Healthcare Across Cultures

Below are two versions of the same story. One audio/visual and one textual. Digest however you please...

(Special thanks to Margarett Davis, Paul Richards and Lindsey Stull for their help with this report.)



Scottish Bagpipes are not a cultural phenomenon usually associated with Sub-Saharan Africa.

However, on November 1st, five men wearing kilts brought the sounds of the highlands to a new parking lot in Molepolole, the largest urban village in Botswana. The parking lot, empty of cars, was instead filled with politicians, foreign dignitaries and several hundred residents of Molepolole, many of whom commute to the nearby capital city of Gaborone for employment and healthcare. The crowd gathered in the heat of the nearby-Kalahari Desert to celebrate the re-opening of Scottish Livingstone Hospital. The hospital’s origins stretch back nearly a century to when Scottish missionaries brought Western medicine and healthcare to Botswana.

In recent years, as Molepolole underwent a dramatic population surge, the government-run hospital became too small to adequately serve the needs of the 250,000-person community. After a massive reconstruction, which cost nearly 350 million Pula (around $50 million USD), the hospital reopened with a grand spectacle of speakers and performances.

Scottish Livingston Hospital is named in honor of Dr. David Livingstone, the famous Scottish missionary and explorer who trekked across much of central and southern Africa in the mid 1800s. Credited as the first practitioner of modern medicine in Botswana, Livingstone's personal motto was, "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization."

In 1947, another Scottish missionary and physician by the name of Dr. Alfred Merriweather followed in Livingstone's footsteps. He came to Molepolole to run the Livingstone Hospital, and continued to work there until 1980, even after its transition to a state-run health facility.

Merriweather was a beloved figure in his lifetime. He became fluent in the regional Setswana dialect, adopted a Motswana daughter, and worked to establish effective healthcare facilities around the nation. Likewise, his novel approach to missionary work was based on a tolerance for local culture and traditions.

Scottish Livingstone Hospital used to be little more than a large clinic. However, after the remodeling, the hospital is now an expansive complex of buildings, connected by passages and courtyards. The Minister of Health, Lesego Motsumi, announced that the new space will house 350 beds for inpatient care, an emergency and accident center, updated equipment, and a host of specialist services. Partnering with German doctors, the hospital will soon be opening a cardiology unit that, according to Motsumi, will be the first of its kind in Botswana and one of few in all of Africa.

The Minister explained the economic implications of the Hospital’s construction.

"Annually we spend about P70 million on referrals to South Africa. With facilities such as this one, we’ll be in a position to reduce costs to the nation,” she said.

According to various official sources, somewhere between 25% and 33% of the adult population in Botswana is HIV positive. And though this marks a dramatic decrease over the past five years, Botswana still ranks as having one of the highest infection rates in the world. But with partnerships and donations coming from a wide range of sources like the Centers for Disease Control, The Gates Foundation, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR, Botswana is working to address this problem. The Scottish Livingstone Hospital represents one of the many projects that the government hopes will provide more effective treatment and preventative care for HIV/AIDS patients.

Later in the ceremony, Dikgaka, a traditional performance group, took to a small stage in the parking lot. Several dozen men and women clad in animal skins and strings of bead-filled moth cocoons danced, sang and stomped their feet. Meanwhile, guests in suits, ties, and high heels, watched with amusement and appreciation.

In many ways, the contrast between the audience and performers represents the community's integration of new living standards and cultures. As the Molepolole Representative in Parliament, Daniel Kwelagobe, explained in the regional dialect of Setswana, this large, sleek building may represent change, but it is change uniquely fitted to the needs of the community.

Dear America...

It's been a while since I shared some political cartoons with the world. Because the Daily Pennsylvanian deemed the first of these too lewd and the latter too late to publish, this blog will bare the brunt of my pen strokes.

I'm also currently working on a radio project concerning the experience of voting from abroad, though getting certain interviews at the embassy has proven tricky. Hopefully, that hat story will appear here at some point in the future, though the internet, and those who control it, has been increasing volatile. The site I use to host A/V slideshows has been blocked by the filters her at the University, but I will find ways to get around this.

For now, inked propaganda for the red, white, and blue.

And yes, I voted. May those who can do so too.

