By Jess Cosby, Summer 2008
Work in ‘Gabs’ (Gaborone, the capital) continues steadily, as does the rain. The rainfall varies from mighty and dramatic downpours that turn our street into a river, to the more harmless English-type showers, that leave everything damp and more green.
The rain has saved me from the heat, made the maize in the villages grow taller than me, and washed away huge chunks of tarmac from many roads. The potholes are so big over the border in Zambia that I’ve heard that donkeys sometimes lie in them, with just their ears poking out! What this means for me is that I think I can safely add ‘rally driver’ to my ever-expanding job description!
Making your way through the busy market area known as `main mall`, or through the hot river of people at the bus rank, you will often hear people say Ke kopa tsela, a polite way of asking people to make way, to move aside. Literally translated, it means ‘Give me road’, and I find this phrase running through my mind like a constant refrain. ‘Ke kopa tsela!’ I think, as I go out on my home visits, bumping along the gravel tracks in the villages. ‘Ke kopa tsela!’ I think as I reach a lake of murky water across my path and wonder whether to drive through the bush to find an alternative route, or . . . just . . . risk . . . it? ‘Ke kopa tsela’, I think, as I approach an innocent looking sandy road and feel the wheels lose traction beneath me. Ke kopa tsela!But as I travel the roads of Botswana, and let the phrase reverberate through my mind like a drum beat, it has taken on a new meaning for me. Give me road.
Give me a road into the lives of the young people that I meet. We talk about music, friends, dreams. They are feisty, full of life, and statistically speaking (I’m told), more likely to contract HIV here than avoid it. Ke kopa tsela.
Give me a road into the lives of the home-based care volunteers that I work alongside. Often HIV positive themselves, fighting the same battles as everyone else and giving themselves to care for the sick and dying in their villages. They need encouragement so much. Ke kopa tsela.
Give me a road into the life of the fifteen-year-old girl I met last week with multi-drug resistant TB, who has dropped out of school, again, and is defaulting treatment, again. Ke kopa tsela.
The list, like the road here that stretches across the vast Kalahari, could go on and on and on, to include the whole colourful myriad of people I meet every day. Give me a way in, I think, give them a way out. Lord, ke kopa tsela.
