Raw

Every evening as the sun is beginning its descent, two of my favorite neighborhood girls arrive to assist with the daily chore of watering my garden – in exchange for quality hammock time, my library of Cosmopolitan magazines and access to Snapchat filters, of course. After months as garden assistants, these two devised a plan for the perfect compensation for their daily labor– a salad party.

Finally, after pushing off salad party promises for weeks, I relented and picked a variety of vegetables from the garden, throwing together a pretty subpar salad topped with some leftover rice, a yogurt dressing and some smashed up, off brand cheddar crackers. Batswana don’t often eat raw vegetables. Swiss chard is chopped up, doused in oil and sautéed with garlic and onion. Peppers are diced to almost invisible levels and mixed with minced meat. Beets and butternut are boiled until they are so soft they don’t necessarily have to be chewed. So yes, a raw salad, even with cheese crackers, is a rarity.

The girls were not pleased. Some serious convincing (see: bribery) lead the girls to take one large bite of this raw mess, and to spit it out all over my yard.

I couldn’t be mad. A year ago when I moved to Gantsi, I kind of wanted to spit it out, too

Gansti couldn’t have been further than what I expected when I committed to joining the Peace Corps 10 months prior. There was no danger of elephant crossings, no winding delta, few majestic shady trees. There were very few waste bins, leaving the streets littered. The bus rank, an area often void of busses, was situated near a building that looks like the abandoned lair of the senile neighbor that is actually a witch or ghost or latent spirit in every PG13 horror film (honestly this building still kind of freaks me out, I’ve never been inside or too close.)

There were roads with no street signs; buildings with no stores. There were children without shoes, cows without homes and men without manners.

Trying new things, especially when you’ve been nurturing and tending these excitements and expectations for weeks (re: salad party) or months (re: my site placement) can leave you vulnerable to disappointment. This lettuce I’ve watered every day for two months tastes….bad? This village I’m supposed to live in for two years has….seemingly no formalized garbage disposal system?

During my first ~~days, weeks~~, months in Gantsi I could only see what wasn’t there. The lack of transport and hot water and cold air and genuine relationships and real purpose. As time has passed, and I’ve had the time to weed, sow and appreciate my home, I am able to see how much is truly here where the amenities and obvious physical beauty may be lacking. Things may not start on time because we wait for everyone to arrive. Things last way to long because everyones voice must be heard. Cars drive way too slow, and stop to talk to whoever they please, because the journey is truly more important than the destination.

I blindly planted this “peace corps seed, ” and after a year I am so grateful for this harvest – a harvest of strangers looking out for my best interest – like the Choppies check-out clerk who always exchanges my vegetables for “better” ones; coworkers who gifted my mother fabric to show how happy they were to meet her; and, especially, kids who show up everyday at 5:30 to water a garden together.