To Build a Home

At what point does “home” stop being one place and start being another?

Is it when you can offer better travel advice and more up-to-date restaurant recommendations in one place than another? Is it when you feel you have closer ties to friends in that newer place, because you’ve done a horrible job keeping in touch with people “back home”, or is it when you can speak fluently about the social ills of a country you once knew little about, but you don’t really know who is running in the next elections that you once would have followed closely, or is it simply when you give up the idea of a firm departure date?

It’s a slow, rather insidious process, this transferring of allegiances, and I don’t think it will ever be final or complete. Certainly I wouldn’t claim that a single year in Gaborone could alienate me from my family home (don’t worry, Mom) or make me a “real Motswana”, but as I settle comfortably into the notion that I don’t exactly know when I’m leaving here, I find myself more and more at ease in claiming Botswana as “home”, for now.

Perhaps the most significant moment in making Botswana home, more than finally buying a car or convincing my bosses that they should keep me on to coordinate a project I’d written a large grant for, was bringing my family here to see this magnificent country and the life I’ve built myself in it. Certainly it was the most meaningful moment.

It’s actually hard for me to express just how meaningful it was—my parents are very supportive of me, but now I’ve spent two and a half years wandering around 13 countries on this continent with an unforeseeably long time ahead and bringing them here felt like I was finally introducing them to this really important part of my life and of who I’m growing into, even though I had no expectations that I’d ever cross that barrier. Now they’ve been here and, even better, they had a good experience: they “get it” more. I’ve got this overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude that frankly I never anticipated.

From my first moments in Uganda five years ago, I knew with absolute certainty that my family would never come to Africa. We do forested, isolated, mild-summer Maine. An equatorial hut with no electricity or running water? Hm, nope. Even as I know that Africa is far more than the stereotypes and misperceptions common in Western media, the places I’d lived in and loved (in one way or another) were too hot, too loud, too crowded, too far away, too chaotic/dirty/vibrant/under-serviced/foreign/diarrhea-inducing/effusive, and simply too challenging to think of planning a family vacation in. But the idea took root that a safari might just provide a little something for everyone, that Botswana—the easiest, least “difficult” place I’d ever been to in Africa—might just suit them. After about four months of cajoling, I was thrilled to realize I’d talked my family into it.

I won’t lie: I started dropping hints about this wild, crazy idea a year in advance, and have spent an inordinate amount of the intervening time thinking through how to make their stay perfect (as all of my extended Gabs family knows). It took a lot of time and effort, and there’s a part of me that still doesn’t believe I pulled it off.

But believe it or not, my mom, dad and brother arrived at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport on a Friday afternoon in late June, mid-winter for the southern hemisphere. I picked them up in my new, cute little Toyota Vitz and brought them to the fancy central-Gaborone hotel whose executives I’ve befriended (for anyone reading this interested in traveling to Botswana: Lansmore hotel is the way to go). I won’t describe every moment of their stay, but I will highlight the following:

1. In Gabs, my family got a crash course on my life. First, they met some of my closest friends over a jet-lagged dinner. Then, I brought them to a session of the 100+-person peer support group I’ve been running at the clinic this year and while I suspect their lasting impression may be of me running around like a headless chicken (not an unfamiliar site, I’m afraid), I think it helped to put human faces to the work I’ve been doing. I know my dad appreciated the chance to engage with some of our “Young Adults” on business management tips. Then, I hosted a braai-turned-dance-party for 60-70 of the wonderful constellation—both foreign and Batswana—of wanderers, do-gooders, co-workers, hippies, hotel executives, Frisbee fanatics, academics, athletes, doctors and fellow adventurers that make up my social circle.

2. On our four-day safari (in the Linyanti region of northern Botswana and the Okavango delta), we saw how majestic elephants are, what messy eaters cheetahs can be, how powerful a male lion is, how many (indistinguishable) types of antelope there are, how striking a zebra’s patterns are, how elegant the stately giraffes are, how lush and peaceful the papyrus-lined waterways of the delta are, and how utterly stunning and difficult to find and quintessentially cat-like a leopard can be. The entire time, the feeling of how incredibly awesome it was to have my family on a trip that, under normal circumstances, I would have done on my own ebbed and flowed through me. It was indescribably exhilarating to share the thrill of new exploration and the beauty of the region, which normally I would be struggling to capture with words and photographs. Trust me, you’ll just have to come.

