Halfway USA

After a hectic last 2 weeks in Botswana, including handing over all office stuff, finishing final assignments and exams for both of our courses, putting up the Christmas tree (even though we were leaving) and having the office Christmas party, we made our way to USA for a 4 week round trip.

We are exactly halfway now, and have arrived in Memphis earlier today. Our trip started with a flight from Johannesburg to Washington DC. After a few days with friends we rented a car and started our trip towards Jefferson City. We crossed though Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky (we stayed overnight in Morehead) Indiana, Illinois, and into Missouri.

Driving across West Virginia

After the last day of driving was a bit extra complicated, as there was 2 inches of snow overnight. It was really cold, ice started packing on the front of the car, wiper blades were freezing up, so loads of fun. Some pictures:

Overnight snowfall, our poor rental car covered

One of the many beautiful bridges along the way

The famous Arch in St.Louis

After a few days in Jefferson City meeting up with friends and family, we headed for Kansas City. We did some sightseeing in town, had early Christmas with grandparents and other family members, and got to see a Kansas City Chiefs football game in the Arrowhead stadium. A lifelong dream for J2. It was not part of the dream that the temperature was 6F (or -18C) with a strong wind. We did tailgating ahead of the game, and I have never been colder. Being at the game was awesome though, and inside the stadium is was less cold because we were sheltered from the wind. Bad news: the chiefs lost, as they have most of the season.

Tailgating before the game, freezing cold...

Chiefs football game, did I say it was cold?

Kansas city plaza by night

Sightseeing in at the Memorial monument

Back in Jefferson city we celebrated Christmas and a flu with the family, which resulted in my smallest Christmas dinner ever, I managed to eat one small shred of the turkey, which was deliciously prepared by my dear mother in law, a real shame. Besides the Christmas we met up with a bunch of friends and family friends, did some sightseeing and eating out, and even some relaxing, all thought the schedule was packed.

Jefferson city bridge, with the State Capitol in the background

A water tower close to JC

The local animal shelter, we visited there to share some experiences

So now we are in Memphis, we had a few drinks and soul food on Beale Street, and watched some live blues, which was pretty cool. Our trip across south Missouri and Arkansas, before coming into Tennessee was pretty cool. Nice scenery and many flea markets and antique stores. I could have bought so much stuff if there was not a maximum luggage allowance.

Another new state....

Beale Street in Memphis

A flea market / collectibles shop on our way

Anyway, that is all for now, more updates from Memphis and New Orleans soon. One small negative during this trip: our landlord in Botswana has informed us he wants the house back for his son and daughter early next year, so we will have to move unfortunately, but we will worry about that once we get back.

WE HEREBY WISH EVERYBODY A (DELAYED) HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR.

J1

RIP Sech

Saturday evening we came home after slaving away in the burning sun all day at an Animal Peeps fundraiser, earning thousands of bucks for the crowd that first brought this big boy into our lives, to find him lying dead in the back yard, with no explanation.

Of course we were in total shock, which partially tempered the grief, but over the last few days it has indeed been sinking in. It's true that we'll never know 100% what happened, but it's 99% likely to have been poison-related based on clues (confirmed by Dr. Vet, over the phone), and 90% likely to have been a snake. To get highly technical, we've narrowed it down to a Mamba or the Puff Adder that I spotted in our garden before.

Mary & Richard came to see him & express their grief with us, and help us bury him. We opted for a less stoney spot than over by Reggie, at the end of the marquee lawn, on the west side, under the sunset. It was dusk, the sun was going down, everybody was sad. But again, the shock robbed us of our chance to be 100% tuned in to the cold truth that our big woofer was gone.

He came to us as a 1 & 1/2 year old welfare case, having suffered abuse and a horrible accident that left him forever 3-legged & gimpy. At first he was traumatized and limp, but after the long rehabilitation of his leg, he grew into his own hilarious and outrageous personality.

