container trouble (J1)

Ok, forget about the last post, and the frustration about the container being in town, but not getting delivered. The situation as now gotten even more absurd. The picture below is taken from our own kitchen window.

That is indeed our container. Exiting....it has arrived. BUT, it has been sitting there since yesterday, and we are not allowed to open it, because someone did not do the customs clearance properly, so the customs officials might want to inspect it. So until they either stamp the clearance papers, or come out to inspect, we (or the moving company) are not allowed to break the seal.

So.....now we have our stuff sitting less then 10 metres from our own house, but we are still sleeping on the floor, and might be for another few days (if not weeks). The only good thing about it, is that we rather had this happen with our container, then with the dogs or our residence permits pending. Still very strange situation, looking at the container with our stuff inside, but not being able to start unpacking.

What are we left to do? Wait patiently and take pictures of this container:

J1

Valentines day (J1)

Happy (late) valentines day everyone. I hope you all spoilt your loved ones. We spoiled eachother with a beautiful dinner at Mokolodi Game reserve, just up the road from us. Our menu....included springbok and crocodile, who else had that for valentines dinner? See here a copy of our menu.

The bad news: apparantly the container crane in the Gaborone container terminal is broken, meaning our container can not be loaded onto a truck until this is fixed. So far mechanics have not managed to fix it. Where is mr. JLB when you most need him (I hope he is not eating fruitcake.....)

J1

Our plot (J1)

Last weekend I took the camera around our plot, and I will make an attempt to create a virtual tour with photographs. It is of course much easier for me, when actually knowing the place, but hopefully it makes some sense. Our Google earth coordinates are:

Latitude: 24°45'58.85"S
Longitude: 25°50'40.11"E

This gives a very nice aerial view. As you can see, unfortunately we do not have dam / river access, but luckily we are meeting the neighbors who do have.

We will start this tour at our front gate, as it is seen from the main road.

Here is what the drive way looks like from the front gate.

To our right we can see the water tank in our vegetable garden from the drive way.

A little further up the drive way....

To the right hand side we can see the swimming pool in the distance.

Further up the drive way, this part of the drive way is pretty sandy.

There is a little path going from the drive way into the bush here, this will take you all the way to the back of the plot. Watch out for snakes......(only kidding, have not seen any so far)

The drive way takes a pretty sharp turn here, as you might have seen on the google earth image as well.

We are now coming to the end of the drive way. As you can see some stuff in the end, lets go there....

To the right we can see the back of our house, with the kitchen door.

To our left we see the car port and sheds, behind this is Mary's place.

With a sharp turn to the left we can follow a small pathway into the bush, want to follow me to see where this is going?

The rondavel appears in the end of the path.

Here is our little rondavel. This will make a very comfortable and private guest room, complete with toilet and shower.

On our way back from the rondavel we can see the house through the bush.

To the left we can see our carport, and this is also where we have a laundry room, and small work shop, and our maid Mary's house and shop. You can see the water tank from our borehole above everything. This is the only beacon that can be seen from the main road.

This is the little 'courtyard' area behind our house, all paved with some nice big trees. The kitchen / back door comes out in this area, and this is also what we see from our kitchen and bathroom windows.

From here we go along the side of our house into our lawn and garden area. This is the area the puppies are allowed to stay in. We do not want them in the bush part of our plot.
Now we are a little further along the side of the house, and can already see a glimpse of the swimming pool.

To the right we can see a big lawn area, our landlord has made it very clear we are NOT to plant any trees here, because she wants to be able to put up a marque here when her daughter gets married.

To our left we can see our house again, and our beautiful porch in particular. This is probably my favourite feature of the house.

This is our 'lappa', a beautiful place to enjoy a drink after work, or have our meal that we prepared on the 'braai'. The plan is to build a small bar into this as soon as I get my tools.

Through our little thatched roof 'lappa' we get to our swimming pool.

From the back of the swimming pool can follow a little path to the vegetable garden. If it was our own property we would be planting many fruit trees here.

A little path to the left will take you to the bird feeding table. We have the most colorfull birds around our place.

And at the end of our path we get to the gate of our vegetable garden. This place gets full sunlight all day. The tank has been used with some sort of drip irrigation (which I might try to install again). Here is where all our lovely pumpkins and mielies will come from next year...



Now we go back a little, the same way as we came the the vegetable garden, back to the swimmingpool. From the pool we have this lovely little paved garden path leading us back towards the house.
In the end of this little garden path we come to the lawn in front of our house. Mary make sure to keep this watered every day, because green lawn is not natural for Gaborone.
And to the left our porch again, where we enjoy breakfast and evening meals almost every night.
Now we come back around the other side of the house, from here you can see our car port again. This side is the puppies favourite side to escape, Reggie especially likes it because he can get staight to Mary's place (behind the carport) and look for food rests at her compost heap.
This is the end of the virtual tour, I guess if you want to know any more you better go to the travel agent soon to book some flight tickets.

