after an interesting weekend (J1)

After a weekend of unpacking many boxes and crates, putting most furniture together, and wondering why we bothered sending and packing some of the rubbish, most is organised in our house. It really starts to feel like a house now. The rondavel and one guestroom are still a mess, but the rest is in order.

Also, Saturday night was the Lunar eclipse, and one of the best places to see this was Southern Africa. We were invited by a Dutch girl (Petra) who works for one of our clients, to join her and a few friends to climb Kgale hill.....

.....on Saturday night, so that we could few the eclipse from the top. Truth is, Jill and I both knew very little about the eclipse, but this seemed like a lot of fun, so we joined them. Started climbing at about 22.30 at night, and reached the top around midnight. The eclipse started at this stage, and full eclipse was at around 01.20. We were up on top of this hill with about 15 people watching this happen, and drink some nice red wine in the meantime. It was very beautiful. We had to wait for some moonlight again before we could decent. Some pictures:

Here is another interesting experience: we have visited 2 different churches on invitation by friends. Last weekend we joined T.and L. to the 'Open Baptist Church (OBC). We attended a very nice service, very musical, all sorts of nationalities, and very friendly people. This weekend we joined a maid of one of our neighbours. Her name is Prisca, we had picked her up a few weeks ago when she was looking for a ride into town. The church was called 'Forward in Faith. It was a very interesting experience, the service lasted about 2 and a half hours (and we were very tired from climbing the mountain) including singing, dancing, preaching, money raising and faith healing. Nothing I have ever seen before.

We have received a rental offer in Ireland for our house, from Apple Computers for 3 Swedish guys who have to come and work in Ireland. It sounds very promising, and the offer is very good, but we do have to furnish the house. Our agency is taking care of this, so hopefully this will work out.

On the job front thins are moving a little as well. I must have sent about 20 applications, but i am now talking to a Belgium pump company about maybe setting up a Southern Africa agency. The downside of this would be that it probably involves a lot of travelling to South Africa, and being away from Jill. I have also been invited by an engineering consultancy to come for an interview, which could be interesting. I am not getting my hopes up, and enjoy working with Jill very much, so I guess I will win whatever happens.

J1

The Bizarre Events of Monday 26 February

Here is sweet little Billy Bob - everyone knows and loves him as our greatest Irish charity case from the streets of Cork. He's been a happy boy here in Botswana so far.

UNTIL MONDAY, that is!!!

Monday we got an urgent message to phone St. Mary, our beloved maid and fixer of all problems.

Little did we know this otherwise sweet lady from Zimbabwe who is typically known to wash clothes and polish floors would be capable of turning into...

DANGEROUS MARY THE COBRA KILLER!!

(pictured here, complete with deadly weapon)

we were, working away and thinking nothing was wrong. We rang her as requested and she hits us with the problem:

A cobra had gotten into the house and spat Billy Bob in the eyes!

Panic hits the JW unit (as we're not used to dealing with cobras and spit and venom in doggy eyes, etc.)

Luckily for us, Mary is a not just any old angelic soul, she's also brilliant. Before we had even phoned her, she had already (a.) killed the snake (b.) flushed Billy's eyes out with water and milk and (c.) called us so we could go to the Vet and get eyedrops that will kill the pain/bring down the swelling.

She even saved the snake for us:

so that we could take a look at it (I was asking a lot of questions on the phone i.e. what color is it, how big is it, trying to be able to describe it to the vet if necessary - to which she just simply kept replying "its a cobra!")

After we rushed home with the eye medication from the vet (who assured us he would survive and most likely not be blind if we attended to him soon), examined the snake for ourselves, and dripped the drops in the eyes of the now-squinty-eyed terrier, Mary made sure to tell us she would burn the snake for us and not to worry.

(Here they believe that if you don't throw a dead snake on the fire, others will come for it)

So here's a photo of our now temporarily sightless boy:

He'll be just fine, just have to bump into things a bit for the next few days as his eyes will most likely remain swollen shut for awhile.

What's funny is that he gets around just fine, I think due to those two massive sattelite dish ears he has that allow him to hear everything in his path.

The end.

our stuff (J1)

Look at these pictures! It is for real, our stuff was delivered yesterday. It involved loading everything from the container into a moving truck, and then delivering to our house, but finally, after 3 weeks of frustration.









Other news: Billy has met his first snake, a cobra. Mary rang us on monday to say that the cobra has spit into Billy's eyes, she had washed it out, and put milk in. She had also killed the snake. His eyes have been pretty swollen, but we got some eyedrips from the vet and things are improving.





J1

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!