Botswana, Part I – The Maru-a-Pula school

On Wednesday, November 1, we flew to Gaborone, Botswana. For those dying to know what I did with my 3 huge suitcases, I stored them at a hotel near the Johannesburg airport. It seemed like a secure option, although the storage room must have had 1,000 bags piled into it – hopefully all bags with owners who know their bags are there! Linda’s bag did not make it on our flight to Botswana. Everyone in Botswana told us that this is normal, the airline will simply decide, rather willy-nilly, to send the bags on another flight. “It will probably arrive on the next flight at 7:00 p.m., or maybe a flight tomorrow morning,” the airline representative said to us in the Gaborone airport, absolutely nonplussed about it. We looked around at the half dozen clocks hanging high on the airport walls and laughed, not a single one told the correct, or even the same, time. But, as all had assured us, her luggage arrived on Thursday.

As a brief aside about my last day (Tuesday) spent in Johannesburg. We visited one last orphanage there. This one has done some great work (e.g., placed 450 orphans into adoption, all of whom had been abandoned in the worst possible way, literally, discarded in gutters and latrines) and creative fund raising (e.g., when told by the South African government that they would not be eligible to receive subsidies for baby formula, but pig farmers would, they bought two pigs…and you have never seen pigs so big!). However, it could only best be described as, well, cult-like. The “matriarch” of the family has adopted all of the children who could not be placed (most of the HIV+ ones). She is up to 20 adopted children. Her daughter and our guide around the property, a woman who looked like a grown-up Elizabeth Smart, wore a long skirt and head scarf because, she explained to us, she does not want to attract any men. In her discussion of the orphanage, she blurred the lines between family and program in a way that unsettled all of us. After this fascinating and strange orphanage, we did more touring around Soweto, visiting Mandela’s house where he lived just before being sentenced to prison, seeing Bishop Tutu’s residence, and eating lunch at a shabeen, Wandie’s, there. (Wandie, who has been running this shabeen/restaurant since the apartheid period, greeted Linda immediately upon our arrival.)
But, back to Botswana: we stayed in the capital city, Gaborone, which is also the largest city in the country, yet is small, with a population of only approx. 250,000. We spent two nights at the residence of the headmaster of the Maru-a-Pula School, Andy Taylor – a large, very modern ranch house on the campus of the school. Andy used to teach at Horace Mann in NYC and has been the headmaster at Maru-a-Pula for the past 2 years. The Maru-a-Pula school (www.map.ac.bw) is the Oxford of Botswana. It has 558 students (including the president’s grandchildren), 60 whom board there, and over 50% from Botswana. Although excellent academically and very multi-racial, what impresses me the most is its orphan scholarship program and its community service aspect.

Andy organized a cocktail reception at his home our first evening there and invited teachers, alumni and students to meet with us. Everyone was delightful and impressive. I met a young alum, Joshua, who went to school at Amherst College in the U.S. and is now back in Botswana doing AIDs training throughout the country. Another alum, and one of the first MAP students, Lucy, is now a human rights lawyer in Gaborone. Lucy was the first black student to attend the University of Cape Town, and the only one that first year she attended. I met four brilliant students, all current boarding students, all orphans. One, Keneilwe, an articulate girl who has lost both her mother and a foster mother to AIDs, just received a full scholarship to study at a Malaysian university. Maybe she will be the first female president of Botswana?

The rains started in earnest in Botswana as soon as we arrived, or so everyone told us, and a visitor who brings rain brings good luck. We slept through loud thunderstorms and awoke early the next morning so that Linda could address all the students at their 7:30 a.m. assembly, a fact Andy sprung on her the evening before. She gave a brilliant speech, all about the necessity of sacrifice in order to succeed. We then spent all morning touring the school (and hearing the marimba-playing band, pictured here) and meeting students, many of whom led our tour. We also visited the boarding houses which, very unfortunately, currently have empty rooms – rooms that could be filled with orphans on scholarship. It costs about $10,000 a year to sponsor an orphan student at MAP (all who must pass entry exams as well) and Andy is passionately trying to raise the money. What I would like to do when back in the US, my goal will be to pool together 9 people who will join me in sponsoring a Botswana orphan to attend MAP throughout their secondary education.

I saw the impact of MAP in Botswana. After our tour of the school, we visited orphans and vulnerable children (pictured here) and women with AIDs in villages around Gaborone. Brenda, the director of the community service program at MAP, and several other MAP teachers, went with us. Each MAP student spends a class period each day in service back to his or her community. This is incredibly empowering for students who grew up in the villages they now serve. We visited a grandmother who is HIV+ and now raising her grandchildren after their mothers - her daughters - died of AIDs. Inexplicably, the government cut off their food subsidies. Brenda and the other MAP teachers with us decided, on the spot, that MAP students would start delivering food to her – possibly saving one or more of their lives. We also visited a small “home” where several orphans live, somewhat supervised by a nun named Sister Angela. One girl told me that all she wants is someone to help her with her math – can you imagine that is all you want under those circumstances??? I hated math as a 13-year old, about the age of this girl. Again, Brenda decided at the moment to send MAP students to tutor them.

What I saw that afternoon were simple, small-scale solutions that could be made by MAP and its students. But, they save lives – both by virtue of the service activities themselves and by what these services teach the MAP students involved. In the future, these students will hopefully make long-term, wide-scale, social changes in Botswana. I was sold on the school.