My One Bad Incident

My First Bad Incident

June, 2013; Botswana

Botswana gets cold at night. It can even get below zero (Celsius). When people think of Africa, they think of the extreme heat of the Sahara but southern Africa has a winter chill. At night, you have to curl up in warm quilts. In the mornings, you need a hoodie and socks. During the day, you can often shed down to a t-shirt but once the sun goes down at 5:30pm, be prepared with your jumper.

That night though, I wasn’t shivering because of the cold. Huddled between Matt and James in the back of a pick up truck that was speeding towards Gaborone in the middle of the night, I wasn’t thinking about the temperature. We held on to each other tightly to make sure the otherswere okay. We sang in loud cheery voices to hide the fear deep in our throats. We occasionally glanced at each other to confirm that nobody had gotten too lost in their thoughts but we feared making eye contact.

As the adrenaline began to wear off, the cold air began to bite my face and piercethrough the layers of clothes that I was wrapped in. I curled up into myself and closed my eyes. And the flashes of what just happened immediately flooded the darkness. First came the bright orange flames of the bonfire that lit our faces up in the darkness so that they all glowed with a warm hue and the smell of burning wood that clung to my hair and the warmth emitted by the fire that burned my face till it felt raw. Then the sharp, fresh taste of Black Label (a beer) on my tongue as I gulped it down and the large cold bottle hanging out of my hand by my side, resting, waiting for another sip. In the back of that truck with my eyes closed, I could still feel the music sending off heavy bass vibrations into the night that made it feel as though the ground were dancing with us into the morning. I could see the people swaying precariously close to the fire, chattering and talking amongst themselves and with us in slurred but cheerful Setswana or English, pieced together through the haze of alcohol. The laughter, sometimes with us but sometimes at us filled the little silences in the music. The milieu is still laden heavy with a sense of merriment. In my mind, the crowd is mixing and mingling, taking turns talking to us – the white strangers – when suddenly the music is cut and its as though someone has, in a single instant, has dumped a bucket of ice on everyone but us. I continue to smile and attempt to finish the sentence I had started before the abrupt silence but I find that my words are lost more into the black hole of silence than they were previously into the chaos of the music.

Then I hear the voice of a young man. He is standing in front of the boys. His legs look bolted to the spot but his arms are gesturing menacingly. His face twists first into a look of disgust but quickly dissolves to reveal anger and then hatred. His tone is different from those of everyone else earlier. It is accusatory, sharp and inimical. I can’t make out what he is saying though. Somewhere between his mouth, spitting venom like a cobra, and my ears, unwilling recipients of anything but tunes and pleasant nonsense, his exact language dissolve into the air. His words are quickly destroying the facade of camaraderie that had developed. The air that was earlier full of warm smoke, cigarette filled laughter and beer enabled chatter is now antagonistic. And the hostility is aimed squarely at the boys and me. Our presence has provoked this man to launch into a violent and racist diatribe against the West, white people, Americans, Brits and us.

I stand in my spot, my eyes growing wide with fear and my heart beginning to race. I’m frozen for a moment before I realize that, even as his tirade continuesunabated, the scene around us is beginning to react. Slowly, people begin to move in different direction. Some simply begin to creep away while others place themselves between the man and us. Still othersskulk into his corner and nod grimly, with their eyes piercing through my drunken haze.

I opened my eyes and I was in the truck again. Now cold, the singing has stopped. We’ve reached Gabane, a village outside Gaborone, where we were meant to stay the night. We quickly exchange looks in the back of the truck and James clears his throat and explains that since the car is going back to Gaborone tonight, we should too. Because it might be hard to get a ride tomorrow.Because we’re tired and would like to sleep in our own beds. Because we’ve almost grown accustomed to the cold and we might as well make it all the way there in one shot. Because I don’t think that I can stand up, walk into someone else’s home and fall asleep. Because I don’t think I can react to stimulus properly.

James movedto the front seat of the car and I huddled closer to Matt. It had gotten colder and the adrenaline had all but left my system. In its place was a sense of… something I can’t put words to. I closed my eyes again.

The situation morphs quickly. There is soon resistance to the man. Someone is yelling back at him in Setswana. As more people join in the fray we are all but forgotten in the exchange. We glance at our hosts for guidance. We sneak looks at each other. We wait. But then someone pushes someone. And he pushes back. The fire feels like its grown bigger but less welcoming. It now glows red on everyone’s faces. But we’re in the dark. Someone tugs my hand but I remain fixed to the ground, watching it all unravel in slow motion. People I had just been laughing with are now standing beside our original aggressor. Others are motioning violently. Someone tells us to stay, it’ll all be alright. We say that we don’t want to cause a problem. They tell us that we aren’t the problem but it is a difficult argument to make.

The boys shake me out of my trance and we rush towards the truck, followed closely behind by our hosts for the evening. They step silently into the front seat and we climb into the back. The engine revs up and we edge towards the main road. Nobody speaks for a minute and the hum of the engine and the sounds of the night give us too many moments to think before someone from the front asks us to sing. I huddle between Matt and James and begin to silently mouth the words to songs as my mind struggles to process what just transpired. Because in reality, it all happened in about 5 minutes.

I’ve been to Africa six times. I’ve visited eight countries here that span much of the continent. I’ve spent time in cities, towns and villages of a diverse nature. And yes, I’ve fallen victim to things like petty theft. But I’ve always felt safe to a certain extent. My reasoning has been simple: it is unlikely that any terrible deed would be done to me accidentally. If anything were to happen to me, it would be in response to something that I have done wrong such as wandering down a dark alley at night alone. And these are things that, with proper precaution and adherence to basic rules of safety, should be able to be avoided. I’m not yet traveling through DRC or living in South Sudan where you accept that your safety is compromised by your mere location. And on top of all that, this was Botswana, the success story of Africa.

Yet here I was, on the receiving end of verbal abuse that threatened to turn physical.

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