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.