Moments that make me laugh:
- Silent
face offs with warthogs. Warthog in my way? I’m sure not moving. I’ll lock eyes with it and silently
challenge it to a game of chicken. Then walk directly at it and wait for it to
be the one to move first. I stare at that warthog, each step bringing me closer to its hairy, ugly mug. I start to smell the
mud its been rolling in and then just before I run directly into its side,
it moves. And we both go on our merry way never to speak of our faceoff again.
- Greeting
children. When I walk through Kasane I am greeted by about 500 children who
look at me and say “lekgoa” with their mouths open a little bit as if I am a
mysterious unicorn pooping rainbows. I almost always respond with “dumela nana”
which means “hello baby” followed by one of two things: “Le kae?” Or “Wa rang?“
I get a variety of answers but there are a few that stand out and make me laugh
no matter what. My favorite is when I ask a really small child, like my 3 yr old
neighbor, who responds in her tiny high-pitched voice “Sepe.” I don’t know why I
enjoy this so much but it makes my day every time. The other answer
that makes me laugh is really not an answer at all. Not all kids are used to
seeing a random white girl walking through their neighborhood. A white girl
that speaks Setswana is unthinkable. So when I ask them a question in Setswana
they just stare at me with big eyes and their mouths open. This could also be because they don’t
understand me… I’m sure my accent isn’t perfect.
- The
child that refused to call me Tebogo. So I was walking to work one day and
I hear a child call out lekgoa (white person). Lately I have been correcting
the kids that live near me because they see me all the time. I say, in
Setswana, “My name is not Lekgoa, my name is Tebogo.” Most of the time the kids just repeat Tebogo then laugh like
maniacs (A white girl with a Setswana name… LOL ROFL OMG). This kid looks at me
straight in the eyes with a defiant smirk on his face, puts his hands on his
hips and says, “Lekgoa”. I looked at him and had to turn around to keep myself
from laughing in his face. I giggled about that one the rest of the walk to
work.
- The
kids that use a tire as a spring to do fancy flip things. So I have been
carrying around a charged camera or phone with me everywhere I go so I can capture more fun things. These little boys are probably my favorite to film. They see me
coming home from work around half 4 and ask me to take pictures and film them
doing their tricks. These kids have dug a tire into the ground and propped it
so it works like a trampoline. So they back up into the bush and then
run full speed toward this stationary tire. The jump on it and then fly in the
air doing a full summersault with a half twist and land on their feet. The
first time I saw them doing this I though for sure they would get hurt. Nope.
These kids are little springs. They launch themselves into the air with no fear
whatsoever. There are no mats or any padding whatsoever, just the sand. They make me
happy every time I see them.
- Baby
elephants. They are the most awkward things in the world. They have all
these parts that they don’t understand. I have seen baby elephants trying to
get used to their trunks just flailing them around in the vicinity of a
bush trying to snag some leaves. They aren’t very successful. Baby elephants
also love to trumpet for no real reason. They may be trying to be intimidating,
but I’m sorry, their little bodies just don’t make an intimidating sound. My
favorite baby elephant is the one that was trying to be bold in guarding its
“territory” by charging full speed at birds. He would swing his trunk,
trumpet, and flap his ears then run as fast as he could at a group of birds.
The birds would move then he would repeat this process. Eventually he got bored but he charged a good 7 times before that happened.
