Odi in the Mid-1970s
Staff Writer | Wednesday October 8, 2014 16:58
With its giant new college, however, and with the earlier boost it received with the establishment of Peder and Ulla Gowenius’ Weaving project, it may be that Odi can no longer be regarded as either typical or representative.When I first visited it, Odi was a very small, very poor settlement with, at that time, little to distinguish it from any other village of similar size.
In the background description in his report, Lewicky states that the village’s population in 1971 had been just 630 but had grown by 1977 to 930. The primary school had 352 students (200 in 1974) and 13 teachers and there was a small clinic staffed by two nurses. The village had two privately owned stores, a multi-purpose Coop, and a recently opened bottle store.
He notes that an unnamed Tlokweng trader provides a weekly transport service to his store at no cost to those transported, that a three times a week bus service has recently been started (to and from Gaborone or Tlokweng?) and that post is collected twice a week from Gaborone.
Unfortunately he doesn’t explain who was doing the collecting or what happened to the post once it arrived in Odi.
Lewicky mentions that the village boasted of just one telephone which was located in one of the two stores and that it had one Tribal Office policeman. And then the always crucial consideration water – which he explains was first reticulated throughout the village in 1974 and that there are now seven stand pipes.
It would be worth adding to this comment that it was because of the establishment of the weaving project in 1973 that the village’s need for water became a priority. Before then, it was effectively waterless.
Because Odi Weavers was established as a three village project – that is Odi with Modipane and Matabele, Lewicky also provides background information about those other villages. Without wishing to belittle the village of Matabele I have to confess that for many years I regarded it as an absolute basket case.
If ever a village was down and out it was Matabele. And perhaps for that reason, I am now delighted that, today, it has ‘taken off’. In his background notes on the village, Lewicky makes it fairly clear that my earlier idea about the place was not unjustified.
He says that the village, with a population of just over 500, has a school with a hundred students and six teachers, it has one store, it has no government personnel of any kind stationed there, it has no health post – but that a borehole was drilled in 1975 and that the village now has two stand pipes.
Interestingly, he further states that the traditional headman is not officially recognised by the Chief in Mochudi - which I had not known or certainly had not remembered. Maybe someone well informed could give us the background to that unusual situation.