A Coming of Age Story of a Girl and a Country

While set in Botswana and praised by Alexander McCall Smith as a "striking portrait of one of the world's most beguiling countries," the deeper subject of Twenty Chickens for a Saddle turns out not to be Africa at all. Rather, Robyn Scott has written a searching portrait of the limits of individualism and an exploration of education in its several forms.

Ordinarily, the problem with being idiosyncratic is that there you are, all by yourself. In this story, however, there's an entire clan of stark, raving individuals who totally delight one another and somehow come together as a family of eccentrics. I knew a family much like them when I lived in Botswana for three years in the 1970s, learning to speak Setswana.

What constitutes a good education? What makes a family, a culture, a nation? How does the individual fit into these gathering units? What is the trajectory of a marriage? What are the limits of change? How is the dignity of a human being colored one way or another? Searching for Robyn Scott's views on these basic questions kept me reading. Clearly, this is more than an exotic memoir of a faraway country and people having nothing to do with the rest of us except to entertain.

It is with a sense of homecoming that I enter Robyn Scott's Twenty Chicken world. Her family is one of a maverick breed of outlanders that has loved this country and contributed to Botswana's peaceful and harmonious development.

Seven-year-old Robyn came to Botswana in 1988, about 11 years after I returned to the United States. She was homeschooled by her mother until 1995, when her formal education began. A successful adult, she appears to have suffered in no way from her early fluid education of learning by doing, by observing, and by being read to.

Graceful asides define Botswana's history, culture, and challenges, including the AIDS crisis, which is told in frank language. Written mostly from the point of view of a child, this is a coming-of-age story of the best kind. As Robyn matures, she takes us through Botswana's changing fortunes in the Selebi-Phikwe area of the Limpopo River and later on a game farm closer to South Africa. This is an environment that both embraces her and allows her to grow up on her own terms.

Twenty Chickens is particularly good at describing Botswana's plant life and wildlife and the freedom of the bush land. The narrative is complemented by photos, a rough map, endearingly drawn icons, and glossaries of Setswana and Afrikaans. An index would make the book even more accessible.

One of my favorite sections is Chapter 16, The Whole Family's Half of an Island. Here, more than in other chapters, we are given a direct sense of Botswana culture and relationships and the heartfelt hospitality lavished upon extended family, even if part of that family is white. There is playfulness and ingenuity here, and a demonstration of natural Batswana diplomacy which is wonderfully revealing of this quiet people living in a vast land.

"My daughter, who was 11 at the time, also loves Bessie's books and was deeply influenced by living for two years in Botswana. One of my favorite expressions from there is Ke moto fela - "I'm just a person."--Barbara Bamberg Scott (Read her impressive bio below.)

Botswana is a land-locked country in Southern Africa, the size of Texas. I lived and worked in Botswana for three years in the 1970s, first with Peace Corps (teaching Engligh as a Second Language and Literature in Maun Secondary School) and later with village development, literacy, and Popular Culture Projects (with my salary funded by British Quakers).

I met Barbara Bamberger Scott through JudyTart (who has appeared on Riehlife several times). Judy, knowing of our mutual connection with Botswana, suggested to each of us that we might enjoy reading Robyn Scott's "Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: A Memoir of an African Childhood" set in Zimbabwe, one of Botswana's neighbors.

Each of us wrote back independently of our love and admiration for Bessie Head (1937-1986) ...as an African author of depth and craft whose work surely deserved to be better known in the United States. When I taught in Botswana "When Rainclouds Gather" was one of the set books for the examination that we studied in our curriculum. I became a fan. Thus it was that Barbara wrote this charming story of meeting Bessie in 1980 when she, her husband and daughter were volunteers for Quaker Peace and Service (a British organization).---JGR
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MEETING BESSIE HEAD
by Barbara Bamberger Scott
copyright 2008

We were quite naive about Southern Africa. We had hoped to go to India, but wound up in Botswana. Our director introduced us to Vernon Gibberd who was Bessie's model for the idealized volunteer in Serowe - Village of the Rain Wind, a book I had read before going to Botswana, in preparation. I had also read Head's Maru.

