Beer cans, the post office and my friend Jim In my first three weeks in Botswana I was taking Setswana language training and had breaks for lunch. My friend Jim Plewes, back in Winnipeg, collected beer cans. I thought he wouldn't have any from Africa. There were three types of beer in Botswana: Lion, Black Label and Castle. They cost about one pula each when full. I gathered up an empty tin of each and packaged them in a triangular formation and stood in line at the post office for thirty minutes on a Monday. Handed it to the postal clerk who handed it back saying it had to be a rectangular package. I responded "Oh no it has great strength Mma" and pounded on it with my hand to show the cans didn't buckle. She ignored me and went to the next person in line. That night I put the the three tins in an empty cereal box and carefully wrapped it in white paper so that there would be no issue about being able to read the address. The next day I stood in a long line for forty minutes and handed in the package. "Sorry Rra," said the clerk. "It has to be wrapped in brown paper." "Oh no surely not" I replied. "Look at how beautiful the writing is and easy to read." The clerk handed the parcel back from his barred cage and went on to the next customer. That night I re-wrapped the parcel in brown paper and wrote in large felt marker letters Jim's name and address. On Wednesday I stood in line for only twenty-five minutes and handed over the package. The clerk said "Rra you have left no space for the Customs forms" and shoved the package back. Then I knew why there were bars between the clerks and the people in line - so you couldn't reach over and grab them. On Thursday I didn't try to go back but that night l re-wrapped the parcel and wrote the name and address in small legible letters, on brown wrapping paper. On Friday I stood in line for 45 minutes and reluctantly handed the parcel to the clerk. He gave me some Customs forms to fill out and went to the back to weigh it. I had the forms all filled out by the time he returned. He said, "That will be 13 Pula." "What!" I exclaimed. "I don't want to send it air mail." The clerk advised "That is the surface mailing rate." "What!" I exclaimed again. "I am not paying thirteen pula to mail three empty beer cans." I took my neatly carefully wrapped package outside and jumped up and down on it until it was flat as a pancake. Then I put it into a 9" by 12" envelope with Mr. Plewes' address on it. On the back of the envelope I wrote "Dear Jim, F you and your beer can collection" and mailed it for 75 thebe.* *There are 100 thebe to a pula. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
GantsiCraft: Two Stories in One Introduction In the early 1980s the country of Botswana had eleven geographic regions with a Rural Industrial Officer for each division. Five were Peace Corp volunteers, five were Canadian placements and one was a Motswana. The idea was that eventually all the positions would be filled by Batswana (people of Botswana). I was stationed in Ghanzi District, the most remote of the eleven and the one with the largest area. There was no electricity, no television, no radio, and no news. There was a saying that if anything important was happening we would see it on the horizon. This applied to bushfires, thunderstorms, nuclear explosions and the arrival of the weekly bank plane. My role was to help rural entrepreneurs get started in business by arranging training, finances and marketing once in production. Successful undertakings included: tanning, leatherwork, metal work, knitting, sewing, bakeries, carpentry and brickmaking. Part One A large segment of population, the Bushmen or Remote Area Dwellers (RADs, also known as San or Khoisan) went unassisted. A RAD might spend half a day making a craft and then three days going door to door trying to sell it. There was reluctance in town to buy something for fear that they would keep coming back. Through the Production Promotion Committee, which approved projects in the district, I started GantsiCraft. It was a place where producers could leave items for sale on consignment and decide what price to ask. The Committee was doubtful that the San would leave things on consignment but it was an immediate success. There were three initial market groups: expatriates living in town; government officials flying up from, Gaborone, the capital; and tourists coming through on expeditions from Namibia (then known as German South West Africa) enroute to Victoria Falls (Musi-O-Tunya). The first month sales were $300 and the year after I left they were up to $300,000. Not only were producers selling more they were getting double and triple what they received for items than before. For example before GantsiCraft a Bushmen hunting set went for $8 – within two years they were selling for $24 (but still sold for $80 in Johannesburg, if you knew where to look). Many of the items were made from ostrich egg shells and occasionally whole decorated ostrich eggs. Each item was tagged with the name of the producer and his/her village. After a year we had a meticulous record of the number of items put through the craft shop. That turned out to be a good thing as the Wildlife department wanted to prohibit sale of ostrich egg shell products on the premise it was threatening ostrich numbers. I was able to research ostrich numbers and show that with females laying