He had agression and trust issues to work out, often leaving the marks of this behind (in Johannes's face and left arm, primarily) but eventually began to trust adult males and even take instructions from the ones he used to be cheeky to. I thought it was going to take forever and a day to teach a 50kg boerboel to get into the truck, when it used to freak him out and send him into psycho fits. But with a little effort, it only took him a couple weeks, and his fear and car-related anxiety was conquered. Not because of me, but by his committment and drive to please.

He learned obedience instructions faster than any dog I've ever had, like sit and stay and roll (halfway) over, but the one thing he could never do was "stop talking". My favorite thing about Sech was the way he would sit down in front of you and just chatter, saying "moof moof wow wow wow" and look into your eyes to try and figure out if you were getting it.

This dog, more than any other dog, lived to please his humans. His magical tactic (once he learned it solid) was "sit". Even at 100 miles per hour on the fly, he would come screaming up to you and before bowling you over, right at the last second, the "sit" would come with the brakes. Every day we would drive into the driveway and flying around the corner would come the Big Gimp, and before crashing into you, he would sit and MOOF, knowing no pets would come unless there was bottom-on-the-ground action. This would then be followed by a big "roll over", without even being asked, in the most ungraceful fashion anyone had ever seen. I laughed every time.

The big crazy yellow eyes will always be imprinted on my mind - I never had a dog with yellow eyes before, and these ones were set so far back in his head, scaring almost everyone who ever saw him. It made us feel good, knowing that we had an intimidating force on the property, even though he was as soft as mush to us. He would've protected us from anything. He had an unbelievable sense of human vibes. He never growled a single tooth to Mary, yet he could spot a trespasser a mile away. He even wanted to protect his plot from the wildlife that came into it. Who could forget the porcupine, various snakes, and most recently the monitor lizard? We never wanted to punish him for being alert and on the job, because in these parts a good guard dog is a good asset. But the most amazing thing about him was that he was never trained or asked to do it, he just took it upon himself after settling into our family and realizing that we were his people. It was as if he was born to do it, and he already knew what to do. We never even had to train him to stay on his plot, he just instictively knew where his property line ended and that this land was his responsibility.

He loved us more than any other dog we've owned. Sure the other ones think we're great, but this dog would've fought to the death to protect us, and wouldn't rest until he was able to earn his pets and affection from us in return.

His best friend in the whole world, Reilly, is in mourning. So much more than we witnessed with our last loss. This morning she went outside to where he died, sniffed around, and then followed the exact trail we moved him on, over to his grave, and sniffed around some more. She's been obviously bummed out these past few days, and I can tell she just knows her best mate is gone now. No more tearing across the plot at top speeds, exhausting him and taunting him to keep up. No more secret walkabouts together through the bush on the plot, looking for live & dead creatures to play with, when mom & dad leave the house.

Hannes is equally devistated, and keeps saying over and over "I had gotten so attached to him..." and we really can't believe how empty the house can feel without 50kg of solid PUPPY wonkily bouncing through the place going "hah hah hah hah". You really do miss it a lot more than a small, old dog.

I'm not surprised I miss him so much, just given his huge in-your-face style, and over-the-top presence in the house. But I also miss his eyes and his character and having a pup who was genuinely your biggest fan and protector. He was the kind of dog who would really grow on anyone, just ask J1 (the one who once threatened to get rid of him during one of their "getting acquainted" rows), and our gardener (whom he once tried to eat).

November news & photos

It's about 100/40 degrees down here and we're all melting to death!!

But lots of good things are happening -

First of all the whole world is celebrating the US Election and it's never felt better to be an American overseas! 2 weeks on and I'm still amazed how excited everyone is to discuss politics now - you would never guess that a country like Botswana would ever get as wrapped up in foreign affairs as they are now. It's STILL front page news, even after a couple weeks post-election. I'm offering my services as President O's Secretary of the Interior, to help him sort out some of his less-than-satisfactory environmental policies but haven't heard anything back yet.

The husband got some beautiful new glasses which look great on him, but he hates the idea of wearing glasses, so we'll just have to tell him how great he looks as often as possible. It should prevent me having to always read out loud for him what the score of the football game is (up on the TV), and possibly any future car wrecks, if he plays by the rules.

