My Botswana driving licence

Whether it is collecting river sand or fire wood in manual work, taking boys to church or the clinic, moving bricks around the school or driving boys at the start and end of term all the volunteers at Bana ba Metsi have to be able to drive. In Botswana you have 3 months when you can legally drive on your UK (or German) driving licence before you have to convert it to a Botswana licence. With it being well over 3 months since we arrived now it was time to get this sorted, as without it a police officer could slap any one of us with a P1000 fine, a quick way to lose a month worth of money. We had been trying to get it sorted, struggling to get the right documents, thinking Archie and I had to get something from the UK embassy in Gaborone. Luckily in the end we could just print what we needed off the DVLA website. Also after being told by several people we could get everything processed in Shakawe, the town an hour and a bit from school, two unsuccessful trips followed when we were given different reasons as to why we had to go to the transport office in Maun. So that is what we did. With Tilmann and Nick going the week before us and converting their licences successfully, it was our time to give it a go. With a folder full of various documents and after passing the eye test in Shakawe we headed off early on Saturday morning for our 4 days off in Maun.

To get to Maun is easy, just a long process. As we were taking some items down to Maun for the school we got a lift in the new land cruiser (new to the school I mean – it definitely isn’t new) to the ferry. There we got a lift the 10km to Shakawe. After getting some food when the supermarket opened and sorting things in the post office we started the task of trying to flag a car down to take us to Maun. The buses from Shakawe to Maun (and vice versa) run pretty regularly and aren’t all too bad on the comfort levels, but getting a lift in a car (which you still have to pay for usually, P1 more than the bus) is potentially nicer if you are lucky with a comfy seat, air conditioning and usually a bit of a faster pace to cover the 400km. However we weren’t too lucky and ended up waiting a while, always a bit of a pain when you are up at 5:30am to get going early. In the end we got a quick ride to Gumare, the next big town on the way, 125km from Shakawe. Due to us again having little luck with lifts and after trying to beat the bus we ended up getting on the bus in Gumare which luckily wasn’t packed so for the remainder of the trip I stretched out on three seats and delved deeper into the good book I had brought with me. Within what seemed like no time, we were in Maun and being picked up by Peter Dow, the former director of Bana ba Metsi who lives in Maun and so kindly always lets us stay at his plot.

That evening we had such a treat. A takeaway pizza from Chaplin’s, a pizza restaurant that is so delicious, there are perks of travelling to Maun. With transport closed until Monday morning, we had Sunday to just have a relax and with Peter again being so nice as to lend us his car it meant we could go to Sedia Hotel, a great place for swimming, milkshakes and internet. We also just did lots of looking around food shops thinking up ideas of what we could take home to supplement the Bana ba Metsi diet as well as watching some football and ending up in the evening at my favourite spot, old bridge backpackers which is so nice to just chill at in the evening (yes, they also serve great food unsurprisingly). With transport opening at 7:30am and after Tilmann and Nick being in there for 7 hours getting their conversion sorted, we weren’t late to bed for the fear of the long day that lay ahead of us.

We ended up getting to transport before 6:30am on Monday morning and somehow we still managed ending up being 125 and 126 in the queue, not really what we wanted but we knew it would be a long day. Little saving graces, by the time we got into the transport building, some people must have bailed as we were now 110 and 111 in the queue, hooray! To cut our long day short, we finally got to the man behind the plastic screen and thankfully all our documents were in order. After waiting 6 hours my heart skipped a beat when he said the only man who does conversions was out of the office, this couldn’t be for real I thought, but thankfully he was just out for lunch, phew! So we had 30 minutes to wait but once he was back we would be back to the front of the queue and finished in no time. We tried heading off in the beast of the hilux that we were using to get around Maun and it was having its very normal trouble of not starting. After lots of lovely people helping to give us a push, we managed to get the beast going, only to drop her off at a mechanics to get the problem with the alternator sorted. With Peter again, as always, saving the day we got back to transport and thankfully the conversion man was back! Now all we did was pay our P70 and wait for our picture to be taken. Which you can smile in which is cool, friendlier than the UK passport type photos and this meant Archie was pulling all kinds of funny faces and almost got caught with a pout! He settled for a startled smiley face for his picture. Then within 1 minute of the picture, there it was. We both had our own Botswana driving licences in our hands! It was such a cool and brilliant moment, the memory of all the waiting washed away and now we could legally drive all the vehicles at school with no concerns of being fined. It is just really cool having 2 licences. A great memory from our year! We even beat Nick and Tilmann’s time. Just!

