random stuff (mike)

Right it’s been a while since iv done one of these so thought id try write one before our holidays.

2 weekends ago Tom and Darren came to visit us for the start of there holiday they arrived mid day on Thursday and brought with them about 25 tired and arrogant teenagers from Bana Ba Metsi (there project) we had to organize all there transport home which meant pilling them literally roof high in the car to drop them off home at the end of the day. After which the 3 of us went to rugby which was a good laugh apart from we had no shoes so our feet were more than a little sour. on the way back we decided to go buy chine’s as non of us had had any junk food since we got here, we all worked in covered in sweat, sand, dirt and waking like old men because of our feet. we were in need of a serious drink, we ordered our food and sat down to water (we decided to get a takeaway due to our stat and the fact that Gordon was at home waiting for his dinner) 1 and a half hours later we still REALY needed a drink and no sing of food, we’d started to which we hadn’t got a takeaway and were eating in as everyone was walking in getting there food, eating and leaving whilst we had to sit there and watch. Eventually we got the food and headed for home, when we got home we all tucked in and finished the food rather quickly by this time it was quit l8 so we decided to have baths (as we don’t have a shower, and not all together) and go to bed. They came into work with us the next day and were surprised at the amount of energy that the kids had and there knack for climbing people whilst they are working, something I am only just getting used to. Fri night we headed to a party, as we arrived people were already leaving for another one and we were ordered/ dragged with them, we convoyed it to the other side of town (about 4 cars full) we got to this bar but shortly left in the convoy for another party that we had heard about at the informs river lodge, having enough of driving around we stayed there for what was left of the night, we got home in the early hours of Saturday morning. On Saturday we all slept for a bit then headed to Vincent’s house for a bri and a swim, after we got a phone call from two other volunteers (John and Fraser from Namibia) they were supposed to arrive on fri but we lost contact with them until the call on Saturday evening but when they arrived one thing lead to another and we left Vincent’s in the early hours of Sunday again. I woke up to my phone ringing (in my opinion to early) with an invitation for all of us to go wakeboarding on the delta with Brett and a few mates, we spent the whole day mucking about in/on the river this resulted in some beasty tan lines and a good day out, in the evening we headed to the backpackers as we all love the burgers there and we only have them when we are all together we ordered the food sat down and by the time the food came two of the guys were asleep, we ate the food headed home and all crashed out on sofas and beds. An early start as Tom and Darren had to be at the bus for 5 and we had to get them there an hours early but all was cool and we sent them on there way to start there holiday. We had john and Fraser with us until Tuesday when we again got them on a bus so they could start the holiday. And then back to work for us.

The weekend after we were looking forward to a quiet weekend and to catch up on some lost sleep. That didn’t happen. Friday night we had our BBL (Bana Ba Letsatsi) fundraiser which went on till 2 in the morning with us driving kids around, dropping them home and generally doing a lot, it was very successfully and we raised a lot more than we thought we would which is always good. Then on Saturday night we had one of our friends Stagg dos…… I won’t go into details but it was a good night. On Sunday we got an invite to an afternoon bri.

Iv been franticly trying to organize last minute travel plans for our holiday which starts next week and as Fiona is leaving to get married on Sunday its mayhem in the office. But everything is coming together.

On Thursday night we got a call as we arrived at a m8s house for a chilled evening that in the 2 hour tropical rain storm we had on of the families who’s kids come to the center had had there home washed away (they live in a tent) so we had to go get half of the kids (6), take them to the center were we picked up clothes and bedding for them then take them to our house, feed them and look after them for the night it was an interesting evening but was it was fun.

Rain, Rugby and Pink Lightning

OK, how cool is that pic? I'll be honest, I didnt take it, I dont really know how people manage to get pictures of lightning so perfect, as you know, it goes as fast as it appears. This is however what the lightning looked like last Thursday (3rd November).

Leading up to the storms was a few days of big heavy clouds out on the horizon and every person you talked to was just waiting for rain. The morning of the storm though, everyone thought the chance had passed since the skies were empty and the sun was doing its usual "I'll kill you with heat" thing.



So, after a long morning of moaning about the heat (which was boiling, everyone, even the Motswanan's were complaining) by around 3 in the afternoon huge rain clouds had rolled in over our heads and winds started picking up.

