Easter
I don't have anything in particular to report, nor have I any particular thoughts to share. However, this hiatus seems unacceptable - two weeks! - and so I will resort to brief summaries....
1. I spent Easter in Francistown, on what proved to be a fruitless mission to meet up with an old friend from Australia... Fortunately I ended up hanging out with the friends I'd driven with, meeting a parade of crazy characters from all over Botswana and South Africa, and generally spending an extremely irreverent Easter weekend.
To be honest, I didn't like Francistown very much. It was a midsize, modern city with a peculiar air of trying to catch up with its own modernization. There were malls reminiscent of the gorgeous outdoor malls in Southern California, where you stroll down beautiful open shiny-tiled walkways, glancing into the shop windows, sitting under the carefully manicured trees to consider your next purchase. Nandos and KFC and the Hard Rock Cafe and grocery stores with pre-packaged produce in little labelled plastic bags. Nice cars, parking lots without potholes, and internet cafes. Yet all of these sparkling amenities of affluent modern life were curiously empty - the broad, clean-swept boulevards of the malls were occupied by just a few people, the restaurants empty but the parking lots full, flooded by people in souped-up cars drinking beers. The government of Botswana seems to have poured money into infrastructure that the population hasn't quite caught up with.
I'd rather be in Maun, dusty and terribly planned, spread out like a spider over the dry ground. "Donkey capital of Botswana," according to one friend. Rivers and crocodiles and safari disasters. There's more personality.
2. Nobody reading this probably cares, but the borehole at the game farm site for Huiku has FINALLY been successfully
equipped.
It's amazing how difficult such a simple task can be... But there you have it, everything here takes 10x longer than it should. After drilling the borehole, we hired someone to equip it (i.e. to install the pipes and pumping mechanism). The problem was that the person who came to equip it was either an idiot, or didn't know the full depth of the borehole; the equipment he used to lower the pipes into the hole was too weak, and it broke, dropping the pipes into the hole and therefore bending/breaking them as they trainwrecked at the bottom. For months the problem was left uncorrected; the idiot refused to fix it or to give a refund, blaming the problem on us, and eventually we decided to just give up on him and fix it ourselves. So last week a team went out to extract the bent pipes, replace them, and lower the full length of pipe back into the hole.* I was highly doubtful that this was going to work, but lo and behold, the pipes were not that badly damaged - they managed to extract the whole shebang - and successfully installed the new pipe! Hurrah! Water!
This is very important because it means establishment of the first of our planned water points in the game farm area - there isn't any other surface water on the 4000km2 of land, so even one small watering hole will attract animals from far and wide. It's an extremely exciting development - the crucial first step into creating an area that will be attractive to tourists, and will actually improve the resources we've been given.
3. A cow walked through my garden. It ate all of my cucumber plants and crushed dozens of seedlings. After a day of mourning, I have rallied and begun replanting... WM advises me that the end of April is the best time to plant anyhow, because then everything comes to maturity during winter. That seems counter-intuitive, but winter is the only time that your crops won't be plagued by swarms of insects - such as the little orange-and-black beetles that devoured my spinach and kale.
4. I successfully set up a wireless network in the office, which I think qualifies me to start my own IT consulting business in Ghanzi District. SWEET.
* Equipping boreholes 101: Pipe comes in lengths of 3m, which screw into each other. The team, using the apparatus shown in the picture, lowers one length in, then screws the next length onto it, lowers it, then screws in the next... etc. I think this borehole is about 70m deep.
1. I spent Easter in Francistown, on what proved to be a fruitless mission to meet up with an old friend from Australia... Fortunately I ended up hanging out with the friends I'd driven with, meeting a parade of crazy characters from all over Botswana and South Africa, and generally spending an extremely irreverent Easter weekend.
To be honest, I didn't like Francistown very much. It was a midsize, modern city with a peculiar air of trying to catch up with its own modernization. There were malls reminiscent of the gorgeous outdoor malls in Southern California, where you stroll down beautiful open shiny-tiled walkways, glancing into the shop windows, sitting under the carefully manicured trees to consider your next purchase. Nandos and KFC and the Hard Rock Cafe and grocery stores with pre-packaged produce in little labelled plastic bags. Nice cars, parking lots without potholes, and internet cafes. Yet all of these sparkling amenities of affluent modern life were curiously empty - the broad, clean-swept boulevards of the malls were occupied by just a few people, the restaurants empty but the parking lots full, flooded by people in souped-up cars drinking beers. The government of Botswana seems to have poured money into infrastructure that the population hasn't quite caught up with.
I'd rather be in Maun, dusty and terribly planned, spread out like a spider over the dry ground. "Donkey capital of Botswana," according to one friend. Rivers and crocodiles and safari disasters. There's more personality.
2. Nobody reading this probably cares, but the borehole at the game farm site for Huiku has FINALLY been successfully
equipped.It's amazing how difficult such a simple task can be... But there you have it, everything here takes 10x longer than it should. After drilling the borehole, we hired someone to equip it (i.e. to install the pipes and pumping mechanism). The problem was that the person who came to equip it was either an idiot, or didn't know the full depth of the borehole; the equipment he used to lower the pipes into the hole was too weak, and it broke, dropping the pipes into the hole and therefore bending/breaking them as they trainwrecked at the bottom. For months the problem was left uncorrected; the idiot refused to fix it or to give a refund, blaming the problem on us, and eventually we decided to just give up on him and fix it ourselves. So last week a team went out to extract the bent pipes, replace them, and lower the full length of pipe back into the hole.* I was highly doubtful that this was going to work, but lo and behold, the pipes were not that badly damaged - they managed to extract the whole shebang - and successfully installed the new pipe! Hurrah! Water!
This is very important because it means establishment of the first of our planned water points in the game farm area - there isn't any other surface water on the 4000km2 of land, so even one small watering hole will attract animals from far and wide. It's an extremely exciting development - the crucial first step into creating an area that will be attractive to tourists, and will actually improve the resources we've been given.
3. A cow walked through my garden. It ate all of my cucumber plants and crushed dozens of seedlings. After a day of mourning, I have rallied and begun replanting... WM advises me that the end of April is the best time to plant anyhow, because then everything comes to maturity during winter. That seems counter-intuitive, but winter is the only time that your crops won't be plagued by swarms of insects - such as the little orange-and-black beetles that devoured my spinach and kale.
4. I successfully set up a wireless network in the office, which I think qualifies me to start my own IT consulting business in Ghanzi District. SWEET.
* Equipping boreholes 101: Pipe comes in lengths of 3m, which screw into each other. The team, using the apparatus shown in the picture, lowers one length in, then screws the next length onto it, lowers it, then screws in the next... etc. I think this borehole is about 70m deep.
posted by Jenn at
11:34 AM
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