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I expected a house in a city with a lawn and ...
October 31, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
I expected a house in a city with a lawn and a carpet would be like a house in an American city with a lawn and a carpet. My mother in Gaborone and I speak the same language, but somehow the rules are different. More taboos, restrictions, and guidelines. On a good day, she is teaching me the gestures of her culture, and on tired day her demands near vindictively obsessive-compulsive. Not the type one would ask to help with oneÆs wedding, or invite to a wind-down Friday get together.
Our struggle is palpable. I imagine her words thicken the air and my replies stiffen layers of walled miscommunication. Her testing accusations- did you use the wrong washcloth to wipe out the sink? - are blocked by a dayÆs trauma, and (like a dogs bark or sighting another Lakgoa) I jerk up my head and say- Hmm?
Sigh. Shit. We both know I broke the most important rule. R-e-s-p-e-c-t. Not the Aretha Franklin love me or leave me type, but the obligatory, language based type.
-Mma? Mma? Her voice turns sour and disappointed. The space between us receives curdled words and I swallow them and repeat her, dulled but apologetic. ûMma?
My intentions are ruined by the truth of my emotions filtered though culture. I am white and will never say Mma as second nature. I like raw vegetables and rice, and I canÆt change my feelings on unskinned red meats, no matter how rude it is. Not when shell shocked from a hard day. Not when I tense at road crossings for fear IÆll let bad timing and letting go carry me to Princess Marina.
She makes that disappointed face when my language doesnÆt connect with her interpretation of my language. Like the day I woke at 7 without an alarm (nurses orders) and twisted my shoulders away from hips to test how my half dose of codeine lasted during sleep. Not as well as the injection from the nurse who pulled down the waist of my skirt, tapped the needle and said, ôSo you came before or after September 11th?ö I picked out my nicest linen with the intention of faking the entire day. If I donÆt say it, IÆm not hurt, right? I hide from my motherÆs morning rhythm and eat my tea and bread like the day was the day before and the day before that.
ôNext time you are sick, donÆt call MmaMokwate. I will take you to the hospital.ö
ôI told you I was sick.ö She made that look, rolled back her eyes and huffed like I could never understand the true meaning of any situation.
ôI donÆt blame you for calling MmaMokwate. I couldnÆt even walk. I donÆt blame you for calling.ö On the ride to Gaborone Private Hospital, Martin told me about singing and dancing in the ZCC church. ôHigh as this,ö he said, lifting his flattened palm to his chin, as though ZCC men became acrobats by the spirit of God alone. I try to imagine the woman who complains about sweeping the dirt outside in rhythmic waves jumping all weekend in Swaziland. She isnÆt partial to cooking- too much standing. But what am I to know about the power of the Lord?
ôYou didnÆt hear me come in?ö You didnÆt hear me slam the door and sob for 45 minutes? I was so loud the neighbors went quiet. How did you sleep when I sobbed in need for you?
She paused as if to choose between truths.
ôI didnÆt even hear Gopo come in. I was so sick.ö
ôSo was I.ö
ôIÆm not blaming you foràö Things started to repeat themselves here, because I wanted her to know how lonely it was thinking I was hurt and alone, without a phone or family to help. And how hard it was to find strength under muscle spasms to get up and walk to the tuck shop, only to realize I wasnÆt alone in the house. But my mother, that name of love and respect that we call the women who love us, abdicated her name to roll over and sleep. But she couldnÆt hear my exaggerated pronunciations of loneliness. I canÆt speak the right language. So I cried again, right there in my Five Roses unfiltered tea and ultrapasturized milk.
My motherÆs language is unraveled and opened in counter moves by my sister. She is long limbed and upward shaped, cr
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This is a little poem I'm writing for my Disi...
October 17, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
This is a little poem I'm writing for my Disign your own part of the fieldbook. For those computer science majors, Botswana as a country is personified as "my love." Just think "My country."
My love, you have forsaken me, and I wail, slack-jawed and weeping for your village touch
My love, where is your deep, sweet village touch?
Where is your clear village dialect?
Where are the sweet names you gave me five weeks ago?
Why canÆt you absorb me in your arms?
Why canÆt you keep me safe from pluralized accusations and the morning migration?
