Poor Reggie (J1)

I am going to have to start this blog with some very sad news: our poor Reggie has / had cancer. He had a swelling underneath his body, that kept getting bigger. We took him to the vet, who at first told us it was nothing to worry about, and treated Reggie with antibiotics. The treatment did not help, and Reggie started to lick the swelling open, with as a result several blood trails through our house and garden. Took him to the vet again, and this time it was decided to remove it. After removing the vet came to the conclusion is was probably cancerous, but luckily he managed to remove it very well, and hopefully it had not spread and rooted yet. It is way too early for poor Reggie to have trouble, is is only 11 years yet.

We have been very busy working, but I will not bore anyone with the details of that (again). But I guess this would be our lame excuse for no activity on this blog. Last weekend was lots of fun though, we went to a rugby game, the vultures (Botswana national team) against Mauritius. We were amazed, the atmosphere was fantastic, the stadium (University Botswana stadium) was nicer then most places in Ireland (such as Musgrave Park), and the game very good. These guys are all not professionals, even soccer players, which is the main sport here, are not professionals. Our friend Eric and neighbour Terry game along for the afternoon, and we enjoyed some beers in the stadium while watching this game. Some pictures:

Jill and Terry.

The police band before the game

The Vultures - Botswana National rugby team

Saturday night we went our for a nice dinner, or that was what the plan was. We went to Dros, a South African restaurant chain, usually very good for a good steak and a nice glass of wine. Not this time.....it was probably the worse steak I had ever tasted. We sent it back to the kitchen, something I never do, and the replacement was just as bad. We took it up with the manager, but they still made us pay! No more Dros for us for a while.

Our friend AL from Ireland is coming over next week, and will stay for us for a few weeks before starting his job in Johannesburg. We will pick him up from Joburg airport, and will try to make a few holiday days out of the trip, and meet up with some old friends. We used to be planning our holidays so well, but now having our own business, things are different. It sounds like it's great to have your own business, you can do whatever you want. But look how it has worked out: we have been here 6 months, and have taken exactly 2 days holidays so far, and even ended up working on some public holidays. We have to change this nonsense, starting next week!!!

J1

The Detectives are in town

For those of you who STILL haven't taken our advice and read any of Alexander McCall Smith's series of books based in Botswana (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series), you'll have a chance to get your enjoyment "cheater" style, when the movie comes out! It's been all the buzz around here for the last 9 months or so, but now that the film crews are running around town and actually getting to work on it, you can't help but feel the vibe.

The sets are up all over town and they're filming away. Amazingly enough, one of my favorite R&B singers (Jill Scott) is going to be the lead role in the movie, and hardly anyone here knows who she is... all they're concerned about is that if you get picked to be an extra, you can make 200 Pula per day!

I'm slightly annoyed that the main characters are all Hollywood actors (or in JS's case, not actors at all). Was there not one Motswana (traditionally built) lady that could've possibly done the job? I have very little faith in Jill Scott's ability to pull off a traditional Botswana accent... she's a singer, for crying out loud! eh, we'll see.

Presidents Day (J1)

July is a very good month when it comes to holidays in Botswana, we had a bank holiday early in the month, and this week Monday and Tuesday were days off, because it was presidents day. Unfortunately we only realised very close too the weekend that we actually would have two days holiday, instead of the Monday we expected, and we made no exciting plans to do anything.

Of course it had only been a week since we were in the bush (Khutse) with Jean, so no huge urge to go back straight away. And we are going to South Africa in two weeks time, so no need for that either. Mary went back to her hometown called Plumtree, in Zimbabwe, so no-one to feed the dogs anyway. And it was very nice to have a relaxing weekend at home, the last week at work was very busy, and even though I am still doing a little work, we also had loads of time to relax.

We are trying to get back in shape, so our plan was to go up Kgale Hill every day for exercise. And at places the path is really steep, so it’s a great workout. We went out for dinner with friends on Friday night, and had some lovely Ethiopian food. Later this weekend we grilled some yummy (aged) porterhouse steaks, and we had an Indian lunch. I also got a few jobs done around the house.

