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.