Grocery shopping in Gabs

Today we take a break from our Victoria falls adventure to talk about the mundane. Life in Botswana is not all about exotic adventures. But sometimes every day life can be an adventure.

So today we will talk about the Gaborone Scavenger Hunt, or what we know as grocery shopping.

Here in Gaborone we have some very nice grocery stores. But things can be a little different in unexpected ways. This happens to be a real sign in one of our favorite stores (picture to the left). In fact, we make a point to bring people to this store so we can show off this sign. It's not really a big deal because there is a pretty good restaurant, Cafe Dulce, on the second floor that overlooks the grocery store. Thom happens to be the third person from CDC to photograph this signto share with friends (that we know of).



Another difference in our Gaborone grocery stores is that it is very difficult to find plain, salted potato chips but every other flavor imagineable is fully stocked (see picture to the right) including Fruit Chutney, Biltong, Chicken and Thyme...

Selection of other items is not as extensive as we are accustomed to... the cereal aisle at the stores here turns out to be more of a "shelf", or an amazing selection of corn flakes (picture on left).

And things are not always grouped the way we are expecting to see them. For example, as best we can determine, there is a"stuff that comes in cans" aisle that includes canned green beans, canned mushrooms, canned tuna, canned spaghetti, and canned chakalaka.

There are also no guarantees that there will be a steady supply of anything. Recently we have had shortages of coke light (diet coke), streaky bacon (the bacon most similar to what we eat in America), cream cheese, and Debra's favorite milk. To be clear on what makes a milk Debra's favorite:

- It can't be from the dairy case because the concept of keeping milk refrigerated from the time it leaves the cow until the time it is drunk is more of a guideline than a rule here. That leaves the UHT (Ultra Pastuerized, Long life, stored in the pantry) milk.

- It must be fat free.

- It must have a screw top, not a flip lid. Not clear why, but it must.

So today in the store they actually had milk that met these stringent criteria. See the almost empty bottom shelf in the center of picture to the right.

In light of these random shortages we have learned that it is much less frustrating to go to the grocery and see what they have before deciding on a dinner menu instead of planning the menu and then trying to find all the ingredients. For example, at New Years, Thom wanted to make stuffed cabbage and decided that if the store had sauerkraut, then it would be feasible. The store actually had 4 cans of sauerkraut so we bought them all and then proceeded to gather up the rest of the ingredients. All went well until we stopped at the produce section on the way to check out and discovered they had no cabbage. We did find cabbage at one of the 3 other stores we stopped at next but it was a bit traumatizing. All in all, grocery shopping is quite manageable. We now know the best times for shopping to avoid the crowds, and which stores have the best bread, and that creamed cottage cheese really isn't the same thing as cream cheese even if it does come in the same package as the philadelphia cream cheese.

Things we do like about grocery shopping in Gaborone:

1. There is the equivalent of hamburger/Chicken/Tuna helper here called Mince Mate/ Chicken Mate/ Tuna Mate. They are even much lower in sodium than their American counterparts.




2. The cookie aisle has become a favorite. Cookies here are called "biscuits". Biscuits are called scones. They're not as sweet. They're not as expensive. And it's a lot of fun trying them.

3. The sausage lady. This is like going to Costco!!!

Victoria Falls - Part1: Getting there

Deb and Thom would first like to apologize for the horrible delay in a new post. Recently, both of our computers crashed within 24 hours due to completely unrelated things and it has taken us a while to recover.

As we resume our blogging we would like to start the story of Thom's Victoria Falls adventures...

Half the adventure of the excursions you can take in Africa is the journey itself. Nothing is ever easy or direct. For example, before Deb arrived in Botswana, Thom and Deb's friend Keith was in town and Thom and Keith decided they wanted to meet our friends Carmen and Jason Villar who now live in Zambia. After much debate it was agreed that we would all meet in Livingstone, Zambia to see Victoria Falls. Because Carmen and Jason live so close (about a 4 hour drive) they end up going there a lot with visitors.

