Francistown: Our "Press Conference" and Other Adventures

July 8th, Day 27:

The press conference was set for 11am, so we woke up early and packed are things in order to get there in time to set up. We arrived at the BTB Office, where the press conference was to be held, at around 10 and began rearranging the furniture and chairs to make it look as official as possible; this was our first press conference and we wanted to have fun with it. We put a desk on an elevation area at the front of the room for us to sit at facing several rows of chairs that we set up below. We then put our camera on the tripod and set it up to film from the back of the room. The scene was set nicely and looked as close to what we had scene in the movies as possible, I was trying particularly hard to model it after Tony Starks press conference upon his return from the Middle East in 'Iron Man'. All we needed know were the reporters...
 

Five papers were scheduled to show up; The Mmegi, The Sunday Standard, The Voice, The Midweek Sun, and The Guardian, but we hoped others that we had contacted would come also. However, at 11am only one reporter was there, and by 11:30am some reporters from The Voice showed up, but the others were nowhere to be found. We were a bit bummed out and felt a bit silly for setting up for a major 'press conference' but decided to answer questions for the reporters who had been kind enough to arrive. They turned out to be terrific reporters and we had very thorough interview and photo-session. They then graciously led us to the offices of the other papers that had not shown up.

When we arrived at the other newspapers offices they seemed confused about the timing of when the press conference had been, but were eager to interview us so we ended up going to several different offices and by the end of the day had gotten great interviews from 6 newspapers, all of whom were very nice and we are waiting for the articles to come out any day now. 

After we had finished our responsibilities with the press I headed to the Tati River Clinic where the doctor from the day before had referred me for some tests. I was feeling much better than the day before but not completely back to normal so I was anxious to see what the doctor would have to say. I was also excited because I find local medical clinics and hospitals to be surprisingly interesting windows into what a culture is like. There are people from all walks of life to see, insights into the level of development of a countries infrastructure, and a glimpse into the culture by seeing how the nurses and doctors (people in important positions) carry themselves. I was not disappointed.

Upon arriving I got stared at by everyone in the entire clinic who had probably never seen a white person come in before. I then asked for the doctor I was referred to and told that he was not there but to go speak to the nurses. The nurses then made a plan for me and sent me to the lab for several tests. When I got to the lab, I was met by a girl who turned out to be my age and was going to be taking my blood. Skeptical, I asked her some quick questions to try to gauge her level of expertise. My first question was simply what they were going to use my blood for once it was drawn; she explained that she had no idea and that her job was just to get my blood out and give it to someone else. I then asked her where she had studied nursing and she explained that she had not gone to school but instead had gone to a several month training session to learn how to draw blood. Eh...good enough for me. 

After they had finished the tests I returned to the hospital to settle the fees. I only had a credit card so I had to go into the back room with one of the nurses to swipe the card. The clinic had just closed and the machine was not working well so I got to chatting with the nurse for a bit. I explained my purpose in bicycling through Africa and she acknowledged how she also thought that the media does not portray a good image of Africa to the West.  'Whenever they show pictures of African's they are always so skinny and sick looking and ugly,' she explained, 'they never show how hot we are! It is such a big problem. African women are hot, you know?' I explained that I agreed, but that it was not the most important misunderstanding that we were combating.

However, it reminded me of another interesting conversation I had had the night before with the people managing the guest house we had been staying at. While I was chatting with a woman in the office a nice looking couple from Zimbabwe appeared and asked for a room. After they were shown to a bed, she returned and started explaining to me how much she disliked Zimbabweans. She explained how Botswanan people are very peaceful and cause no crime but the Zimbabweans are coming now and causing lots of crime (For those who do not know Zimbabwe has been facing very severe problems in terms of human rights abuses by their President Mugabe, a huge cholera epidemic, and inflation to the point that the currency became completely worthless, you can buy 10 Trillion Zimbabwean Dollar bills on the streets now as souvenirs. This has caused a great number of refugees to leave Zimbabwe enter neighboring countries, and Francistown was only some 50km or so from the Zimbabwean border). While there was certainly some truth to her statement and I understood where she came from, she then followed up her statement by explaining it to me again in different wording.  'You see, Botswanan men are all cowards and never attack you or steal from you, but Zimbabwean men have courage. They have so much courage they will stab you in your sleep and steal all of your things.' I nodded.

 After returning from the clinic Eric and I got some food and hit the sack. We would be leaving Francistown the next day after finishing up a few interviews and photo shoots and would be sleeping out, so we needed some rest.

-Aaron