Harassment

Well, this week went quickly! (I'm always grateful for that) Yet, it wasn't entirely uneventful. I've had a few days to ponder the things that transpired this week and feel that I might as well report them...

There is a small "grocery store" in our village - it has about 3 isles and sells some bread, chips, soda, rotten bananas and ALCOHOL. It's across from the police station and the little hut where people buy their electricity vouchers. As such it's sort of the "heart" of the town. Men tend to congregate here at all hours of the day (and night) and sit on it's cracked steps drinking alcohol. They congregate in groups of 10 to 20 and there's never less than two of these large groups. All that to say it's rather intimidating for me to go to the store, especially alone. I stand out a bit in my village and drunk men (after losing their ability to think rationally) swarm to me like moths to a light. I've been chased and grabbed while going to the store before and have learned a few techniques to keep myself relatively safe, so I felt confident going to the store alone during the day.

I went to the store last Thursday and just WASN'T in the mood for being cat called and called "whitey" etc. So when I was leaving the store and the men were erupting once again into chorus' of "LEKGOA!!!" I turned and faced them and yelled "GA KE LEGOA, EMA!" This was a stupid thing to do and I regretted it immediately because it was only fuel to their fire. Several men jumped up and started coming after me "crap" I thought. So I turned and started walking away rather quickly...my walk turned into a run and the men finally stopped chasing me and calling me vulgar names.

I was SO angry I burst into tears (wah, wah poor me I know). I got myself worked up into a fantastic feminist inferno and vowed to do all in my power to change the way women are treated in this village (good luck, right?). So the next day I went to one of my schools and worked out a small girl's camp project I've been wanting to do for this year's grade 7 girls. I'm going to be doing it in two weeks for one hours per day after school. We're going to deal with self-esteem, goal setting, self-respect, HIV/AIDS etc. I was pretty excited to get that project off the ground so I walked home (passed the store) feeling quite happy.

As I neared the store I quickly realized my mistake...many of the men there must have been there last night (some probably hadn't moved). I was walking on the side of the road with the police station though so I figured that added a relative amount of safety. The officers were sitting under trees in the yard so I felt comfortable continuing my walk. Then a drunken man came stumbling over to the officers shouting at them in Setswana. I got nervous because he looked angry. I kept walking but that drew the man's attention to me. He became so angry when he saw me he started screaming and going crazy. I looked at the police officers for help "what should I do?" They just started laughing (perhaps at my distress over a drunken imbecile or because of what the man was saying - I couldn't understand it). I looked again at the man. He had reached over and started picking up hand fulls of rocks along the road, still screaming. He looked up and started throwing those rocks at me! It took two rocks slamming into the fence behind me before I was off running again. He threw rocks at me and chased me until he stumbled and fell from drunkenness.

All that to say, the police didn't do anything and I was FURIOUS. I told my host mom, my APCD and Jason. My host mom marched down to the station and chewed them out, my APCD is coming to the village to see what can be done next week.

After going to the police my host mom came home and said "Don't worry they caught the guy and they're now beating him as hard as they can." "WHAT?!" I was mortified! I wasn't half as angry at the man as I was at the police's negligence to do ANYTHING about it. "They're beating him?" She seemed really proud that they were handling the matter. I won't even get into how disturbed that information made me.

So, needless to say, Safety is a problem in our village. I can't go to the store alone and there's no way to explain just how frustrating it is to not be able to go places without a male escort! :)

I'm not really sure how this is going to turn out. At this point I'm not really sure what the best thing would be to do. Jason has been working out a lot lately and now says it's so he can whomp drunken men's butt if necessary. :) I told him he really didn't need to, if they did something like that to me again I'd have no problem whomping butt by myself!

I'm not traumatized by this incident and, in fact, I'm only retelling it because I'm using this blog as a journal to document events in. It happened and perhaps someday I can use the experience for the betterment of someone else. Who knows.

Just a general update: We start our computer classes tomorrow. I start my mini girl's the week of Thanksgiving. We DON'T get Thanksgiving day off and as such aren't going to celebrate it at all really (I can hardly cook pasta...plus we don't have an oven). Jason and I will have been married for 3 years in 8 days (Nov. 20). It's really hot here. I am reading a lot and have finished 15 books since I arrived at site (I'm NOT kidding). We have 39 more days until we're off travel restriction.

That's about it for updates! Until next time-