One small bit of bad news: our container was supposed to be delivered yesterday, and then today, BUT....the truck has broken down. At this stage I would be happy if we get it before the weekend

J1

Could it be........?!?!?!?!?!

How about this for an exciting phone call:

OUR SEA CONTAINER IS IN JOHANNESBURG!!!!!

This time next week we could be wading through 15 cubic metres of OUR OWN STUFF!!!!!!

Lovely lady at the shipping company says it is likely to arrive into Gabz-city on friday evening, processing through customs over the weekend, maybe into monday.



(two Westras jumping up and down)

One month in Botswana (J1)

One month in Botswana (J1)

It is very hard to believe that we are already one month here at this stage. I suppose we are getting settled and used to some things, but I still have the feeling we are new here, and there is so much to explore and find out. It would help if our container with stuff would actually arrive. When leaving Ireland I was told 6 to 10 weeks. It is 6 weeks now, but no-one seems to be able to tell me where it is.

The land lords had left us with a little petrol lawnmower, which was very nice of them. The only problem was that it was broken, and my toolbox was in the container. I quite like to work on little petrol engines, and luckily I could borrow some tools from our neighbour. I managed to get it running again, and gave the grass a desperately needed trim.

I have also cleared up piles of rubbish around the garden, so it is looking loads better. Once I find a job we plan on hiring a gardener for a few days a week, but at the moment I will attend to it myself (with MaryÂ’s (our maid) help, she is very good in watering everything.

We are really enjoying having all these beautiful birds around, having so much space for the dogs (they seem to be fully trained on their borders now, even Billy) and have this outside live-style. We have also noticed that our day has changed, the nicest part is early in the morning, and we are getting up at 6 or 6.30 these days, go for a morning walk while it is still cool, and then have breakfast outside on our patio before going to work. At night time a jump in the pool and a braai (barbeque) for dinner, who would complain about that. I justrealizedd today I have not worn socks since we arrived in Botswana, at 45 degrees sandals are much better.

I have been busy as 'office manager' at our company, and this week I had the 'lucky' task of setting subcontractors straight, who had abused the situation of T. being too busy for the last few months, and their quality of work had slipped. Unfortunate to have to do things like that, Gaborone is a very small town, and a few harsh things had to be said, but it all went very well. We also received some very big payments for projects we worked on for the last year. Cashflow in the meantime was often supported from our private account, and now we get to have this money back, which is very nice while we are trying to furnish this much bigger house.

I have applied for 3 exciting jobs so far, never know what will happen, some advertisements are only there because they have to for visa purposes, and they have already someone in mind for the position. I do think there are loads of opportunities around, and still would not want to take something I am not convinced is right. I will start making some phone calls this week to companies I would like to work for. If nothing works out there would not be any panic either, the company could sustain both me and Jill, and I would be able to start some more engineering orientated projects on my own.

Unfortunately our house in Ireland is still empty, usually houses in Ireland are rented with furniture, and we left it unfurnished. We said we will try and see the interest, there has been plenty viewings, but no-one has come forward yet. We are now considering furnishing it, as the agent tells us it will be rented within a month if furnished. We will have to wait and see on this one.

Johannes

More photos of the locals... (J2)

I'm posting a photo of some typical neighbourhood scenery.

First we have the neighbours... a colourful bunch they are indeed.
This photo was taken from our driveway, looking across the street.














I'm also adding a photo taken on our daily drive to work. This is the main road into town that we drive every day - to get to the shops, to get to work, to get anywhere, basically. It's called the A1, but we just refer to it as "the main road".
You could do a lot worse for day-to-day scenery, no?














Our current furniture situation means that this is the current look of our "eating room". Breakfast in the morning is one of our highlights of the day. Particularly when it involves fresh papaya and mango on our otherwise pretty typical museli and yogurt.



if you look closely in that photo, you'll see the peach-eaters again. Between the beagles and the birds, they may not leave much for our consumption come autumn, but there won't be a shortage of Vitimin C in these guys!

And the photos keep coming... (J2)

New wheels.

This is the car we bought a week ago, our 2002 Honda (2002 - what a great year!) Civic. Let's make sure we highlight the most important part: it's got Air Conditioning!!!

This is our wee little car at the front gate to our house.

Wildlife query of the day: Given the fact that we don't have our own "Birds of Botswana" book yet, I have no way of identifying what we have buzzing around the garden. We have a lot, that's for sure, but we just don't know what. One of my favourite (albeit bittersweet) characters are these huge, grey guys who sit in our peach tree and constantly eat all of our un-ripe peaches. Not to mention provide the dogs with loads of entertainment, particularly because they throw the peaches on the ground, whereby Reggie lays underneath the tree and proceeds to chomp them down, one by one, all by himself.

