Week Away (J1)

Lots of things have been happening in Botswana, so after a quiet spell on this blog, here follows an update on everything, both fun and work stuff.

First there was a weekend, the 1000 Desert rally race came to Botswana, and the finish was at the shopping mall right up the road from us. These cars are seriously tuned up. Most teams are South African, and I guess after a few you pretty much have seen everything, as they just flash past and leave you with a dust cloud. Here some pictures.


From the rally race we went to see our friend B. play rugby. It was really cool to see an amateur rugby game, we had expected it to be a huge ex-pat event, but it was mostly locals playing, as well as refereeing and coaching. It was high school teams play each other, and the Maru-a-pula team, with our friend, beat St. Joseph college, which is right up the road from our house. Some celebration pictures:
On Sunday we had a really nice fathers day lunch with our lovely neighbours, but after this we had to leave to travel to Serowe. We stayed in a really nice place called Lentswe Lodge, on the top of a mountain, with nice views, and a cute little bar. This was our ‘base’ for the next 3 days of public consultation for the big power line job we are working on.

The public meetings take place in a “Kgotla”, a customary court, and are lead by the Kgosi, which is the chief. The kgotlas are organised through the tribal administration, and every small village has one. All sorts of things are handled here, from sentencing people who have committed crimes, selling cattle, and also public presentations such as ours.

The thing generally went as follows: The kgosi would wait for around an hour after the time it was supposed to start, then finally when he decides all people who would want to attend would be there, the meeting would be opened with a prayer. After this he would do a small introduction, after which our presentation starts. And don’t imagine a nice shiny PowerPoint presentation, all this is happening in the open air, under a big tree. We had a translator, Mr. S., who accompanied us for the week, because these meetings are held in Setswana only. After our meeting the public would come back with their questions. And the public are usually a number of old men who have lived in the village their whole life. Comments generally included job creation, power to pumps in cattle posts, and compensation issues. The funny thing was that most people really wanted this power line as close as possible to their village, even though they will not be able to get any power from it, because the voltage is too high.

Besides having 7 of those meetings, we also met with various land boards, water departments, town and village councils, planners, defence force, telecommunications, and even a game park on our way. We even managed to squeeze in some site visits. It was a very hectic week, and we came back absolutely exhausted on Friday night, having travelled 2200km in only 1 week, dragging three people who work on the project with us all the time, and starting every day at 6.00 AM sharp…We did get a lot of really good information, and it is now a matter of working all notes out.
I must admit I am very glad to be back home and in the office, a week of breakfast, lunch and dinner from some small place or hotel might sound nice, but get very boring, and made me quite sick actually. I have come to two conclusions this week: mining towns (I mean Lethlakane) are really, and I mean really ugly, it is probably one of the worse places I have ever visited. And second, in this town we lost a cell phone, we considered it stolen, and already bought a replacement this weekend. On Sunday someone send me a message to ask if I knew someone who had lost a phone, it was found, and the guy dropped it at the hotel for us, the manager will keep it there until we visit again. How about that for Africa?

To end on a sad note: The All Blacks (New Zealand) beat the Springboks (South Africa) in Tri-nations rugby this weekend.


J1

Powercuts, Parties (and Pumps) J1

That is exactly how I would summarize our last week(s). Botswana has been experiencing major power cuts over the last 2 weeks. Nearly everyday the power disappears for a while, this morning it was gone when we left home, last night it dropped out for an hour, and Sunday was a day without power until night time. Same thing happened the Sunday before, with minor interruptions during that week. Apparently, this is a sign of what we can expect for the coming three years (not sure how realistic this is...), until the new power plants have been completed. People are already making jokes that in the near future the only thing you will hear in Gaborone is the noise of many diesel engines, powering the many generators. We have candles all over our house, and luckily have a gas stove, so we can cook at anytime, so I guess it is kind of romantic. If it would be my own house I would be interested to investigate a backup system with solar power and batteries. A dutch friend here sells solar power systems, and the technique sounds very promising. But given the fact that we are living in a rental house, there is really not much point.


We have met so many people since we have moved here, and it is quite amazing what a group of new friends we already have or know. Probably more then after nearly 5 years in Ireland. And we have been invited to so many parties. Last weekend there was a birthday party of a 10 year old, with more adults attending, who all were just hiding outside, away from the kids party, drinking and eating yummy foods. Then we went to a birthday party in the Saturday night, with more eating, drinking and going out. We also attended an Indian food festival in town. Gaborone is full with Indian people, and if you know us, you know that this is one of our favourite foods. Imagine a whole park full with small stalls selling all kinds of Indian food, while playing the most awful Indian disco music. It was great! This weekend we went to a cocktail party, the couple who run the Dutch consulate were married 40 years, and invited a bunch of friends for a spontaneous cocktail party in their backyard, it was really 'gezellig'. Next week we already have invitations for a farewell party and a lunch party. Weekends are pretty packed like this....


