A Fieldtrip to Nhabe

Finally finally finally, after 3 weeks of talking to people and organizing we took the kids from Adam & Eve daycare on a fieldtrip! We visited the Nhabe museum, where the children learned about Batswana culture, and then walked to the airport to see airplanes. It may sound like a trivial affair to take 11 children into town for 3 hours, but it really wasn’t.

Maun’s only museum, the Nhabe museum has a collection of cultural objects. It is in a quaint building with 3 exhibit rooms, 2 offices, a bathroom, storage space somewhere, and a tiny gift shop that I haven’t seen anyone in. Joyce (Maleba) is the curator. She is a fantastic woman who I go to visit often.  

The museum is free, but it seems totally under utilized. Thinking about all the times that children in the States have excursions and being inspired by the many activities that Sara organizes for the children at Motse Wa Tsholofelo, I talked to George (the boss man at Adam & Eve,) about taking the children out. Obstacles kept flying at the idea, but finally things came together. A key component was transportation, but Bana Ba Letsatsi very generously gave the 11 children, 2 teachers, and 3 volunteers a ride to the museum in their kombi.

The children packed into the  (I think we were one over the holding capacity) and we headed out around 9:30. When we arrived the children had their snack. After, Joyce began a very interesting presentation of some objects from the permanent collection

Joyce taught the children about musical instruments, bellows for the fire, a gourd ladle, a clay pot, dancing rattles, brooms, and, my favorite, the hippo drum. The drum has a reed inside that when pulled with a wet hand sounds exactly like a hippo calling: “whoo whooo whoo whoo”.

Her presentation was extremely hands on, so the students were able to try out the different instruments and I was able to try out the dancing rattles. The rattles are strapped around a dancer’s ankles and make noise when the dancer moves around. The rattles are made out of moth cocoons that are dried, filled with gravel, and then sewn together.

Joyce telling us about baskets

Joyce also taught the children about traditional baskets. The current exhibit is a basket competition for artists from all over Botswana. The students learned about how the baskets are made, the materials used, and what different patterns represent, e.g. tears of the giraffe, head of the zebra, flight of the swallow, and urine trail of the bull. My favorite pattern is running path of the ostrich.

Joyce spoke to us mostly in English, but she also addressed the children in Setswana as necessary. However, even these two languages weren’t always enough. Semi comes from bush men and only knows one of the clicking languages. Some of the other children come from Uganda.

An unexpected addition to the day was a sidetrip, on the fieldtrip, to the airport. The Maun airport is roughly on the other side of the street block that the museum is on. The teachers mentioned that some of the students had never seen an airplane before, so we walked in and let the kids look through the window at the airfield. The kids really adored the trip and were fascinated by the runway and large noisy planes.

Group at Maun airport

It is really unfortunate that I hadn’t realized such a simple fact, as I would have arranged to have the kids go out on the tarmac and maybe touch one of the little planes. It is also unfortunate that I don’t have a picture of us each taking two kids by the hand, holding on tight, and trudging down the street. All I could think on the walk was “please god don’t let any of the kids get hit by a car” and “well, now all of Maun knows that Adam&Eve Daycare went on a fieldtrip today”.

The first time some of the kids saw an airplane

Hopefully the children were as happy with the day as Joyce and I were. It was wonderful to see them get out of the possibly only two environments that they know - home and school. It was even more wonderful to see the joy it gave Joyce to bestow the kids with their cultural heritage.

Getting in to kombi. Can you see the "Oh my god I can't believe this is happening" look in my face?

The kids weren't interested, but I had to try the dancing rattles

At museum sign

Learning about marembas

walking in to the museum

While this trip is a trivial accomplishment when compared with the huge problems that plague Africa, it has given me a very strong taste of reality here. People who work at NGO’s here must feel like they live in a videogame. Obstacles keep coming into their path and they have to dodge them, often each in a different way than before. I don’t know how the volunteers and coordinators here keep themselves together. They constantly dodge flying objects or put on a force field that lets the obstacle hit them, but just roll right off and then they move on.