Advertisement
Published: July 19th 2009
Peering over the edge!
I must admit I felt nervous taking this photo!It was an amazing feeling driving into the Bible College after so many years! It had been raining and there was green grass everywhere! To arrive 'ka pula' (with rain) is a real blessing and we did feel blessed to be back after so many years away! We checked out our old house, the swimming pool, workshop, the Bible College buidings and met up with Dave Long who was there with some AEC (Africa Evangelical Church) young people on a conference. I took a photo of Colin and the boys outside Comrades' House. This dormitory block was built using donations from Colin and a group of runners who completed the Comrades' marathon in South Africa. It was great to catch up with
MmaSepunki, who had worked for us for many years and also
Tumisang, who was one of the first students at the Bible College many years ago. The boys thought everything looked smaller than they remembered, which is common when you revisit places from your childhood! We visited
MmaTuelo, the wife of
Moruti Mmolawa, who had been the Chairman of the Africa Evangelical Church for many years. He had been tragically killed in a car accident,
which also claimed the lives of Tim and Sandy Cober and their young son James, about thirteen years ago. We spent time with
MmaOlekanye, MmaTuelo's mother, who still knew us even though she was blind and confined to bed. When she greeted Michael and Joel she wanted to know where her daughters-in-law where? She was the most amazing lady. We sang Setswana choruses to her and prayed with her. Not long after our return to Australia we heard that she had died at the age of 108! Living near MmaTuelo, is
Judy Mmolawa (MmaBoitumelo) who had worked at the Bible College Office for many years. It was so good to see her along with her grown up family.
Francistown We stayed with our good friends the
Corkers in Francistown and it was great to catch up with them again. Visiting Clifton Primary School, where Joel had attended for three years, and John McKenzie Secondary School, where I had taught and Michael had attended for three years, brought back lots of memories!
We were thrilled to catch up with
Ralph Bousfield who took us one rainy afternoon to a new game reserve he is setting up just outside Francistown
called Tachila. We parked the vehicle and set off into the bush to look for animal snares. We found so many scattered through the bush and spent our afternoon cutting them free from the vegetation and taking them back to the vehicle. It was dark by the time we got back to the vehicle but Ralph brought us out of the bush within meters of the vehicle! Not sure how he did that, but he is renownd for his 'bush skills'!!
Heading Further North! Heading for Kasane, we called at Woodlands, run by our friends the
Wests. They have developed an amazing camping/chalet area and we enjoyed a cup of tea on their verandah. Amazingly, some men from Water Affairs were there and one of them had worked for us years ago at SBTC! It is such a small world!
The road to Kasane was quite pot-holed but not as bad as some roads we had seen in Kenya! We saw lots of game, including lots of elephant and a huge herd of buffalo along the road.
We met up with
Heather Carr-Hartley who very kindly allowed us to stay in a cottage on their property. It was
Planet Baobab
Cooling off in their amazing pool. perfect for our needs. Next morning we were up at 5.30 and headed into Chobe Game Reserve. We had spent many happy family holidays camping at Serondella so it was great to be back. We enjoyed watching the elephants, especially a mock charge from one inquisitive youngster! The birdlife was prolific along the riverbanks and it was worth the trip just to hear the haunting call of the African Fish Eagle once more! We then spied a lioness resting in the shade along the riverbank. She was intently watching a mother warthog and her three piglets. We pulled up near her, alongside two other vehicles and turned off the engine. As the warthogs approached, the lioness bacame very agitated, swishing her tail from side to side, as she got to her feet and started stalking them. Suddenly she ran at the vehicles using them to hide behind. I could almost have put my hand out the window and touched her! As she sprang out from her cover the warthogs scattered and in the lioness's moment of hesitation, she lost her chance to catch one. It wasn't a happy outcome for her but I must admit I was pleased as the
piglets were so cute!
Later in the afternoon we took a leisurely river cruise along the Chobe River with some great close up views of hippo. One angry male chased us and got very close to the boat. It was New Year's Eve so we ate out and played cards back at the cottage. Joel went out to meet up with some friends from Clifton days who were also in Kasane on holidays.
New Year's Day We headed over to
Victoria Falls in a combie as the boys were keen to bungee jump from the Vic Falls Bridge. We were surprised and disappointed to see so few tourists in town. Nowadays most people visit the Falls from the Zambian side. A visit to the Curio markets was particularly unsettling as everyone wanted us to buy something from their stall and I just wished I could have bought things from all the stallholders! The Vic Falls Bridge, however, was teeming with tourists, whom we found out were all based on the Zambian side. I was much more nervous watching and filming the boys jump than they were in leaping off the bridge in great style! Of course, a visit to
Vic Falls is not complete without going to the Victoria Falls Hotel. At the entrance was a sign that said, 'The house is open to you - make yourself at home.' The boys did just that having a swim in the 'Guests Only' swimming pool. They were even offered towels to dry themselves from the staff there! We had planned to have' high tea' at the hotel but had second thoughts when we heard that it was now $US30 a head!Instead we enjoyed an ice cold Coke!
