Big things happening... (J2)

Most of our family and friends are already aware that we have recently become the parents of a beautiful 3 month old baby girl... so naturally there is the obligatory photo-sharing process to go through now!

So, without further adieu, here is Julia...

She is a great little girl, and 100% healthy and happy. Her birthday is 3 April 2009, and the official adoption paperwork was finalized on Monday 21 July. She comes from Windhoek, Namibia and spent her first 3 months of life in a public hospital after she had been found abandoned in a river bed outside of town in her first 24 hours on earth. We are currently staying in Namibia for a few weeks to get her birth certificate and passport sorted out, and will be headed back to BW with the little one as soon as it's all done.

In the meantime we are still working away (thanks to the miracle of email and cell phone roaming) and keeping up with things rather nicely. Even Billy came along with us and is enjoying all his special attention away from the other 2 dogs.

Apologies in advance to those who didn't hear it from the horse's mouth yet, or who are currently suffering coronary heart failure after reading the above, but it all happened very fast and during the adoption process they tell you not to spread the word too far and wide, lest something unexpected happen and things don't work out or take a super long time to become a reality. Often the parents can start to feel pressure from other people asking for updates and "is there any news yet?" , etc etc, so that's why we had to keep a bit of a lid on it since March, when we started the process.

But now it seems everything has worked out great and we look forward to introducing her to all our family and friends as soon as possible!

Puppies (J1)

We have some really nice pictures of Billy and our new boerbull named Jock. Unfortunately, the two of them do not get along very well.

Jock certainly likes to sleep a lot, he can play really hard for 5 minutes, but then he is finished. We took him for a 5km run last week, and I was very surprised he actually made it.

He is slightly bigger then our old boerbull Sech, and his character is a lot different. We think he is about 2 and a half years old, and we adopted him from the kennels. He was a typical abuse case, and was scared of everything at first. Things have changed though, he has gained confidence, and is quite the watchdog / guard dog now.

Billy is coming with us to the office most days now. He is looking after the canine side of our business. You can see him at the picture above at his workstation.

This picture was just after one of his disputes with Jock, unfortunately he ended up wounded (again)

Billy is really getting older, this is how he used to be 24 hours a day, ears straight up to make sure he knew what was happening. He sleeps a little more these days.

And Billy does not like the cold, when we have a fire in the fireplace he lays right in front of it, and a distance I could not last longer the 1 minute. Sometimes I worry he might melt away. We have recently bought him a little jacket.

The vet thinks he may have arthritis, making him a little stiff, and really appreciate the heat. Hopefully the jacket helps.

No pictures of Reilly this time, I guess she has not done anything special, apart from chasing monkeys on the mountain from time to time.

J1

Annual Golf day (J1)

Believe it or not, J2 and myself managed to spend a whole day on the golf course two weeks ago, and yes, this was a first for both of us.....We were not playing golf though, it was the annual golf day fund raiser for our animal shelter (and one of the excuses for not blogging, organising such a day takes a lot of time and effort.)

So here is how it works: the shelter committee organizes a golf day, with all proceedings going to the animal shelter. We book the golf course, and get people to play. So how do we make money? There is a few ways for us to raise money around this day:

1) Companies sponsor the holes.

2) We place advertising signs for companies to put their names on (at a fee).

3) We get shops and companies to donate raffle tickets, and organise a huge raffle.

4) Players pay the play.

5) We have our shop there, with all sorts of doggie goodies.

6) The players may get thirsty, so we provide shots at the course.

7) We organise breakfast and lunch at the course.

The trick is to get as many companies involved as possible, and try to make it one of their company outings. And then get everything donated, from the printing and advertising, the food, the catering, the prices for the raffle and the golf etc etc etc. Loads of organising. The prizes for the raffle this year included a laptop, a number of luxury holidays, camping equipment, dinner vouchers and loads more.

The day itself went really well, it is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and all though the final money count is not confirmed, indications are that we matched last year, which is not bad in a year of economic downturn. All holes were sold, loads of raffle tickets went, and we had a full playing field. The game starts with a 'shotgun start', early in the morning.

Some pictures:

One of the player taking a shot, just after enjoying one of our drinks

J2 and I were at hole 8, selling shots of horrible liquor

The prize giving after the golf

Our shop with the doggy goodies

And some of our puppies.

J1

K3H (J1)

Since a few weeks ago we have joined the Kalahari Hash House Harriers (K3H). The hash house harriers is an international club, mainly joined by expatriates, with clubs all over the world. They call themselves "a drinking club with a running problem".

