A gift for Mavis

Tuesday morning I visited BOTUSA, where Sechele Sechele works as communications director. The organization is a joint operation between Botswana's Ministry of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It helps conduct research and provides prevention/treatment programs for HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis patients in Botswana. Throughout the halls you can see evidence of Sechele's work translating studies and programs into readable and concise posters that explain the mission. He graciously took me on a tour and helped me find Mavis, the former housekeeper to the former U.S. ambassador Robert Krueger and his wife, Kathleen.
The Kruegers hosted me in their home last month at a dinner I'll never forget for the way the Kruegers shared their memories of Africa. They asked me to carry a card to Gaborone for Mavis. It featured a family portrait on the front. I cannot express how much happiness one can feel when delivering a precious gift to someone. Suffice to say, the humble task made my day.

Mavis is a housekeeper at BOTUSA now. She and I had talked by phone on Saturday, and here I was meeting her. I pulled the card from my bag, and she moved a few steps away to hold it up to the sunlight at a window. Her eyes, squinting hard to inspect every detail, filled with tears. She was silent for what seemed like a long time.
"My baby!" she said of the son, now a preteen and a hoops enthusiast. "I can't believe how grown up these ladies are! They're big and beautiful. " The older daughter is at Duke; the younger will follow next year. Mavis cared for them 10 years ago. The Kruegers will never forget her.
Mavis said she will put the photo in a frame beside her bed. "They're the reason I'm here. I'm here because of them," she said, her eyes still welling with tears. "I love them very much." She nodded to me, as if to confide in me.
"I can still feel their love."
She promised to write "a piece of paper" that would detail all that has happened in her life and in her children's lives. She will give it to me to deliver to Texas. But at that moment she needed to go back to work.
Later I stepped down the stairs outside the BOTUSA main building into the brilliant midday sun, and Sechele pointed to a building on the right, the TB building. A shiny brass plaque was visible even from this distance; it commemorated the building's important dedication day and the honorable U.S. official who presided: Robert Krueger.
The world felt suddenly intimate and intricately connected, wonderfully so.

Bureaucracy overcome!

It's official: I'm a Motswana for a year, which means citizen of Botswana, although I am just a temporary resident.
Of course the search for the official document was anything but easy. Last I heard in the United States from the Bots embassy, I was supposed to call a woman to check on where to pick up the permit in Gaborone. She was out sick the day I called in January. So I left the country hoping it would all work out.

Today, my hostess Puni took off plenty of time from work to help me navigate the bureaucracy. The sick govt. worker woman is now officially on leave and I was in the lurch. Puni spoke Setswana and wouldn't take no for an answer at every office we visited. I cooled my heels for over 2 hours in the U.S. embassy, which independent of botswana immigration officials was helping to track down the paperwork. I'd hoped to see the U.S. ambassador, but she is out of the country. She had wanted to have coffee after former ambassador Bob Krueger had told her a lot about me by phone. Bob and his wife, Kathleen, hosted me at an amazing dinner at their home in New Braunfels, Texas, on Valentine's Day when I was traveling across the country. I didn't leave their driveway until 12:30 a.m. We had such great conversations about Africa, destiny and spirit-- and politics. When I gave his wife a thank-you gift at the beginning of the evening that included a card with a quote I love from Doris Lessing, Kathleen burst into tears. She, too, feels the pull of the African sky and misses it every day. I'll share the quote later when I have my journal nearby. I recommend with great enthusiasm the book the Kruegers wrote together called, "From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi," published by the Univ. of Texas press. That was their first ambassadorial post before Botswana; they were there for the genocide that coincided with what was happening in Rwanda. They both were brave in trying to stop the killings, document the massacres so that the murdered were identified and support the choked gasps of democracy. They are an exceptional couple and among the precious guides along my path.

On the lighter side -- but don't judge it by my waistband --at the moment I'm in the Gaborone Sun hotel business centre, having downed the biggest celebratory lunch you can imagine with Puni to mark the occasion of putting the permit into my backpack and becoming official and able to come and go as I please across borders. The lunch, as usual, included major spillage -- beets on my white jacket that I wore today to meet govt folks and the dean of the university. There is an emergency laundry crew on the job. I'll pay whatever it takes for a bleach-out. I also took the afternoon break to have my hair trimmed, and was it ever a disaster! I've returned to my childhood haircuts that looked like someone put a bowl on my head and cut around it. Egad. This head is going to have to be under a hat for weeks. Of course, I didn't let on to the nice guy who whacked my hair; he might as well have used a weedeater.

So Puni is coming back soon from her office to hang out -- government workers "knock off" at 4:30 pm. Her husband, Sechele, has set off today with U.S. embassy officials to Ghanzi, a full day's drive away, to do some workshops for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he works as a communications director, as local staff. I'll see him again Friday, and I'm looking forward to it. He's a trip -- funny, friendly, former editor of the Mmegi newspaper who took it from a weekly to a daily, a history buff, a maniac squash player and a fan of "township jazz," which he promises to introduce me to. I'll be attending tonight's AMWAY motivation session with Puni here at the hotel; she's got big dreams to be a millionaire selling Amway products and she's making it happen, she says. (Wonder if they have miracle hair care potions to make my hair return to curls from frizz and to grow really, really fast?) We'll see. My savings will be draining away for hair products. Ain't it always the way for us girls?