This Circus Coming, Coming, Gone

A little late I am with this one, but here it is--cute and fun for the whole family.

also, my lack of (decent) photos can be attributed to Boswell's No-Camera Policy. After I had taken about ten, sneaky pics, a man with a straggly pony tail and squinty eyes appeared out of nowhere and told me to "zip it or dip it." I'm not sure what he was threatening to dip my camera in, but I doubt it was fondue.

ink, don't blink: The Graffiti of Khwezi

Khwezi Mphatlalatsane has roots in South Africa, Swaziland, and here in Botswana. His name is Xhosa—not Tswana—and if it reminds you of the word, crazy, then you’re onto something. I wouldn’t describe Khwezi as insane, reckless, or unaware. In fact, he has a voracious appetite for visual observation, cultural knowledge and linguistic wit. He’s socially clever, taking a leadership role in most group situations, and like many self-learners, he likes to show-off his ingenuity. If Khwezi seems crazy, however, it’s less because of what he does and more because of how he does it.

Khwezi is a showman. Everything he does—and he does a lot—seems ready to be consumed for an audience. He seeks to master MCing, DJing, and Graffing, three of the four “elements” of hip hop culture. Along with two friends, Khwezi is almost finished recording an album under the name, People of Religious Nature, or P.O.R.N. And such contradictory nomenclature—however sophomoric—is a distinctive mark of Khwezi’s aesthetic.

His Graffiti tag is, “ink,” often followed by the catchphrase, “Don’t Blink.” When I asked him what this meant and how he came up with the idea, he replied, “It’s ink. Yah know, ink, bitch. INK, don't blink!” And despite his enrollment in Gaborone’s school for fine arts and media work, Limkokwing University, he asserts that his identity is derived from roots in the neighborhood of Partial, which he describes as, “a ghetto within a suburb.”

Khwezi has a slangy and unique sense of language. Describing an American Southern accent, he used the phrase, “deep and hectic.” He speaks of cultural dissection as using his “forensic ear and eye.” Setswana and English roll off of his tongue like ball bearings, and I’ve counted at least six different words—all Khwezi’s inventions—that he uses to talk about marijuana.

After approaching the National Museum of Botswana several times regarding their diversity of art, they finally agreed to let him come paint a mural. He maintains that the curators should focus more on local street artists, so he along with Ngozi Chukura, a fellow member of P.O.R.N., gladly jumped at the commission. He hopes that this is the first step in building a relationship with members of the more “elite,” artist community in Gaborone.

The fourth element of hip hop is break dancing, but Khwezi, tall and sinewy, leaves the pops, locks, and acrobatics out of his act. His quick moves and rhythmic gestures are reserved for the dark walls and corners of Gaborone. He does his best work when no one is looking, and with flicks of the wrist, the triggered release of paint, and a dashing eye that looks at both the cinder-block canvas and the surrounding environment, Khwezi leaves his mark the city. Always trying to innovate his designs, style, and location, Khwezi is one of Gaborone’s most prominent graff artists. To know the city’s appearance is to know his work.


ISO 200 17mm f/6.3 1/125 sec
I chose this image to begin the series because it is representative of much of Khwezi’s work. To the left is his tag, ink, which he punctuates with the copyright symbol. When I asked him about the irony in his assertion of property rights while infringing on another’s, he didn’t seem to understand what I was getting at. Whether he’s aware of it or not, Khwezi’s work is imbued with the inherent ethical debate surrounding the medium. He seems to be unintentionally mocking it without engaging in it, and I'm not sure if this is charming or infuriating?
On the right is another common motif in Khwezi’s pieces—a bug-eyed face grinning demonically. Khwezi is a nice and (usually) calm guy, but he often makes similar expressions that are larger-than-life. His animation seems to imitate his animation. In this photograph I included the tree, trying to make the shack into an imitation of the face painted on it. As Khwezi often repeats, “life imitates art imitates life imitates art imitates...”

ISO 1600 17mm f / 2.8 1/25 sec
The lighting wasn’t strong under this awning, located inside a building at the Main Mall, so I boosted my ISO, opened my aperture all the way, and tried to keep a steady hand with the slow shutter speed.
I composed this while thinking about the repetition of the man’s angry, green face juxtaposed with the red, sterile, no-smoking sign. If ever there were a semiotic face-off between rebellious street art and authoritarian street etiquette, this is it.

