A Familiar Issue, a Familiar Policy, a Familiar Problem

We were all so excited to have had our first field trip in Botswana and NO CLASSES. On Wednesday, we took a day to visit a San Village, and there I learned so much about families and how they live outside of Gaborone. What caught my attention the most was their seeming isolation. Access to transportation and services like health care seemed limited. There is a clinic in the village which is usually staffed by a nurse but the clinic had not had a nurse for sometime. On our visit, I was lucky enough to see how a government group delivers food and other necessities to families in need. As I spoke to a young lady from the university, I asked her about how this program worked and she mentioned that social workers evaluate families to determine if they qualify for assistance. If approved, the families receive vegetables, powdered soup, maize meals, flour, sugar, cooking oil, 8 pints of milk, and they get a stipend to purchase meat locally. The lady who I spoke with was very upset by this because she said that since the programs provide so much food every day, and the family members do not have to work, that this sometimes lead to fraud when ineligible people take advantage of these programs. This led me to think about how this situation is very similar to ours in Texas. I related the situation with the San village to poor families in Texas who receive food and welfare services from the government. Everything seemed so similar to our situation back home; the way some people are so upset at those who fraudulently receive government services.
I intriguingly noted that Botswana and my country have similar societal problems, similar government policies and similar spillover issues.

Ruby T.