I found that the reactions by the kids to the wind (which was quite strong to be fair) were a little over zealous, I mean, running for cover when there was really no need. My reaction was to go outside and stand in the strongest wind I could find enjoying the sudden drop in temperature. At 4, usual closing time, i heard the first crack of thunder in the distance which produced a huge grin on my face as I totally love lightning and the whole lightning storm thing. At around 4.15, when we finally finished work, I was waiting outside for Mike to come back from dropping some kids off when it began raining. (To all you people back home in "Sunny Scotland" or really in most anywhere else in the world but here, rain is not really anything special, here though, its almost as good as money raining from the sky, you miss it so much.) After standing in the rain for 15 mins, getting weird looks from the Motswanans passing by in their cars and running to escape the "heavy rain" (more like a drizzle).

Before too long I was in the car on the way home to get ready for touch rugby with a bunch of local (mostly white) guys. After a quick munch and change we were back in the car on the way to the pitch when the real show began. Both of us had our windows down and were in danger of crashing the car for want of watching the lightning as it lit the grey sky in a pink hue. Once we arrived at the pitch and everyone commented on how the weather was finally perfect for rugby since there was rain and cloud and it was as close to home as it could have been.

So, everyone then went on to play a full 2 hours of rugby under sheets (and I do mean sheets) of pink lightning. My single favorite show of lightning was seeing the lightning start at one point in the cloud and breaking into 5 forks of lightning that raced across the sky from left to right. Was AWESOME!


(Once again, not my picture but close enough to what I saw)

STEVE!!!

This is Steve...

Steve was happily sitting under some sheet metal, just chillin with his two brothers, when the world started to move as the sheet metal was removed and he was faced with around seven kids who had one thought... Kill the Geckos...

Lucky for Steve, a white guy was doing work right next to the metal. After realizing that the kids are not just stamping on the ground for no reason and there is actually three Geckos under attack he quickly ran over and stopped the kids. After removing Steve's two older brothers (Being bitten by one particularly angry brother) and setting them free far away from wee hands, he proceeded to catch Steve. As you can see, Steve is well cool, enough said!

my trip to somewere (Mike)

Last weekend I went on a little trip to visit the other two volunteers
in Botswana Tom and Darren at Bana Ba Metsi,. This involved a 6 hour bus ride,
1 hour combi, a dodgy ferry and then a 45k hitch. All was
accomplished within a day but not without its problems and experiences. Which started with what should have been the easiest bit ; boarding the bus. This literally means scrumming down and charging for the door (hoping that you don’t fall over), once on you find a seat quickly and watch the bus fill up till all the seats are gone. Then they bring even more people on and they start to sit on people’ laps! We ended up with nearly every seat having two people on it and there being
queue, two abreast, in the alley waiting for anyone to move an inch so that they could sit down. This is fine for the first half an hour but for a six hours bus journey I think it’s a bit much, I’m pretty sure the sides of the bus were bending.
After about 5 hours I started wishing that we could just arrive so that we could unload the bus but that would have been easy and ‘non African, so what happened was something African, the bus broke down in the middle of know where, with no phone reception! We were all told to get off the bus whilst they fixed it, an hour later standing in the mid day sun, the bus was fixed and we all scrambled back on and headed for Shakawe.I got off the bus, happy to breath some fresh air, and then tried to find a combi. I soon established that there was only one and because of the
bus breaking down we had missed it. So we sat around at the bus stop ( a
stick in the ground) and waited for it to come back, when it arrived it was
packed full of people but, in the non deterred African way, we all
crammed into it, with people getting on the roof with the bags and some
on the back, and off we set to the ferry. At the ferry we just managed to
get on one that was going our way. On the other side I started to walk and
hitch; I got about 10k with many cars not stopping so I decided that I
would walk a bit further and then phone Darren to come and get me. He arrived
soon after and took me to their project; I was greeted by some of their
kids and then shown to their house, we stayed the night.
In the morning we got a lift to the road and then sat around in the shade waiting for a passing car; luckily the first car that passed ( after about an hour)
was happy to give us a lift so we piled into the back of the buky (like
a pick up truck but with a smaller cab and a bigger back) and settled in
for the drive. All was going well until about an hour into the journey when there was a massive bang and the front cow bar came off, ripped the water pipe out
and bent the front bumper, so we had to stop and fix it which was easy
enough. Then we were back on our way; we eventually got to the cross
roads were we were getting out and then got another hitch to the river
side. We took a mokoro (local dug out tree log which acts like a canoe) to the island were we where we staying for the next 2 days. When we eventually got there we found out that we were supposed to bring our own food, so we got a boat back to the main land, borrowed a car and went into town to buy food from the local shop (a
shipping container). Then back to the island to start our weekend,!
We did pretty much nothing but chill, talk and a sunset mokoro ride the
whole weekend but it was just what we needed. At the end of the weekend we
left and got another hitch with 6 other locals, one of which was quite
large, all crammed into the back of another buky. We got back to their
project a lot faster and still had a whole day to spare, so we went
swimming with the kids, which translates as them trying to drown us! Then did some manual work in the afternoon and chilled in the evening and just chatted.
On Tuesday the heavens opened and it looked like I was going to be stuck there, I was supposed to be leaving that day. Then Steve, their boss, told me that he was driving back to Maun and I could get a lift with him so all was good. We got about 200kms and he pulled over in the middle of no where saying that this was where we were spending the night. He got out a tarpaulin, made himself a shelter, and went to
bed ! He had locked the car so I decided that the safest place was on the
roof of the car so that’s where I slept; under the millions of stars and
an amazing lighting storm in the distance. We were up very early and he
dropped me off at the centre where I went straight to work.