Anyhow, to get to Victoria Falls from Gaborone is not a 4 hour car drive but rather a little bit more complicated and reminiscent of the Steve Martin movie, "Planes, Trains and Automobiles". So we left work at about 10:00 AM to catch an 11:00 flight to Kasane in the north part of Botswana. Note that we made it to the airport with about 25 minutes before departure and we were some of the first there for that flight. While waiting in the departure lounge, Thom ran into 2 people he knew from Gaborone. It's a small town. The plane took off on time and we landed in Kasane a little after noon.

So Keith and Thom went outside the airport and realized they really had no idea what company was picking them up to provide transportation. Apparently this is quite common because there were a lot of confused people standing there and a lot of confused drivers coming up to different groups asking, "are you the So and So's" or "are you staying at the umpty squanch lodge?" In all this confusion one gentleman asked Keith, "Are you the Villas?" and Keith replied, "No we aren't staying at the Villas, we're going to the Tongabezzi Lodge." Thom jumped in and said "do you mean the Villars?" because Carmen had made the booking. The driver, whose name by the way was Sparks, said "Yes, the Villas." After he showed Thom and Keith the booking and it was determined that yes indeed it was the Villars we were on our way.

So we got in the truck (pictured to the left). Thom was a little concerned that they were going to ride for an hour in this vehicle. It turned out that really wasn't an issue but it was windy as they drove along in the back of this truck. The truck drove through Kasane as it headed to the Zambezzi river and had to slow down to almost a complete stop. The reason for the slow down was a mess of live stock in the road (Ok it wasn't a mess but it would have been if we didn't slow down). Pictured on the right were some cows that would not get out of the way. This is not unusual for driving in Botswana.

After leaving Kasane we headed towards the river and the border crossing. About a mile before the border we encountered a line of trucks. Sadly Thom didn't realize at the time what this meant and didn't get a picture. You see, the line of trucks were waiting to cross the border. They line up and wait, and wait, and wait. Our driver told us that the truck at the end of the line will probably be there for 3 to 4 days before he crosses the river. Mostly the backup is due to only 1 truck getting on the ferry at a time and cars get priority on the ferry. If both ferries are working there are 4 crossings an hour. Most of the time only 1 ferry is operational. Above on the left is a picture of a truck crossing on the ferry heading to Botswana from Zambia.

Thom was worried that waiting for the ferry was going to take for ever. It turns out those fears were unfounded because once we went through immigration in Botswana we were taken down to the river where a private boat was waiting for us. Keith and Thom quickly grabbed their bags and jumped onto the boat. The driver even rode across the river with us to make sure we were passed off to the next vehicle on the other side. The whole boat ride took about 10 minutes.

When we got to the Zambia side we were met by another transport company who had brought 20 tourists to the border earlier that morning. So we got to ride toward Livingstone in the luxury bus that they had traveled in. It was a little bit more comfortable than the truck that had picked us up at the airport. The expediter took Keith and Thom through Customd and Immigration which was amusing because the woman processing Thom's diplomatic passport thought it was a big deal. Thom being the fool that he is tried to down play it which made her think that there was something suspicious about Thom. Editor's note: Thom learned his lesson about too much modesty and will not repeat that again. 2nd Editor's note: there usually is something suspicious about Thom.

From there the drive to the Tongabezzi lodge took about 30 minutes.

In next week's exciting blog we will continue the adventure at Victoria Falls.

The Hilarious Elephants at Mokolodi

After our cheetah experience at Mokolodi, we thought we were pretty much done for the day and were heading out of the park when we noticed an elephant walking toward us. Our ranger stopped the truck while 4 elephants came in to the clearing just next to the road. These elephants were with their handlers who teach them commands in Urdu and Hindi. They have one male elephant and 3 females. So we sat there right next to these giants and watched them for about 20 minutes. You should know that elephants that close smell really bad. And elephant poop has a worse smell than you would think.

One of the females came right beside our truck and starting eating the plant stuff growing very low to the ground. The male turned around to see what she was doing and used his trunk to pull the stuff right out of her mouth (see picture on right). Evidently, he decided that was kind of tasty so he started working on pulling up some of the stuff himself.