Sunday afternoon we went for a little game drive into Mokolodi. Just across the road from us, very convenient. And it is always nice to go game viewing, I never get bored. We saw kudu, impala, waterbok, wildebeest, warthog, zebra, rhino, ostrich, springbok and all that in an hour and a half. The Mokolodi restaurant is being refurbished and getting a new owner, it will be open again on the 3rd August, so we are excited to see what it will be like.

As I said, work is busy. We (mostly Jill) is still really busy with the powerline project, and will be for the coming week. Besides this we were awarded a small job on a new terminal building at the airport, and it seems we might get a job on a new dairy facility. I have been very busy putting a proposal together for a new park in a small town outside of Gaborone. With these jobs we usually form a team, with architects, civil engineers, quantity surveyors, and electrical engineers. It takes a lot of effort to get all this together in a proposal. After submitting a proposal as such to the council, it usually takes a long time, it can take 6 months are longer before a decision will be made, but that is how it works in Botswana. We are also working on a proposal for the environmental input on a new road.

Anyway, that is probably too much writing already, I will try to find a few pictures to go with all this…..

J1

More camping, more friends, more photos

I have been informed by the husband that he is "too busy to blog" today, whereas I have just finished off a big project (WAHOO!) so it's going to be my turn to do two-in-a-row for once.

First of all, having Jéan in town with us for 5 days last week was great. We kept him busy. We dragged him to the office with us where he started the ball rolling on our company's first website. It's about time, too! We have already registred the domain name (watch this space!) but we have not yet actually gotten around to constructing THE WEBSITE. So J. came to work with us on Wednesday and created a temporary webpage that basically has the back bone of our future site and some appropriate links that you can click on which all take you to the same page that basically says: "sorry, this is under construction!!" What an anti-climax!! But it's something, and we can hopefully get it hosted and put up for all to see, soon.

If anyone out there wants to finish it off for us, (HA!) let me know, you're welcome to put your name in big fat letters on it, if you do it for free ! ! !

Considering that Jéan is now officially our most frequent visitor, and we have not yet ever taken him outside of the big city of Gaborone, we decided that we would spend a few days out in the bush with him before he headed back to Johannesburg and subsequently up to the rain and gloom of Scotland in a matter of months. Here are some photos:

Jill

Johannes & Jéan

Hornbill - practically sitting on my head

The highlight of the weekend's game viewing was the sheer number of oryx that were out in masses. The oryx (aka gemsbok) is one of my favorite antelope species and they were everywhere (see photo). At one point we came around a bend in the road and caught at least 40 of them in a pack less than 50 metres from our truck. It was really beautiful.We saw giraffe as usual, many mongoose, bustards, springbok, steenbok, impala, and hartebeest. I hate to sound complacent, but I'm getting pretty sick of giraffe by this stage. I think I have suffered a serious giraffe-photo-binge since we got here, and it's about time to declare a photo embargo on myself for pictures of them walking around, standing, drinking, etc. It really is getting ridiculous. From now on unless they're mating, running, playing poker or singing karaoke, I've officially decided to avoid taking any more (hundreds of) photos of those guys.

Lions came very close to our tents at night, carrying on and roaring like crazy - I think there was some substantial mating going on - and scared the pee out of Jéan. In the morning he told us he had even pondered which strategy the Botswana Government would put in place to cover up our deaths in an effort to avoid any potential negative impacts on tourism.

This weekend is yet another public holiday (we have 2 in July - fantastic! The first one being Sir Seretse Khama day 2 weeks ago). This one is actually President's day and we get both monday AND tuesday off, but I believe SOMEONE wants to work on tuesday because we have a big proposal to submit on wednesday morning. It may be possible to do some of that work at home, however. We'll see. We won't be going anywhere far away anyway, as Mary is going back to Zim for the weekend and we didn't line up anyone to look after the dogs.