Then Archie and I went on a food shopping spree to take with us back to school in the old cabstar we thought we would be driving home. With a new favourite of mine being Trident cash and carry of which we are members which sold lots of my favourite stuff at a really good price. I was glad Archie pushed to go and see it! With the cabstar, after being looked at for over a year, still causing problems we weren’t allowed to drive it home. A little concern as Archie and I had more food than we would really want to carry on the bus. However with a work bench that needed to be taken to school and again Peter being a lovely person he allowed us to take his hilux that had already had the one problem with the alternator fixed. Great news for us! The bus as I said is fine but having the freedom of driving yourself is great. 

So with it being a fairly cool morning on Tuesday and with all our stuff in the back of the pick-up we set off for home. Peter had thrown in a tarpaulin into the car for us if it rained, not something we expected, luckily he gave it to us as within 50km of our journey we hit some brief light rainy patches. Nothing we couldn’t just drive through we decided, not thinking to pull over and tarp our things in case things got worse. Silly us! It then started absolutely chucking it down and we got soaked, along with our stuff as we frantically tried to cover everything the best we could. We got there in the end and everything had a chance now to stay dry. The drive home was good, lots of signs of more rain since the New Year, which means watching out for cows and donkeys even more. I drove the first leg to Gumare and then Archie took over there to take us all the way home. We even spotted a tortoise crossing the road, the first we’ve seen, and pulled over to take a closer look. 

All in all it was a good trip down to Maun and most importantly we got our Botswana driving licences. Making it a successful trip.

2016!

Dumela borra le bomma, 

 I firstly want to wish a late Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone who still checks here every now and then. I hope you all had a really wonderful time over the holidays. I can’t quite believe it has all been and gone, probably because my holiday period was far from the norm but here is 2016 and let’s have a great year!

Before I go into my experiences over the holidays I just want to quickly mention something about post. I am so thankful to everyone who takes time and money to write and send things out to me in Botswana. I appreciate it hugely! My only concern is I don’t want people thinking that I am ignoring them. Here is why I say this… To start post can take up to 3 weeks, sometimes more, just to reach our private bag in Shakawe. Then the post itself can sit there for a long time, as Shakawe is a small town that is on the other side of the river to my school, meaning we don’t often make the 40km dirt road trip and cross the ferry (which can have a long queue, my longest wait being 3 hours to cross but some waiting 6!) to get to the post office. Last but not least, once I actually receive a letter I then often have to wait a while to make it back to Shakawe to post my reply home. I hope this makes sense and explains why a letter you may have sent in October will get its reply months later. For example on the way back to school we checked the private bag for the first time in a couple of months, on the 5^th January and I received a letter sent from the UK on the 30^th October. I am in no way saying to stop sending letters, if anything I would say the more letters the better, but I only want to ensure those who may be waiting on a response that I am responding as quickly as I can to all letters I receive (which I hope is all the letters that are sent but that may not always be the case unfortunately as this is Africa). Thank you again to everyone who writes and please keep it up, ke a leboga.

Right, now into what I want to write about. On the 19^th November 2015 term 3 ended at Bana ba Metsi, meaning we took all the boys down to Maun to meet with their social workers and our long Christmas holidays began. What a holiday it was!

With Tilmann and Nick the two German volunteers heading north to Zambia and Malawi, Archie and I planned to head south to South Africa and Swaziland, with lots of plans to meet and stay with other Project Trust volunteers for the beginning of our travels. I think to save huge paragraphs of me rambling on about what an amazing time we had I will make a list of the places we went to, the people we met there and some of the things we did. 

• ·         Johannesburg

We met Ann Botha, our (not quite) in country representative who we were kindly allowed to stay with. For one day we were proper ‘tourists’ and went on a big, red, double decker, open top, city sightseeing bus, getting burnt and seeing the popular sights. This included going up the Carlton Centre which at 220 metres is the tallest building in Africa. We ventured the same day into the far less touristy areas and got to see more of the real city which is always fun and very different than being on the bus where you are advised not to walk alone. I am not saying there aren’t dangers by any means, but thankfully we never had troubles even in areas which by what people say sound very notorious. Being in a big city we got to go to the cinema which was great and I also realised I definitely didn’t miss walking around shopping centres!