ISO 1600 17mm f / 2.8 1/50 sec
This shot is explicitly about the environment in which Khwezi chose to place his work. The architecture of this staircase, leading up to the restaurant and poetry bar, Khwest, is loud and full of distracting curves and angles. The wide-angle view is mildly disorienting, which keeps a viewer’s eye entertained and engaged. I wanted to reflect the subtlety of Khwezi’s work, located in the bottom-right of the image, by stacking the building on top of it, and in this sense, his tag becomes a solid foundation for the cacophony above.



ISO 200 30 mm f / 4.0 1/40 sec
The lighting was sharp when we arrived at this tag, located on the southern side of the Standard Chartered at the Main Mall. I faced it directly, trying to compose the shot with attention to Khwezi’s bleeding stencil interacting with the crisp, Helvetica of the bank’s name.
I left the photograph slightly tilted, weighing the viewer’s eye toward Khwezi’s unforgiving blemish upon this financial institution. P.O.R.N., the acronym for his music group, People of Religious Nature, seems to be mocking the static and truncated, “Stand-” and “Charte-.”

ISO 200 19 mm f / 2.8 1/30 sec
This picture is a close-up of the previous tag. I wanted to show the texture of the surface on which Khwezi stenciled. Using a wide aperture and focal length, I was able to get close, keeping the entire stencil in frame and achieve the narrow depth of field that draws a viewer’s eyes to the porous metal. If you looks closely, you can see that the spray paint clogged up some of the holes, and even though I was there and already did, it makes me want to reach out and feel the texture.


ISO 400 17 mm f / 2.8 1/8 sec
I tend to rely on my wide-angle lens too much, but I can’t help how attracted I am to vanishing points and foreshortened perspective. For being so close to this scene (excluding the cars in the background) the photo still has a sense of depth and movement. Khwezi’s crude and gestured lines draw the focus from the bottom-left to the top-right, just as the gold/white color scheme of the environment moves from the top-left to the bottom-right. This compositional and hue-oriented balance, combined with the slow shutter speed, makes the griminess of this image feel strangely comfortable. Hug trash much?


ISO 1600 17 mm f / 2.8 ¼ sec
Again, I find myself using a wide angle and a fully dilated aperture. This time, however, the photograph was taken in the dark, and I was maximizing the amount of light that entered my lens and struck my camera’s digital sensor. With a ¼ sec-long exposure, I had to take a deep breath, dig my elbows into my ribs, and search for that transient moment of meditation while the shutter flew open.
The Moon is the white light on the left, the incandescent street-lamp is on the right, and after a couple takes, I got the smeared light trails of a car going down this quiet road through Gaborone’s Block 9 district. This photo, I hope, is less about Khwezi’s tag and more about one’s situational encounter with it.


ISO 1600 17mm f / 5.0 1/80 sec
I’m almost embarrassed by how brash this photo is, and I only include it because it reveals something crucial about Khwezi: he is a performer. When we came upon this tag—painted with a reflective silver tone—I attached my flash and began illuminating the scene. Khwezi proceeded to pop some wheelies with his offensively-neon-red bike. (Okay, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enamored with the hyper-dynamism of the shot.)
All the same, Khwezi, who is cruising down that daunting hill known as one’s second decade, makes a funny site atop that one wheel. If there’s any doubt as to where his creative soul is leading him in this moment, look at the words and arrows directly beneath the tag.

ISO 1600 17mm f / 2.8 ¼ sec
There was little-to-none ambient light when we arrived at this piece, located on someone’s backyard wall in Block 9. I asked Khwezi to shine his flashlight—a halogen—on the tag. While I wanted to treat his work like a cleanly-lit spectacle on a stage, I also wanted to let its environment creep into the photograph. The encroaching weeds on the bottom serve two purposes: they cut the composition in two and provide some context for this piece’s geography. Khwezi had to get close to the ground and off the beaten path to spray this. When I asked him about choosing his locations, Khwezi explained that it’s important to find somewhere that’s both covert and frequently seen. In this regard, Graffiti is one of the few mediums where the canvas is sometimes more important than the paint.