The only thing I want to do this weekend is exercise. One yoga class per week for me is not cutting it. I'm seriously annoyed by our lack of fitness these days, due to the really early hours of darkness every night which has given us way too nice of an excuse to go home and go running/walking like we used to after work. If we didn't maintain such a healthy diet, we would both probably pack on at least 2 extra kilos during the winter here. I have decided that we are going to climb Kgale Hill every day between tomorrow (Sat) and Tuesday. That's 4 climbs i n 4 days. If that doesn't kick our butts into gear I don't know what will. Oh yes, and kayaking too.

I'm really looking forward to the days getting longer again, but I'm wary of complaining about the cold weather because I know that within a month we'll be back to sweating and sunburns. My only real complaint about this winter has been the climate-challenged nature of our office. Even with our house being freezing cold in the morning and nighttime, it's not so bad because we just make a fire in the TV room or turn on the heater in the bedroom. Here at the office, it is always and I mean ALWAYS at least 5 degrees colder inside than outside!!! Even with the sun pouring in the window, the cement walls and floors that we're surrounded by in here make this place like an icebox. My feet are always frozen and my hands and nose as well. I don't even bother dressing nicely to come into the office because I know I won't even bother removing my fleece, snow hat, and scarf throughout the day. This photo was taken of me looking "professional" at my desk during what should be the warmest part of the day... outside anyway.

Anyway, happy President's day weekend to us and to all who will miss out on a fabulous 4-day weekend wherever you may be! We're off to enjoy some ethiopian food tonight with a couple of our friends at the Abyssinian cafe, and then the rest of the weekend is an open book (for once)!

Long time, no post.

Well, there's a good explanation....
we're just busy!!!

Never has more work been cranked out of the office than over the past week. The power line jobs are eating into both our days and nights. Proposals still keep rolling in like crazy, and we have a visitor staying with us as well (Jéan again, from Pretoria). However, we made an effort to stop and smell the roses this weekend, for a change.

Saturday we slept in until 9am (YAHOO!) and woke up, got in the car, and drove about an hour and a half south.... over the South African border, through the R51.00 toll gate, and into the booming platinum mine town of Rustenburg. Rustenburg has recently been named the fastest growing city in South Africa. Why is that little fact important? Because with major growth comes.... Major shopping malls!!!

The new(ish) Waterfall Mall in Rustenburg is home to many, many shops (where I finally proceeded to spend many, many Pula on clothing... my first time clothes shopping in a whole year!!) as well as....

....?

.... The CAPETOWN FISH MARKET!!!!!!!!! Home of the only SUSHI BAR to be found within a 3 hour radius of Gaborone!!!!

We had been craving sushi for so long now (it's been over a year since our last raw fish feast, as there is none in Cork, either) that it was all worth it. A nice glass of white wine and a conveyor belt full of tasty, delicious, fishy/sea weedy delights was by all means worth the 3 hour round trip and R102 toll fee. (I hear Dutch people shreiking in horror!) It was also nice to do some clothes shopping, and we picked up yet another boxed set of another season of "24". It was a really great day. And we were home around 9pm.

Since Monday was a bank holiday here, there was also more time to attempt some relaxation, and even though I ended up working on the laptop at some stage during the afternoon, we still managed to work a run in, as well as a bike ride (with Reggie) and some bonding time with the neighbours and their newborn twins.

The new babies are unbelievably tiny (they were a few weeks premature) and together the 2 of them only weighed in (combined!) at 4kg when they were born. Boy and girl, pretty cute. I think they will definitely keep S-H&S (mom and dad) plenty busy. S-H's mom has come up from Cape Town to live with them and be the nanny, indefinitely, so the household has not only grown by 2, but by 3, all of a sudden. Pretty ironic considering that S still hasn't finished building the house yet!! Luckily he got 1 bedroom & 1 bathroom totally finished while S-H was down in the Cape giving birth. Mom & grandma have since moved into that room and S is hiding out in the half-finished guest room.

At any rate, there's the update for now. Given all our hard work and accomplishment over the last mad week, we're taking thursday and friday off to go camping with Jéan, which we're really looking forward to. With any luck we'll spot the lions that our friends saw when they were at the same campsite a few days ago. Fingers crossed.......