Killer Palm Trees!

Well, as it happens, we had not seen any signs of rain or storms or anything for... well, the whole time we where here! And in this place, the thought of a large storm and rain makes you happy, more than happy, 3 months with full on heat and sun is kinda hard to handle, as you may be able to imagine. Of course, this can not last forever, with the rainy season closing in a storm would eventually be seen.

For us, the real signs came on the 12th of November, with the first real sighting of clouds on the horizon and a slight (and I really mean slight) drop in temperature...

Before the sun found its way behind the horizon the winds began... (I now know why we are the ONLY people who have let palm trees grow right next to our house...)







When these things fall on the roof it sounds like someone is throwing grenades at the place. Now imagine what would happen if it fell on you head...

First Impressions (Gordon)

This is a little dated (around 2 months 2 weeks in fact) but I will try and remember exactly what went through my mind when I arrived here in Botswana for the first time.

Well, as you might expect, the first thing you notice when you get off a plane here... is the heat. The extreme unavoidable heat that you san see and even smell. It is hard to explain but the heat becomes like this annoying person who spends all day jumping on your shoulders wearing you down. You really don’t want to do anything for the first while here other than live in a swimming pool (not that there are many of those around) and drink all the water you can find.

After the heat though, the sheer size of the country hits you. You can scan from horizon to horizon and swear that you have never seen such a huge sky. The fact that Botswana is really quite flat does help with that.

Anyway, after getting through customs and taking our bags to the waiting area, I saw what, at that time, I thought I was to expect all the houses here looked like… Right outside the airport was a large square orange building. This however is NOT what the houses here (well not the traditional houses) are like. They are actually circular, with thatched roofs. So yes, all those pictures you see of traditional African houses are right.



Well, that was pretty much the first day in Maun. (We did not realize that the title of "Donkey town" was used as we managed to not see a Donkey that day, for anyone who has been here that would be surprising.)

Anything I have missed out is in Mike's first impressions.

First Impressions (Mike)

Right we have decided to final get around to doing this so here goes (don’t get your hopes up)

On arrival at Maun airport (a shed) we got our bags and walked straight out of the airport with no worries, soon after to be called back in and told to wait for someone to come and check our passports and stamp them, we had no idea we had to do this as there were no sings or even people in the airport. Then the four of us gathered our bags and sat at the front of the airport and waited for the much anticipated arrival of ‘Steve’. Playing the guessing game with every white person we saw didn’t work and as we gave up a man turned up looked straight at the four of us with our huge bags sticking out like a sour thumb and then proceeded to very obviously look around for the four volunteers. As we tried to catch his gaze we decided that this was his weird sense of humor we had been told about and went and introduced ourselves.
Steve took us to our project and left us with one of the lady’s there who didn’t speak English and left without really telling us what we were supposed to be doing, we managed to get into town and get a few bits that we needed and then we were dropped off at the place were we were staying the night ‘the old bridge backpacker’. We had our first night in Botswana here with Steve picking up the bill for all of us which was a great surprise, he got a little drunk as it was his last nigh off for another 4 months, we actually put money in his pocket without him realizing it as he would not except it another way. The four of us parted and went our separate ways thinking that was it for another 2 months but after dropping our bags at our new house and meeting our new room mates (2 of them both pilots) we were then dropped back at the backpackers as that was thought to be the sensible thing to do, we met up with the other two about 2 hours later and then again the next morning to help load up there MASSIVE truck full of kids and there bags then that really was our last time seeing them for two months.