3. I finally got to visit Planet Baobab and have a deep, compelling gut feeling that I’ll be back more than once before I leave this country. There’s something about being out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by these ancient plants. As I lay in a hammock under the camp’s biggest baobab tree, reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fantastic book of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, I thought about the number of people that had passed by that tree, the heartrending romance that at least one young couple has surely felt at its roots, the arguments that may have been held in its presence, the longevity that has held it here longer than I can comprehend. The salt pans, where we camped under the open, star-filled sky, are one of my favourite parts of the country and they are even more striking following a visit to the Okavango delta: how could there be such lush abundance of water and life, on the one hand, and such an expanse of bone-dry emptiness, on the other hand, in such close proximity?

4. My family was more attentive to the livestock wandering the streets of Maun town and to the stark differences between urban and rural than I was. I guess I’ve been desensitized. We drove by cattle posts and village homes and football (soccer) pitches of packed dirt with makeshift goal posts, and the gleaming malls of Gaborone seem a world away. I suspect I’ve been comparing rural Botswana with rural elsewhere-in-Africa, rather than with urban Botswana. It was good to be reminded not to miss the forest for the trees.

The moments of greatest cognitive dissonance at my “US life” being present in my “Botswana life” were the most mundane: waiting at the small, rather dreary Maun airport, where I’d previously been stranded for hours thanks to (utterly typical) Air Botswana delays on my way back from a business trip to visit our local satellite site, or admiring a sunset in the fragrant, scrubby bush (African sunset #826, give or take). Because these little, day-to-day moments are the bread and butter of life, the things that add up to make our understandings of what a place really feels like, for lack of a better phrase.

Much of our safari time felt like another dimension—not so much because the luxury safari is out of reach for the vast majority of local people (which it is), but more because I just didn’t connect it with my everyday life in Botswana or other parts of the continent. It was a wonderful vacation adventure of great beauty that had only circumstantial connection to normal life. Which is perhaps why I felt almost comically off balance when serial safari-goers at the lodges would tell me, with a sincerity that I am by no means trying to mock, that they “just love Africa” and ask conspiratorially whether I’d “caught the Africa bug.”

Oh yes, it’s wonderful, I’d say, unsure if “it” meant the specific and highly diverse towns/people/hassles/miscommunications/smells/delights that come to mind when I think of my times here, or if “it” meant the world of safari adventure. Then I’d find myself giving mini-lectures over the dinner table about Botswana’s health system relative to neighbouring countries, the latest national HIV/AIDS statistics and the social context behind them, and day-to-day life wouldn’t seem so far away after all.

My plan for the coming year is to stay in Botswana to work at the same clinic and with a new organization of passionate Batswana youth, on a project that we hope will reduce teen pregnancy and new HIV infections. If successful, we’ll expand through the Southern Africa region. I’m near the bottom of the bureaucratic food chain at the clinic I’ve been working at and, simultaneously, running the Finance and Development division of a start-up NGO in my spare time. My job(s) are fulfilling and frustrating and challenging and exciting and, in many ways, perfect.

Meanwhile, my collection of quiet, breathtaking moments of exquisite contentment is growing: a potluck Thanksgiving-Hanukkah with a few dozen Americans and foreigners, massive braais and smoky campfires in the bush, all-day wine tastings in the sun, clambering around on thousand-year-old baobab trees looking out on the vast expanse of the salt pans, swimming on the ledge of one of the world's biggest waterfalls, lazy Sunday breakfasts, driving along stunning mountain passes in Lesotho, and—now—setting off in a safari vehicle to see some of Africa’s most incredible animals with my family around me.

So even as I miss Mom’s cooking and the feel of walking alone in the evening through the streets of New York, I've built myself a home here in Botswana. And it's pretty darn great.

