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