Standing out

Thursday 17th September

Mokolodi, Botswana

Today, everything seemed closed.

 

We had heard about a collective of weavers in Oodi, set up in the 1970s by Swedish missionaries as a way of creating employment for local women.  They produce tapestries showing scenes of rural life and enjoy showing off their skills to passers-by.

 

Interested to find out more, we headed off to Oodi, only to find the road there closed and the diversion causing us to once again go off-roading in a VW Polo, this time across the fringes of the Kalahari Desert.

 

When we arrived in Oodi, there were few signs of life.  Approaching the weavers' building and peering through the windows gave a glimpse of their magnificent tapestries, but everything was locked and bolted with not a soul in sight.

 

Mochudi

Oh well, never mind.  We headed instead to Mochudi to visit a museum depicting Tswana life.  We followed the signs to what we thought was the museum, but it turned out to be a community centre where we gate-crashed some kind of adult literacy class.  A street vendor eventually gave us directions up a steep mountain path and after a lot of climbing we arrived at the museum's huge iron gates and pressed the intercom.  No response.  Eventually, after much scouting around, we concluded that this, too, was closed so headed back into Mochudi to visit the market.

 

The village is under tribal authority, and we had been advised that we should first visit the tribal offices and ceremonially ask for permission to enter.  To this moment, we have been unable to locate said office, so proceeded to without the relevant permissions.

 

From nowhere, a woman began shouting to us and instructed us we must enter the property she was pointing to.  Ah! we thought, this must be the Tribal Administration Office.  But not so.  In fact, the woman who lived there just wanted to see the white people, so once she'd had a good look at us, we were on our way.  She even asked if we could give her son a job, and was much dismayed when we told her we were only visiting for the day.

 

This quickly became the story of the day - throughout the village, everyone wanted to look at, to talk to and to touch us.  Stall holders shouted, not to try and sell their wares but just to ask to shake our hands.  Every passing person wanted to stop and talk.  Parents chided their children for staring at us, then continued to do so themselves.  One small girl even came up, stroked our arms, then ran off giggling to her group of friends.

 

To be fair, we did stick out like sore thumbs.  We were clearly the only white people in the village.  We dressed differently - while we were wearing what any Scot would in 35° heat, the locals remained wrapped up in long sleeves.  Supposing we'd worn flashing neon signs, we could not have been more noticeable, and yet the level of attention we got could never have been expected.

 

Even in the car as we left, a bus driver going in the opposite direction yelled for us to stop and wind down the window, only so he could say hello and then drive off.  By the time we left Mochudi, it was all rather tiring and it left me glad never to be destined for celebrity.