Cape Town Adventures

I wrote this mostly from the Cape Town International airport, waiting for the flight (five hours delayed…) that would take me away from the vacation of a lifetime and wondering how to sum up my nine days in Cape Town and the surrounding area. Primarily, asking myself how I can avoid overuse of the words “beautiful”, “stunning”, “amazing” and “incredible” – I suspect it’s a lost cause.

Cape Town

I arrived in the city on a glorious Friday afternoon, evidently the first after a long week or so of rain, wind and early winter conditions. You could feel it, too: the sidewalk of Long St was buzzing with the sounds of early Friday happy hours bursting from bars and cafés, laughter, smoke and the clinks of glasses in the afternoon sun. This exuberance matched my own excitement perfectly. Long St, the party street of Cape Town, was to be my base for the coming four days, a decision that both served me well and that I regretted at times (like, say, 5am when the trash collectors were yelling at the tops of their lungs for an hour, shortly after the bars shut down).

Lower end of Long St, Cape Town

That night I ate magnificent food at Fork, heard the incredibly talented Shane Cooper perform live and danced with happy Khosa women at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. The following day, fellow PiAf fellow Dana and I sampled raw fish, cured meats, olives, cheeses, champagne, wine (overheard at 10am: “no drunk texting!”), oysters and more from local food vendors at Old Biscuit Mill, where it seemed every single person was eager to make friends, and finished my day’s culinary wondertour with a Cape Malay dinner in the Bo-Kap.

Delicious food at Old Biscuit Mill 

The Bo Kap by day -- an iconic view

It was the closest to “home”, i.e. the U.S./Boston/New York, I’d ever felt in Africa. I’d wake up and emerge onto Long St to hear the rumble of trucks, chatter of people and sounds of a city center coming to life, walk down streets—all concrete and pavement with that familiar pattern of historic gum pressed into the sidewalks, so unlike anywhere else I’ve been in Africa—that could have easily been in some of my favorite New York neighborhoods. The V&A waterfront is touristy and expensive in exactly the same way that the Boston waterfront and Fanieul Hall areas are on a late August afternoon, the same salty breeze whispering through (overcharged) wining-and-dining foreigners. My walk through “The Fringe” to Old Biscuit Mill brought me through neighborhoods of such obvious, recent gentrification I couldn’t help but compare it to Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and similar – the stretches of run down shop-fronts, semi-deserted plots and brightly colored stores the wealthy have no interest in interrupted by small pockets of artistic high-end furniture stores, coffee shops, and art galleries that pre-existing residents will never afford to frequent.

The V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

This feeling of being near and yet so far from home was bittersweet. As happy as I was to reconnect with all the luxuries, joys, idiosyncrasies and annoyances of life in a big city, being immersed in the sights and sounds of the familiar made me remember what I’ve left behind, the absences I don’t even notice in my life anymore.

On Sunday, I took a cable car to the top of Cape Town’s iconic Table Mountain to see the city tucked into the nooks and crannies around the mountains, before descending to the other side (Camp’s Bay) for an afternoon of glitzy beachside cafés and my first beach trip in what feels like an ETERNITY, drinking in the salt air and the rhythm of the ocean. I didn’t know until living in Gaborone how important living by the sea or a major body of water was to me. The mountains of Cape Town on one side, the ocean stretched out on the other, it was blissful and heart-rendingly beautiful.

Camp's Bay, Cape Town

It was in this milieu that something Dana had said the day before really started to reverberate in unavoidable ways: the challenge of living in beautiful, luxurious, wealthy, (white) Cape Town but working in Khayelitsha, a huge and growing (black) township of great poverty and little opportunity was wearing on her. How to reconcile the worlds? Cape Tonians have a huge amount of pride in their city—as they should!—but seem to consider their city to consist primarily of these glamorous, metropolitan neighborhoods (Camp’s Bay, Clifton, Sea Point, Observatory, City Center, Waterfront, etc.) as though the townships of Gugulethu and Khayelitsha sit on another plane of existence. In some ways, they do.