Planet Baobab We decided to call in and spend a night at
Planet Baobab, a camping/chalet area that is set up like an African Village. This is one of the camps that Ralph Bousfield and Catherine had set up so we were keen to see it. It was the most amazing camp site, with clear evidence everywhere of Catherine's artistic abilities and Ralph's attention to detail. Before setting up our tent, we cooled off in the huge swimming pool as the weather was oppressively hot. A lot of thought has gone into the design of the eating/bar/lounge areas and the toilet blocks and shower areas are amazing. We were the only campers
Comrades' House
This student block was built while we were at SBTC there at the time. We discovered hammocks in the shade of some baobab trees and whiled away a few relaxing hours reading books.
Nxai Pan Game Reserve We got up at 4am the next morning and headed for Nxai Pan Game Reserve. We had visited there before as a family and the boys enjoyed driving along the 4 wheel drive sand tracks. The highlight of the time there was seeing a family of five Bat-eared Foxes resting in the shade of trees. The area is very dry, being made up of many salt pans so when any elephants come through they are usually desperate for water. A new ablution block had recently been built and we were amazed at the efforts they had to take to keep elephants out! (see the photo) We also took the opportunity to visit a group of baobabs named after
Baines, a famous painter, who painted them many years ago. They are situated on the edge of a group of salt pans and as there had been some rain we had to drive carefully around the edges of the pans lest we started to sink! We then headed back to Francistown and about 1
With Dave Long and Sydney at SBTC
Sydney was a student at SBTC for a year and has worked with the AEC. At present he is teaching at the University of Botswana kilometer out of Nata we ran out of petrol! An old Motswana man drove up in a beaten up bakkie (ute) and the boys jumped in the back and headed off in search of petrol. Once they had the petrol they waited by the side of the road and were picked up by the 3rd vehicle going past. The first was a car full of Bastwana who said they were sorry but they only had one space in their car. Then a white man, who had the whole car to himself, didn't even bother to stop... Then a bus packed with local people stopped even though the boys didn't hail it! It makes me wonder if I would have stopped...
Visit to Kgopiso and her family Kgopiso had worked faithfully for us for many years and was like a second mother to the boys. She is an amazingly kind-natured person and a really hard worker. I don't know how I would have managed in Shashe without her help over many years. It was a real thrill to catch up with her and her family in the village of Mmandunyane. The boys were eager to hear stories of what they
Sebokolodi
We had forgotten how big the millipedes grow in Botswana got up to as children and we laughed over some of the memories. Kgopiso brought out photos she had kept of the boys as small children and showed us all the improvements she had made to their property.
Sunday afternoon at the Corkers We spent a fun afternoon at
Lance and Chris Corker and the
Bertsche family who were also revisiting Botswana. They had been missionaries in Francistown when we were in Botswana. We ended up with about 9 young people in the pool catching up on all the news!
Shashe On the way back to Gaborone we spent time at the
Dam, where we had enjoyed countless braais and picnics! It was a thrill to also spend time with
Mosamaria and her mother, MmaTomeletso who were faithful members in the Shashe/Tonota churches and helped us so much with learning Setswana. Through them we heard that
RraDrew, who had been the foreman at the Bible College and one of the pastors at the Shashe Church was not well. We visited him and despite his being very ill he was thrilled to see us all. Sadly we heard after our return to Australia that he had died.
Our
remaining time in Gaborone was rushed but we were so pleased to catch up with
Guida Hope and her family. We had been friends in Francistown and Joel and their son Euan had gone to school together. I had coffee with
Tina and we took
Barbara and Jim out for lunch. They had looked after us so well and we are so grateful for all their help.
It was sad to be leaving Botswana. In some ways it felt like we had never left and in other ways it felt like our life there was so long ago. We still had an adventure ahead of us as we boarded a plane for Joburg, en route to Tanzania, where we hoped to climb Mt Kilimanjaro! But that is another story.....
I have uploaded two pages of photos so don't forget to keep scrolling down and click on the second page.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.398s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 25; qc: 117; dbt: 0.2288s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.5mb
michaelpaddo
Michael Meadows
good times!
another great blog mum, lots of fun looking back on our return to botswana; i'm so glad we got to do it all together as a family!