• ·         Manzini (Swaziland)

In Manzini we met with all the Swaziland volunteers, Johnny and Matthew who kindly put us up in their house as well as Ali, Tara, Freya, Lauren, Joanna and Milly. This was our longest stay with other volunteers and the time flew by in the blink of an eye! I loved being able to see other projects up and running or at least the children and young adults that the volunteers work with, it truly is amazing how much positivity they often give out. With the Swazi Trails company we all went white water rafting for half a day in the north of Swaziland which was so much fun. It was strange but beautiful being somewhere with a more hilly terrain than our lovely, but very flat Botswana. The rafting was a great day and with only one scare when Lauren fell out her and Ali’s boat on the worst rapid, we all survived in one piece. Finishing off the day with a 14 metre cliff jump followed by some Swaziland brewed beer on the bus home was a perfect end to an amazing day. We also went to a waterfall in a nature reserve called Mantenga Falls, which we wouldn’t have found without the volunteers insider knowledge and which was so beautiful. I definitely have a new found love for waterfalls! On our last day we went on a hike organised by the volunteers to a place where they were going to camp for the weekend, which was such a lovely end to our visit. 

• ·         Tongaat

Visiting the four great guys, Donald, Celyn, Matt and George, who work with boys similar to the boys at Bana ba Metsi was a great stay. We actually helped out a little with manual work, trying our best to earn our keep. The now pretty infamous Beach Bums bar was also a great night out and walking onto the sand from the bar made me feel like being back at the Watering Hole on Perranporth. It even rained that evening to fit the bill. Archie and I also ventured for the first time into the Indian Ocean and being back in crashing waves, well only up to waist depth in fear of sharks, was also a reminder of Cornwall and how I had missed the sea. For those that know I love food, they also got a weekly delivery from Woolworths (the SA equivalent of Marks & Spencer) of huge palettes of food that have just gone out of date and we were lucky enough to take part in the feast that follows that evening.

• ·         Durban

Here was our first stay without a Project Trust connection but we ended up meeting up with four volunteers, who turned out to be in Durban at the same time which was a lovely coincidence and surprise. Our main stop in Durban was uShaka marine world and water park which boasts the tallest water slide in Africa (maybe even in the Southern Hemisphere) which was a full day of us running around between rides like kids, charging up the stairs in an attempt to shorten the wait for the next slide. 

• ·         Underberg

With talk of hills in Swaziland, Underberg being the gateway to the Southern Drakensburg is a step up with mountains exceeding 3000 metres high so as you can imagine the views were spectacular. The exciting combi ride there, with the views distracting from the drivers tailgating and interesting times to overtake on roads with pretty sheer drops brought us to meet Claire, Ffion, Heather and Rebecca. We were taken to so many braiis (BBQs) that it made up for missing such good food up at school. Archie and I created quite a habit of bringing rain with us wherever we went, not quite the South African summer I expected. So when a thunderstorm put a stop to our plans on going hiking up the Sani Pass into Lesotho, in an area which is suffering with a drought, we didn’t think luck was on our side. Just one reason to visit this place again at some point. This did allow us to snuggle up inside and watch a Christmas film to get into the festive mood a little more, nothing like less heat and more rain to make you feel more like being in the UK.

• ·         Zithulele

Although our stay in Zithulele was the shortest stay we had with volunteers we still managed to squeeze so much in with Emily and Hannah taking us to Hole in the Wall which was so fun to hike to and swim at. Anything with the water and I’m happy! Like with many of our stops we also got to meet some new, fun people. There are two more volunteers at Zithulele, Dainelle and Emma who had started their holidays, so we had just missed them but kindly we got their beds instead of the floor. The project was also so different to those we had seen as it is in a hospital, which is far from most people’s projects.

Such a fun day at Hole in the Wall

• ·         Port St Johns 

Port St Johns was the start of our holiday away from staying with other volunteers and therefore the start of us paying for accommodation, eish (we aren’t as tight as it sounds, promise)! With 2^nd beach being right on our front doorstep we couldn’t wait to get in the sea, so it was only a slight bummer when we found out it is one of the most dangerous beaches for shark attacks in the world. Sticking to a natural rock pool for cooling off it was, a reminder we are on the east coast of South Africa. Meeting a cool guide we went on a forest hike to a waterfall where there were several rock jumps, again waterfalls just being awesome we had a great time and I even trekked back a second time before leaving. There was a Christmas quiz arranged at our backpackers so we took part in a team with two medical students we had met at Zithulele and with it being a fairly young scene the questions must have reflected as we somehow managed to win. The extra bonus points from hulla hooping and air guitar helped too. 

