Things we will miss

With less than 3 weeks left in Botswana, we have been thinking about some of the things we will miss from here...

Incredibly blue skies:

Botswana grass fed beef (and it's cheaper than chicken):

Giraffes:

The Bull and Bush:

Particulary the cow statue at Bull and Bush which Debra thinks would look fabulous on the front porch of our new house in Atlanta. Thom disagrees for some reason.

Signs that Amuse Us

From Mokolodi, an important reminder for everyone:


Those darn lawyers have just ruined everything:

The fish don't like it when children throw rocks at them:

Debra's all time favorite HIV prevention message from outside Gaborone City Council:

Fight AIDS because it's messy.

Last Trip to Madikwe or Why Tau is our Favorite Game Lodge

Last weekend, we went to Madikwe for what most likely will be our last trip there. We booked at Tau Game Lodge (http://www.taugamelodge.co.za/) for several reasons:

1. It is very easy to get there from Gaborone.
2. Tau is built around a very large watering hole.
3. Customer service is better there than almost anywhere else in southern Africa.

We will show you just how easy it is to get to Tau from Gaborone.

Here is Thom looking rugged driving the truck from Gaborone to Tau:

Here are the cows hanging around the border:

This is the Botswana border post (about 20 minutes to get there from where we work):

For the Botswana legalities, you park, get out of the vehicle, walk inside, sign the vehicle registration log, turn in your passports (along with the Botswana immigration form which we have filled out ahead of time having learned from past experience that there are no pens to borrow at the border), get an exit stamp and a gate pass, get your gate pass stamped, get back in your vehicle, drive to the exit, hand in your gate pass and drive a very short distance to the South Africa border. This is the South Africa border post:

For South Africa legalities, you park your vehicle and walk inside, you turn in your passports, they put a visa stamp in your passport, you get a gate pass, get back in your vehicle, drive to the exit, and hand in your gate pass and you are on your way.

Once you are fully across the border, you take almost an immediate left to enter Madikwe Game Reserve.
You drive on the dirt road for about 15 minutes. As we have a very rugged truck we took this opportunity to drive very fast on the very bumpy dirt road. Then you turn right when you see the sign for Tau:
At the gate you have to fill out some paperwork to enter and declare whether you have firearms(we did not have firearms even though Debra feels this would be the most effective spider abatement system). The gate attendent has been studying Spanish while sitting in the gatehouse for hours and hours and was very anxious to ask us all questions in Spanish (important safety note: When asked in Spanish if you speak spanish say "huh", rather than being clever and saying "un poquito"). After that, you drive another 10 minutes to get to the lodge. Notice the electric fencing on the ground at the lodge entrance to keep the scary animals out of the lodge:
And that's it. About an hour total travel time including the border crossing.

So then there's the watering hole. This what we saw from the watering hole.

Impala, water buck, and a wildebeast:

Elephants:
A female lion (Debra wants full credit for spotting this lion from the lodge deck while gathering for afternoon tea):

We actually saw a lot more at the watering hole but Debra was in charge of photography this trip...

We really should have just stayed at the lodge because we saw a lot more there than on the game drives. Unfortunately we had the worst ranger ever. He actually took us to see a dead wildebeast and thought we would be happy about that.

And now a word about customer service at Tau. One of the staff asked if we had enjoyed our lunch and we mentioned that the food is always very nice at Tau. Thom told them that we always hope that we will have the same lunch that we had the first time we went to Tau 4 years ago. He even described the entree which was a cashew encrusted chicken. The staff member asked if we had told anyone in the kitchen about this wish and we laughed and said we hadn't. That night at dinner we were told that one of the entrees was by special request and when the waiter came to our table, he told us that the chef had prepared the chicken as we had requested, breaded chicken fillet with peanut butter sauce. Hmmmm. OK, so not exactly what we had requested but it was still really good.

Also a note to those who have been to Tau in the past. They are in the process of remodeling and extending the chalets. We got one of the newly remodeled chalets with a lounge area (cool, huh?):

And, of course, we must end with a sunset photo -- sundowners at Madikwe:

This week in Botswana

We realize we have been neglecting the blog but we haven't managed to get any good photos lately. So this will be a non-illustrated blog. Just words. Non-readers, considered yourselves fairly warned and go no further. For the rest of you...this is what life has been like this week here in Botswana...

Last Saturday as we attempted the grocery shopping at 8:30 in the morning to avoid the end of month shopping stampede, we came to realize that none of the shops had tomatoes for sale. By Monday afternoon when we still could not find any tomatoes in town, we started asking around. What we learned was that due to the complaint of one local farmer re: his inability to sell his tomatoes, the Ministry of Agriculture shut the border to tomato imports. Obviously the Botswana tomato farmer sold all of his crops in about 10 minutes which left the whole country without tomatoes for the week. Yesterday afternoon at the Gaborone Yacht Club, we randomly met some agriculture type people: a farmer from Canada who is into some kind of farming here in Botswana, a man from the Royal Agricultural Society of Scotland who sells all of his wheat to the makers of Gordon's Gin, and 2 guys from Australia here in town to sell their crop management software system to the Canadian. This group theorized that Botswana regulary supplies about 15% of the regular demand for tomatoes and 85% is supplied through imports. And this is what led to the drastic shortage of the week.

More importantly though, tomatoes were back in the shops on Thursday. And now we can go back to full time complaining about what is really bothering us this week. Apparently in an extreme over reaction to the cholera in Zimbabwe, Botswana has begun over-treating the water here. It's terribly safe but tastes terrible. We've had to start using all bottled water for drinking water. This drives Thom crazy but Debra refuses to drink coffee that tastes bad.

