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