Vernon was a Tarzan-like figure, very English, and his wife was equally attractive and Dutch. They had two older children and a new baby. I believe when they had only the first child, Bessie described them (perhaps with some jealousy as she seemed to have had a crush on Vernon) as "A man, a woman, and an ugly baby." But there was nothing ugly about any of the family.

Vernon was exactly as advertised---he was a true Quaker, intelligent, aristocratic, could have been doing anything but chose to be in Africa digging wells and going slightly native. The day we drove up to Serowe from Mogoditshane, Vernon stomped around showing us various projects we had read about in Bessie's book. We later got very sick with tick-bite fever from following him through the high grass.

That evening there was a meal and social gathering that included Bessie. She would have been about 50 then I think, and I found her fascinating. I had not gotten used to the odd accent of Southern Africa, and I knew little about what it meant to be "colored." But she was easy to talk to, perhaps because I was complimenting her writing.

Like most writers (I have since learned, having become one) she did love to talk about what she'd written, and what strikes me as most memorable is what she said about Maru.

I told her sincerely that I believed the last sentence of the book was perfect.

People like the Batswana, who did not know that the wind of freedom had also reached people of the Masarwa tribe, were in for an unpleasant surpise becuase it would be no longer possible to treat Masarwa people in an inhuman way without getting killed yourself. (NYC: The McCall Publishing company, 1971)

She was delighted, and serious, as she told me that the whole book had been, from her viewpoint, written backward from that sentence.

I later read her short story collection and A Question of Power which seemed to me one of the best books ever written about a man's domination over a woman, and a mental breakdown all rolled into one.

Considering how difficult it was to get around, we lived far from Serowe, and I never saw Bessie again. I think her books are magnificent, the lucid narratives of a person who lived her life in pain and sorrow in a strange land.

In our work I had a lot of contact with refugees. One, who had lived in four countries since he was forced to leave his home naked and fleeing from two armies, told us, "A refugee is a person whose heart has been broken." I think that applied to Bessie.

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Speaking of Botswana

Botswana is the country.
Batswana are the collective citizens of the country.
Motswana is an individual citizen.
Setswana is the language of the Botswana.
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About Barbara Bamberger Scott

Barbara is a freelance writer, a Spanish interpreter, and a well-traveled person. She grew up with a small library of the Heritage books, and Les Miserables was one of the first "real" books I ever read, at about age 10. Barbara was a child actress. She writes songs!

Barbara has written the nonfiction book, Golden Thread, about the impact of an Indian spiritual master on a group of hippies in the late 60's in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her second creative non-fiction tale is With It: A Year on the Carnival Trail. Her private company is called Barscoink, dedicated to using words to their best effect.

With Phyllis Silverman Ott-Toltz she co-authored Love Bade Me Welcome: The Life of Phyllis Ott.

You can read Barbara's reviews at Curled Up with a Good Book and many other sites. Google her name to find her many online interviews. She is the principle editor for A Woman's Write.

Maun, Botswana

Afternoons, I teach schoolchildren to swim
in the flooded waters of the Tamalakane.
Two fingers support wiry bodies that sink
every chance they get.
“Arch your back! Spread out your limbs! Float! Kick! Paddle!”
Until one student travels under her own speed.
We collapse on the bank, gasping with sputtered water and glee.

Evenings, I swim downriver towards sunset.
A flamboyant lilac-breasted roller covers the sky.
The current muscles me onward, multiplies my strength.
No matter I cannot reach the sun. It reaches me.
My arms cut through the smooth-rolling water flaming before my stroke.

At river’s edge reeds grow with tender white shoots at their base.
Good to eat.
Water lilies perch on princess pads.
Waterskaters skim along the surface between legs of Jesus birds.

It's slow work swimming back against the current.
Fin and smooth slippery skin slide past my calf and knee.
The water parts before my hands. Sun sets.
My wet cheeks reflect the moon, rising.

Okavango Delta, Northern Botswana

We leave from a white hunter safari camp with a Motswana guide in a
Mokoro, that buoyant log burned and dug from tribal memory.
Tent, food, two passengers.
My hand leaves its own wake.

