Blogs from North-East, Botswana, Africa - page 4

Hello everyone, Sorry it has been so long since we last wrote to you...time seems to have flown!! We are now feeling very at home in Francistown and even our room has become quite cosy. The hostel we are staying at is really lovely and the staff look after us loads! They were worrying so much when we went away this weekend, nice to know they are watching out for us!! Our routine now is arriving in hospital for the 7.30am meeting then off to the wards for the ward round. Myself and Amy are on peadiatrics at the moment and Jemma and Fiona are on Infectious diseases. On peads we are able to help out on the ward round doing lots of the little jobs and often worryingly being asked things the doctors should really ... read more

Well we made it safely to Francistown!! We spent yesterday just wandering in the centre of Gaborone and took some pictures of the Parliament building etc, but nothing too hardcore touristy as we were still recovering from travelling! It's a nice enough city, but we all got the impression it has been very quickly purpose built and is definitely not a top tourist destination! In fact we ended up in a government office for the Department of Tourism getting some information on buses to Francistown etc as the tourist board was too difficult to find! We had our first experience of "combis" (minibus taxis you flag down, cram into no matter how many people are already in there and shout when you want to get off) and successfully managed to get back to our accommodation without ... read more

Maun, Botswana. It's an interesting town with some smart shops and a vitality about it. For once the corrugated shacks have been replaced with some nice small huts and bushman huts. I get the feeling there's a lot of employment here. That gives people money and that makes them happy, although Botswanans are generally happy people from waht I've experienced. I decided to take the road through Botswana - Gobabis, Ghanzi, Maun, Gweta, Nata and Kasane. It's a long straight road, an endless road and I just count off the 10km markers, which in general take about 33minutes to complete with the constant headwind that knocks me back. Lately around 3pm it tends to switch sideways. Still, at least the road is tarred all the way. The weather has turned hot again and I found 10 ... read more

After a long-ish bus ride from Gabarone, we arrived in Selebi-Phikwe (sa-leeb-peek-way) and were met by Sarah and Pilar, 2 amazing Peace Corps women, who took us back to their flats (they live next door to each other), and we settled in for the evening. Sarah made chili for dinner, and after not having eaten much since arriving in Africa, I was elated to have familiar food. The 4 of us talked for a while, then Jerry and Pilar decided to call it a night, while Sarah and I stayed up for hours discussing Botswana and life in general. It was a really fantastic conversation, and I greatly enjoyed getting to know Sarah. In the morning, we got ready to start our driving adventure. Botswana is a country that drives on the right, so being a ... read more

It was a beautiful African morning. I was standing on the dusty riverbank soaking up the warm sun and watching an amazingly long line of ancient trucks and busses and a few private vehicles wait their turn for a spot on one of the two tiny river boats that were ferrying the vehicles back and forth across the river. I had already passed through Zambia’s border post and from where I stood I could see three other countries - Zimbabwe was off to my left, across the river, Botswana was next to it to the right and, off to my right, a small point of grassy land formed Namibia’s tiny portion of the rare four country border. I was headed across the river to Botswana and, as luck would have it, I didn’t need to wait ... read more