My love, I bleed for you, and yet you forsake me
I come to you from the wrong way on a one way strip
I come in twenties without seatbelts
I come open armed and I smile with your tongue
Yet you cut my exposed wrists with laughter
You hate me on your roads
The roads you develop in my name
You pound down my skin in the name of spreading my language
You forsake me though development plans are stamped in my praise
You spit names in my ruts until palm-sized water holes appear
You will not hold me on the street
And even as I wear your skirts you taunt its low slung waist and lick its ill-fitted gaps
You, my only African love, distract me from my point
By ordering me into restriction taboos
I cannot even touch you on kombis
Today you write me love songs
Tomorrow you will disappear
You turn me back and forth between daisy petals
I whistle our secret names, but you stopped listening with population growth
My love, why canÆt you scrape open my wooden door and kiss my forehead as for the first time?
Where is the soft dirt between my toes?
Where is the dirt and smokey smell in your hair?
Why have you gone cold in with the asphalt?
Why do you make me cold with neglect?
I try so hard and you will never see my effort.
I cannot take your distance on the kombi
I cannot drink night rain alone
But I will not return to you as a woman returns to her perpetrator
So I wail and leave my tears to disappear in your forgetting air.
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ôYou didnÆt wipe the basin
October 16, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
 ôYou didnÆt wipe the basin. You have to wipe the sink and the floor with this and then take it outside to dry.ö
ôEe, mme.ö
This is my fifth double checked mistake since she woke up this morning. 1. Close your window. 2. Wipe the kitchen basin and the kitchen floor if you use the kitchen faucet. 3. No sugar in the teapot- it doesnÆt dissolve completely. 4. Eat with a tray and a doily. 5. Water droplets adhering to porcelain are dirty.
Most of these cleansing rituals are executed with the cloth that hangs stiff on the plastic bath basin. We also soak up shower water with this cloth, for the tucked up shower curtain is purely a cosmetic covering of our sunken concrete cube of a shower. Clean, closed, and dry. With a cherry on top and a doily too. I feel seven, pushing the toothpaste up in its capped tube and brushing the toothbrush against my leg. I feign hygiene, making the motions of showering twice a day in icy water, avoiding full body submersion at the risk of ridiculousness. I shave frequently to fulfill splashing sound requirements, but only one leg a day. My body is clean by seven in the evening, but with the lower half thirteen hours dirtier than the upper. Yet she seems content enough with the show, and I am motivated to run in the evenings, to warm up for the chill night cleaning.
However, it is my wet hair that shivers her back and opens the white of her eyes. On Sunday morning I was particularly careful with cleaning the upper half, soaping up ears and scalp until I shone with pinkie exfoliated cheeks. Two more minutes of such vigor and IÆd have martyred my skin for the sake of my motherÆs policy of cleanliness above godliness. I didnÆt know how right I was. A man from the ZCC church visited, and caught us three womens breaking the bible with our bare-headedness. My mother scrambled for a scarf. I leaned in, wet hair curling up in stubborn resistance. ôSo IÆm disrespecting men and God for not covering my hair?ö He nodded and laughed, eyes darting to my mother and the dead TV.
I am culturally sensitive. I will allow his religion to arrest my hair into a kept peace. I will tie my dyke bandana around my head and smile. He drinks my tea and leaves without his hat.
After his parting, my mother promptly took a three-hour nap. Sure needed it, with a week watching my hair loosen itself in the sitting room. Obsessive-compulsive thoughts are exhausting. Imported colonial cleanliness and patriarchal taboo traditions must be too. Oh, for the quiet of a motherÆs nap. The air is not clean, not ordered, but undone and softened with its undoing. I could paint an hourÆs eyeful in this sweet quiet. I try.
ôLorato?ö (When did love become an order?) ôWhere do you wash your panties?ö (Possibly my favorite tone, word, and question all in the same accusing exhale.) I choose to avoid and deny the existence of underwear.
ôMme, your garden is too beautiful. LetÆs go out and sit.ö
Our bedroom-sized square of grass flaunts itself to the desert dirt at its side. My feet breathe in yielding blades; they are in love. I would like very much to learn to stand on my head, to tangle my hair with green and yell into its watered roots. Sitting on white lawn chairs is only a few centimeters from the initial knee-jerk plan, so IÆm happily sedated. We are so perfect at this moment, sitting together without orders or niceties. Groomed hedges lock in green and cut the sunset into filtered pink and undefined shades of purple sunset blue. We breathe out a Sunday confined in corners.
My mother (oh, my beloved mother) crosses her legs with the stiff bath cloth on one knee, holding a mirror. She tilts her face (sweet soft black skin illuminated in greening light) and looks carefully. Squints. Begins to squeeze.
