Masimo

Every family in Botswana owns land out in the bush where they plant their crops.  This land is called masimo. I recently went on a quick trip with my landlord to her lands, as she had hired some community members to help hoe and was giving them a ride to masimo, 11km away.

My landlord's lands.

My landlord is an extremely generous woman (imagine if someone in the states who made a million dollars a year decided not to take their $100,000 tax break but instead gave that money to people in need... that would be my landlord) and lets people plant their crops on any land that she is not using.

The daughters of people who are borrowing my landlord's lands for their crops.

The government actually gives away plots of land for free, but the application process is fairly long and drawn-out.  

Trying to avoid the blazing heat of the sun.

People go out to their lands (which are sans running water and electricity, by the way) and plan to stay for days or weeks at a time, in order to get everything done.  Keep in mind that this is no backyard garden - these are large-scale plots of lands that need to be hoed, weeded, and watered.  Luckily, my landlord can afford to hire people to do the work for her.  This saves her effort (she is getting on in years) and provides income for a needy family.

We didn't have time to walk through the fields, but are planning a return trip soon to do so.  It's beautiful and peaceful at masimo, and I can't wait to take more pictures.

My landlord is the woman in the red dress, third from the left. 

In addition to masimo, all families also have cattleposts where they keep their cattle (duh) and other animals.  My landlord's cattlepost is about 2 hours away near a village called Mahalapye, but we are also planning a trip there soon.

I don't think it comes as a surprise to anyone that in the past months I've been struggling a little bit with integration and harassment in my village.  It was such a pleasure to go out with my landlord and learn about the culture as part of a family rather than as an outsider.