The History of SOCOBA — How We Began
In 1997, after completing two years of service in the Peace Corps in Mabule, Botswana, I was granted a one year extension of service to plan and build a community center for the village. I met my wife, Segomotso, in Mabule, and after completing the community center project we moved to Hawaii to further our education. Our plans were to return to Botswana to pursue careers in community development and education.
We studied at Hawaii Pacific University where Segomotso earned a B.A. with a concentration in business management, and I completed a masters degree in teaching English as a second language.
During our six year stay in Hawaii we were able to return twice to Botswana. On the first trip in 2001, we visited with family in Ramotswa, and traveled to Mabule to visit friends and colleagues at the school where I had taught.
What we discovered in both Ramotswa and Mabule completely changed the direction of our lives.
In Ramotswa, Segomotso’s home village, the families surrounding her housing plot had been full of children. All of these children had recently died from AIDS. One family, which consisted of a grandmother, mother, father, and five children, was almost wiped out entirely due to AIDS. The only remaining members of the family were the elderly grandmother and the mother of the deceased children, who is living with HIV.
In Mabule, people who had been our good friends during our four years living there were dead. We visited new gravesites and read the dates on tombstones, we learned that most of the deceased were born in the 1980s. Very few were any older than forty.
A friend of ours there, who had taught me how to speak Setswana, and welcomed and introduced me to the village people and families, was dead, a victim of AIDS. Although I was incredibly saddened at the loss of this good friend, the loss was heightened with the realization of the dire straits of the children he left behind.
Neither Segomotso nor I had ever experienced such shock and disbelief. We left Mabule feeling as though a part of us had been lost, and feeling utter despair with the knowledge that my friend’s children would be left in poverty without a father.
We returned to Hawaii knowing we had to do something about these people we loved. We found it impossible to stop thinking about the HIV/AIDS situation in Botswana. The situation seemed so monstrous, and so far advanced, that we had to focus on only one fragment of the issue.
We decided that the best way we could fight what was happening was to begin helping one village at a time. We felt we could not save Botswana or Africa from HIV/AIDS, but we could make sure that one part of the country, one village, would be a force in combating the disease.
This is how the plan to create SOCOBA, The Society for Children Orphaned By AIDS, had its genesis and became our complete focus. The children are the most innocent and vulnerable casualties of the AIDS epidemic that is engulfing Botswana. With our teaching abilities and development experience, we hope to provide them with the knowledge and resources they will need to ensure that they do not suffer the same fate as so many of their kin.
—Nicholas Seferian