Flooding back are Sassy Seventeen Commandments on Skin Care: Never, Ever Pop a Zit. Never gonna kiss that cutie boy if youÆve got zit sca
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Yeah! I love you sooo much- friends and famil...
October 15, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Yeah! I love you sooo much- friends and family who turned out in such amazing and thoughtful numbers to give all of Ja's lovin to me so far away in this little desert country. And vote's tallied (wieghed slightly in favor of my own personal intuition ballot), I'm comming home next semester. It was, yes indeed, a bit more guidence from Miles David Nolte, the scout leader of this here A-team of seven, than I'll admit (wait, did I just admit that?), but mostly it was remebering how hard I love ya'll and how much sweeter the next two months will be if I such the marrow out of them as the last. ah, I'm gonna cry if I don't stop. You are Amazing to me...Sniff.
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Group vote needed on should I stay or should I go
October 12, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
Group vote needed on should I stay or should I go. I want your opinion and your support, but mostly I just want you to think about if you want me far or real far. Its not like I'll see you more, or be more safe, or any of that. no passive agressive 'its your decision' bullcrap. my e-mail is the same, voting ends on monday morning. Thank you thank you my most loving family.
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New letter from Sadie, dated 9/21/01
October 10, 2001 by Adam in Sadie & Greg
New letter from Sadie, dated 9/21/01.
Mom
 I pass over unblemished skin and forget uniformity in the memory numonics of banality. Every day is neatly filed in the Department of Nothing's grey metal cabinets, and is as good as forgotten. We only remember the rough patches, the unusual compared to the ordinary. As with the cold showers before my boiling bath water is tempered (the Botswanan Power Corporation promises electricity any day), extremes bring awareness. Zen Kicks. Which is why it might be so easy to forget this little house in Palapya, which is not so poor or dirty as my house in Kanya. Comparitively, I'm living the easy life, and I should not scratch the healing scabs from last week's wounds. But I am not rested. I still scratch at old tick bites until they bleed and leave red residue under my nails. I rip apart my simple covering of pinkish tan cells as soon as I can find a tear. I dig into my own imperfections. Do I hope to actually find something new or revealing hidden underneath opened skin? Will I find the Me under my face, under what all of Palopye stares at, even the few white doctors? I'm living the easy life again, and complacency, the ease of being satisfied with every meal, is making me morose. Or perhaps I was naturally greiving, still tired from all the war dreams and losing you, and distracted so well in Kanye that I had no room for outside problems. With a girl younger than me waxing our floors, there isn't much room for imperfection, so I must focus in on more interesting material. I also find myself looking carefully at trash, watching crumpled paper butterflies flutter and crash on grit and asphault. I feel empty without the dead animals by the road, or just more anxious. What one doesn't have to face, one can't overcome and let go. This is the first principle of behavior therapy concerning anxiety and phobia. Exposure brings peace, and at the moment I am insulated from Kanye and American hardships. So I am tired from them without letting them go, for they are not mine to let go of. Last night I dreamt I could only receive news through the comics, and had to decipher that we bombed Afghanistan through jokes made in Beetle Bailey. I worry about getting a flight back to Botswana, and want you to call the Council Travel in Claremont to see how it will work. Don't worry, I'll get full credit and graduate on time - Smith likes students to go abroad all year. I'm glad I'll get a bit of a break to see the fam, though. God, I love and miss you more than chocolate. Do you want to go to Mozambique, which is a more successful version of Zimbabwe? Check out archeology sites and write if you want to.
Thanks for listening to me vent mama. Many hugs and kisses. - Sadie
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hey guys
October 04, 2001 by Sadie in Sadie & Greg
hey guys. I'm not homesick, really. too much excitement her is margaritaville, aka kasane. lots of afrikaaner tourists and proplr who can't even say dumela to the african waitresses- and they look just like me. whiteness is strange to be seperated from for a month and a half and then thrown back into, like being thrown back into the water you came from and realizing how suffocating it was all along. very interesting. cheers, Sadie
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Sadie just called my mom
October 03, 2001 by Adam in Sadie & Greg
Sadie just called my mom.
She's at the Chobe Safari Lodge in Kasane. Her phone number is 011-267-650-336 in room 206. She should be there after 9 pm Botwasna time (between noon and 8 PM PST) in the evenings and it's fine to call late.
She's homesick, but doing good. Supposedly she's learning amazing things, including cooking. She'll be there until the 10th or so. She did get food poisoning and had to run into the ER, but I think she's feeling a lot better.
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