And the photos keep coming... (J2)

New wheels.

This is the car we bought a week ago, our 2002 Honda (2002 - what a great year!) Civic. Let's make sure we highlight the most important part: it's got Air Conditioning!!!

This is our wee little car at the front gate to our house.

Wildlife query of the day: Given the fact that we don't have our own "Birds of Botswana" book yet, I have no way of identifying what we have buzzing around the garden. We have a lot, that's for sure, but we just don't know what. One of my favourite (albeit bittersweet) characters are these huge, grey guys who sit in our peach tree and constantly eat all of our un-ripe peaches. Not to mention provide the dogs with loads of entertainment, particularly because they throw the peaches on the ground, whereby Reggie lays underneath the tree and proceeds to chomp them down, one by one, all by himself.

In other doggy-news, 2 out of 3 hounds have officially been trained to stay in our property. First prize goes to anyone who can guess which of the 3 is still failing miserably to learn not to run away?

Alright then, obviously since this is not an interactive blog, I will have to withdraw the prize offer. At any rate, the loser is BILLY BOB, who has escaped twice so far, but is always found within 10 minutes of bolting for the hills. (Not really "the hills", just more like "the neighbours" or "the local cows who wander our road")

Opa/Grandpa Reggie continues to amaze us, proving that you can teach old, stubborn beagles new tricks. He's so good and just stays around the pool and the lawn area or the back porch all day. Eating un-ripe peaches, panting, drinking water, and sleeping.

Reilly was no sweat. She's just too good, and shows no desire whatsoever to run off and explore things without us. And finally she has the space that a 1/2 border collie - 1/4 beagle - 1/4 spider monkey deserves.

There has been no baboon activity around our own plot. The local baboon troop mainly sticks to the main road about 800 metres (1/2 mile) away from our place. They only tend to wander into the residential areas when they're starving or when people have made baboon-buffets way too obviously available. A neighbourhood up the road from us, closer to town, where we know some people, has a bad problem because it's much more densly populated and people leave their rubbish bins out all the time and make feeding off human food waaaay too easy for the monkeys.

And so far we've only witnessed about 2 snakes (tiny tiny ones) on the property, and about 300 rather large frogs. The frogs are very fond of our kitchen and for some reason we always wake up to in the morning to find them proudly sitting on the kitchen tiles, waiting for us. No idea how they're getting in there.

That's all I've got for now.

J2

Oh the Things You'll See... (J2)

So--- Who are the people in your neighbourhood?

Not sure about all the people yet, but here are some pleasant faces that we interact with inside our house on a daily basis.... Yes, INside the house.

J2

Busy Week! (J1)

Time is going really fast, we have already been in Botswana for more then 2 weeks. These two weeks have certainly been very very busy. We have been enjoying ourselves, but wish we would have a little more time to enjoy ourselves. Between organising everything and coming into our company with some major deadlines, have made things pretty hectic.

We moved into our rental house on Friday the 12th January, so a little over a week ago. On this same day the dogs arrived as well, in fact, when I went up to the house to get the keys that morning, the delivery van with the dogs was already there. It was great to finally have our ‘own’ place again, and have our dogs with us.

The house is great, but pretty sad as it is very empty and big, and our furniture will not arrive for another few weeks. We are sleeping on an air mattress and have our laptop to watch some dvds, but that is about it. Luckily we borrowed some plates and dishes from our friends. There are bits and pieces in the house, like light fittings etc that need fixing, we have contacted the landlords about this.

The house is great, but the garden is really awesome. It is so big, the pool only is as big as our whole Irish back garden. As we have our own borehole for water they have also been able to keep a lawn growing, which is pretty unique in Botswana. The whole property is fenced, but at places the fence is not good enough to stop Billy from escaping into our neighbours plots. This created a bit of a challenge, we either needed to re-fence the whole 9 acres, or come up with some other plan to not have our dogs escape when we are at work. We have bought a radio-fence, and are busy training them with this at the moment, to keep them in part of the garden around the house, but keep them out of the bush. We have been warned by many people that our dogs might not be ‘bush-wise’, and meetings with baboons and snakes should be avoided. At the moment they stay inside during the days, and we come home during lunchtime to let them out. Hopefully in another week, when trained with the fence, they can walk around freely during the day. They do not have much energy anyway, due to the heat.

Other challenges of a new place included: arranging a big gas bottle so we could cook on our stove, and also maintaining and keeping a pool clean. Both of us have never had to do this before, and it is not that easy if you do not know what to do. With help from neighbours we seem to have most things sorted our now.

After driving around in a small rental car (without air-conditioning) for a little over a week, we managed to buy a nice car for ourselves, a beige Honda civic, complete with all extras. We picked it up on Friday, it is a very comfortable car. (First leather upholstery ever… very swish.)

Business is booming at the moment, in the first week we arrived we got a contract for designing the landscape of a health institute, and the second week we got a small environmental consulting job, and another landscape job. Also, a major job that has been on hold for over a year is starting up again. All this combined with the fact that there were some major deadlines straight away and that our Landscape Architect is on holidays, has made it pretty hectic. The way it is going at the moment there would be enough work for me as well.