ISO 1600 25 mm f / 3.5 ¼ sec
This Photo is primarily a product of white balancing. Like the other photos taken at night, I was using a long shutter speed with a wide aperture and high ISO, trying to give my camera the right parameters to soak in the light. With Khwezi shining his halogen lamp on the stencil—which depicts a mo-hawked punk—my camera misread the incandescent streetlights as being much more orange-red than they actually appear to the human eye.


ISO 800 17 mm f / 3.5 1/25 sec
Khwezi walks past one of the murals he painted at The National Museum of Botswana, located in City Center. The murals were part of a new exhibit showcasing the various instruments and musical traditions that come from Botswana. As it was a commissioned piece, Khwezi painted this over a drawing that was projected onto the wall. An art director at the museum drew the original sketch, and though Khwezi hoped to show-off his personal work, he considers this only the first of many opportunities to showcase his talent.
By shooting at a low shutter speed, I caught his arm swinging by his piece, either waving at or dismissing it.


ISO 100 50 mm f / 3.2 1/1600 sec
Khwezi shows off some of his sketches and scribbling. His comic character shows through in all his work, and can be felt in his precise, yet playful, renderings.
I chose to use a shallow depth of field in order to draw the viewer’s attention to the upper-left corner, where Khwezi seems to be drawing either his own image or that of a fellow graffer.


ISO 100 50 mm f / 5.6 1/500 sec
The sun was pretty strong where we chose to go through Khwezi’s sketchpads, so I was able to lower my ISO and get a lot of detail in this shot. I also switched to my 50mm lens, as it tends to make colors more crisp than my 17-70mm. I chose to position Khwezi’s fingers in the shot and angled toward the drawn figure in order to fill some negative space, give the image a sense of scale, and bring attention to the minute and precise work that an artist’s hands can achieve.


ISO 100 44mm f / 9.0 1/250 sec
Located on the basketball courts in the park situated between the University and the Main Mall, this green wall is slowly being engulfed by Khwezi's paint. The order of his work is evident; he made another bug-eyed "don't blink" face and then the personified spray-paint can—again with a bulging stare. Then there are the blue lines, words (both in English and Setswana), and figures coming from the can itself, as if the writer’s creation took over. There are two different stencils painted on the wall, one of a bubbly face and three of a right-angled sumo wrestler. Finally, Khwezi sloppily slapped on his "ink," tag and left the court, game over.
I placed my f-stop reasonably high in order to keep the fencing in the foreground in-focus. This reaffirms a viewer's sense of an urban environment, and at the same time, the wire remind the viewer, that graffiti is an art form predicated on transgressing boundaries. Khwezi, it seems, never forgets that tenet.

Botswana National Stadium part II

I'm off to Namibia for a week-long holiday. I apologize for a lack of posting, but the internetz have been fickle with these large files. In the meantime, I present Part II of the Stadium Series. Due to a limited amount of photos, a few select still images will have to satisfy any visual demands. hopefully the audio will suffice...

From Dschwaz Photo Blog

From Dschwaz Photo Blog

Photos of some Characters

Khwezi Mphatlalatsane, hip hop artist, takes a leap on the outskirts of Gaborone.



People of Religious Nature, a Gabs-based, eclectically-talented, hip-hop group, poses for test shots for their upcoming album, Word Truth Freedom. Members include, Ngozi Chukura, Shorty, and Khwezi Mphatlalatsane




Dominic "Mex" Mandindo, owner and head producer of Mexyland Studios



Sebastian Modak drums at Mexyland



Some men juggle a soccer ball at a charity soccer event in Central Gaborone.



Ilana Millner reads to her sunny heart's content

The Botswana National Stadium 1

This auditory location sketch is part one in a three-part series (culminating on October 12th. the photos taken for this were also a victim of the camera thieves. I hope the audio suffices.

Over-Dume La and Taking Photos

Irony is a shabby place to start, but here it is. As i proclaim this imagistic site up and running, i also proclaim that my camera was stolen. Yes, the author's pen was nabbed but he will continue to nib--puns and all. Before we get there, however, let's start here...

