Champagne (by J1 and J2)

Who would have thought this: we have accepted an offer on our house today. Less then 2 weeks after it went on the market, it is now 'sale agreed' which means contracts can be drawn up. This whole process usually takes around 2 months, and lots of things can go wrong, but let's not worry about that.


We accepted the offer on the condition we can stay in it until the 20th December. A reason for celebration.... champagne for everyone....... !!!

J1 and J2

crazy week (by J1)

This must have been the most crazy week so far, after having gone to some small 'situations', poor J2 has spend pretty much every evening since Sunday night behind this laptop. We have this deadline for this huge report for an airport extention, and she has been helping them to put things together. Unfortunately, all this happened during an incredible busy time at her day job, at the same time. The good thing is that she finished everything as far as she could on Friday, so we have had a nice weekend to relax and recover.

On Thursday this week we had another viewing of the house. Cleaning the place from top to bottom again, all by myself....The same people rang the agent Friday morning, and asked if they could come back Friday afternoon, also asked if they could buy some of the contents, it sounds promising. In the mean time I have made contact with the solicitor already. The papers belonging to the house, are stored away in some safe place by the bank, when selling the house these need to come out of storage for exchange of contracts. Sometimes it can take weeks to get them, that's why it is smart to get this started already.

By the way, I have added a new link to the blog website, it is the Gazette newspaper, one of the main Botswana newspapers. They update their website edition once a week, on Wednesdays. I usually check it to kind of keep up with what is going on.

Ok, I started writing all this on Sunday so far. Now it is Tuesday, we have received a really good offer for our house. We are trying to agree something on the contents as the purchaser is interested in taking most of our stuff over too. This would mean a very 'light' move. I am going to make a list of all stuff now.

One small other thing: the move of our dogs. So far I had been getting no-where with the company from Belfast. No service and reply, definitely no faith in them handling it. I started ringing around and found that a company from Dublin called multicargo were also able to do it. Great response from them, and a quote half the price of anything I have seen so far, also experience in moving dogs to South Africa. All I need to do now is find an agent in South Africa who can receive them and maybe arrange transport to Botswana. I have contacted a company called global paws who seem to be able to do this.

With a little luck we should have the house sold next week, the dogs move arranged, and most furniture sold. I guess something is destined to go wrong, this all seems to easy.

J1

For sale (by J1)

It has obviously taken a while before I got myself to sit down and post a little update. Lots of things have been happening in the last week or two.

First of all, the house is now officially for sale. We have decided not to put a sign up yet, and keep the advertising down to internet only for a while, for the obvious reason that we still have not told anyone at work about leaving. Most people only search for property on the internet anyway, so this should be ok. The third real estate agent is taking care of things, it is on his website but more importantly on one of the big property sites. We had one viewing on Thursday already, exciting, see what happens now.


The company is still as busy as ever, struggling to keep on top of everything. As soon as I am done writing this Jill will take over, starting some kind of new report. Two smaller projects finally paid up their outstanding bills this week, which means at least we do not have to worry about money coming in.

What has kept us so busy this week, was most of all cleaning this house from top to bottom for the pictures, organizing / contacting the solicitor who will handle the sale, applying for another job for myself. This is actually pretty exciting, it was a job as manager of a plant hire place (caterpillar, Komatsu - bulldozers, loaders etc, every agricultural engineers dream. The recruitment consultant came back asking me to make a few small changes to my Cv, because he wanted to put it forward to his client. See what happens from here.

We have also spent quite a few nights in the pub this week, birthday parties, Holland - Ireland soccer friendly (we beat the Irish 4 - 0!!!!!) and other excuses. It gives me some kind of feeling like we are already starting to say goodbye here and there, even though no-one knows yet.

All right, that's about it for me now. I am going to start measuring our dogs now. I have found a new company in Dublin that has experience in shipping dogs from Ireland to Johannesburg in South Africa. I have wasted so much time with another company, definitely not very organized, and never getting back on my questions. Hopefully these guys are better, because I would really like to get things organized for this.

I promise a next update sooner.

Updates from Down-there

I had a long conversation with the office yesterday (Sat.) and it was a good thing too, because he's feeling a bit overworked and stressed. I think it was a helpful hour on the phone, though, because his spirits seemed to lift by the end of it. This reminds me to ring him more often, over the next 4 months.