In other news we had an unbelievable surprise waiting for us in the post the other day. Our good friends from Aus, the Jamiesons, just up and sprung a beautiful gift on us out of nowhere. It's this photo that Steve took while they were visiting us about a year ago, of Reggie:

They had it blown up and put on canvas. We were gobsmacked by how beautiful it is, and how happy we are to have Reggie commemorated in a nice piece of art for our walls. Now just to decide where to hang it - I'm going to be torn between the office and home, because we seem to spend equal amounts of time at each place these days!!

This weekend, in between me studying like mad for my upcoming final exams, and work-work-work, we took the time to head across the border to do some hiking with our friend Petra (from here) and Alan.

The town is near Thabazimbi, in the Limpopo Province, and the game farm that we went hiking in is at the base of some really beautiful mountains in the Waterberg. We were the only hikers using the base camp this weekend which meant we had the whole place to ourselves. The weather stayed nice and overcast so that we didn't fry, and it only rained overnight while we were nice and dry in the elevated "tree house" hikers' hut. Saturday we did about 16km, and sunday a brisk 10km. The camp was great, and we just couldn't stop spotting birds. Cuckoos, all kinds of Kingfisher, Cormorants, Sunbirds, and Bee-eaters everywhere. As you can tell by the photos, bug spotting was also a good activity when you're sick of drinking wine and playing Cranium around the campfire.

Parktown Prawn (aka King Cricket).

Mantis.

We spotted plenty of leopard tracks, but alas, no cat sightings.

The valley we were hiking through had lots of great swimming holes:

The hikers hut and all its wonky bunk beds:

Donkey boiler on site, in case you're one of those posh city folk who demand hot water in your shower:

Crossing the drift:

The only unfortunate outcome of the weekend was that I managed to get into some seriously poisonous weeds/scrub/plants/bush/whatever, and came home with half my skin on fire and covered in a horrible bumpy rash. The proprietor of the land that we were on said "cover yourself in onions! That works every time!" So of course I spent the next 12 hours after we got home, with sliced onions wrapped all over my body. It didn't work. Don't EVER try that at home. Go for the old Calamine lotion over old farmers' wives' tales every time. ahhhh....

Now it's time to sit back, get all our work done, get my exams/final assignment done, and prepare for the big flight to the USA. It feels like every last nano-second of our trip is full already, and we're all planned out. I think a sort of stand-by list needs to be created now, of things that we want to do but don't have time for, just in case something falls through. 27 days sounds like a long time, but it's not. Especially where there's more than 4 cities involved, and several days of driving! I think we just know too many people, and don't want to disappoint anyone.

Our friend got us a handy Trac-Fone for our trip, so we already have a pay-as-you-go phone number for those who are interested, which will be active from sometime on the 11th of December, for the whole time we are there. It's 573-645-6967. It's one of those american cell phones though, where you actually have to pay (in minutes) to RECEIVE calls (something totally obscure to us outside of the USA) so don't take offence if it sounds like we're trying to get off the phone after 20 minutes!!

In other news it appears we will be aunt and uncle yet again - as we just heard that Lucas & Hanneke are expecting No. 3 now. They're hoping to have a full football team for the World Cup in 2014, we suspect.

And finally... We've planned ahead this time (for once) and have decided that over Easter, we're going to head down to the Mabuesehube/Kgalagadi Transfrontier park (& the Nassob Wilderness Trail) at the junction of BW/SA/NAM for a week. Anyone who wants to come is welcome - but it isn't for the faint hearted! Lions galore and no water. At least that gives us something to look forward to, after we crash in January, post-big-USA-holiday. How's THAT for organized?!

Pula!!!!

Ke bereka ko ofising.....Indeed, we have been very busy with all sorts of things, one of which is a language course in Setswana, the local language in Botswana. We have been doing it for about 5 weeks now, 2 nights per week. It is quite hectic on top of everything else, but certainly worth it. Our teacher is fantastic, and we are starting to recognize some words already. I just which I was as good with languages as my better half!