Day one
In knee shallow water, we wade.
If waist high, it's still okay.
The kindly hippo breathes bubbles in warning.
Our guide poles to one side.
You don't want the hippo carrying your boat on its back
before dropping down to swagger off with your arm in its mouth.

Day two
We're beyond settlements now.
A fellow poler hails us to show an abscess on his leg.
Medicine? No.
But we lance the pus and bind his wound.
Fancy-pants language not much use here. Damn!
I wish I were a nurse.

Day three
Our guide burns down a palm tree
to find and eat its heart.
We strip to bathe among reeds and mud.
I've never felt so clean as with
sand and ash for soap.

Day four
This place owns itself.
38 varieties of fish
47 varieties of animals
96 varieties of birds
143 varieties of plants.
None knows their names.
They just are.

Day five
Halfway to somewhere we turn.
We must return to nowhere, where we began.
Uncharted channels call.
We duck out of reach of that siren, Adventure.

Day six
Sky meets water.
We’ve exhausted
all conversational combinations
of Setswana, English, and body language.
We're together, in silence.
Clouds dive deep.

Day seven
It's a straight shot to camp.
Another straight shot to the hot sun showers.
Imported grub.
We empty boat.
The boat is empty.
Goodbye, water legs.
Hello, sand ruts.

Kalahari Desert, Springtime

Rainclouds gather and drop their load.
Delirious sands soak it up, roll it off.
Herbs, wildflowers and tufts of grass spring up...
beyond seeing.

Yesterday, a road.
Today, a river runs...
beyond fording.

We cook sausages over a quick, small fire;
Sip strong tea;
Warm ourselves over stories;
Touch stars on the piercing bright night;
And wait for The Arc to arrive.

Internationally, there is also pressure about what Africa and South Africa are about, and a vague prescription as to what stories I should tell. Africa is a dark continent, and as a Black woman, I represent the disadvantaged. Zulu culture is assumed to be the de facto Black South Africans’ culture. And the folktales are mostly about Anansi.

My children’s stories should depict children who walk miles to draw water, not those who struggle to understand why the fairy godmother never shows at her house after they lost teeth, but does so at her Caucasian friend’s house.

When my daughter was born, I discovered a new reason to tell stories I liked, in my own words, no pressure. She’s growing up in a city, away from most of our relatives, so my stories are also about building her sense of identity. “These are the people to whom you were born, the people who are part of your history,” my stories say.

I also attempt to bridge the gap between Western culture, which she assimilates through friends, books, TV, the internet and magazines and our traditions and culture. “Batswana have too many rules,” she complains. Most cultures do, I tell her.

Sometimes the stories I tell are just meant to entertain her. I am also her reservoir of memories she no longer remembers; storer of the images of people she doesn’t remember meeting. “Tell me about me about the time when I….” she loves to prompt me.

I am painfully conscious of the fact that some stories are lost across the generations. My father used to urge me to visit old people in the village and ask them to tell me what stories they remember. I visited some of them, but mostly I was “busy” and their stories are gone with them.

My daughter and I spend more time watching TV, playing on the Internet, watching movies/other people’s stories rather than sharing our own. That, I suppose, is the price we pay for living in modern times.

She also has to deal with the scepticism that is a natural part of modern life. Last December I wanted to take her up the small hill near our home in Phokeng and she wouldn’t go. “What’s out there,” she asked suspiciously, wary of the small forest, city child that she is.

“Ralelatlha’s foot,” I said.

The vague imprint of a giant foot on a flat piece of rock was an object of legend and curiosity when I was growing up.

Many Setswana folktales and legends begin with ‘long, long ago, when the rocks were still soft…” So I grew up wondering if Raleletlha’s foot was proof that the rocks truly used to be soft and the giants walked the earth alongside men.

“Oh please don’t tell me you believe in Big Foot?” my daughter laughed when I explained footprint.

My hope is that she will pass on some of the stories to her children and that through the stories and her kids will learn to appreciate the people my parents and grandparents were.