetically.
"There is no food at home," she said. She looked down, and fidgeted with a dull shard of broken glass.
I was upset. I'd just seen the lady that allegedly was her mother. I'd also seen her pass out an hour before. I initially thought she was faking, and maybe she was. I don't know. I was upset because I never seem to know what to do anymore. In a lot of ways its easier to deal with children back home. They aren't supposed to spend much time unattended. If you tell them not to play with dulled shards of glass or throw stones at donkeys, they listen. I went to the kitchen and cut open a 1kg bag of sugar beans to dump 1 cup of them into a ziplock for myself and the rest I put in an old plastic grocery bag with a 500g bag of pearled wheat, and an unopened 1kg bag of samp (corn with the husk removed) and gave them to Lorato. I'd bought the pearled wheat just to see how it tasted and then I never touched it again. I was never going to eat the samp. I bought it impulsively just to show Craig, when he was visiting, what Setswana food was like. I bought the beans to make for other volunteers the upcoming Saturday...Mexican food isn't complete without sugar (pinto) beans. I was upset because I was giving food away. I've been in Botswana too long. I now give food away like a Motswana. Its kind but it's short term. She'll be hungry tomorrow and there's a chance she's lying (although I doubt it) and just wants to taste American food. There's an even higher chance that she won't get to eat the food, or she'll get a negligible amount because adults are served first. Children are served last, and served the less desirable parts.
The food didn't come completely free. I handed her the bag (heavy, about 4lbs) and told her to come with me. I asked if her mother had talked to the social worker, as I walked her next door to the social worker's house. At 2:30 the office was closed as usual and the social worker was in her house watching TV as she dozed. I asked her to find out if Lorato's family was registered for food baskets. As it turns out, Lorato's a registered orphan with 4 siblings. In their house 10 people are living off of the children's food basket. Of the 10 adults only 3 people in her household are children. The rest are unemployed adults and Lorato lied for her Aunt because if the social worker comes around asking why this child is constantly dirty and disheveled and is hungry, Lorato knows she will be beaten.
I went back home to lay in bed and finish watching my American TV show on the laptop. I finished a bowl of salsa (no chips, no bread. I'm weight watching so it was just salsa made with fresh homegrown cilantro) and fed my cat an old piece of boiled chicken, a leftover from the week before last. I looked around at all of my things. The plush couch, the large charcoal drawing of a loaf of bread on the wall and the bookshelf packed tight with novels, dictionaries, manuals, and other literature. Food and ceramic dishes bustle out of every cabinet in my kitchen so I have plastic shelves to hold the overflow of beans, herbs, spices, and vegetables. In my universe, it rains Mexican food, basmati rice, and tea seasoned with cardamom, cassia, cloves and cinnamon. I bake fresh breads and have an assortment of flours: rye, wheat, white, cake, self rising, and cracked wheat. The bean aisle and spice aisle are my favorite at the grocery store so I have beans and spices that I don't know how to use and piri-piri peppers, masalas, and dry roasted cashews from my holiday in Mozambique. I make gourmet poorman's food in the name of slimming and drink imported coffee made with a machine. My cat eats nutritionally balanced catfood, wears flea and tick collars, he gets vaccines and is neutered and sleeps in my bed at night. I live by myself and buy dried beans and rice in bulk.
I wear perfume, make-up and fashionable sunglasses and I'm hesitant to give out samp and beans to a hungry child because I don't want her asking me for enough samp and beans to feed a family of 10 everyday. I know she and the other two kids in her house may not get any, that the adults may eat it all, that the wheat may be thrown away because they didn't know how to cook it, and suddenly I am ashamed. The government employees pity me because I'm always too broke to drink at the bar and wear clothes that don't have holes in them but I have 2lbs of unopened beans and 2lbs of unopened samp and a bag of pearled wheat just laying around the house and suddenly I am ashamed of my opulence.