It has been very busy, the language course, our respective courses health and safety and landscape courses, work, the kennels, crazy really. At least our courses will come to a close soon, J2 has her exam in the first week of December, and I have my final assignment during that week. For me that means the end of my course, and if I pass this semester I will get my certificate! J2 still has a while to go.

Work has been hectic, big new jobs, deadlines etc. But our guys (we have two guys full time in the office now) are working very hard with us and we are just about managing with everything. Just longing for a Christmas break.

I have made a drastic life change a few weeks ago, I just was not getting everything done, between long work days and all the extra stuff. I have started getting up at 6 am every morning. I am NOT a morning person. We are still going to work at the same time, so I am using my extra time in the morning for studying, or doing admin for the kennels. It is a nice feeling that when you go to work, some of these things are already done.

What else is news?
- Jill has a case of ringworm (and so to our dogs we think, the vet will confirm tomorrow
- I will get a pair of glasses, during a check up at the optician this week it was established I can
not do without any longer, especially for driving and watching TV. We will pick out a nice pair of
specs tomorrow
- Our neighbourhood has set up a neighbourhood watch
- We are going hiking next weekend, and will be staying in a tree house
- It is only 3 and a half more weeks until Christmas break.

It is late on Friday afternoon already. I should not be at the office any longer. Going to the gym now.

J1

PS: the title? we have had so much rain this week, it has been really nice. Everything has turned green

More Adventures in the Back Yard

This weekend was another shocker in the back garden of Family W.

It was like the sequel to The Night We Fought off the Giant Porcupine 2007.

I was sitting by the pool reading my enthralling Occupational Hygiene course material, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a large body with a long tail walk out of the bush and across the lawn. After coming face to face with an African Paradise Flycatcher last weekend, I was thinking it could be a really neat long-tailed bird. So I snuck over to where I saw it go behind a shrub, and found myself staring right into the eyes of the biggest Nile Monitor Lizard I've ever seen.

Unfortunately Sech was lounging with me out there too, and decided he needed to go into Securi-dog mode, and promptly sunk his fangs into the poor lizard's back.
I screamed at and beat him and pounded him with rocks but he didn't want to let go, and proceeded to shake the thing like a rag doll. It was over a metre long and later when I picked up its body it weighed more than Billy!

Anyway, Sech had his way with the lizard and left him bleeding on the ground, and went off to sulk, knowing he was in big trouble with me. I observed the lizard for about an hour, and he managed to drag himself off toward the bush, which gave me hope that he was still ok. So we immediately called Mokolodi and made an appointment to bring him into their wildlife rehabilitation centre.

We picked him up (he was still feisty, which gave me even more hope) and put him in Reggie's old carry crate, and sped off to drop him with the professionals.
I had really high hopes but when I rang them today I was told by Lincoln at the rehab centre that they had to put him down this morning because it had a broken back after all. :(
Here are some photos and even a video of the aftermath.
Can I just say one more time how gigantic he was....?

Spring in Botswana (J1)

It is spring in Botswana, which usually means dry and hot. This year is no exception, we reach nearly 40 degrees C during the day, it is very dry and dusty, and not a drip of rain. We have had 2 storms in the last few weeks, with lots of wind and lighting, but no water. The 'veldt' in Botswana is on fire in several places, and even some nice lodges have burned down, including Nata Lodge, where we spent a few nights last year during our Christmas trip.

It has nearly been a month since my last post. We have been very busy, both at work and outside of work, many events organised during the weekends. I will attempt to do a small summary of what we have kept ourselves busy with this month.


First there was a rock festival about a month ago, called Woodstock Botswana. It was a unique event, held at a beautiful location in the middle of nowhere. Attendance was quite low unfortunately, but it was surprising to see that there was a 'rock crowd' existing at all.

