At 8 A.M. on a Monday,everyone at Shashe River Secondary School should have been at breakfast after having had an hour of classes, but the great cooking pots had not been heated and the lines of hungry students had vanished. We were under house arrest. Outside my window, a khaki-clad soldier, machine gun in hand, stood at attention. Beyond him to the horizon, the conical-thatch roofs of the village huts burned in the brilliant sun. The goats browsed as usual on the thorn scrub, but the jingle of the belled cows rung hollow across the arid, gray landscape.

 

Near my rondavel the morning before, students had discovered a machine gun lying half-hidden under the spring grass. In the afternoon, another one was found. Then like swarms of locusts, truck after truck of Batswana soldiers with jaunty camouflage berets screamed into the compound and began a blade-by-blade sweep of the school. Searching.

 

Botswana, an independent nation almost surrounded by White-ruled countries, is a home for political refugees from those countries. Botswana is also economically dependent on those countries. Anything suspicious is carefully examined. Two soldiers knocked on my door and politely asked if they might look at my belongings. Without my reply, they began to take apart the one-roomed, thatched-roof hut. The inner parts of an old stove began to look in the uneasy atmosphere much like a dismantled gun. Before they could question me, I was ordered to the typing room to unlock its cabinet. For the entire day, the soldiers walked the compound with metal detectors trying to find other weapons. The sun finally set on retreating trucks.

 

That evening students found Republic of South Africa Whites, from the White-ruled south, camped on the playing field. The students silently gathered branches and stones and surrounded the men. Marched to the principal, the men could not explain their presence and the students guarded them until the police arrived. The rumor was that they were South African Special Forces sent to stir up trouble. All was quiet once again.