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.