Welcome to Reportswana: A Botswana Report. I have been in this Sub-Saharan country for just over a month, but because the gray meat in my head needs marination, this blog might taste a 'bit tardy. If so, then it is my goal, over the next several months, to serve up some memorable, educational, and linkable content. I like seasoning (my Setswana name is Baba Dijo, which means Spicy Food), so I promise consistent and zesty recipes of images, sounds, and words.
***
I am here in Gaborone, Botswana as an exchange student from the University of Pennsylvania. I came here to seriously pursue a creative and intellectual passion for multimedia-based documentation. I am enrolled at the University of Botswana, taking courses in both the Urban Studies and Media Studies Faculty, using classes such as Radio Production and Urban Sociology to investigate the people and places around me. The difference between the U of P and the U of B is nicely summarized by the latter's lower, curvy line. Indeed, this location has thrown me for several loops. Whether I speak in terms of health, infrastructure, food, fun, people, beauty, language, or security, the past several weeks have been dizzying.

There's a bit too much ground to make up if I am to cover my past month, so for now I promise that future posts will fill in some of the gaps. However, memories are fickle and some might remain rooted in the ink of my notebook or evaporated into this region's dry air. It is for this reason, among many others, that I humbly and imploringly ask that you look at two blogs written by two special people who both do two special things with words: write well and write often.

Ilana in Botswana
Sebswana

As this blog will not strictly be a travel journal--it may in fact bend toward the less-personal and more-formal aspects of recording this place and time--both Ilana and Sebastian's blogs are insightful voices of balance. I hope you read 'em.
***
Experience is a rich fellow, and as an aspiring documentarian, I will be striving to reach further and further into his pockets. This takes us to friday night, when someone reached into my own pockets.

Lizard Lounge is a club whose tacky nomenclature matches the atmosphere. With red lights, green lasers, and multiple levels of griminess (Sebastian named one "The Dancequarium"), I was glad to arrive with a large crowd of friends. A quick round of introductions:

-Ilana and Sebastian, both putting the 'bomb' in Bombay. They are also exchange students from Penn.
-Mex, a Zimbabwean music producer and local studio owner. He has become a relentlessly generous friend and host in the context of Gaborone's cultural scene.
-Lebo is a life-long friend of Mex, and he lives and works at their studio, Mexyland. He is a stoic iceberg--calm and quiet on the top but salsa-dancing, DJing, chess-mastering, and marimba-banging on in the bottom.
-Khwezi and Ngozi are local musicians/artists. They, along with friend/collaborator, Shordi, are finishing their debut hip hop album under the name, People of Religious Nature. (Much more on them at a later date.)
-Anna is a student at the University of Maryland Baltimore County majoring in English and minoring in International Affairs. She is a constant source of acute, metaphysical observations regarding cloud movement.
-Brianna is an exchange student from UC Santa Clara studying history. If her sarcasm were a knife, it would tickle you. She also plays some mean guitar and sings some charming tunes.

We arrived at Lizard Lounge early in the night, hoping to show some support for DJ ONKZ who was playing that night. Mex is currently putting the finishing touches on ONKZ's new album, House Work, and I was "hired," two weeks ago to provide graphic design and photography for the CD packaging. Below is a tentative promo poster that may soon be plastered on walls across this fine city.



Walking into a club can either be confidence boosting or diminishing. However, walking into a busy, unsafe environment with big, expensive gadgetry is downright uncomfortable. Furthermore, I enjoy tapping my toes on occasion, and with a shoulder bag weighing around 8 lbs, I know such dancing must be attempted sparingly and prudently. I have engaged in festive, photographic evenings on a boat in Philadelphia, at a bar in the Peruvian Amazon, and in a concert-hall in Atlanta, GA. I pride myself in having the competence to extend my bodily awareness, my kinetic sensory ability, and something along the lines of spidey-sense to my camera. The machine molds into my palm, and neither gravity, a strong swipe, nor tempestuous fate could pry my baby away from me. Yet, such skill (or luck) was limited on Lizard Lounge's premises.

Around 12:30 pm (00:30), I was shaking my hips to the beat with my camera tucked, zipped, and velcroed into my shoulder bag. With Ilana on one side and Lebo on another, a tall man, dressed in a red track jacket, came right up to me and started dancing. Suspicion began to swirl in my head: his movements were friendly, his face unsmiling, and his proximity threatening. I decided to return the groove and plastered a friendly expression on my face. In the vague recesses of my memory, I now remember feeling something wiggle against the the black canvas holding my camera.