A friend of mine who studies slums/informal settlements for a living said that the townships of South Africa were the worst she’d ever seen. Now I get it. I didn’t spend much time in Khayelitsha and certainly won’t claim great insight, though I did briefly visit Dana’s office and attend a commissioner’s meeting about developments in the police department that I found a little hard to follow. But you could see from the outside, from our drives through parts of the township, and from the vantage point on Lookout Hill that this place is dense in a way I haven’t seen before. Something about that lack of space and concentration of poverty was so visually striking—and there was something about that visibility and yet invisibility that will form a lasting impression on my Cape Town experience.

It was a theme of my trip, the jarring view of these townships, which I knew were there but… couldn’t quite believe in while wrapped up in the glam of Cape Town life. Seeing them right there along the highway from the airport, to the beach, off a wrong turn along my coastal drive, and on the edge of a non-descript town in the midst of rolling hills and golden fields. The way a driver in Stellenbosch mentioned the “coloured” neighborhood and the township “where the black people live,” but didn’t really have to point out which was which because you could just see it. There is great inequality and segregation in the US (and around the world), but I just don’t think it’s as visible as it is here. But maybe (probably) that’s my outsider’s perspective?

A glimpse of Khayelitsha from the airport road

Two other quick notes on Khayelitsha, things that others said that will stay with me: I had a chance to sit down with the brilliant, inspiring and super friendly Mitch Besser, founder of mothers 2 mothers, an NGO I greatly admire that does peer-to-peer health counseling. He was talking about a new project he has been working on, expanding the organization’s work into elderly healthcare.

“You can’t imagine,” he said, “the sight of our elderly people in Khayelitsha at the graduation ceremony after our training. These are people who have never had jobs, who thought they’d never get work in their lives, who are now trained and employed. They are so proud. That’s empowerment.” [Emphasis mine. Paraphrasing the rest of it]

And Dana, on her work with an NGO that promotes youth empowerment, student activism and advocacy around education services in the townships: “The kids say to me, ‘We don’t remember apartheid but it can’t really have been worse than this. We live in shacks, we can’t get good education, and we can’t get jobs. How is this so different from how it was back then?’” Contrast with those who claim change has come too quickly, that blacks “weren’t ready” for leadership handovers. South Africa is a magnificent parallel to the U.S.

Stellenbosch and Franschhoek

I left Cape Town by train, finding a chaotic, disorganized, and rather shabby train system lying behind the gleaming modern Cape Town station. Upon arrival (finally!) in Stellenbosch, I befriended a local student who had been equally confused by last minute track changes and who graciously walked me all the way to my guesthouse across town. It was the start of a few days of spontaneous friendships, curiosity about this girl traveling all alone, and fun conversations. Not to mention incredible food and wine!

Standout moments included the tour of the Fleur de Cap winery, where I enjoyed seeing the “home” of an unfiltered chardonnay I came across in Gaborone (“Let’s google the best SA wines and see which ones we can get here” = research skills), amazing lunch at Cuvée at Simonsig, after-dinner silliness and laughs with new Stellenbosch friends, and tasting at the Meerlust estate, where the wines were great and the staff delightful.

I can’t say enough how beautiful this area is. I rented a car on Thursday (many thanks to Ingrid at Banghoek Place and Dave’s cousin Julie for assistance) and struggled less with driving on the “wrong” side of the road than with not running over or being run over by other drivers while gaping at the scenery: the mountain ranges, the vineyards, the beautiful estates…!

Much like the Cape Town metrorail that had brought me to the winelands, behind the beautiful façade lies a shadow world. As a tourist, it is hard to see past the cute small-town feel of Stellenbosch, the stunning scenery, delicious food and wine: life seems great. But that world depends on the labor of farmers, may of whom have little pay, little access to health care despite dangerous working conditions, little tenure security and often terrible living situations (a 2011 HRW report found people living in pig stalls and former pit latrines). Under apartheid, workers were paid in alcohol, creating an environment and legacy of massive alcohol consumption that persists today, much to the detriment of the community.