It is very slow getting things organised in Botswana, no surprises there. Everything involved actually going to the particular office to arrange things / pick things up, which means a lot of driving around, which can be frustrating when you are busy. For example application forms, which could be faxed or mailed to you in any other country, are available for pick up. Or paying the telephone bill actually involves driving to the Botswana telecom office, queuing in line and then paying the bill. Slowly there are some improvements, internet banking seems to be up and running, and we will need to investigate how we can improve these things. It seems our predecessor has been running around doing this for the last year, instead of trying to find way to improve.

In general we have found people here very friendly. When needing someone to help you in a shop, we have found two types of people. They are either very very helpful, will do anything to make sure your problem is solved and you leave satisfied. The opposite is just as common, they do not care one bit, are annoyed with anything you ask them, and show an enormous attitude and act like they do not want to be there at all.

That is all for the moment. I will try to also post some pictures this week, as that is usually much more exciting then this really long story.

J1

Photos of House (J2)

The current situation in "the living room".

But check it out: everything one needs is there alright, an air mattress with (our own) bedding, 3 tired puppies, a laptop, an ipod with booming speakers, and an extension cord.

oh yes, and a relatively good-looking husband!

;-)

And moving on to the dining room.... Again not much, but the bare necessities. Who could need more? A borrowed plastic garden table and chairs, air conditioning, and a lovely bottle of (extremely cheap) South African red wine. No complaints here!

Hello from Botswana (J1)

Believe it or not, but we are already 1 full week on African soil. A quick update on our situation.

We arrived in Johannesburg airport early on Thursday morning the 4th January. Again completely overpacked and over weight (even after posting a big box from the Netherlands), but the airline let us through again without paying. The flight was very comfortable, as always with British Airways. The most exciting part of this day was visiting our friends at the family Polson in Pretoria, and visiting our dogs in their kennel. The kennel facility was about half an hour driving from Pretoria, and we really great. I think we were more excited to see our dogs, then they were to see us. They were so happy to be able to run around in the exercise area.

After 2 relaxing days at the Polsons, with plenty of sunshine, braais, drinks and relaxing, we continued our journey, and flew from Johannesbrug to Gaborone. This time they stopped us, and we had to pay for 19kg’s overweight (imagine how much it must have been before….) Again a very smooth flight of less then 1 hour, and T. was waiting for us at the airport.

We spend the Saturday afternoon catching up with T. and his wife L., both on personal and business issues. They live in a beautiful place in Gabane, a little village about 20 minutes outside Gaborone. They have a very cosy 1 bedroom rondavel. The rondavel next to theirs belongs to a friend (architect from UK), and this is where we are staying since the owner is in the UK at the moment. Sunday was spend checking out our new place in Notwane. We loved the plot, it is so big, with a really nice garden and pool. The house was locked, so we could not check that out.

Monday was back to work, and one thing is for certain, our holiday was certainly over! Only one full week with T., before he and L. go on a well deserved two weeks holidays. On top of this 3 major deadlines, plus lots of admin stuff to take care of, such as:
- immigration permits
- bank signatures
- office access
- getting cellphones organised

No real time for a proper handover, today we have finished the first deadline and submitted a report, after 3 long days in the office, and this is only the start. Most weight for this is on poor Jill’s shoulders, I am trying to help where I can. In the meantime I also try to keep up with the constant flow of emails from Ireland, they certainly seem confused a lot in Ireland.

We went back to our house on Tuesday, this time we could get inside, and made a snag list for repairs etc which we forwarded to the owner. The kitchen is even bigger then we expected, and the living room is a really nice space with sliding doors into the garden. The 4th bedroom and bathroom are in a little rondavel, a little away from the house, really cosy. The whole place is just missing some finishing touches, which will hopefully be sorted out after we sent the snag list.

We were planning to buy a car quickly, but have not had the chance to do any car shopping so far. Now that T. is going on holidays, and we can not catch a ride with him anymore, I think we might just rent a car for a week or two. Not ideal, but we have no option.

Our dogs are arriving on Friday, so I think we might move to the house on Friday, and vacate our little place here. It will be nice to have a pool to jump into after a long day of work, because the weather (I saved this for last) is pretty hot, 30 to 35 degrees Celsius during the day, and it does not cool down much at night time.

I can not think of much more at the moment, will update further soon

J1

Happy new year (J1)

First of all we would like to wish everyone a very happy new year. We are still at the parents farm at the moment, trying to meet family and friends. We are leaving on Wednesday, tomorrow I need to try and get my driving license renewed.

The Irish house is advertised on the internet with our rental and management agency, tomorrow offices are opening again, and we are excited to see if there was some interest already. Realistically it will take a little longer though. We have also signed a lease for a house in Botswana already. We had always said we would wait and check places out ourselves, before renting them. But this was advertised on the internet, and we sent T. to go check it out. We are really excited about it, it is situated in Notwane, about 10 minutes outside of the city, and has beautiful gardens with a pool.

We will keep you posted though this blog on out first experiences. The next entry will be from African soil...

J1