About five minutes later, my shoulder was bouncing too easily, and I reached around to feel an all-too-light bag. My hand went for the clip and zipper, found both undone, and reached for what was no longer there.

I immediately stopped Ilana and Lebo, frantically notified them that my camera was gone, and I began running around the club scanning hands, bags, tables, and floor space. I stopped random club-goers, peered under couches, and hyperventilated. Mex notified the club-manager, who quickly had security close all the entrances and search everyone leaving. Brianna began to systematically interrogate anyone and everyone she could, and together, she and Anna went into the V.I.P. lounge and searched under all the furniture. Sebastian, Khwezi, and Lebo went outside to investigate whether the theif(theives) had been seen exiting. Ilana and Ngozi stood with me at the main door, making sure the guards didn't let my camera slip out. To say that my friends rallied in my effort is an understatement. I have known most of these people for less than a month, and yet, without a flicker of hesitation, they came to my aid with sincere urgency. These are true friends, and if it took this experience of material dispossession to understand it, then that's okay with me.

At around 4:30, after some confusing and hectic leads outside the club, Mex informed me that the camera was probably gone. Two girls had seen a man walk out of the club with a big camera around his neck shortly before security closed the exit. In all likelihood, this man stole my camera while his red-jacketed partner distracted me. If i had been the nabber, I too would have made haste and scrammed before the eventual physical and emotional reactions. Effective and affective indeed.

The past several days have been filled with police reports, pawn shop visits, and sadness. Regret is also present--I should not have brought the camera there, I should not have been dancing, I should not have kept my bag in back of me. But as someone who still isn't comfortable living my entire life with a lens to my eye, I feel that there's a fine line between working and experiencing. Perhaps a real photojournalist can give me some tips (please do hollar at me), but maybe this is just a lesson in probability and luck. Furthermore, only my camera and the attached 17-85 mm lens were taken--not my or anyone else's physical safety*. That alone is reason to rejoice.

As I remarked to Ilana that night, I often think about what I'd do if someone approached me with a knife and demanded my camera.

Ugly Mugger: Give me your camera or your guts sucker! (knife shining in moonlight).

Daniel: Yes, of course. Here take it. If I give you my 50 mm lens and tripod, will you walk away faster?

Ugly Mugger: Shut up. (takes all my gear and saunters away, picking at a wedgie.)

And as I told Ilana about this hypothetical situation, I described the swelling wave of violence I would internally have to suppress. I'm a pretty big pacifist--I've never intentionally hit someone with all my strength, and I've never been in a real fight--but this scenario has always boiled me into raging, fist-tightening anger. However, standing against the club wall at 3 am, I didn't want to lay my knuckles on anything but the sweet metal and plastic of my Canon. Perhaps I read Gandhi too young, but I was--and still am--ready to forgive and get back.

Property theft is probably one of the most common forms of disempowerment in this world. People experience it everyday in a variety of forms and with a multitude of implications--candy, wallets, cars, real-estate. For some people, a stolen meal is annoyance while for others its starvation. On this spectrum, I place my loss relatively low. Likewise, it's possible that the people who profit from this theft need money in a more immediate and basic sense than I need my camera. Yet, that feeling of my possession being in another person's is pitted in my stomach. Pitted deep.
***
Future entries will hopefully be less self-concerned and wallowing. Though my camera is gone, I had taken and saved ample photographs to bide my time until new imagery can be acquiesced. Likewise, I am hoping that my insurance company will help out and I'll be getting a replacement camera soon. No matter what, I will continue to post the sounds of Botswana using a handy field recorder. This is a fascinating, entertaining, and complex place, and I hope my reports can reflect it.


*On the cab ride home, I noticed that the outside pocket of my camera bag was unzipped. It seems that the thief also made off with Ilana's room keys, which I had been holding. This petty, useless, and unprofitable action rendered Ilana locked out of her room for the remainder of the weekend. For a detailed and infuriating account of that tale, check out her blog in the next several days.

The Dilemma of Food Vendors

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Things Are Happening

mumbling beginnings