twenty eggs a year the amount going into crafts was less than 1% of the eggs laid. Moreover most of the eggshells made into beads came from already hatched eggs. A producer could get more for a decorated egg than any number of necklaces they might make from breaking an egg - not even taking into account all the labour that would have to go into making uniform size beads. The eggshell products that were being crafted were from hatched chicks they came across in the veldt. Using that argument and having researched the quantity of eggs being laid in the wild plus having a year's record of sales production we were able to get a permit to sell that many each year. Part Two Once the success of the consignment aspect was realized I expanded access of the operation to the remote communities. !Xade, in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, being the first. It was a long one day drive to reach there using rutted tracks through the Kalahari. It is said that more Anthropologists have studied the people of !Xade than there are people in !Xade. When I first reached there one Bushman started measuring my skull with his fingers, instead of calipers. Ngarie, the New Zealand nurse stationed in the community, explained he wanted to "get" me before I "got" him. They were only used to outsiders as wanting to study them. Ngarie had one of two houses in the settlement; the other belonging to the teacher. The only other cement building was the one room school. I was able to stay overnight in Ngarie's guest room. In the morning I arranged for a Kgotla meeting and explained through two interpretations (English to Setswana, then Setswana to Nharo) how they could leave their craft items for sale at a place in Ghanzi, rather than travel there by donkey cart. I would take the items back for them and next trip bring them money from sales. Rather than money from sales they wanted goods such as tea, sugar and tobacco. To oblige this request I helped them form a consumers cooperative, explained its principles and that they would make decisions on its operation. I had an arrangement with the district wholesaler to procure items at wholesale prices. This meant they could buy items at the same price as in town rather than pay a hawker a 200% markup. The operation went well and soon expanded into other items such as washing powder, oranges in season and salt. In a sense it became too successful. One on trip Ngarie wanted me to stop bringing sugar. It turned out the local brewmaster was cornering the sugar market and making a potent brew to be imbibed within hours. Ngarie explained if they got inebriated after my deliveries they beat each other up. She wanted the sugar deliveries stopped. Since she was my source of accommodation and fellowship for 200 km I wanted to accommodate her. However I didn't want to unilaterally cut off supplies as I had told them they get to make decisions about their operation: what prices to charge and what items to bring. In the morning I requested a Kgotla meeting. I could see some of the fellows with bandaged heads and arms in slings that Ngarie had to attend to in the night. I went about it in a roundabout way saying it wasn't fair that one person bought up all the sugar and that maybe there could be a limit of two pounds per person. They didn't want to do that so I came straight out and said there was a problem with people getting hurt from drinking the sugar brew and I nodded toward several of the injured. They acknowledged it was a problem but did not want to change how sugar was allocated. I had to defer to my promise that they got to make the decisions and reckoned I may have to sleep in the back of the truck during future visits. On the long drive back to Ghanzi I realized that although the women attended the Kgotla meeting, at the periphery, they didn't speak up. They didn't have a say. What if it had been them being beat up would I have left it at them making the decision for the community? Or on a further think that it shouldn’t matter who was being battered. As far as I know the beatings and bashings stopped. They seem to recognize the importance of policing themselves. Then I recognized there was a situation analogous to Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Reasoning. At the first level I wanted to Avoid Punishment > being denied a place to stay. At the second level I wanted to please myself and bring about delivery of goods. On the third level was Pleasing Others: the people who wanted sugar brought in vs Ngarie wanting sugar stopped. On the fourth level was Deferral to Authority > Ngarie being the defacto authority, at least on health matters. On the fifth level was adhering to Agreement > to do what I said I would do - to abide by their decision. On the sixth level > Concern for others - what if the women, who did not seem to have a voice at the meetings, were victims of the violence? There was also recognition that it wasn't simply a matter of acceding to the highest level but there was an amalgamation of factors operating together: some pulling one way, some pulling the other way. Postscript 2002 After twenty years, I went back to see how projects, I had assisted with, were faring. GantsiCraft was still in existence but had been taken over by Danish Volunteers. Their approach was to pay cash for items and not involve the San with the operating decisions. Their view was that it was more important to get funds to the Remote Area Dwellers upfront. The people of !Xade had been forcibly removed and when they went back anyways the borehole was shut down. The Consumer Cooperatives no longer existed. Postscript 2017 GantsiCraft no longer had a presence on the internet. I do not plan to attend the CUSOBOT session in July. However some of my stories from 1982-1984 may be found at www.tvulcano.com. Also, here are Parts I to V of a PowerPoint presentation on Botswana. - Terry Vulcano (Botswana Cooperant 1982-85)
