There are many lovely places in the world. Fewer are extremely lovely. Among these few is a place called Sanita’s Tea Garden, here in Gaborone, the capitol city of Botswana. I am here with another Fulbrighter named Beckie from Minnesota. When she left her home state it was negative 24 degrees Fahrenheit. When I left Washington DC it was unseasonably warm at seventy degrees (in the middle of January!) Here in Botswana the temperature starts off in the seventies in the morning, climbs up to the eighties or nineties at the height of the day and becomes cool again at sundown, back to the seventies. It is as good as it sounds. Every day here in Gaborone is a lovely one for having a quiet lunch at Sanita’s Tea Garden.
I first visited this charming place during my second
Saturday in Gaborone on a bus tour of the city. It is a nursery filled with
lovely plants, including several types of jasmine, lavender and trees. There
are several “show gardens” through which daintily painted butterflies flutter
among purple, pink and yellow blossoms. They are truly picturesque. There is
also a restaurant. Picture diners sipping cool mint lemonade, seated at
round wooden tables dotted with umbrellas beneath soaring green -leaved trees,
artfully scattered along a patterned brick ground. It is the perfect place to just
go and think. I visited one Sunday after church and last Saturday after an
adventure at Makodi Game Reserve (which I will describe in a later blog.)
I love gardens. One of my earliest memories was standing in
front of huge gardenia bushes in the foyer of the National Botanic Gardens in
DC on a visit with my parents. Inhaling the sweet fragrance overwhelmed my little six-year-old nostrils with aromatic pleasure. During my
first visit, I lunched on a salad, filled with their own hand-grown herbs, and a
deliciously spiced chicken sandwich. I also bought a jasmine plant (which I
will gift to someone before I leave.) That evening she produced a tiny,
fragrant pearl - white blossom, with soft petals. I named her Petronia.
I am embarrassed to say that my visit to Sanita’s disrupted
many untrue ideas that I had about Africa. Not every country in Africa is the
same. First, life here in Botswana is like any other place in the world. Sanita’s
is like a lovelier, outdoor version of Home Depot or Lowes. What does this suggest? – Families
here Gaborone garden. Enough families garden to profitably sustain this
business. These families have disposal income. They have jobs and are making money.
They drive over in their cars, along paved roads, pass by the numerous malls in
the city, the office buildings and car dealerships, and make their way over to
purchase plants to beautify their homes. Homes that they own. Water is precious
here in Botswana, which is a semi-desert. Water bills are like US electricity
bills. These families can afford to water their gardens. Contrast this truth to
images that we are fed about Africa in the West from the time we are young.
These images suggest that all Africans live in poverty. I first became aware of the Continent in my tender years from the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s that inspired the
writing and recording of the song We Are the World. I think the song’s music video showed Ethiopians with rail thin
arms and legs, bloated bellies, bald heads and numerous flies about their faces.
(This image came to represent all Africans to underexposed Americans, and small
children growing up in the eighties like myself, who had no other information to
go on about the Continent.)
So yes, I have learned many needed lessons during my short
time here. Number 1 – I have only been to one other African country – Ghana.
Once for two months after my sophomore year in college and one more time last
summer. I expected for Botswana to be like Ghana (my heart!) It’s not. In fact,
the entire Southern African region is very different from West Africa. Botswana
is probably more like South Africa, which is somewhat like the United States
(So I’ve heard. My only time there was in the Oliver Tambo Airport waiting for
a connecting flight.) Botswana’s wealth is derived from diamonds, which were
discovered after independence in 1966. This is a country that has kept,
controlled and profited from its natural resource. Unfortunately, many countries in Africa have
lost ownership and control of their natural resources. Ghana is rich with gold.
But the gold mine is named Anglo Gold.
From the name, you can guess who owns it – the British, Ghana’s former colonizer.
Botswana has one of the most stable economies on the Continent and has benefited from the wise leadership of four presidents – two of which come from
traditional royal lineages. They were kings as well as presidents. (This includes the current
president who is a king in the royal line.) The government has invested
profits from the diamond trade into building the country’s infrastructure and
public services.
It is this infrastructure that supports the high standard of living here in Gaborone and such lovely places as Sanita’s. It is hard for me to write this without sounding like I am putting down other African countries. Of course, I am not. It’s just that I did not realize the descriptor ‘stable economy’ that everyone assigned to Botswana during my pre-arrival conversations was code for ‘wealthy economy.’ An overall lesson for me is to put aside any preconceived notions or expectations about a place before I get there. Sorry to say, the ever-popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency does not represent Botswana or Gaborone of 2017 (or the Gaborone of 2009 when it was filmed). It depicts life as it was fifty years ago, or ‘Old Gaborone.’ Is it not curious that the American media engine (HBO in this case) has chosen to depict such an antiquated version of such a modern city? False notions of ‘African poverty’ and/or delay in technological development support the idea of Western (read European) supremacy. There are wealthy, middle class and poor everywhere – just like in the United States.
I guess I am thinking along these lines because I am here to
learn so I can teach Africa, and train others to teach Africa. For our children
of African descent, we must be very careful to counteract all false and negative
images about their homeland. By focusing on examples, like Sanita’s Tea Garden,
that destroy any and all stereotypes that have been imposed on them, their sense
of identity is nourished and pride in their homeland can be developed as it
should.
