The afternoon was clear blue and just past warm, a bit more so than I associate with Botswana winters. The boat skimmed the surface of the Thamalakane River, and for the second year in a row I marveled at how much water there is in Maun. The house I lived in could only be reached by boat this time last year, prompting me to wonder what it would be like to sleep in a mokoro. The reeds teemed with heron, darters, and little bee eaters; lilies floated a path for the jacanas’ spidery legs, and tiny pied kingfishers hovered above the water, peering down for silvery slips of fish before diving and coming up (hopefully) wriggling.
Another small boat approached; I glanced over and saw some colleagues from the research center coming from further up river. “Hey Mike, Piotr,” I said, loudly, with a wave. My students burst out laughing.
“You KNOW them??” one of them asked, incredulous. There we were, kilometers up the river from Maun, in what must feel to them like the back of beyond, Africa, and I was greeting the guys in the next boat over like they were my neighbors. Of course, they used to be just that.
“You know EVERYBODY,” another commented. This, after spending 24 hours with me here in Maun, where I hadn’t gone more than a couple of hours without running into someone I know. I’d been greeted warmly that morning at my favorite local café by its owner, run into friends on the street, had someone in a Land Cruiser whip the vehicle to the roadside where I was walking to say hello, arranged a morning basket weaving course with probably the most lauded basket weaver in the country, and briefly introduced my students to the director of the research center where I used to work. In all of this, Maun is not unlike many small towns, continent aside. But to them, it might be another planet entirely – and seeing me so at home was unexpected.
I’ve spent months arranging and rearranging plans for this field school, my first foray into bringing students with me to Botswana and Namibia. But in the midst of all the doing and undoing, I found myself wondering what it would be that would impress itself upon my students most strongly, what would grasp their attention or capture their imaginations most powerfully. And in many ways now, it seems to me that what matters most is the personal. And as much as I’ve tried to make sure that they hear from many voices on this trip, much of what they understand is still filtered through my view. To some degree this is unavoidable – I do, of course, want them to understand certain things, and I’ve set this up to help them see what I think is most important. But I’ve realized that the ‘view’ is beyond that – that they are watching me, in speech and expression and deed, taking cues, raising questions, and comparing.
On our second full day, for example, we visited a campsite and cultural village that’s part of a local community conservation project. Walking outside of the reed fence around the small circle of huts, I saw some elephant dung. “Ah, mma,” I said to the assistant manager, Olly, who was guiding us around and telling us about everything from solar panels to hyena traps. “Are you having elephants here?”
About an hour later, we stopped at a craft shop selling baskets. An open Land Rover from a high-end safari company had already pulled up at the roadside, and a woman dressed in shades of khaki was seated on the front step next to a woman who was weaving. The tourist wanted a picture; the woman said not unless a purchase was made. Refusing to believe that a weaver was not part of her safari, the tourist laughed and took her photo anyway.
Back on the road, my students were clearly annoyed with the obnoxiousness of the tourist; they couldn’t believe that she didn’t listen when told not to take the woman’s picture or how insensitive and condescending she was. So we began to talk about how people talk to each other here. “You may have noticed that my speech pattern and grammar tend to be a bit different here,” I said. And they jumped on it. And indirectly, me.
“Yeah, you asked if they were having elephants there, which is incorrect, but she totally understood you,” one of them noted.
“But what’s different about the way I talked to Olly?” I asked. “Or, is anything different? Was I being condescending?”
They chewed this over a bit, as we rehashed our interaction with Olly. One of them had tried to ask her a question that she did not understand, and after a couple of tries I rephrased it. But did this mean that I did not respect her, that I thought she just was not smart enough to get it? I also asked if they had noted how nervous she seemed when I asked her to tell us about the campsite, until we talked for a few minutes. I spoke slowly and carefully, smiling, trying to put her at ease. And I think my students came to see that how I spoke was perhaps more important than what I said (although this may be a dangerous lesson to teach college students :-). They had clearly ‘read’ the tourist’s motives as selfish and thoughtless, but they could see I was trying to behave otherwise. Whether or not I succeed consistently is, of course, up for debate – but I have noticed that they are at least as curious about peoples’ stories and experiences as they are in getting answers to policy questions. This, I think, will serve them well.