Now this stuff is so low to the ground that it's out of their line of sight and it's rooted very tightly in the ground. They wrapped their trunks around it and then used their feet to help get it out of the ground (see photos below). The male got a nice big serving and the female pulled it out of his mouth with her trunk. When the male's trunk started "nosing" around her mouth she pulled the plants out of her mouth with her trunk and held it away until he went to back to uprooting more of the stuff for himself. We were highly entertained for several minutes by this interaction.

As an editorial aside, we were quite impressed by how agile the elephants were. They're huge but they can do some very delicate work. Kristen and Debra also found out why elephants have 4 feet (It's a joke that was demonstrated by the male elephant while we were there).

After the elephants decided they were done entertaining us, we finished our Mokolodi adventure and headed home.

The Cheetahs

While Kristen was still in town we all went to participate in Thom's favorite entertainment for vistitors.... "The Cheetah Experience." About 15 Km (or 15 clicks) outside of Gaborone there is a little game park called Mokolodi Game Resereve. The game park has no predators except the indiginous leopards and the 2 cheetahs that are in their own 10 hectare(we have no idea how big that is) enclosure. These 2 male cheetahs were rescued as cubs when their mother was shot by a farmer. Supposedly these cheetahs are very accustomed to being around people and don't know how to hunt at all.

The trip started as most trips to Mokolodi, or anywhere in Botswana, usually do, the booking (reservation) was all messed up. After sorting out the booking so that we could actually do the cheetah experience we were on our way. Within 45 seconds of starting the game drive we saw this really cool bird. It's some sort of hornbill but we never really pay attention to the names of birds. Somebody just made up those names anyhow. Our guide showed us the indiginous things that are normal: Impala, Kudo, Warthog, blah blah blah. But we were dying to see the CHEETAHS.

Thom's impatience was momentarily abated when we went a different way and approached the watering hole from the north instead of the south as is normal. By doing this we came right up on the hippos. Not that they ever do a lot but you could actually see them in the water this time. They were very cool. We're pretty sure they even noticed us.

We came across some Heart-a-beasts and saw them from an angle where we could really understand where they got their name (it's a deer like thing whose antlers kind of make a shape of heart in case you care) and then we were finally off to the cheetah enclosure.

When we got there our guide jumped out of the truck and got the key that was hidden, as always, under the rock next to the gate. So we drove inside the enclosure and immediately saw one of the 2 cheetahs. This cheetah was easily identified as the son-of-a-bitch that doesn't really like people (he is pictured to the left). We've been told he almost ate one of Clinton's Aides a couple years back but you have to question what his motivation might have been.

Our ranger had us get out of the vehicle to look around a bit for the "cool cheetah". That's when this next picture was taken. As you can see Debra thinks it's a really bad idea to walk around in a cheetah's habitat. She just doesn't get how cool the experience is. He wasn't anywhere close so we got back in the vehicle and drove around until we finally found the cool cheetah. (Pictured to the right is an artist's rendition of the cool cheetah that Debra was expecting)

And by the way, yes, we would love for you to send us cheetos...email for the address if needed.


But back to our story now. We found the cool cheetah and he seemed happy to see us but right then a horse trotted by the enclosure and the cheetah was fascinated by this. He took off and ran a long the fence keeping pace with the horse until he couldn't see the horse anymore (but, of course, these cheetahs have no concept of hunting). Anyhow the cheetah did not return to the same tree to hang out but kind of just took off so we had to get back in the vehicle to go find him again.

We finally found the cheetah all settled down hanging out under a tree.
To the right is what the cheetah actually looks when all relaxed and content like.

Thom and Kristen had a great time petting the cheetah but Debra preferred to keep her distance. She doesn't like cats. The picture below was captured during one of the brief moments when Debra wasn't screaming, "We're all going to die!!!!!" Fortunately no one got eaten (this time) and we got back in the vehicle to drive around and see more of the game park.

In our next edition we'll talk about the hilarious elephants at Mokolodi.

To see more pictures from Mokolodi, visit Kristen's pictures on Shutterfly