In other doggy-news, 2 out of 3 hounds have officially been trained to stay in our property. First prize goes to anyone who can guess which of the 3 is still failing miserably to learn not to run away?

Alright then, obviously since this is not an interactive blog, I will have to withdraw the prize offer. At any rate, the loser is BILLY BOB, who has escaped twice so far, but is always found within 10 minutes of bolting for the hills. (Not really "the hills", just more like "the neighbours" or "the local cows who wander our road")

Opa/Grandpa Reggie continues to amaze us, proving that you can teach old, stubborn beagles new tricks. He's so good and just stays around the pool and the lawn area or the back porch all day. Eating un-ripe peaches, panting, drinking water, and sleeping.

Reilly was no sweat. She's just too good, and shows no desire whatsoever to run off and explore things without us. And finally she has the space that a 1/2 border collie - 1/4 beagle - 1/4 spider monkey deserves.

There has been no baboon activity around our own plot. The local baboon troop mainly sticks to the main road about 800 metres (1/2 mile) away from our place. They only tend to wander into the residential areas when they're starving or when people have made baboon-buffets way too obviously available. A neighbourhood up the road from us, closer to town, where we know some people, has a bad problem because it's much more densly populated and people leave their rubbish bins out all the time and make feeding off human food waaaay too easy for the monkeys.

And so far we've only witnessed about 2 snakes (tiny tiny ones) on the property, and about 300 rather large frogs. The frogs are very fond of our kitchen and for some reason we always wake up to in the morning to find them proudly sitting on the kitchen tiles, waiting for us. No idea how they're getting in there.

That's all I've got for now.

J2

Oh the Things You'll See... (J2)

So--- Who are the people in your neighbourhood?

Not sure about all the people yet, but here are some pleasant faces that we interact with inside our house on a daily basis.... Yes, INside the house.

J2

Busy Week! (J1)

Time is going really fast, we have already been in Botswana for more then 2 weeks. These two weeks have certainly been very very busy. We have been enjoying ourselves, but wish we would have a little more time to enjoy ourselves. Between organising everything and coming into our company with some major deadlines, have made things pretty hectic.

We moved into our rental house on Friday the 12th January, so a little over a week ago. On this same day the dogs arrived as well, in fact, when I went up to the house to get the keys that morning, the delivery van with the dogs was already there. It was great to finally have our ‘own’ place again, and have our dogs with us.

The house is great, but pretty sad as it is very empty and big, and our furniture will not arrive for another few weeks. We are sleeping on an air mattress and have our laptop to watch some dvds, but that is about it. Luckily we borrowed some plates and dishes from our friends. There are bits and pieces in the house, like light fittings etc that need fixing, we have contacted the landlords about this.

The house is great, but the garden is really awesome. It is so big, the pool only is as big as our whole Irish back garden. As we have our own borehole for water they have also been able to keep a lawn growing, which is pretty unique in Botswana. The whole property is fenced, but at places the fence is not good enough to stop Billy from escaping into our neighbours plots. This created a bit of a challenge, we either needed to re-fence the whole 9 acres, or come up with some other plan to not have our dogs escape when we are at work. We have bought a radio-fence, and are busy training them with this at the moment, to keep them in part of the garden around the house, but keep them out of the bush. We have been warned by many people that our dogs might not be ‘bush-wise’, and meetings with baboons and snakes should be avoided. At the moment they stay inside during the days, and we come home during lunchtime to let them out. Hopefully in another week, when trained with the fence, they can walk around freely during the day. They do not have much energy anyway, due to the heat.

Other challenges of a new place included: arranging a big gas bottle so we could cook on our stove, and also maintaining and keeping a pool clean. Both of us have never had to do this before, and it is not that easy if you do not know what to do. With help from neighbours we seem to have most things sorted our now.

After driving around in a small rental car (without air-conditioning) for a little over a week, we managed to buy a nice car for ourselves, a beige Honda civic, complete with all extras. We picked it up on Friday, it is a very comfortable car. (First leather upholstery ever… very swish.)

Business is booming at the moment, in the first week we arrived we got a contract for designing the landscape of a health institute, and the second week we got a small environmental consulting job, and another landscape job. Also, a major job that has been on hold for over a year is starting up again. All this combined with the fact that there were some major deadlines straight away and that our Landscape Architect is on holidays, has made it pretty hectic. The way it is going at the moment there would be enough work for me as well.

