We're back from vacation!

First we want to reassure our readers that we have not fallen off the edge of the earth. We have just returned to Botswana after 4 weeks of vacation. We put about 2500 miles on a rental car and had a great time visiting with family and friends in 6 states and the District of Columbia. A few lessons learned from our trip: 1) contrary to what we thought before, it is NOT impossible to take 4 weeks off from work -- they will survive without us; 2) it is not the best idea to eat all your favorite foods every day for 4 weeks straight; 3) we do not like cold weather.

It snowed while we were in Washington, DC (see below).


We had a fantastic time at the National Air and Space Museum which turns out has expanded to 2 facilities.



After being away for 4 weeks, it was really good to come home. We are now busily getting ready for celebrating Christmas in Hotswana where the temps have been around 100 all week. Looks like we might have some rain today though.

Chicken Art

This is a new addtion to our back yard. We found it a craft fair last weekend and just couldn't resist. Thom named him Tenders.

Cape Town in the Spring

To celebrate Thom's birthday, we planned a little getaway for Columbus Day weekend. We ended up driving to Johannesburg on Friday, spent the night at a hotel close to the airport, and then flew down to Cape Town on Saturday. We love Cape Town. It's so refreshing to be on the coast or down town at the Waterfront. It's a special treat after spending months in the desert.

This time we stayed right on the beach in Camps Bay. And we managed to lose our camera so all of our photos for this blog are borrowed from other websites.


We stayed at the Fairways which was nice.


But the best feature of this hotel is the restaurant Luigi's. We had dinner there Saturday night and it was unquestionably the best Italian food we have had in a very long time.

Our other fabulous restaurant experience was Codfather's. Codfather's was recommended to us by a friend who had also given us the driving directions to Johannesburg and we're just not sure if she was trying to kill us or not. After the driving directions experience we were somewhat skeptical of the restaurant she recommended. It turned out we were pleasantly surprised. At Codfather's, you get to pick your food from the fresh seafood case and you can mix and match and then they cook it perfectly. We had tuna steak, sword fish, local mahi mahi which is called something else, and prawns from Mozambique the size of lobsters (they're truly too big to be called shrimp). It was a delightful experience.

It was a just a bit too chilly and way too rainy to really enjoy being on the beach. It rained all day Sunday. We tried going down to the Waterfront and even made it to the Green Market Square craft market in a break in the rain:




The craft market experience is similar to many places in Africa and many of the "shops" have the same stuff that everyone else has. There's the typical hard sell approach because you'll find the same thing at the next shop and maybe they'll make you a better deal. When we first got there, everyone was pressuring us to come inside their booths and look at there stuff more closely. As soon as it started raining, the message changed to "buy something and then you can come inside to get 'free' shelter".

We ended up going back down to the Waterfront and spending several hours in a very nice mall to stay out of the rain. Debra was happy. Thom, not so much.

We're looking forward to going back in February when it should be hot and steamy.

Time to Build an Ark

They say it's a good sign when the rains come before Botswana Independence Day (September 30). Well, the rain came Thursday, September 28. According to some reports, we had more rain that afternoon than all of last year.

Since Thursday, we've had showers every day. Today, we're having quite a lot of rain. This is a pretty big deal. Botswana is a desert country. The currency in Botswana is the "pula". The word for rain in Setswana is "pula". See the connection?

However, some of us, accustomed to the bright sunny days with endless blue skies, are starting to feel a little depressed. Will the sun ever shine again????

This is what the Thursday afternoon storm looked like from our patio (after it got light enough to take a picture):

Trouble in Paradise

Our friend the Weaver Bird from our last blog entry built what we thought was a lovely nest but the Girl Weaver Bird did not approve.

While eating breakfast on the patio yesterday, we watched the Girl Weaver Bird totally tear apart the nest that the Boy Weaver Bird spent the past couple of weeks building. It would have made a fabulous picture story but we have realized that we just don't have the patience for photographing birds. It was quite entertaining.

This is what is left of the nest today:

For those of you who would like to see good pictures of weaver birds, check out Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Masked-Weaver

And here's a link to a video on YouTube that shows a weaver nest being built:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO12M_FP3L4&mode=related&search=

Spring in Botswana!

And so finally, after a long, cold winter, spring has come to Botswana. For most of our readership which is in the northern hemisphere we should remind you that Botswana is in the southern hemisphere so our seasons are opposite of those in the northeren hemisphere. Also on most days in the winter the temperature will get into the 70's (Farenheit) during the day and will be in the 40's over night.

So without further explanation. Here are some signs of spring....

Flowers are blooming...

This strange orange flower (above) started blooming a few days ago.

Even stranger orange flowers (above and below). We have no idea what these are.

Lizards are back...where do they go when it's cold????

And here's a Weaver Bird that is tearing apart this plant The bird is dead center in the picture ripping strips off the palm frond.

And weaving a nest in this tree. (the nest is in the center of the tree hanging from the branch)

Temps are hitting the 90s during the afternoon but falling into the 50s at night. Last week we were still hitting the 40s at night so we're definitely on a warming trend. We even had rain one day last week.

We couldn't figure out what the noise was and had to go outside and experience this weird water falling from the sky.
It's a lovely time of year.

A Trip to Gumare

A few weeks ago Thom had the opportunity to visit hospitals outside Gaborone in the North-Western part of Botswana. The purpose of the visit was to assess IT infrastructure and lab processes to determine readiness to install Lab Information systems at the hospitals. Anyhow, the journey was a lot more exciting than the work.

The trip started at the Gaborone "International" airport. At about 7:30 the pilot found us and escorted us outside to the plane. He had already loaded most of the medical supplies but we helped him carry out a few more things. The interior of the plane was not quite as "posh" as Thom expected. There is a bench on the left hand side that has seat belts for 4. The rest of the seats are put in where ever they fit.
We flew for about an hour and a half and landed at Ghantzi (pronounced 'hanzi') dropped of a passenger and then were off again about 10 minuites later. 45 minutes later we were landing at Gumare. The fact that there was animal dung all over the runway was a little diconcerting. The plane landed on the very small runway and taxied over to the "terminal" pictured below.
Because the hospital had only sent a pickup truck to meet the airplane, the entire lab assessment team could not ride together at the same time to the hospital. So Thom and one other team member stayed at the airport and waited for the second truck to arrive. During that time Thom watched the departure of the plane as it took off for it's next stop in Maun.
Once all the staff made it to the hospital the team met with the hospital Matron and then toured the labs. Sadly, Thom screwed up the coolest picture of the day. In one of the labs a large "Coke" cooler is used to store laboratory stock and samples. The really amazing thing is that the log of tempartures showed it was the most consistent of all the refrigeration equipment at the hospital.

Thom made up for screwing up the shot of the cooler by catching this shot of a chicken walking through the hospital. After the hospital visit we had some time to kill until the plane returned to pick us up. So we walked to the nearest "restaurant". The restaurant menu was goat with papa, goat with sorghum, or goat with rice because only the goat was ready when we got there (usually they have a 2nd meat choice as well). The team tried all three selections. It was pretty good and at a price of $1.50 you aren't going to hear to many people complaining. Below is Thom's lunch....
Once we finished lunch we had tea with the Matron and then headed back to the airport. Below are some random shots as we drove through Gumare on the way back to the airport.