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When I came back to Canada from Botswana, I somehow wanted to keep connected to that country. At the same time the early history of Botswana had always intrigued me, and so I started to take an interest in the topic. And that led me into postal history, in other words, the little pieces of paper in the form of stamps that are able to give us a bit of an insight into that distant period. That interest of mine then evolved into a stamp collection that is almost complete, and covers Bechuanaland for the time period from 1880 to 1930. Here I just want to give a few snapshots of how postal history can link to important and interesting events of the time. I am not a historian, and I am not well read up on the topic, but I thought I could share the snippets of information I picked up along the way. And hopefully this may awaken an interest in the early history of our beloved Botswana, and may lead others to look further into its most interesting history. So now I am just showing a few of my stamps, and telling the stories that are connected to them. Should it then happen that anyone is interested in the topic of Bechuanaland Postal history, needless to say, I would be happy to show the whole collection, or to share some of my insights regarding collecting the early stamps of Bechuanaland. One of my most prized possessions is this stamp. The cancel reads “KURUMAN” and the date is August 2, 1893. The stamp is pre-Bechuanaland, and at the time the postal system was linked to the then British “Cape of Good Hope” colony (now Capetown). Kuruman today is outside the Botswana border, but back then it belonged to a region known as Bechuanaland. The town is historically significant because it was the seat of a mission of the London Mission Society. The first missionary there was Robert Moffat, who became much liked and appreciated by the rulers of the surrounding Bechuanaland tribes, and the mission did much good work. Later, the London Mission Society decided that Robert Moffat needed some help, and sent out a young missionary by the name of David Livingstone. But he only stayed there long enough to marry Robert Moffat’s oldest daughter, Mary. Missionary work turned out not to be to David’s liking, and he took off north to parts then unknown and unexplored. The rest is history, but we will meet Robert Moffat again. Another stamp from Bechuanaland is this Cape of Good Hope example, and here too the cancel is from a town now outside of Botswana’s borders. The cancel clearly reads Bechuanaland, and the date is March 17, 1899. Taungs (now called Taung) is not directly linked to the history of Botswana, but has become famous in another sense. In 1924, at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a young British professor, Raymond Dart, was tasked with setting up an anatomy department. He needed specimens, and encouraged his students to go collecting during their holidays. One student came from Taung, and there, in a local limestone quarry, she found a fossilized monkey skull. Dart then asked the quarry foreman to be on the lookout for other fossils. One day, when Dart was just getting ready for a wedding, two crates from Taung arrived. He had to see what they contained, and what he found made Raymond Dart almost miss the wedding. In the box was a skull, now named the Taung Child, and given the Latin name Australopithecus africanus. This find was the first pre-human fossil found in Africa, and was to revolutionize paleo-anthropology, and put the name of Taung forever on the map. It also made Raymond Dart famous as the father of African paleo-anthropology. Later on, extensive finds by the Leakey family in Kenya were followed by many more important finds in Ethiopia and elsewhere. But these later finds can not diminish the importance of the fact that the first pre-human fossil was found in Taung. We are now familiar with the stamps of the Cape of Good Hope used in Bechuanaland. In 1882 the Boers established two short-lived independent colonies in the interior of Southern Africa. These were Stellaland with the capital Vryburg, and Goshen with the capital Mafeking. Then, in 1885, a British force moved into the area, and occupied both Goshen and Stellaland. There the British established the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, and soon after, a rudimentary postal system was established. It was still using the stamps of the Cape of Good Hope, but these stamps were now locally overprinted with the text “British Bechuanaland”. The stamp illustrated is cancelled “Mafeking” and dated AUG 8, unfortunately the year is not legible. And as we may know, Mafeking remained the capital of Bechuanaland, and had the distinction of being the only capital of a country in the world being located outside that country. Vryburg is located in that large slice of land south-west