workin'...i think...

For some reason which remains unclear, my contract was mailed to Canada instead of the US. So I arrived here without paperwork, other than a faxed copy of my offer letter. The director of the research centre decided that we could sort this out in Maun – that the main campus, 1000 kilometers away in the capital of Gaborone, could just send a replacement and we could sign and seal everything via DHL. But when more than two weeks had gone by and I was still not official, plans changed.

“I think you must go to Gaborone,” Dudley, our centre administrator, announced to me. This is, of course, what he’d said several weeks before. Too bad he was right then too. Of course even this required a few more days and a long weekend to pass before a time for me to arrive could be agreed upon…which turned out to be, “She can come any time!”

So Karuu, our secretary, asked me when I could go. “Tomorrow,” I said, ready for this to get sorted. So she booked me a flight.

“But it’s only a one way ticket because when you sign your contract they must pay on that side for you to report here,” she explained. This ‘rationale’ was vaguely discomfiting but, as with most things here, it wasn’t up to me.

The next day – a Wednesday – I arrived at my office here in Maun ready to be driven to the airport. “They are thinking maybe you need to postpone until tomorrow,” Karuu stated. “The lady who arranges accommodation is not around, and if you pay yourself, they might not like where you stay, and they might not reimburse you.” She went on about people I needed to see, how much I had to do when I got there, whether there would be enough time, if I got stuck for the weekend…and I lost track of the logic somewhere. Which is easy to do in rural Africa.

“Ok,” I said, stopping her. “Is the problem that they can’t find a hotel for me in the next EIGHT hours anywhere in the city, or that the person I need to see when I get there, won’t BE there?” I was trying to create categories of problems – mostly, ‘things I can fix’ and ‘forget it.’ Such categories compare in size, of course, like puddles and oceans.

In the end it appeared to be a paperwork and purchase requisition problem in paying for a hotel. So I called a friend and asked if I could stay with her, and she was glad to say yes. I informed Karuu that I was going anyway. I should have seen that this was a bad sign.

About five minutes before I was to leave, she entered my office. My contracts and appointment letters had arrived from Gabs. Seriously. After almost three weeks, they showed up as I was on my way down. Now of course, if they had not, I’d have had even bigger problems when I arrived. But no one here was even sure they’d been sent. I should have recognized this, too, as a bad sign.

One quick flight and a shorter taxi ride later, I arrived at the University of Botswana’a main campus. I found the office of Ms. B. Mothlabani, who represented my starting point. We introduced ourselves, holding out our right hands with the left lightly resting under our right elbows as a sign of respect. Straight away, she asked if I had brought my contract. Thanks to any and all deities that Karuu had checked the mail before I left, I thought silently. I signed the contracts I’d brought and she watched. She then assigned a tall, well-dressed woman in dreadlocks and spiky heeled-and-toed Italian leather shoes to walk me over to Mr. Modise’s office. “I don’t know how you walk around in those shoes, mma,” I said to her, smiling. “They make my feet hurt just looking at them!”“You have to practice,” she said quite earnestly. “You will get used to it.”

She glanced down sideways at the only pair of ‘dress’ shoes I brought to Botswana – chunky, rounded black clogs that are already well-worn. And worse – for someone who lives in the city – they were dusty from kicking around in the Kalahari sands of Maun.

“Maybe you are just not interested,” she said. But the way she said it suggested no doubt on her part; it was quietly authoritative statement made like she was diagnosing the terminally pathetic state of my footwear.

I laughed. “It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Mr. Modise signed my contracts on behalf of the university. But they would not be official until I’d had a medical exam as a condition of employment. Which I had already done, in Maun. But the report was not on the right form. My doctor in Maun had essentially just written me a note saying I was in good health and, after reviewing my chest x-ray, did not have TB. This would not do.

“There is a form, with more detailed information, that we must have, and the doctor just across the street knows this, you must go there,” Mr. Modise droned. “We are being audited now and they could ask me for your file, and for this form, and if it is not there...” And on and on. I gave up and with directions from his secretary, proceeded ‘across the street.’ Which was, of course, not across the street. Having been told to ‘go straight’ meant cut through the soccer pitch to the main road about a block to the left, and then turn right onto that road. The ‘second street to the left’ meant the fifth, and ‘not past the Gaborone Sun Hotel’ meant right across from it.