View of Franschhoek in the valley

In Franschhoek, I went straight to one of their top restaurants for a “splurge” dinner (having missed lunch due to car rental logistics). It was incredible. Since I was mistaken for an undercover American food critic (!!) by multiple people in the restaurant, it seems only fair that I should try to offer my thoughts on the amazing five-course meal (with wine pairings, about $65) I assembled.

1. Basil risotto: visually appealing with some sort of frothy bubbles, but somehow I didn’t really get the basil taste and the texture was sort of lumpier than I expected; a little disappointing.

2. Salmon: the salmon was paired with several variations on fennel, which were delicious and definitely made me enjoy fennel more than I ever had, but didn’t really bring out the flavor of the salmon, which had been brined (?) in one of the house wines; good.

3. Duck, wonderful, with various corn-flavored things, including an amazing cornbread koeksister (like a donut); very nice.

4. Duo of kudu with pumpkin, smoked blueberry, walnut chutney, harrisa and gingerbread. I looked up the full listing on the menu because it was SO GOOD. South Africans really know how to cook their venison meats. The warmth of the pumpkin and the tart juiciness of the blueberry went so well with the kudu steaks, half of which had a sauce on them that just exploded with flavor. Amazing!

5. Trio of plum (?) – I admit, by the time I’d worked my way through all of that, I was stuffed and my memory of the dessert is a little hazy… but it was visually stimulating and full of flavors that combined in interesting ways.

I was also growing somewhat concerned about the fact that I had not yet checked in to my guesthouse for the night and it was getting towards 10:30pm. I drove off down a long, dark, winding road into the middle of nowhere, ever more convinced that I’d be spending the night in my car. The guesthouse was open, dark, and empty as I crept cautiously into the upstairs of the old country house and peeked into a room with two small beds and no signs of recent habitation. It felt safe, so I lugged my stuff upstairs, wrote a note apologizing for my intrusion and assuring the reader s/he could wake me up and kick me out—since the door didn’t lock anyways!—and fell asleep sated and dreaming of guesthouse owners who destroyed the belongings of sleeping intruders.

(The very bemused owner/manager pointed out the next morning when I took him by surprise wandering into the reception area to settle my bill that there was a bell I could have rung, had I seen it in the dark.)

Days of driving

I left Franschhoek on Friday afternoon after an unexpectedly delightful breakfast at the very cute Moreson estate and a disappointingly stuffy lunch at La Petite Ferme (yes, this trip was 95% about food, 5% other stuff). For the next couple of days, I was treated to some of the most beautiful scenery. Driving up into the mountains from Franschhoek, I wound around and between the green peaks that had risen tantalizingly in the background for days.

Since I was driving, I couldn’t take as many photos as I would have liked. Much of this beauty couldn’t be captured by a lens anyways, but it also seems to be escaping my words.

I wove along the coast, in and out along the rocky crags jutting out into the perfect turquoise blue ocean. The views were breathtaking, the late afternoon sun illuminating every crevice and bathing us all in a perfect glow, though the towns (including one I stayed in) were decidedly uninspiring.

Heading inland from the coast, I encountered wave upon wave, mile upon mile, of rolling golden fields. I took several detours over my days of driving, either due to (extensive!) road construction or my own errors, and cut through huge amounts of completely empty territory—one of the most striking aspects of the southern Africa region, which I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around.

After a quick trip to the southern-most tip of Africa, I returned to Cape Town on what was likely the last beach weekend of the season. Passing through the towns of Muizenburg, Kalk’s Bay and Simon’s town made me wish I’d set aside more time to just chill out at the beach there. Fortunately, I did have a chance to meet the absolutely adorable penguins at Boulder’s Beach (they were less adorable when screeching right outside my guest house room that night!).

Ready for his modeling debut!

Not only were the penguins adorable, but the location was beautiful too

The final days of my trip left me overwhelmed with the beauty of South Africa, a sensory overload of visual stimulation. And as I raced to the airport, I almost didn’t even notice those cramped, colorful shacks of Khayelitsha to my left…