Shakawe!
Today I'm off to Maun, and on Monday to Shakawe for a meeting. Haven't been to Shakawe before, and it's more up in the Okavango Delta than anywhere I've been so far, so that's exciting. I hope to update with lots of photos of lush greenery when I get back on Friday.
Managed to get a bunch of GIS data from the department of wildlife, and let me tell you, it's amazing. I love maps and I love technology!
Government offices in Botswana are funny places. In some ways they're much more efficient than my office, and I suppose they must be in order to keep the great machinery of government bureaucracy churning away, but in other ways? The man I spoke to, quite a high-up fellow in the Ghanzi department of wildlife, had no idea where his reports were, and no idea of how to use his computer. He kept excusing himself by saying he'd only been in the office for a short while, and initially I thought he'd just arrived a few weeks ago and hadn't found all the old files left by his predecessor. "So, how long have you been here?" I asked, trying to make polite conversation as he rummaged in a filing cabinet. "Oh, since early 2007," he replied.
He did try to be helpful, but it was obvious that nobody had ever asked to see those reports before, and indeed he had never cared to look at them himself. What are they DOING in those nice, air-conditioned offices?? Playing spider solitaire, probably. Just like everyone else.
In other news, on Thursday the cat brought a common pouched mouse* for her kids to eat - the orange cat ate it up, but apparently devoured it a bit too quickly, because he promptly vomited the whole mess onto my floor. Chewed mouse fur. Bits of kitty kibble. Scraps of tail, slimy with bile. And the head entire, its neck quite literally a bloody pulp, eyes still open and staring glassily up at me as I wiped it away with paper towels. Ah the little horrors of domestic life.
*Saccostomus campestris! Thank you, Jonathan Kingdon. I use my field guide mostly for identifying the small critters that Melissa delivers to my doorstep. So sad!
Managed to get a bunch of GIS data from the department of wildlife, and let me tell you, it's amazing. I love maps and I love technology!
Government offices in Botswana are funny places. In some ways they're much more efficient than my office, and I suppose they must be in order to keep the great machinery of government bureaucracy churning away, but in other ways? The man I spoke to, quite a high-up fellow in the Ghanzi department of wildlife, had no idea where his reports were, and no idea of how to use his computer. He kept excusing himself by saying he'd only been in the office for a short while, and initially I thought he'd just arrived a few weeks ago and hadn't found all the old files left by his predecessor. "So, how long have you been here?" I asked, trying to make polite conversation as he rummaged in a filing cabinet. "Oh, since early 2007," he replied.
He did try to be helpful, but it was obvious that nobody had ever asked to see those reports before, and indeed he had never cared to look at them himself. What are they DOING in those nice, air-conditioned offices?? Playing spider solitaire, probably. Just like everyone else.
In other news, on Thursday the cat brought a common pouched mouse* for her kids to eat - the orange cat ate it up, but apparently devoured it a bit too quickly, because he promptly vomited the whole mess onto my floor. Chewed mouse fur. Bits of kitty kibble. Scraps of tail, slimy with bile. And the head entire, its neck quite literally a bloody pulp, eyes still open and staring glassily up at me as I wiped it away with paper towels. Ah the little horrors of domestic life.
*Saccostomus campestris! Thank you, Jonathan Kingdon. I use my field guide mostly for identifying the small critters that Melissa delivers to my doorstep. So sad!
posted by Jenn at
1:07 PM
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