of Mafeking which is to this day populated by Tswanas, but is now part of the South African Province of Northern Cape (as is Taung to the south and Kuruman to the west). Before the establishment of British Bechuanaland in 1882, Vryburg was the capital of the short-lived Boer Republic of Stellaland. In 1885 the area came under the administration of the Cape Colony. By the early 1890s the British colony was well enough established to include a postal service. Here shown is a one shilling stamp with the cancel “VRYBURG” and the date 18 February 1892. And this stamp is now inscribed “British Bechuanaland” and it became the proper postal use in the area. Later, when the Bechuanaland Protectorate was proclaimed north of the Molopo River, the sector to the south, including the towns of Vryburg and Mafeking, was annexed to the Cape Colony, and thus British Bechuanaland ceased to exist. The movement of Boer settlers into the Northern Cape became a great concern to the local Tswana Tribes, and they felt powerless to stop it. The three main Tswana chiefs, under the leadership of Khama the Great, together with Chief Sebele and Chief Bathoen, decided that the best way to try to solve this problem was to seek counsel from their English Missionary friend Robert Moffat in Kuruman. According to lore, Robert Moffat told the three chiefs that there was only one solution: they had to seek the protection of their great Mother the Queen. And so, in 1885 it was decided that missionary Moffat and the three chiefs would travel to London and seek an audience with Queen Victoria. They travelled by train to Capetown, where the chiefs were outfitted in tuxedos and bowler hats, before taking the steamship to England. The three chiefs caused quite a commotion in London, but they were successful in persuading Queen Victoria to establish a Protectorate north of the Molopo river, which was proclaimed on the 30th of September 1885. Needless to say the three chiefs also had a good look around, and took a few lessons home as to how the white man lived. This may have had a profound influence on the future direction of the development of Botswana. Illustrated is a stamp of British Bechuanaland, but now overprinted “Protectorate”. The town cancel is Shoshong (west of Mahalapye) and the date of AP 25, 1889. Only a few years later the Boers rebelled against the British, in order to re-establish their independence. However, the British would have none of it, and so it came to the Boer war of 1899 to 1902. The British were used to a traditional type of war where two armies confronted each other, but they had no experience with a guerrilla type of warfare, where the enemy was scattered and conducted a mobile warfare based on familiarity with the environment, using the terrain and local knowledge to their advantage. As a result, the British armies experienced several crushing defeats. They desperately needed some good news from a war they were losing. And the town of Mafeking provided just that. The local commander and his militia were able to hold off the Boer troops, and while his town was besieged, it was never taken. That commander was Baden-Powell, an archetypal British soldier. He had mobilized the male population of Mafeking, and successfully repelled the Boer troops again and again. He was also able to maintain a postal system linking the town north into Bechuanaland. Here is a stamp of the Cape of Good Hope overprinted “Mafeking” and “Besieged”, with the cancel “MAFEKING” and the date May 11, 1900. Because of this feat, Baden-Powell became the great hero of the Boer war, but whether it was due to his capability, or to simply being at the right place at the right time, is a question historians can better answer. Baden-Powell’s main problem was the severe shortage of capable men to defend the perimeter of the besieged town. He needed every capable body to man these defences. That left him severely handicapped by not being able to communicate with these outposts, especially when it came to relying on warnings of an impending attack. To solve the problem, he decided that the boys of the town could just as well fulfil that crucial task of linking the outposts to his central command post. And so he established a corps of runners between his centre and the outposts, and was most impressed as to how well the system worked. After the end of the Boer war, he was received as a hero back in England. But he always remembered his runners, and decided to establish an organization of youths to fulfil just such a supportive role. Thus Baden-Powell’s name will always associated with the founding of the Boy Scouts. A knighthood seemed a proper reward for his achievements. When Mafeking ran out of Cape of Good Hope stamps, Baden-Powell was forced to produce his own Mafeking stamps, in order to keep the postal system going. What more appropriate than a stamp with his own portrait, and the text “MAFEKING BESIEGED”, here with a cancel MAFEKING, and the date 10 April 1900. Here a link to Botswana needs to be mentioned, since a British armoured train was stationed south of Kgale in a fortified location. Once in a while that train would build up steam and run down the track towards Mafeking to shoot up any Boer war parties. And when the situation got too hot, the engineer would throw her into reverse and run back to Kgale. |
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