When I arrived there was a problem with the date on the report from my doctor in Maun. It was January. And apparently I should have been carrying my chest x-ray around. The funny thing about that was, it has actually occurred to me that I should bring it. I hadn’t.

The doctor was gentle and soft-spoken, with a degree from the University of Lagos and a vaguely French-laced accent. He was much more thorough, checking my blood pressure twice. “It’s a bit high,” he told me after the second time. “Have you ever had high blood pressure?”

“No,” I replied, “and it was fine ten days ago at my exam in Maun.” I thought about being here for three weeks with no sign of clear status, about the effort to change my trip that morning, about being told I had to go to another doctor, about dragging my backpack and briefcase around in the midday sun to find the place, about being told I should be carrying a chest x-ray around with me. And then I thought about every university bureaucrat who handled my file having access to my blood pressure. Eish.

Tromping back down the dusty, uneven, brick-chunked path at the side of a four-lane road to the university, I resented the drop of sweat trickling down the curve at the small of my back. I resented that no one had even offered to keep my bag in an office for me while I ran around. Mostly I resented not the rules, but the fact that I could never seem to figure out what they were until I’d already broken them. But I had to admit that the situation was becoming more comical by the second as I dodged traffic to cross back to the Administration Building.

Mr. Modise’s secretary, Thaba, sent me away. “It’s too late now for anything else,” she pronounced. It was all of 4:10pm. I had to have an employee ID number to move ahead any further, and apparently the chap with the ability to give me one was, well, I don’t know where he was. That wasn’t the point. The point was, it’s 4:10. I did manage to pay 20 pula for my faculty ID to the cashier. But I couldn’t actually GET an ID yet because, well, I didn’t have an ID number.

“When should I come back in the morning?” I queried, sincerely hoping that one more day would do it and I could get home on Friday.

“We start at quarter to eight,” she replied.

“Seven forty-five?” I confirmed.
“Yes,” she said. “So you should come at about nine.”

I don’t particularly care for using the words ‘need’ and ‘gin’ in the same sentence. But there are times when the quinine in tonic water truly is medicinal. Or better, perhaps, therapeutic. I had three at the bar of a posh hotel that night, one for each friend with whom I shared dinner and watched France beat Portugal on a penalty shot. “Yeah, it is kinda too bad to win on a penalty shot,” Robert agreed with me. Robert is a wind-up toy of a GIS expert whose research in the Kalahari never fails to excite him. His energy flashed on memories of mine while doing my first fieldwork in Africa. It was refreshing to be reminded that one can, in fact, maintain such adoration for technical subject matter over time.

The next morning I returned to Ms. Mothlabani at eight o’clock, saving Thaba for her appointed hour of nine. And she spent the whole hour circling the point while the heater above her computer whirred.

I started out with good news. “I just wanted to let you know that I don’t need a place to stay tonight either. I can stay with my friend again,” I informed her.

“Now THAT is a relief!” she sighed, leaving me wondering if anyone had ever come to main campus from out of town before. But unfortunately we then proceeded to the small matter of my return ticket to Maun.

“Why did they do THAT?” she asked me, exasperated already when I told her that my centre had only booked me a one-way ticket. “We can’t do it here in just ONE DAY! I think maybe even up there in Maun they are not following the procedure! To buy a ticket we have to get three quotes from three different travel agents. Then there is a competition and one is selected. Then we have to get all the approvals and signatures for a purchase order. Then we can pay so the tickets can be issued…”

I was primed to cut my losses. “So, if I pay for it, can you reimburse me?”

“Oh yes, that is MUCH easier.”

Maybe for you, I thought, knowing that I should have realized I was going to end up eating at least some of the costs of this trip. Nothing like paying to be employed.

She made the call and I spoke to a travel agent. I’d have to pay and pick up the ticket in person. The agency was “not far,” Ms. Mothlabani assured me, but she wished I had a car. When I asked if I could walk, she looked at me like I’d lost it. Even though she said it was less than 2 kilometers away. She gave me directions and I wrote them down as if they meant something, tucking them into my pocket for later. I did make sure I had the agency’s phone number.

We moved on to reimbursement for the ticket I’d bought to get here from Chicago. In addition to the printed itinerary and receipt, she wanted the unused part of the ticket. I didn’t want to give it up, as I’ve got designs on a grand trip to San Francisco and Boston in November which require the use of this particular ticket. I made the outrageous suggestion of photocopies but she clipped the originals to the paperwork anyway.