It is very slow getting things organised in Botswana, no surprises there. Everything involved actually going to the particular office to arrange things / pick things up, which means a lot of driving around, which can be frustrating when you are busy. For example application forms, which could be faxed or mailed to you in any other country, are available for pick up. Or paying the telephone bill actually involves driving to the Botswana telecom office, queuing in line and then paying the bill. Slowly there are some improvements, internet banking seems to be up and running, and we will need to investigate how we can improve these things. It seems our predecessor has been running around doing this for the last year, instead of trying to find way to improve.

In general we have found people here very friendly. When needing someone to help you in a shop, we have found two types of people. They are either very very helpful, will do anything to make sure your problem is solved and you leave satisfied. The opposite is just as common, they do not care one bit, are annoyed with anything you ask them, and show an enormous attitude and act like they do not want to be there at all.

That is all for the moment. I will try to also post some pictures this week, as that is usually much more exciting then this really long story.

J1

Photos of House (J2)

The current situation in "the living room".

But check it out: everything one needs is there alright, an air mattress with (our own) bedding, 3 tired puppies, a laptop, an ipod with booming speakers, and an extension cord.

oh yes, and a relatively good-looking husband!

;-)

And moving on to the dining room.... Again not much, but the bare necessities. Who could need more? A borrowed plastic garden table and chairs, air conditioning, and a lovely bottle of (extremely cheap) South African red wine. No complaints here!

Hello from Botswana (J1)

Believe it or not, but we are already 1 full week on African soil. A quick update on our situation.

We arrived in Johannesburg airport early on Thursday morning the 4th January. Again completely overpacked and over weight (even after posting a big box from the Netherlands), but the airline let us through again without paying. The flight was very comfortable, as always with British Airways. The most exciting part of this day was visiting our friends at the family Polson in Pretoria, and visiting our dogs in their kennel. The kennel facility was about half an hour driving from Pretoria, and we really great. I think we were more excited to see our dogs, then they were to see us. They were so happy to be able to run around in the exercise area.

After 2 relaxing days at the Polsons, with plenty of sunshine, braais, drinks and relaxing, we continued our journey, and flew from Johannesbrug to Gaborone. This time they stopped us, and we had to pay for 19kg’s overweight (imagine how much it must have been before….) Again a very smooth flight of less then 1 hour, and T. was waiting for us at the airport.

We spend the Saturday afternoon catching up with T. and his wife L., both on personal and business issues. They live in a beautiful place in Gabane, a little village about 20 minutes outside Gaborone. They have a very cosy 1 bedroom rondavel. The rondavel next to theirs belongs to a friend (architect from UK), and this is where we are staying since the owner is in the UK at the moment. Sunday was spend checking out our new place in Notwane. We loved the plot, it is so big, with a really nice garden and pool. The house was locked, so we could not check that out.

Monday was back to work, and one thing is for certain, our holiday was certainly over! Only one full week with T., before he and L. go on a well deserved two weeks holidays. On top of this 3 major deadlines, plus lots of admin stuff to take care of, such as:
- immigration permits
- bank signatures
- office access
- getting cellphones organised

No real time for a proper handover, today we have finished the first deadline and submitted a report, after 3 long days in the office, and this is only the start. Most weight for this is on poor Jill’s shoulders, I am trying to help where I can. In the meantime I also try to keep up with the constant flow of emails from Ireland, they certainly seem confused a lot in Ireland.

We went back to our house on Tuesday, this time we could get inside, and made a snag list for repairs etc which we forwarded to the owner. The kitchen is even bigger then we expected, and the living room is a really nice space with sliding doors into the garden. The 4th bedroom and bathroom are in a little rondavel, a little away from the house, really cosy. The whole place is just missing some finishing touches, which will hopefully be sorted out after we sent the snag list.

We were planning to buy a car quickly, but have not had the chance to do any car shopping so far. Now that T. is going on holidays, and we can not catch a ride with him anymore, I think we might just rent a car for a week or two. Not ideal, but we have no option.

Our dogs are arriving on Friday, so I think we might move to the house on Friday, and vacate our little place here. It will be nice to have a pool to jump into after a long day of work, because the weather (I saved this for last) is pretty hot, 30 to 35 degrees Celsius during the day, and it does not cool down much at night time.

I can not think of much more at the moment, will update further soon

J1

Happy new year (J1)

First of all we would like to wish everyone a very happy new year. We are still at the parents farm at the moment, trying to meet family and friends. We are leaving on Wednesday, tomorrow I need to try and get my driving license renewed.

The Irish house is advertised on the internet with our rental and management agency, tomorrow offices are opening again, and we are excited to see if there was some interest already. Realistically it will take a little longer though. We have also signed a lease for a house in Botswana already. We had always said we would wait and check places out ourselves, before renting them. But this was advertised on the internet, and we sent T. to go check it out. We are really excited about it, it is situated in Notwane, about 10 minutes outside of the city, and has beautiful gardens with a pool.

We will keep you posted though this blog on out first experiences. The next entry will be from African soil...

J1