When we take a break from the complaining about the hardships of the week, we are thoroughly enjoying a gorgeous weekend. It's a pleasant 80 degrees today with a slight breeze. The sky could not be bluer. The air could not be cleaner. The plants are all still green and blooming from another very good rainy season. Life really isn't all that bad.

Giraffe Tracking

Today is an American Holiday (Martin Luther King Day) which means as US Government employees we have the day off but not many other people do in Botswana. So we used the opportunity to book a Giraffe Tracking Adventure at Mokolodi (http://www.mokolodi.com/activities.php).

We arrived at Mokolodi at 7:30 this morning. Our group consisted of a guide/driver, a tracker, and Thom and Debra. This is why we do things on American holidays.

Our guide Kesa explained we would drive until we spotted giraffe tracks and then get out and try to track the giraffes. He told us that we should let him know if we thought we saw any giraffe tracks and they would get out and track them if they actually were giraffe tracks. We quickly realized we've never really paid any attention to giraffe tracks but after some discussion decided we could probably tell the difference between giraffe tracks and leopard tracks. But nothing any more complicated than that. Fortunately we had an expert tracker, David. After about 20 minutes driving toward the south end of the game park, David spotted the tracks. We pulled off road and started tracking. In case you are wondering, giraffe tracks are long narrow 2-toed hoof prints.

For about 30 minutes we hiked through the bush following the giraffe tracks. It turns out that giraffes walk through a lot of spaces you wouldn't think they could go. They walk over rocks and through mud and in between bushes and trees that are really close together.

Fortunately it had rained (hard!) the night before so it cooled things off a bit because it was a hot sweaty hike. Also, the guide told us that it is really a lot easier to track anything when all the old tracks are wiped and the ground is soft to make new tracks. But then we saw our first giraffe! Absolutely amazing!

Our first giraffe sighting

And a little further in, we came across a journey of 8 giraffes. 3 of this group were about a year old and very small compared to the others. And for the next 20 minutes or so we followed them around but we couldn't keep up with them. They are very fast and quite fascinating when they run in a group.

Getting a little closer to a giraffe

After our time with the giraffes, David led us back to the truck in less than 10 minutes. That was also impressive.

The rest of our morning was quite fabulous. We saw a large herd of wildebeast, lots of ostriches running around, herds of kudo and impala, zebra, warthogs, a pack of jackals which was cool -- we had never seen them before. Thom got to stop in to see his friends, the cheetahs, who really had not yet woken up for the day. And then on the way out of the park, we saw 3 rhino. A very satisfactory morning.

The cheetahs sleeping very hard

At least one cheetah woke up enough to be petted (after Thom poked it)

March on the cake!

Here in Botswana, at the US Mission in Gaborone, we celebrated the 233rd birthday of the Marine Corps on November 14. This is a Marine tradition started in the 1920s and Marines celebrate the birthday of the Corps wherever they are. We have a detachment of Marines at our Embassy and so then, we get to attend the Marine Birthday Ball.

Some photos from this year's Ball:

Gaborone Marine Detachment

March on the Colors!

Guest of Honor, Ambassador Stephen Nolan

March on the Cake!

Cutting the cake with a sword

This year's cake

It's tradition that the oldest Marine in the area gets the 2nd piece of cake -- this guy has been getting that 2nd piece of cake for about 17 years now.

Thom and Debra with 2 of our Marines. We were busy talking and missed the group shots with all the Marines.
...

Thanksgiving in Botswana

Yesterday was the first Thanksgiving we have hosted together (side note: today is our 2nd weddding anniversary). We co-hosted the event with our friends Kim and Luke and ended up with 20 people total for dinner. Once we moved all the furniture out of the living room, we had room to set up 2 long tables.

We have the only airconditioned kitchen in the Embassy housing pool, and since the high yesterday was 98F, it made sense that we would host the event. Our first guests showed up an hour early at 3:00 instead of 4:00 but we were on schedule and were happy to have some time to catch up with them while we finished the last minute prep activities.

Dinner turned out quite nice with all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods...some slightly modified because you just can't get the same stuff here (for example, there's not a can of sweet potatoes in the whole country so you use the variation of yam that's closest to the sweet potato that you can get here and add a lot more butter, cinnamon and sugar for flavor)...everyone who came brought a dish and just like Thanksgiving should be, we had way more food than any group of 20 people could ever eat.

Cool side note: we ended up having a true Thanksgiving celebrity at our house. One of our guests was the daughter of the man responsible for the turkey pop up timer. How about that!

Thom making the buttermilk biscuits

The Perfect Pumpkin Pies

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. It's celebrated in Botswana only by Americans. It makes it a little more meaningful when you are the minority celebrating the day here and you know all your friends and family back home are also celebrating the day. That's not to say that an American Thanksgiving is a complete mystery here. About a week before Thanksgiving 7.5 kg Turkeys appeared in a freezer case at one of the bigger name shops and a letter was sent to the American Embassy apprising us of the recent development. There were a lot of questions from local staff just how we prepare a turkey as it is not a food that is normally eaten here and certainly not as a meal that is looked forward to.

Thom's favorite Thanksgiving tradition is to require everyone to say at least one thing that they are thankful for. As we went around the room, we realized just how blessed we are. As we reflect on the day after Thanksgiving, here are some other things for which we are thankful:

• good food and good friends
• being able to stay in touch with friends and family back home through modern technology
• pourable buttermilk (a Thanksgiving miracle!)
• the electricity stayed on the whole evening
• lots of leftovers in our house including 2 leftover dressing balls ("left over" by a combination of luck and sneakiness)
• our fantastic maid Lucy who did all the hard cleaning up on Friday and helped put our house back together again
• the Botswana adventure