Then, however, she handed the packet to me. “Take this to Mr. Modise and he will sign it. After that you can take it to the cashier and ask how long it will take for a check,” she instructed.

I walked out. It was just about nine anyway. And on my way, I removed my return ticket from the wad of papers she’d handed me. Must have gotten lost in my bag, I thought, stuffing it between a couple of books.

Thaba seemed irritated with me already. She told me to sit. Then she proceeded to ignore me completely for at least five minutes. Not a word. Finally she informed me that the gentleman who had to put me into the computer system had not yet done so. Then she ignored me for another ten minutes. She had managed to take the reimbursement papers into Mr. Modise’s office. I wondered if I would ever see them again. I wondered how much I cared. I sat quietly and tried to shrink into the chair.

Mr. Employee ID called. He didn’t have my passport number, which he needed to finish uploading me into the system. Could I come over with it, sure. But, over where? Thaba’s seeping disapproval made me feel like I’d violated the secret code no one had taught me. Except that the employee information form I’d filled out the day before hadn’t asked for my passport number. Neither had anyone with whom I’d spoken. In fact, I could have been anyone. Hell, Ms. Mothlabani’s shock at my appearance in her doorway the day before was explained only with, “I thought that DeMotts was a man!!”

The morning dragged on mercilessly:
Can I please have my copy of my contract? (eventually)
Is the ID machine working? (I’d heard it was down)
Don’t I need a copy of the acceptance letter too? (making a copy will take time…)
Don’t I need to fill out Medical Aid forms? (yes, go where you were this morning)
Where do I go to get my ID? (let me show you…aka, not where I was sent)
Is the machine working? (it was)
I don’t WANT to go to immigration here, I want to do it in Maun. (where I can pester them every day until it’s sorted)

The woman who took my picture for the ID giggled at it on the screen. “I think you must smile like this all of the time,” she beamed. I looked like a bit of a smirking dork, but I suppose she was right nonetheless.

I went back to Thaba’s office for at least the tenth time. “Is there ANYTHING else I should be doing?” I asked. Somehow it was only approaching noon.

“I don’t think so,” she said for at least the tenth time. I chose to ask about the reimbursement paperwork. “Ah yes, Mr. Modise has sent that back to Ms. Mothlabani, you will have to go to her about that.”

Not good news. Suddenly I wondered if my removal of the plane tickets had gotten poor Ms. Mothlabani in trouble for submitting something that was incomplete. I felt terrible. It was not a receipt, and shouldn’t be needed, but logic was so far beyond the point that I could no longer define it anyway.

I walked slowly back over to her office. Do I lie a little, I pondered, or a lot. I had a good half an hour to think it over while I waited for her to be available. I squatted in the hallway outside her office and stared. Someone asked me if I was all right. I don’t think I answered very politely.

I would be surprised when she commented on the absence of the ticket, surely. Maybe it fell out in my bag! Oh here it is! I also thought about the hard line. Hey, I gave it to you. I have no idea where it is. Maybe that was better. I couldn’t decide.

In the end it didn’t matter. The problem had nothing to do with the missing ticket. The problem was that I had not officially accepted the university’s offer of employment BEFORE I flew to Botswana to begin work. Because they sent my contract to Canada and consequently, I had not signed it before I got on the plane.

This conversation spun even more pointlessly than any other. Until the next one, with Mr. Modise himself, in which he admitted that there are things they might pursue “internally” to see about the problem of wrong addresses on contracts. But about the money, his hands were tied until he met with his boss. So they finished with me by creating the distinct possibility that I will lose the $1600 I spent to get here.

Thaba thanked me for being so patient as I slung my bag over my shoulder and turned to go. I almost laughed out loud. The irony was, of course, that to a large extent I had won. I had a contract, an ID, medical insurance. But at every turn I felt like it cost me an increasingly painful piece of my hide.

I started walking down the street in the direction of the travel agency to pick up my plane ticket. But at some point, as I ambled along the low brick wall of the university’s edge, I reminded myself that ‘far’ and ‘not far’ were almost obscenely relative. Maybe I’d better call, I thought, once I’d been walking for a while. No answer. Shocking.