To keep ourselves in shape, especially after eating 'Kroketten en Bitterballen' this weekend, we went for a hike up Kgale Hill twice, and we went for a paddle on the Gaborone dam, Billy and Reilly joined us.


On the work side Jill is keeping me busy with our projects and stuff. It is really nice to be able to work together every day. Especially, when fieldwork is required, we can just go together, instead of one having one leave the other behind. In the meantime I am talking to an old business contact from my Ireland time, a pump company from Belgium. They sell pumps to pharmaceutical and wine industries all over the world, but not in South(ern) Africa. They have shown interest in my (or, "our") company representing them in this region. I believe that given the fact that these industries are large in South Africa, combined with the enormous economic growth, there might be some really nice opportunities (and more work at the already-busy office). I working on a proposal for them at the moment, and hope they will employ us (part time) for the start up months as a consultant, while we investigate opportunities and market, and make their product known. After that, when the supply of some equipment will hopefully start, I would be working on a commission basis. I am really excited about this, and it will give us a nice excuse for a few visits to South Africa every year.


I realize that I have done too much writing now, not enough pictures. But a picture of a stainless pump is not that exciting. But we did get this picture from V., from our weekend in Khutse.




J1

Workload update & Pula returns

It's been a bit quiet on the blogger front recently, due to the huge amounts of work going on down here in Gabz-city. "Swamped" would be a pretty appropriate word to use, actually. Which is one of the reason I've spent the last 5 months pleading with Hannes not to leave me for greener pastures in the engineering world!

June 18th begins the week of solid public consultations that we will have to undertake for our big powerline job. Our schedule includes holding public meetings in the villages of:
Serowe,
Palapye,
Mmashoro,
Mabeleapudi,
Orapa,
Paje, and
Letlhakeng

These are all villages in the Central District, and the powerline will be running through, or bypassing each one. So we need to investigate how the locals feel about the potential environmental implications of this proposal on their doorsteps. The red pointer on the map here vaguely shows the corridor between Palapye and Orapa, in which we'll be operating (smaller villages not shown).

The light-yellow line refers to a pretty sub-standard type of road that is at best considered to have a "tar" surface. But for the majority of the trip it will be a pretty bumpy, uncomfortable ride, with the exception of the days when we're in Palapye, Serowe, Letlhakane, and Orapa. We'll be loading up the new rig and spending the whole week out there in the bush, facilitating meetings with the Cheif of each village in their kgotlas, and inviting the public to participate in discussions on the topic. Richard, our ecologist and public consultation specialist will be joining, as will Eric, our student intern and Setswana translator.

This project is only in the first 1/3rd of it's lifespan at the moment, we still have to do a constraints report to pick the best route for the power line, and then do the full Environmental Assessment. There may be a helicoptor ride involved, which I'm looking forward to. We'll see.

Otherwise, life in Gaborone came to a screeching halt this weekend when we had a massive city-wide power blackout. This was the first one all year, and it lasted about 4 or 5 hours. South Africa experiences this all the time, because there's not enough power for their country. However, Botswana also buys power from South Africa (until the end of the year) so the SA blackouts are bound to affect us from time to time until Botswana becomes self-sufficient. This is why there is so much work in our field at the moment, with such a desperate push to find power sources. SA is going to be literally "turning off the switch" on Botswana, within the next 6 months, as our contract with them runs out.

And finally, "Pula comes back to Gabs for one night only!!!" Last night we had rain for hours. This incident is completely bizarre, as the rain season ended several months ago. Life in a desert climate is so much different to anywhere else we've ever lived, because the weather patternsare ALWAYS consistent. You just simply will. not. get. rain. during the winter here in a typical year. In fact, we usually don't even see clouds between the months of May and October. But some freak climate anomole occurred last night, and we had a huge summer storm in the middle of winter. It made us very happy as all we've been hearing so far this year are announcements of drought and "national emergency" conditions whereby everybody will be seeing a lot of dead livestock scattered across the landscape this year and severe drought is going to see most wildlife struggling from now until October, because this year's rainy season didn't bring enough water. This is never a good thing, as the many cattle and donkeys that wander around the city die of thirst and starvation, and that's a really cruel way to go. So the sound of rain and thunder pummelling the city last night was not only an incredible "What the....?" surprise, but also made everyone very happy.