Busy Day Back in Gaborone

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

We got up this morning and walked two blocks from our apartment to Gaborone Secondary School where we met Tommie and had some tea and bread for breakfast. From there the three of us were picked up by two women from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and taken to the Ramotswa School for the Deaf. This was a 45 minute drive outside of Gaborone. Dena had requested to visit a Deaf school while we were in town and was very excited that Foreign Affairs was able to arrange a visit.

When we arrived at the school, we met with the school's headmaster and deputy headmaster, who are both hearing. We explained the purpose of our visit to Gaborone, which was to help Tommie and GSS with the Malaria Campaign and also to explore the possibility future exchanges between our sister cities. Tommie explained what his ICT club does at his school and offered to help the Ramotswa school with any needs that can be met by the ICT club, such as donating toys or educational resources. We also offered to involve the Burbank High School Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, as well as the rest of the Burbank community.

After our brief meeting, we were shown around some of the campus. We got to see their woodshop and leatherworking shop. It was nice to see these programs exist on a campus like this, offering the students a chance to learn a valuable trade. Most of these programs have been phased out in the California school systems. In the leather shop, Dena bought a few items that had been produced by the students.

Before meeting any of the students, we discussed some of the differences between American Sign Language and Botswana Sign Language. Every country has its own unique sign language; even the different English-speaking countries use different signs. America's and Botswana's signs aren't very different other than a few signs, some numbers, and 2 or 3 letters. The difference that amused us the most was the sign for the letter "T". In America, it is done by making a fist with your thumb sticking up between your index and middle fingers. In Botswana they use a different sign because our version is a universal insult used by all people in Botswana, hearing and Deaf--it means "vagina." We all had a good laugh when we discovered this.

 signing "T" in ASL

At 10:30, the entire campus takes a short tea break, so we had a chance to interact with some students. We went into a classroom with students from age 4 to 7. We handed out some Burbank High School pencils to the students and teachers, and we each went around and introduced ourselves to the students and asked them their names and ages. They were all very cute and friendly. After we met them all, they performed a song for us using sign language. It was very nice to see them singing with their hands with big smiles on their faces.

We went into another classroom where we met some teachers and left behind some more pencils for the students who were outside on their break. Soon, the students were all looking into the room through the windows and waving to us. As soon as we took out our cameras, they all went crazy and started posing for pictures with their hands in the "I love you" sign. After a few pictures, we left the rest of our gifts with the headmaster so she could distribute them, and then we got in the car to head back to Gaborone.

We went back to GSS and had a bit of time to visit with some of the students during their lunch break. We didn't want to say goodbye to them, and we weren't sure if there would be another opportunity to see them all again before we leave town. Then we had a nice lunch with Tommie and the deputy headmaster in her office.

Later in the afternoon, we were picked up by two more people from Foreign Affairs and taken to the Office of the President. Don't get too excited--we weren't there to meet THE President. But we were meeting with John Moreti, the deputy clerk of the Cabinet, which is also an important and highly respected job. Mr. Moreti has done a lot of work with the Botswana government and their embassy in the United States. He also has a close connection to our Sister City relationship as he worked with William Ruddell, a former mayor of Burbank and the person responsible for establishing the Sister City relationship in the 1970s. We talked with Mr. Moreti about the Malaria Campaign and our future hopes for exchanges between our two cities. He was just as supportive of our ideas as the Gaborone mayor and the members of the Foreign Affairs office were when we met with them. We also presented him with a few gifts from the city of Burbank. After our meeting, we all posed for a picture outside the building, and then we were taken back to our apartment.

 Dena, Mr. Moreti, Tommie, Lebo, Doug

We quickly got ready to be picked up again by two more people from Foreign Affairs, but this time it was for a much more casual event. Mr. Nkoloi, the Director of Foreign Affairs for Europe and the Americas (we had met him before leaving for the Campaign), had offered to take us out for dinner and drinks with the rest of his staff. He picked us up with one of their interns, a young man named Pimelo, and took us to a restaurant called News Cafe. When we got there we ordered drinks and a sampler platter with pork ribs, sausages, chicken strips, chicken wings, and potato wedges. After awhile, the women from Mr. Nkoloi's office joined us--Thsidi (she had taken us to Ramotswa this morning), Lebo (she took us to Mr. Moreti's office), and a new girl that everyone called "Twiggy." The 7 of us had a great time talking about our weekend in Zambia/Zimbabwe, cultural differences, and American TV shows. It was fun to see this people in a casual setting rather than the formal business meetings where we have always seen them before tonight.

At 8:30, we left and Mr. Nkoloi took us home. It felt like midnight to us since we had such a long day, and we still weren't fully rested after our long busride yesterday. We went to bed very soon after getting home.