Concrete squares stuck out from the lower edge of the bricks, and I seated myself on one of them in the shade. Cars zoomed by, beeping minibuses that always seem to have one wheel lower than the other three, beat-up Toyota sedans with several hundred thousand k’s on them, Land Rovers outfitted for safaris, a slablike truck with men in cobalt overalls spilling out of its bed. I pulled out a cigarette, there at the corner of Jawara Road and Mobutu Drive, and lit it. I only have an occasional smoke when I drink, but there I was – a thickly rounded white girl sitting just above the tawny dust of roadside midday foot traffic, pulling on a Chesterfield and watching Gabs go by. At some point, I noticed that the lights in the intersection sometimes glowed red and yellow at the same time. Good thing I’m not driving, I thought.

The concrete was cool against my thighs. I leaned back to enjoy my cigarette, or at least the mildly disorienting buzz it delivered.

I finally got through to the travel agency on my cell. It was indeed further than I’d hoped so I postponed until Ase, whose couch I’d be gracing again later, could give me a lift. I thought I needed a better last interaction with UB so I walked back to campus and found the library. I’d been hoping to locate a couple of books on resettlement to help with an article I’m working on. I had an ID, I had their call numbers, piece of cake. Maybe I could even sit and do some work until Ase picked me up.

“You can’t bring that in here,” the security guard at the front desk announced, indicated my small backpack.

I’d love to have seen the stupid look on my face. ‘I can’t bring books into the library?” I asked, unable to restrain myself a second longer.

“Yes, books, but not the bag,” she replied. I could see this was going nowhere fast. I wasn’t about to go sit and leave my bag with its paperwork and books from the office and so on sitting behind that desk. “Don’t you have a car [to put it in]?” she asked accusingly.

Of course, I’m white, I have a car. “No, I don’t,” I replied. She didn’t believe me. I was in the process of signing in and took out my rubbery new ID to fill in the box for “ID number.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were staff? You don’t have to fill that out,” she exclaimed. I had actually first asked if they needed to see my ID. Though staff standing is apparently not considered insurance against stealing, because I still had to leave my bag.

I took my wallet out and ran upstairs to find the books. No problem. Back down to check them out. The computer beeped as a woman with sharpened rot-brown teeth looked up at me. “Ohhhhh….but you haven’t registered,” she said gravely.

You just need an ID to check out books, our librarian back in Maun had told me. “But I’m faculty, not a student,” I said, flashing my best stupid look for the second time.

“Nooooo, you’re new. So you need to register with the library to be able to take out books. You have to bring us a letter from the head of your department introducing you so we can register you.” She kept saying register like it involved a series of inoculations against overdue books and talking loudly in the stacks.

So I danced with her too, around and around. Why don’t you come back at 2 when my supervisor is back from lunch, maybe they can make an exception. I tried, can’t you just call the library up at the centre or something, what if they ask for the books, I’m only here for one day. And you have no idea how badly I want out.

Finally an idea crept from the defeated recesses of my brain. “What does this letter need to say, exactly?” I asked.

“It must be from your head of department, telling us your title, how long you will be working, if you are full-time, the details of your position,” she replied. Part of the reason that this was so funny is that my research centre isn’t a department. So I don’t really HAVE a head of department. But I had to admit, she was abashedly kind while not giving me what I wanted.

“Well,” I began, “I do have letters that say all of those things, but they aren’t written to the library.” I thought about the envelope in my bag that was full of letters for immigration, administration, payroll, academic affairs, medical services…

She brightened. “I think that might work!”

I went out front to retrieve my bag from security. I refused to empty it and give it back, but pointed rather obnoxiously instead. “I’m just going to walk RIGHT THERE to the counter and then come back. OK?” Though it wasn’t really a question.

The letters I produced did indeed do the trick. She entered me into the computer, and I answered her questions. I even gave her the expiration date of my contract. Apparently the letters needed to be seen, stamped and official-looking, but not actually referenced or kept. They greased the spinning wheels of our conversation, enough to make her comfortable with me just long enough for me to walk out with my letters, my three books, and my backpack.

While I’d stood at the counter waiting to be registered, I glanced at a newspaper folded and pushed up to the edge of the wall to my right. It displayed a prominent headline: “Poor service delivery a concern.” Fair enough. I just couldn’t imagine who had been reading it.