The Gaborone club gets together once a week, on a Sunday morning during winter, and Monday evening during summer (because Sunday morning would be too hot). The "hash" has its own set of rules for the run. The "hares" are members who set out a trail, which is to be followed by the rest of the club. There are both walkers and runners, and by setting out a trails with a few false trails etc, the runners and walkers stay close together, and finish around the same time. The run is usually around an hour, and about 6 or 7 kilometers. The run is finished with drinking beer, which is the 'drinking' part of the hash. We have met some really nice people already, and have been on 4 runs so far. More about the 'hash can be found on the world wide hash house harriers website.

Two weeks ago, the local "kennel" had the 1400th run, which was celebrated with a special run, and nice meal at a lodge afterwards. Some pictures:

The runners on the 1400th run.

Drinks and snacks after the run

On a beautiful view point.

J1

kennels update (J1)

Finally another update from us, don't worry we are still here. What have we kept ourselves busy with since our Easter trip. Well first of all there was a car to be fixed, we now have a refurbished fuel pump, four brand new shocks, and clean filters etc. The car is running better then ever before, the bill was a bit of a shock, keeping a 4x4 is certainly not cheap.

Besides the car (which we did not really fix ourselves, we have a great mechanic here) we kept busy with loads of work and study. It has been hectic, but I will not bore anyone with the details. Winter is also coming, this afternoon we have spend chopping some wood with my new chainsaw, this should keep our fireplace going for some time.

What has really kept us busy is our duties on the committee of the local SPCA. There was a newsletter to get ready, which was something J2 was busy with, and there were accounts to be handed over. We have completed our first year on the committee, and at the Annual General Meeting in the end of April we had some lovely new volunteers join. We both stayed on the committee, but I handed the treasurer duties over to a new person. This involved quite some work, first getting it ready for the AGM, and then for handover. This year I want to work a little more on upgrade projects at the kennels, as well as getting an education plan going for the local schools.

There was also the activities, we did a day in one of the local shopping malls with some of our puppies, and managed to re-home quite a few, which is what it is all about. We also hosted the World Woof Tour. A girl called Joanna is travelling from Cape Town all around the world with her adopted dog Oscar, to raise awareness about adoption of dogs in local kennels and SPCAs. All details about their trip is on the website. We were the first stop on the way, and a local 'current events tv-show' was following the first part of the trip, so we might even get on South African tv. We had invited a group of children from the SOS Childrens village, a local orphanage, to be part of this special event, and had a very nice day. Some pictures:

Oscar and his owner Joanna.

The children, Oscar and our team of volunteers on the day.

A nice lunch after a busy day with Oscar and the tv cameras.

We are now busy organizing our annual golf day and raffle, which is usually the biggest fundraiser of the year.

In the meantime Jock, our new dog at home, is really settling in. Unfortunately Billy and Jock seem to have some issues figuring out who the boss is at home, Billy is wearing some of the scars! Some more doggy pictures soon.

I have also found a tennis partner again, and I am very happy to be playing again on a weekly basis.

Greetings from Botswana

J1

Pictures from the Mabuasehube Easter trip (J1)

It has been nearly two weeks since our eventful Easter trip, and I had promised pictures to a few people already, so here it goes...

After nearly 2 years of reliability our good old Pajero 4x4 decided this trip was a little too much, and the terrain was a bit heavy. The trouble caused us to have to change the plan a little, but the holiday was still awesome.

Mabuasuhube is part of the Transkalahari Trans frontier park, a large game reserve at the south west side of Botswana, the park runs across the border into South Africa and Namibia. On our first day we drove from Gaborone to a village called Tsabong, about 100km from the park gate. The village is the last place for supplies, and we stocked up on the last diesel, food and booze. We spend the night at a small lodge, where we also loaded up on firewood, as wood collecting is not allowed within the park.
The track from Tsabong to the park entrance was pretty heavy sand, but the car went through like a trooper, although the temperature was slightly high. During this the roof rack started showing the first symtoms of collapse. The load of wood was slightly more then what it had been designed for.

Our friend A. from South Africa joined us, and in the following picture we were getting close to the gate.

At time of arrival at the gate the roof rack had totally collapsed, and started scratching and denting the roof. Still all fun and part of the trip. Our first night in the park was supposed to be about 70 km into the park. After a scenic drive around some of the pans, we set of towards our campsite. After yet another stop to tie up the roof rack, we discovered the spare tyre had snapped off the car and been lost. We decided to turn around, and as we were on our way back to find the tyre we heard a strange noise from the bottom of the car. Upon inspection we found that part of the rear suspension support had cracked off the frame, making the rear axle very loose. We changed our travel plan as it was already sundown, and set up camp at the nearest pan.

The next morning we inspected the damage closer, and tried to decide what our next plan would be. The original plan was to go to South Africa this day and travel over 120km. We changed the plans and made it back to the park gate to get the damage repaired first.

