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.