Update
Tuesday morning, my last in Gabs. Back to the packing, the loading, the gear I had grown so accustomed to in South Africa; the routine I was apparently eager to forget. Fully loaded, I made the short walk to the bus rank that I had made dozens of times during my time in Gabs. Walking across and then beside the road, normal traffic nearly running me down, a few people here and there walking as well when one stumbles in front of me holding out a hand. Again, nothing out of the usual, not even when he grabs my arm and starts asking something I can’t understand, really complete strangers will out and grab you and hold your hand while they ask for money. Not this guy: “Give me your phone.” Everything seemed so routine until then that I was a little confused. He kept repeating it and then moved in my path (I had been trying to just continue walking) and said “I have a knife, I stick you with it…give me your phone.” His grip on my wrist tightens a little so I shake free and push him away. I can tell from his face that there is no knife and that this attempted robbery was by no means planned. Just saw a white guy with more money on his back than he’ll see in a year.
I was a little surprised that none of the people around stopped to help though. I was yelling quite loudly for him to get away from me and looked straight in the eyes of an off-duty security guard who didn’t even pause her stride. Anyway, I walked away from this guy safe and sound, and told a few people on the phone and on the bus to Francistown. Now, no one said this, but I can guarantee that every Gaboronian thought to themselves “I bet it was a Zimbabwean.” To be honest, the regional xenophobia has infected me to some degree and I wondered the same thing. Wondered though. I have no idea what this guy’s nationality was, my wonder was due to the fact that with every story of almost any crime in Gabs comes the inevitable, “you know, those Zimbabweans, they’re crazy,” or something to that effect.
Arriving in Francistown, incident-free, only delayed, I met up with my friend Kaya, who is PSI’s lone sales-representative for Botswana’s second city. He is also Zimbabwean. Kaya worked for PSI in Zim. under the same Country Representative who now heads up the Botswana office. PSI and Kaya did quite well in Zimbabwe, with currency and product coming from abroad and programs with a lot of momentum, but inflation eventually got the better of people’s salaries, with consumer prices sometimes increasing as much as 300% overnight, even quarterly salary raises couldn’t keep up. Kaya eventually left and moved with his wife and daughter to Johannesburg.
There were no jobs for PSI in the region, and Kaya, even with his life’s worth of education and experience in sales, could only obtain work as a security guard. Jobs in Jo’burg were plentiful, but Kaya and his wife Wussi, a career teacher, encountered intense discrimination and impenetrable bureaucracy that kept them from obtaining decent-paying work in their respective fields. Kaya kept in contact with PSI and his former boss though, until the position in Francistown opened up and he got the job.
Kaya has been working in Botswana for a month now, Wussi and their daughter moved to join him from Johannesburg a week ago. I sat down with all of them at the end of my long day and they described their recent moves and countless encounters with the xenophobia that has possessed this region. In South Africa, you’re more likely to hear “those Nigerians, they’re crazy,” but no matter where you’re from, Kaya describes, when you get in a cab or a bus, as a black African, and speak English to the driver, they don’t start driving, they say “where are you from?”
It’s not much better in Botswana. Wussi is skeptical she’ll find work and Kaya has found it very difficult to do business with Batswana as a salesman in a close-knit town where he’s already known as that Zimbabwean from PSI. Both of them have been shocked to see how immigrants are treated in their two host countries.
“I never knew that people could be stopped on the street and asked for I.D. Where’s your I.D., I got that all the time, even here in Botswana,” Kaya says. He feels betrayed as well because Zimbabwe was just such a destination for regional immigrants in the 80s. Wussi described her schools being populated by students and teachers from all over Africa and never remembers anyone asking for I.D.
They are doing their best to settle into Francistown. I can attest that a foreigner’s existence in Botswana is a difficult one, but I can’t imagine how unaccommodating this place is for them. Like I said before, the vitriol of the xenophobia here is contagious, and Kaya even says that Botswana will get what’s coming to them if they don’t treat immigrants better. This is, bluntly, what I had in mind in the previous post on immigration issues, and hearing Kaya and Wussi has reaffirmed what I said in that post, but has also made me wonder what kind of lasting effects this will all have on Southern Africa. It’s convenient for both Governments in Pretoria and Gaborone to have a fall-guy for everything, so I don’t see them rushing to solve these problems through policy or legislation anytime soon.
I was a little surprised that none of the people around stopped to help though. I was yelling quite loudly for him to get away from me and looked straight in the eyes of an off-duty security guard who didn’t even pause her stride. Anyway, I walked away from this guy safe and sound, and told a few people on the phone and on the bus to Francistown. Now, no one said this, but I can guarantee that every Gaboronian thought to themselves “I bet it was a Zimbabwean.” To be honest, the regional xenophobia has infected me to some degree and I wondered the same thing. Wondered though. I have no idea what this guy’s nationality was, my wonder was due to the fact that with every story of almost any crime in Gabs comes the inevitable, “you know, those Zimbabweans, they’re crazy,” or something to that effect.
Arriving in Francistown, incident-free, only delayed, I met up with my friend Kaya, who is PSI’s lone sales-representative for Botswana’s second city. He is also Zimbabwean. Kaya worked for PSI in Zim. under the same Country Representative who now heads up the Botswana office. PSI and Kaya did quite well in Zimbabwe, with currency and product coming from abroad and programs with a lot of momentum, but inflation eventually got the better of people’s salaries, with consumer prices sometimes increasing as much as 300% overnight, even quarterly salary raises couldn’t keep up. Kaya eventually left and moved with his wife and daughter to Johannesburg.
There were no jobs for PSI in the region, and Kaya, even with his life’s worth of education and experience in sales, could only obtain work as a security guard. Jobs in Jo’burg were plentiful, but Kaya and his wife Wussi, a career teacher, encountered intense discrimination and impenetrable bureaucracy that kept them from obtaining decent-paying work in their respective fields. Kaya kept in contact with PSI and his former boss though, until the position in Francistown opened up and he got the job.
Kaya has been working in Botswana for a month now, Wussi and their daughter moved to join him from Johannesburg a week ago. I sat down with all of them at the end of my long day and they described their recent moves and countless encounters with the xenophobia that has possessed this region. In South Africa, you’re more likely to hear “those Nigerians, they’re crazy,” but no matter where you’re from, Kaya describes, when you get in a cab or a bus, as a black African, and speak English to the driver, they don’t start driving, they say “where are you from?”
It’s not much better in Botswana. Wussi is skeptical she’ll find work and Kaya has found it very difficult to do business with Batswana as a salesman in a close-knit town where he’s already known as that Zimbabwean from PSI. Both of them have been shocked to see how immigrants are treated in their two host countries.
“I never knew that people could be stopped on the street and asked for I.D. Where’s your I.D., I got that all the time, even here in Botswana,” Kaya says. He feels betrayed as well because Zimbabwe was just such a destination for regional immigrants in the 80s. Wussi described her schools being populated by students and teachers from all over Africa and never remembers anyone asking for I.D.
They are doing their best to settle into Francistown. I can attest that a foreigner’s existence in Botswana is a difficult one, but I can’t imagine how unaccommodating this place is for them. Like I said before, the vitriol of the xenophobia here is contagious, and Kaya even says that Botswana will get what’s coming to them if they don’t treat immigrants better. This is, bluntly, what I had in mind in the previous post on immigration issues, and hearing Kaya and Wussi has reaffirmed what I said in that post, but has also made me wonder what kind of lasting effects this will all have on Southern Africa. It’s convenient for both Governments in Pretoria and Gaborone to have a fall-guy for everything, so I don’t see them rushing to solve these problems through policy or legislation anytime soon.
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