The views from our campsite onto the Bosobogolo pan were stunning, not a bad place to break down. And we had a few of the local residents check up on us to make sure everything was ok.

With the limited tools and resources we strapped the broken part up, and started to make our trip back to the gate at 5 km per hour speed.

At the gate there was a mechanic who could help us, but unfortunately the welding machine was at another gate, and would only come back the evening of the next day. Luckily there were some nice campsites at the gate, and plenty of time for relaxing and cooking good food.

Of course this also gave us the chance for some very nice pictures.

We had a number of new food inventions during this camping trip, and having new pie irons helped a lot. We even baked a bread in our potjie.

And the end result looked pretty good, and it tasted delicious as well.

We did a very short drive with the broken car during the day, and encountered a snake crossing the track.

And saw a beautiful African sunset, we saw quite a few actually during our trip.

Some sundowners during the trip, of course......

And finally the welder arrived nearly 2 days later, and our friendly mechanic welded everything together as good as he could.

After this we were finally back on the road / track again. Because we had lost so much time we decided to abandon the plan to go the the South African side, and rather just stay around the Mabuasehube part.

This gave us the chance to check out all the pans in the area, and luckily some people who had booked did not show up, so we ended up on some beautiful camp sites. We also had sufficient food and diesel to keep us going (on the South African side we would have had a chance to stock up).

The game viewing was quite spectacular, loads of antelope and some very nice birding. Our campsite was surrounded by tracks of hyena, lion and jackal nearly every night. We did not see them though, but heard them regularly.

Checking out one of the pans in Mabuasehube:

And some more beautiful African sunsets over the pans....

One of our last pictures before our camera died, was of this little friend trying to enjoy our lunch as well.

After these last few very relaxing nights, with lots of beautiful scenery and great food, the car started sputtering a little during the last day. It was worrying me slightly, but it was still running so we were just hoping for the best.

On the way back the sputtering got worse, and the car lost all power. A few kilometers from the gate it got really bad, and the car eventually cut out on us. After waiting for a while checking it out, we restarted it, and it was running again. The fuel filter must have gotten blocked with dirt or something, and we repeated this process on the way back. Eventually it got a little better, and we made it back to the 'living world' and tarred roads. But not before we had a flat tyre to add to the drama. Good thing we made it, because with no cellphone reception and maybe one car per day passing through, we could have been there for a while.

The car is with the mechanic now, getting ready fro the next trip. We are still waiting for his report on the full extend of the damage. The Trans frontier park is amazing though, and we would go back any time.

J1

New our four-legged friend (J1)

We have a new family member, he has been with us for about 2 weeks now. His name is Jock, he is between 2 and 3 years old, and Boerbull breed. He is a very sweet dog (and very big...) I will try to take some nicer pictures this weekend.

J1

Visitors (J1)

We have been in house new house for nearly 6 weeks now, and it has been hectic since the start. Of course we were very busy with all the moving stuff during the first week. And we wanted to get the place pretty organized, as our friend B. from DC came to visit after the first week. She helped us getting some of the finishing touches in place, and was very patient and helpful with shopping for some accessories.


After spending a long weekend at our place, she had the chance to relax and visit some of our countries most beautiful places, this made us feel a little less guilty.

We kept ourselves busy with a dog show at the shelter, a work trip away, and a bunch of other stuff I can not even remember anymore. Next 'big' happening was the visit of my parents, their first visit to Botswana.
They stayed with us for a weekend at first, we had a chance to catch up with them and celebrate my mums birthday (picture above). After this weekend they went on a 5 day trip to Kasane, where they did boat safaris, visits to Vic Falls and a Namibian village, and of course a lot of eating and drinking in the trusted lodge.

They came back on a Friday, and on Saturday morning we left to spend 2 nights in luxury at Rhulani Safari Lodge in Madikwe game reserve, just over the border in South Africa. The place was stunning, the guides and host fantastic, and we were the only visitors that weekend, we were truly spoiled. Some great game viewing during our drives.
The 'break-away' pack of wild dogs. These guys are a very rare sighting and we were excited to have seen them.
White Rhino, after just having bathed in a mud pool. At night time during dinner we also saw a male black rhino, just outside our camp.
We saw large herd of elephant, on two occasions. I think the elephant were probably my mums favorite...

We saw this female lion trying to catch an impala. She was very close but got confused in which impala to chose, and ended up with nothing. It was a very cool thing to witness.

The food at the lodge was fantastic, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And of course there was the bar for the necessary refreshments after our game drives.

After the trip we had to go back to work unfortunately, but my parents had another few days to relax, explore our village, shop, and meet us for lunch. I think they really enjoyed their first 'taste' of Africa, which makes us very happy of course.

J1