My first encounter with Botswana was as an 11-year old boy, riding the train from Ndola via Bulawayo to Johannesburg in 1960, on my second trip to Canada. I remember being intrigued by the curio-sellers at Sashi Siding, and determining in my mind that one day I hoped work in Botswana. CUSO was the first to give me that opportunity. CUSOBOT also provided a social network and community that was both challenging and supportive.
I came to Botswana as one of the first 2 District Officers/Land (the other was Neil Dunford) working under the Central District Commissioner. After 3 years, I was recruited to the Department of Town and Regional Planning, and later became the Senior Planner (North) based in Francistown and covering the northern half of the country, with administrative and management responsibilities. DTRP was the first Government Department to “localise” its staff, I was one of the last expats to leave. But the Department immediately started using aid-financed consultants to support it, and seemed to appreciate hiring those that had worked previously as staff. (“Better the devil you know...” and all that!) So I returned some years later in a team on which at least 3 of us were former staff members. The responsibilities imposed on DODs and DOLs as well as on staff within DTRP were often well beyond what similarly aged staff would have in Canada or Europe. At both local and national levels I had to address innumerable issues in fields I was academically totally unqualified for. So working in Botswana was professionally an incredibly stretching process. It led to such a wide variety of experience that I was acceptable for work in (re-)establishment of a Land Use Planning Institute (Lesotho); land restitution (RSA) and reformation (Tajikistan), writing urban and regional planning guidelines based on real life pilots (Egypt), doing participatory land and natural resource management (Lesotho), soil erosion studies (high Andes of Ecuador), drafting a regional tourism strategy (Zimbabwe), plus taking on assignments in all aspects of project design, management, and evaluation. One thing stands out though, and that is the difference that a stable, peaceful, and participatory democracy makes to a successful development.
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At times it seems to me that I reached my peak in my 20's and haven't progressed much further since then. After reading some of the things I wrote and perceptions I had during that time, I sometimes feel I was smarter then than I am now.
In 1973 I graduated from Sheridan College as a production potter who specialized in wood fired kilns. I had planned on setting up my own studio in Canada but a notice from CUSO looking for a potter who fired with wood to work in Botswana caught my interest and imagination. The requirements fitted me so perfectly, they only left out my name. The placement also offered me a convenient way out of a marriage which had led our interests in different directions. While life in Botswana was certainly different than anything I had experienced before, it wasn't a huge shock for me. I find that people are people wherever one goes. They laugh when they're happy and cry when sad. There are good ones and devious ones, no matter what setting or skin colour. Having been born in the former Yugoslavia, been a refugee in Germany with my family for a couple of years and then learning my third language in Canada at the age of 10 had already introduced me to quite a lot of changes. What I did with Thamaga Pottery - the conclusions I reached, changes and implementations I made - makes me wonder if I could have done the same as well today. I don't feel as smart nor as confident. Perhaps it's because I have more experience - and life has battered me about some - that I don't have the same cocky attitude to undertake something that should not have been within the realm of my competence. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. I just know that I'm grateful for the whole experience. It helped shape who I am today. And that's okay. Dennis Lewycky, Director, Agricultural Information Service, Government of Botswana, 1974–783/15/2019 If people ask about the effect of Botswana on my life, I say very honestly that I was really born in Africa. I went to Botswana a self-righteous and aggressive university graduate and came back a more humble and introspective social activist. The people put me in my place and it was the best education and experience I could ever have had. I have tried to live a life of social principles and practice since, not always succeeding, but continually trying.
The women of Botswana taught me a lot. I learned so much from them about what hard work really is, how singing can brighten any day, anywhere. How waiting in line all day under a tree to have your turn for your baby to be immunized can be like a holiday, because you are there with friends and not plowing the fields behind oxen. And how easy it is to deceive people with large colourful posters if you are a corporate giant like Nestle.
The CUSOBOT experience opened the door a crack to my heretofore hidden inner life. It delivered me gradually and safely to a place where I could now discover and reveal my mysterious secrets. My time as a volunteer in Botswana made me a better, God-loving person, heading me towards more effective morality. It consolidated my beliefs in my obligations to humanity – and to all of life; that I should not take life so deadly seriously; that it is not up to me alone to save the world; and that the place for us to start is with simple immorality, dishonesty and self-dislike especially, rife in the world today. We must root it out: starting with ourselves.
I left Toronto in 1969 to go to Africa as a school psychologist. I was a city girl with little interest in nature. I found myself teaching science at rural schools in Zambia and Botswana and left Africa in 1975 with a newfound curiosity about plants, largely due to learning about organic gardening and applying what I learned from a collection of Organic Gardening magazines left by a Peace Corps teacher at Shashe. Our resulting garden produced an incredible abundance of tomatoes, corn, peas, eggplants, papayas, and 6 ft marigolds. That led me to studying botany and biogeography upon my return to Canada and a career researching and teaching plant ecology. I seriously doubt that my change in career would have occurred had I never left Canada. Also, from living in and traveling around Africa, I developed an appreciation of how fortunate we are in Canada to be able to pursue our interests through our largely accessible education system. As a result, for the past 30+ years, I have been a Plan Canada sponsor, donated to bursaries, established scholarships, and supported our public libraries and also political candidates and parties who share my belief in the importance of access to education.
If I’d had a clue about how much Botswana would shape my life, I might not have been so hesitant to go. Sometime in 1973, with a background in commercial art, clothing design and production management, and hand weaving, I sought out the CUSO office in Montreal hoping to find a way of following my yoga teacher to India. Instead, I was offered Botswana and the task of doing a feasibility study to identify ways of employing girls who left the brigades with sewing skills. It was a hard sell, but months later the enthusiasm of the recently returned Nangle family gave me the final push. Carol (now Caroline Shepard) and Hugh took up yoga with my teacher, and I went to Botswana. Three-and-a-half years later, I left this gentle, welcoming country with work and living experiences I could never have imagined, so much new awareness and knowledge, a British husband – Alan Etherington – and an 8-month-old daughter, Amy Pulana.
I have never been close to and inspired by so much creativity and magic as in Botswana: beautiful Thamaga, my home away from home, and the creation of the Botswelelo Pottery and Sewing Centres with the amazing energy and skills of Anita Hamilton (then Hutchings), Linda Snyder, Bodil Pearson and visionary/hero, Father Julian; the miracle of Oodi that many of us are still reminded of daily with the tapestries that grace our walls, with two more heroes, Ulla and Peder Govenius, and dear Krempien, their red-bearded side-kick/tenant; the work of still practising (in Totnes, Devon) textile artist and close friend, Caroline Hall, and the textiles of Serowe and later, Francistown; the development of Botswanacraft with Susan Bellan’s involvement in the crafts of the Kalahari….. Looking back, I’d say my decision to volunteer in Botswana in 1971 was largely motivated by the first part of what was then CUSO's motto: "To serve and learn." By the end of my two years, while I couldn’t say how well I had served, I was keenly and gratefully aware of all I had learned. I went there to teach, but Botswana taught me: to slow down, to be patient, to live simply, to value people over time and money, cooperation over individualism. Living in the shadow of Apartheid taught me to take a stand against discrimination in all its ugly forms. The CUSO Botswana experience changed my world view, led me to various kinds of social and political activism, and, I believe, made me a better Canadian.
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Add a ReflectionWhat was the lasting impact of the CUSO Botswana experience on the rest of your life? How did it change you? How did it affect your values, beliefs, actions? Your thoughts on the meaning of the experience are important to all of us and to Cuso International (200 words max). Email your reflection to: Archives
June 2019
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