Serowe

Serowe is a young village with an old people behind it. The Bangwato, a Tswana chiefdom, ruled this part of the country from Shoshong and then from Palapye during the nineteenth century, moving as water, grazing and firewood ran short. In 1902 Khama III, their Christian ruler and one of the three chiefs who travelled to London in 1895 to keep Bechuanaland out of the hands of the British South Africa Company, moved his capital to the well-watered ground beneath the granite hill here, and the whole population moved with him.

The village grew into one of the largest in Botswana, laid out in wards around the royal kgotla, with families keeping homes in the village, fields at the lands and cattle at distant posts. Khama III died in 1923, and the Royal Cemetery on the hill above the village, the burial ground of the Bangwato ruling house, holds his grave and those of his family.

His grandson Seretse Khama was born in Serowe in 1921. His marriage in 1948 to Ruth Williams, an Englishwoman, provoked a crisis: under pressure from South Africa, Britain exiled him for years before he was allowed to return, renouncing the chieftainship. He founded a political party, led Bechuanaland to independence as Botswana in 1966 and served as its first president until his death in 1980, when he too was buried on the hill above the village. The Khama family has remained central to the village and to national politics ever since, and the kgotla here still carries weight beyond the district.

Serowe is the ceremonial heart of the Bangwato, and its kgotla is a functioning institution rather than a survival: disputes are heard, government policy is explained and argued over, and decisions are talked through until a consensus is reached. Each ward has its own headman and its own smaller kgotla, and a family's standing is tied to its ward, its cattle and its ancestors. Respect for elders, unhurried greetings and careful, indirect speech are noticed here.

The village is also a literary place. Bessie Head, born in South Africa, came to Serowe as a teacher in 1964 and stayed until her death in 1986, making the village the subject of Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind and the setting of novels including When Rain Clouds Gather, Maru and A Question of Power. Patrick van Rensburg's Swaneng Hill School, founded in the 1960s, brought a movement of self-help education and brigades that trained young people in trades.

Church life is strong, with the mission congregations that grew from Khama III's conversion alongside newer churches, and Sunday singing carries across the wards. Choral music, the setapa dance and traditional dress appear at kgotla occasions and national holidays, and weddings and funerals remain the great social events, attended by hundreds and lasting days.

Serowe is Botswana's third largest village, larger than many of the country's towns, though it keeps a village's shape: compounds and cattle kraals rather than blocks of flats, spread over a very wide area of sandy ground below the hill.

Work is mostly government and services — the council, schools, the hospital, the tribal administration — along with shops, transport, building and a good deal of informal trade. Cattle remain the backbone of family wealth, kept at posts out in the sandveld and tended by hired herders or relatives, and many families still plough sorghum and maize at the lands in the rains, so the village empties a little in the ploughing season. Younger people leave for Gaborone, Palapye's university or the mines and return for holidays and funerals.

The day begins before sunrise, slows through the heat, and picks up in the late afternoon when livestock come home and the bars and shops fill. Recurring concerns are unemployment among school leavers, drought and the cost of feeding cattle, water supply across such a large settlement, and the pull of the nearby towns. Serowe's hospital, banks and secondary schools serve a much wider area of villages and cattle posts.

Serowe eats what central Botswana eats. Bogobe, the porridge of sorghum or maize meal, is the base of nearly every meal, served with a relish of beef, goat or chicken stew, morogo greens, or dikgobe, samp and beans. Beef is taken seriously in a village built on cattle, and seswaa — beef or goat boiled long and pounded soft with salt — is the dish of weddings, funerals and kgotla gatherings, cooked in three-legged pots by men over open fires and served in great quantity.

Phane, the mophane caterpillars gathered after the rains, are bought dried by the cupful and fried with onion and tomato or eaten as a dry snack. Madila, thick soured milk from the cattle posts, is eaten with porridge; biltong keeps meat through the dry months; and melons, beans and pumpkin leaves come in from the lands in a good season. Marula fruit is eaten fresh and brewed into a light, sweet drink, and wild berries are gathered in the bush around the village.

Around the bus rank and the main road, takeaways sell fat cakes, grilled meat, chips and sweet tea through the day. Bottle stores and bars supply lager and Chibuku sorghum beer, and bojalwa, the home-brewed sorghum beer made in the compounds, still belongs to family and kgotla occasions.