A beautiful view from a sunset trip

• ·         Coffee Bay

It was getting close to Christmas day when we arrived in the beautiful and remote Coffee Bay. This was the stop I was most looking forward to as it was a real meeting point for lots of volunteers from South Africa and Swaziland and it did not disappoint! Seeing people we had seen earlier in our travels and then new volunteers was awesome, through our experiences there is so much to talk about and everyone just gets on so well it’s great. With free pool in the bar and some pretty stringent bar drinking rules the stay was set to be good fun. We did more rock jumping, anyone spot the pattern between my enjoyment of water and jumping off things yet? With a hike to a naturally formed “Jacuzzi” (that was actually pretty cold) on Christmas Eve we built an appetite for our Christmas dinner that evening. Celebrating with food a day earlier wasn’t complained about as we ate a plate full of different meats and sides that wouldn’t normally be on my Christmas plate but that were equally as delicious. Still got some Christmas pudding and brandy butter among other deserts so I was a very happy bunny. On Christmas day some of us made our way to the beach and after making sand men rather than snow men I enjoyed being in the water for ages without the need for a wetsuit. Saying goodbye to everyone wasn’t so bad because apart from a few volunteers who were at their project over the New Year we would see everyone again and more in Cape Town!

Enjoying our Christmas Eve sundowners

• ·         Storms River

On our way to Cape Town and between two overnight buses we stopped in Storms River, mainly so we could tick of the Bloukrans bridge bungee jump, the highest off a bridge in the world at 216 metres. To say the least, I loved the bungee! It was such an adrenalin rush I can see why people get hooked on such activities. Meeting with the Swazi crew again at the bungee with Ali and Lauren jumping an hour before Archie and I, as well as the volunteers we had met in Durban being at our backpackers it was great always being with other volunteers. The other side note to our stay, not surprisingly food related, is that we got free pancake breakfast at the backpackers with raw honey, maple syrup etc. It was an exciting and delicious brief stay.

Just waiting for my turn

The jump!

• ·         Cape Town

The last stop on our long journey had us ending up in Cape Town. I am not usually a city person but from what I saw of this city, I loved it. We didn’t have time to do everything so we crammed in as much as possible. First we headed off in the Swazi’s rental cars, they had for the last day, to Simon’s town going past Boulders beach to see the penguins. With it being very busy we turned back from the idea of going to the Cape of Good Hope and instead cruised around back to Simon’s town for a lovely lunch and then to a relax on Clifton 3^rd beach. The water there was freezing, even colder than Cornish waters in the UK summer which you don’t expect when it is 30+ degrees outside. My favourite thing in Cape Town and one of my favourite on the whole trip was climbing up Table Mountain. It was hard work but so worth it for the views at the end, plus Table Mountain has a café on top so the ice cream was well deserved. It took us much longer back down, than it did us getting up, but we got down just before dark had properly set in. Time to venture into the city in search for food and watch a brief bit of a carnival. New Year’s Eve was obviously a great time in Cape Town with most of us being at a street party to see 2016 in. 

Admiring the view from the top of Table Mountain

The whole holiday has been amazing and I loved every second, even when cramped so tight with our bags in a small minibus taxi for hours. On the 1^st at 10am Archie and I boarded a 22 hour bus to Windhoek in Namibia, which I slept 19 hours of, catching up on a real lack of sleep from the amount of fun we all had. Then to get taxis and hitch hike back to Maun in Botswana where we arrived on the evening of the 2^nd January. Giving us some time to get prepared for heading back to Bana ba Metsi on the 5^th for the start of term 1. It is almost funny being home and in my own bed every night now and I am very excited for this term at school, with a whole new standard 5 class to meet!

Well, my plan to not ramble on didn’t quite work but I hope someone enjoys reading through nevertheless. I hope to put some pictures on here too, but with school internet that may be a challenge. I will also try and link some blogs from the people I have mentioned here for anyone who is interested in reading about some other projects.

P.s. almost all the pictures on my blog are taken and edited by Archie (I'm not great at carrying my camera with me at all), so all credit to him :) Also I have to really reduce the quality to be able to upload them at school so hopefully they aren't too bad :)


http://donaldinsouthafrica.blogspot.com/

I shall leave it there for now.

Go siame.