Major issues include:

1. Having no help on the public consultation for the airport EIA. What with Ratang (obviously) taking a compassionate break from work for the next week or so, the main man had to handle the whole kgotla thing by himself. This is difficult for him, not speaking Setswana. When these major issues cause a bit of argie-bargie amongst the locals ("will the proposal bring benefits to the community?" "Will there be an increase in pollution/employment/AIDS/anti-social behaviour/services etc. due to the proposal?" "Will we be compensated for our trouble & strife throughout construction phase" and so on) they launch into discussions in Setswana with no warning, and they're off like the horses, not an english word to be heard. The main advice after experiencing this is that when attending these things is: 1) Have an interpreter; 2) Have a fluent motswana there to take notes in setswana & translate later 3) Have someone there who can bring the conversations back to english, diplomatically, without stepping on anyone's toes.

2) Bad news. The Lion Park thing didn't work out. I am obviously dissapointed, but as our friend says, maybe it's just a huge relief, with all this other work on the table at the moment. The client concluded that the Water Park specialist will get their own planting guys to do the landscaping. In my opinion, not very wise. They normally have a very short term view on how to do planting, and may not fully appreciate the local conditions. Anyway!

3) T: "Please, please please please come earlier than January?" J2: "We can't. Don't worry so much. You'll be fine." T: "I'm drowning down here!" J2: "You're not drowning. You'll be just fine. If you need to take a break, take a break." Situation tricky, as he's really trying his best to drum up enough work to keep himself on, when we get there. But:

4) L. (wife of T.) working too much. Woolworth's (her company) pretty much owns her soul at the moment. Apparently there's no time. No time for family, no time for holidays, no time for socialising, no time for personal sanity. Apparently she'll be working over Christmas this year AGAIN. But they pay her well. So: what to do, what to do? Is there any compromise, like working 1/2 time? No. It's all or nothing. She's the manager, and they expect her to be responsible for 100% of everything. Working Sundays is probably the hardest on her, as she's a good church-going girl whose had to give up on their congregation out in the suburbs because she's working every sunday. T still attends there, but L is now going to an english Baptist service somewhere else, on another day or at night or something. Which she likes, but not as much as being able to go to their "own" with her husband on a proper sunday morning. I think if we can keep everyone employed once we get there, she'll just quit and they'll just survive on 1 salary. Probably start popping out babies then, I think. Anything is better than being in Africa for "the lifestyle" and then living a life of stress, unrest, and overworked-ness.

All for now......
Number 2.

BOOKING REF: 2536FW

That's it. . . . Our ticket out of here.

Let the record show that 23 December 2006 will be our last day in Ireland.

If you come hunting down the wayward westras. . . .
. . . we won't be here!!!!

-J2

Slowly getting closer (by J1)

We were just talking last night, one of the reasons we wanted to take over a year to prepare ourselves for this whole move, is so we would not have any panic situations in the end, and we could finish Ireland in a proper and calm way. Now there is less the 5 months left, do we have everything under control?

The third estate agent came around valuing our house. He was much more serious about the whole thing then previous ones, and was also recommended by a friend. He does not know it yet, but I think he will be selling our house. His valuation was around the same as the other two. Here is a nice statistic (no matter how well you plan, what can you do about this?) One in every three sales of property in Ireland falls through after the sale is agreed. That could create serious problems for us time-wise. But then we could always rent the house out when we leave. I will put a link on this website for the sale advertisement, once the house is on the market. We will probably go forward with this next week. One last thing we need to decide: are we putting a 'for sale' sign on the house. This would raise many questions, I think we might start with internet advertising and newspapers first, and see what interest we get.

I applied for this job in Gaborone, or actual with a USA organization, but the job was based in Gaborone, working as a TB manager on some health / aid projects. It was closing yesterday and I received the following reply:
Thank you for your interest in employment with Comforce. Although we do recognize the skills and abilities of all of the candidates for the position, it is necessary to select candidates whose qualifications best meet the needs of the organization at this time. We wish you continued success in your professional endeavors.
What does this mean, does it mean I am still being considered, or that I am out? It is really bugging me. I guess I am not getting it, even though I was convinced my experience was a perfect match.

I finally received information about shipping our dogs, a package with vet papers etc should be in the post, and I received a cost estimate by email. I will be able to tell more about this when the package arrives. We are also considering booking our last tickets out of Ireland, usually it is crazy expensive to fly around Christmas, but Aer lingus has a 3 day special on at the moment. Will need to book tomorrow though.

Last thing I wanted to share this time: when we move to Gaborone we hope to probably stay with our friends for the first week or two. The plan is to find rental accommodation for the first year. After this we might buy something again, but I would really like to get familiar with the area, neighborhood etc first. One of the estate agents has a wonderful website, I am checking this site once in a while, and it gives a pretty good idea about what is available for rent. The exchange rate is approx 7.5 Pula for a Euro at the moment. So for approx 650 euros per month (euros) you can rent something pretty nice.

That's my update for now, we will try to get a few more links safari camps) and maybe some photos on this blog soon too (maybe J2?)

J1