Then of course there was my birthday. It was a busy week, and I was not feeling all that well that week, some kind of flew. My dear wife however made it beautiful day, I was spoiled with breakfast in bed, a nice lunch in the middle of the work day, and a nice diner out with friends. They even managed to embarrass me by having all the waiting staff in the restaurant come sing a birthday some, while I had to stand on a chair.


I received loads of presents, from new shirts, camping stuff, loads of emails, cards, cash, sms's and messages. Thanks everyone! As the big surprise in the end of the day my wife managed to surprise me with a beautiful new guitar!

Then there was a Spring party at our yacht club during the weekend. Nice night out again, drinks, food and a DJ while looking over the dam, and veldt fires on the other side of the water.


This last weekend there was a dance exhibition from a local classic dance school. It was a formal dressed party, and our friend L. was part of the show. It was a really nice evening, and we even got the chance to have a little dance practice, the first time since our dancing school days in Ireland, a lot of the steps had sank away.

I have started playing tennis again this week, with our friend G. I am really excited to play tennis again, we are about the same level, and are going to try to make a regular thing out of it, once a week on Wednesday nights. I am a little burned out with the gym, so this is very nice.


We are both busy with our studies again as well, J2 had to submit an assignment last weekend, and I am busy submitting assignments throughout the weeks. This is my last semester before I get my certificate, but I am looking into possibilities to continue and get an MSc degree. Hopefully it will be possible as an overseas online course, though the university in Canada that I am doing my courses with now.


Our Irish buyer / developer has backed out of the deal of the house sale again a few weeks ago, after the price was agreed, and contracts were ready to be signed. As soon as he backed out and had the deposit returned from the estate agent, he called me in Botswana to try and buy directly without the estate agent, at a reduced price. I told him in pretty clear terms where to go. No surprises I guess, typical messy business deal as can be expected. With the whole housing and financial crisis it looks like we might be landlords for some time to come. Good thing is that we have good renters and interest rates are dropping. We will hang in there until things pick up again.


As I mentioned work is keeping us busy as well, we have been awarded two big new contracts, there are a number of smaller projects, and we are doing a lot of monitoring on construction projects at the moment, which is nice and regular work. Our monitoring work includes airport construction, sewerage construction projects, road upgrade projects and office building projects. New assessments are for proposed hospitals, powerline, diamond mine and electrical substations. We are also working on some landscape designs for community parks and a new hospital.


Enough about work stuff, I will try to find a few pictures to upload with this post, so it is not all boring text


J1

Some photos of the kennels, etc.

It's been a big week in W-land. J1 had his 31st birthday (I'll let him write about that) and we had a good time with our friends on Wednesday night for that. He got lots of presents and phone calls and managed to have a good day, even though he's been feeling a little bit under the weather and a lot stressed out lately.

Last night a big "thank you" drinks & braai for the SPCA volunteers that helped out at our big open day a couple weeks ago. I took some photos of the shelter between drinks and nibbles.



This guy always jumps up on cars and then stands on their roofs and proceeds to jump up on top of the carport. However, the cars then eventually drive away and he's left stranded. Us committee members have no sympathy, and let him stay there. Actually about 8:30pm last night in the dark, Jenny finally gave in and moved her own car underneath him so he could get down.


Bunny & Guinea-Pig Land:

A couple of the shelter's new kids:

Eric showing off my favourite little guy: "The One Who Got His Ears Munched":

And finally, it is indeed bushfire/veld fire season. Since last weekend every night there's a massive orange glow on the horizon which stretches as far as the eye can see. Very upsetting. Especially last night when it was so close to my neighbourhood that I could see individual smoke plumes and flames from my kitchen window.... (this photo would look a lot more dramatic if my camera was actually zooming properly these days)

Is it too early to be excited for Christmas?

My friend Scott just wrote me that our tickets to the Chiefs have been officially procured!!

It's been one of my lifelong dreams (well, life-long since about 1994) to go see the Chiefs in the flesh, in Arrowhead. Now someone has made it happen, so both J1 and I are over the moon. The kicker is that he managed to get us Club-level seats AND there will be tailgating involved. To be honest, by this stage I'm not even caring that they're probably going to be on the bottom of the ladder by the time December rolls around, I'm just so excited. Seating chart below...

