ecw-dev
Episcopal Church Women in NC
Category: The Botswana Diaries
-
The choirs have finished competing and are again sitting with the other members of their delegations from churches throughout the Diocese of Botswana. The judges are huddling together, conferring about the energetic performances of the women.
-
Activities ran long during the Saturday morning session of the Mothers’ Union conference and now there’s an early afternoon lull. The slower pace, so different from other days at the large gathering in Tsabong, is a little disorienting at first. Then I realize all is not as it seems on the surface.
-
Late one afternoon, after the last of the reports have been presented at the annual conference of the Mothers’ Union, about a dozen MU members and I pile into the trusty white passenger van and head to the home of a recently deceased maruti, Mma Toto. Mma Toto, whose husband predeceased her by about a…
-
Competitions are an integral part of the annual conferences of the Mothers’ Union in the Anglican Diocese of Botswana. Women from different parishes vie for top honors in a variety of categories. These showcases for skills are friendly competitions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t taken seriously. The first contest at the conference in Tsabong…
-
The mornings do indeed begin bright and early. After lunch there’s a break of an hour. However, the timing of the evening schedule turns out to be more a suggestion. Events go on until 11 p.m., midnight, even later. And here’s the thing, younger and older alike are truly present, participating with gusto even as…
-
On the first full day of the Mother’s Union annual conference, and our second day in the desert village of Tsabong, I leave the assembly hall to stretch my legs. It’s late morning and a dozen or so of our hosts are preparing for the lunch crowd.
-
I slept soundly the night the Mother’s Union officers and I finally arrived in Tsabong, but woke early the next day. Eyes closed against the bright sun streaming through the window next to the bed, I lay still, listening to birdsong, men calling to one another, and the tinkling of bells.
-
Like the Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of North Carolina, the Mother’s Union of Botswana rotates the place of its conference. In August 2010, Tsabong, on the southwestern edge of the country in the Kalahari Desert, was the home for the annual event.
-
A journey of a 1,000 miles may begin with a single step, but the 324 miles between Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana, and Tsabong, the administrative center of the Kgalagadi District in the Kalahari Desert, is best begun with a reliable vehicle and trailer.
-
Within a few days of the tornadoes that tore through North Carolina on April 16, 2011, I began receiving e-mail from Botswana. The people there had begun to get word of the destruction wreaked by the storms and they were concerned.