Other things I'm looking forward to:

• Seeing friends in DC
• Driving from the east coast to Missouri with no plan or itenerary
• Spending time in KC
• Spending time in Columbia
• Xmas (of course)
• New Orleans for New Year's with our friends
• Driving from New Orleans back up to DC with Jéan, through the Carolinas

And of course seeing everyone, eating a bunch of food, and showing J1 a bunch of new places all over the country.

Ironically enough, I just got Scott's email while watching an overseas broadcast of the MLB game of the week: Minnesota vs. Tampa Bay. Apparently the Devil Rays are now just simply "The Rays". Who knew!?

Memories of Reggie (J1)

The unavoidable has happened a little over a week ago. Our dear old beagle hound companion and friend has left us. Reggie had been struggling with cancer since the start of the year, and had a number of tumors removed. The Tuesday of the week he went in for surgery to our vet to have another tumor removed. Unfortunately he lost a lot of blood during the surgery, and the vet told us he was getting to old for this, that it would probably not be a good idea to operate again in the future.

Anyway, we were so happy he had made it through this one, and was spending his days with us in the office again. We did however notice he was not quite himself since the surgery, poor Reggie was sleeping even more then usual, he was sometimes loosing his balance a little, and just did not look the same. We thought it was because of the loss of blood, and were hoping for recovery.

On the Friday of that week he came with us to the office in the morning, and we dropped him home during lunchtime, because we had plans during the afternoon. Early evening we got a call from our dear Mary telling us Reggie was very sick, he was vomiting. When we came home he was in his shed, and he followed me very slowly on a walk back to our house. Halfway the walk he collapsed, and at this stage I realised the poor hound might be very close to the end. We carried him inside and put him on his chair. About a half an hour later he had his last breath, while being in J's arms.

It has been very very sad since, we miss him so much. He had such a unique character and habits. We miss his noises, his barks, but most of all his companionship. He has been such a good pet, but we are glad he went on his own terms, while we were able to be there with him.

We made a grave for him the same night, in his fenced area in the garden. It is nice to have it there so close to our house, and I am going over there nearly every day in the morning, when I miss him during the feeding of the dogs, Reggie's favourite time of the day.

Reggie during on the Thursday night, the last night with us.

Reggies grave, with his favourite food bowl

J1

Part II of holiday by me

As the Mr. wrote, we had a great time in St. Lucia, and on the way back we stopped off in Joburg to stay with Alan for the weekend and go to the last tri-nations game of the season for South Africa.

It was a fantastic game that the Springboks HAD to win, seeing as we'd lost the last 3 in a row (not a great run for the current World Champions). That and we just couldn't possibly go down to those nasty Aussies two weeks in a row.

Well that turned out to not be a problem. The end score was 53-8, with South Africa pulling off the most exciting game I'd ever seen live, in my life. It wasn't just a walkover, it was a slaughtering!!

Vodacom, one of the local cellphone providers, sponsored free plastic bongo drums for the game, placed on every single seat in the stadium (as you can see if you look past Alan's face)The noise was outrageous and it was no wonder the Wallabies fell on their faces. And, everyone in the stadium got these cheesy green visors (as modelled by Alan & I). Not a bad freebie since we were sitting in the stand that was looking DIRECTLY into the sun. Excellent idea.

After the game, we were just about ready to head back to the car, when we realized the "beer garden" that was just off to the side of the stadium had live music (Queen covers to be exact) pouring out of it, so we went in there. There was a good band and about a thousand Springbok-jersey-clothed fans drinking beer and celebrating the outcome. It was great - the first live rock & roll I've heard in Africa in nearly 2 years. (if you look closely you can see the ONE Aussie fan in the beer garden getting consoled here by a nice, caring South African)

While we were in Joburg we had a great time as we always do there, and were extremely sad to come home, particularly as our 7 days of vacation was well and truly over. Til Christmas...