Getting to Know Gaborone

Well, enough about logistical headaches. Maybe you’d like to know a little more about Gaborone. This is the largest city in Botswana, and it is located just minutes from the border shared with South Africa. There are somewhere around 350,000 residents, with more commuting into the City daily from nearby villages.

Originally the City had a circular layout, but it has expanded into a complex spiderweb and is now divided into areas called “Extensions”, an indication of how quickly it grew after gaining independence from Britain in 1966. We live in the area called “Village”, which is near Tlokweng where Chief Gaborone of the Tlokwa Clan established the first modern settlement in the 1880s. Across the street from our house is the Thapong Cultural Arts Center and Park, whose grounds encompass the first colonial fort built here in the 1890s. We live in a block of six two-story apartments, and there are six to ten others like this one on this street with no name. Our neighbors, who we met due to our recent power outage, all work at or attend the University of Botswana. They come from Nigeria, Uganda, and Bulgaria. Our backyard has a sour orange tree in it that is full of fruit right now. These are excellent substitutes for lemons and the juice is delicious on beans and rice.

Most of Gaborone’s action takes place in the “malls” that are scattered about the City. A “mall” can consist of anything from a small strip mall to an enclosed structure with shops and restaurants. Like the malls in the U.S., the stores are consistent from mall to mall for the most part, with minor differences. There are chain clothing stores, grocery stores, cell phone stores, furniture and computer stores, and the occasional misc. store such as a hardware store or laundry services. Prices are comparable to U.S. prices, with some things being slightly more or less expensive. One thing that puzzles us: how can people here afford the fancy clothes, furniture, and electronics that are so prevalent everywhere?

In the grocery stores you must take your own bag or you will be charged about 10 cents for a cheap plastic bag. Every store has a security guard at the entrance, and you must check any parcels you have outside the store before entering. When you leave, the security guard will check your receipt to make sure it matches the items in your bags. In an electronics store, this might involve the guard filling out paperwork to record the receipt number, item purchased, etc.

There are amazingly few restaurants, other than the chain upscale and fast-food restaurants associated with the malls. In place of restaurants, Batswanas set up card tables along the streets and in parking lots and offer food kept warm in chafing dishes. The menu usually consists of beef, chicken, stewed greens, and mealie meal (a side dish made of ground corn similar to polenta or grits.) Also for sale at these tables are individual candies, cigarettes, and scratch cards for cell phone time.

Traffic is horrendous. There are two rush hour times during which a relatively simple trip will take a minimum of three times the normal time to complete. The combi drivers seem to ignore every traffic rule and create their own lanes of travel. Many of the major intersections are double- laned traffic circles, which we love in the U.S. for their smooth efficiency, but reversing the lane of travel makes this very confusing for us. Most Batswanas living Gaborone do not use maps and cannot give you directions to anyplace, even though they know how to get there themselves. The landscape is completely hostile to pedestrians and one had better be extremely careful to avoid a collision with a vehicle. In some places, you would have to cross an open sewer ditch to access a shopping area unless you walked some distance to get around it. There are very few sidewalks and virtually no one stops for the few pedestrian crossings that are marked. Very few people ride bicycles and none of the bicyclists we have seen have been wearing a helmet.

Unfortunately, since April of 2009 there is no passenger rail service in Botswana. There is a large bus station downtown and one can catch a bus to many nearby villages and larger towns to the north such as Francistown, Kasane, and Maun. On Saturday, we caught a bus with our friend Karin to the village of Kanye, which is located about 40 km to the southwest of Gaborone, in a hilly region. It was our first cloudy morning since arriving here and the air had that wonderfully spicy smell that those who are familiar with the southwestern US will recognize as hope for rain. It was very chilly and I was missing my long underwear believe it or not! But we didn’t get any rain and it was sunny and warm before noon. Kanye is mostly notable for the prevalence of traditional architecture: round houses with thatched roofs and old mud walls surrounding portions of the houses. Most have solar water tanks and outdoor privies. About a 20 minute walk from the bus station, there is a nice canyon to hike with a perennially flowing stream. Again like the southwestern US, one must share the nature walk with the cattle, which are everywhere, but it was still beautiful and nice to be outside in a rural area. The people seem, on average, much more relaxed and friendly in the smaller villages, and we did not feel unsafe. Riding the bus gave us a closer glimpse of people we don’t interact with at the University, government offices, and shopping malls, and everyone treated us nicely. Obviously, there is a large divide between the wealthy and many people on the brink of poverty.

On Sunday, Karin and Pat kindly invited us to join them on a trip to the nearby Mannyelanong Hill Vultury Game Reserve, where we were able to observe nesting cape vultures along with nesting black storks: two birds we never imagined seeing together! We saw a host of other interesting birds (see the associated Page on this blog) as the areas was teaming with activity, and afterwards we tooled around the countryside enjoying the landscape. Crossing the road at a bridge we saw a gigantic bullfrog called….you guessed it…the giant bullfrog (Pyxicephalus adspersus). It is worth googling!

There is still much to tell about Gaborone, but it looks like I have written an awful lot and I picture folks nodding off, so I will stop here. But if there is something specific you are wondering about, please ask in the comments or send me a private message at PriscillaJTitus@gmail.com

You are always in our thoughts and hearts,

Priscilla and Jon

In our Gabarone home at last.

There is much to tell and this keyboard seems like a bottleneck between the events of the last week spinning through our thoughts and the attempt to record them on this page. We were taken to our new apartment on late Tuesday (8/10/10) morning. Our final winning residential address is Plot 4715/32, Village, Gaborone.

By the way: no one here receives mail at home. Everyone has both a residence and a postal address. We were told in the Fulbright Orientation that we could receive mail at the Embassy, and this is technically true, but after going there to pick up the three boxes of books we shipped, we don’t think we want to do that too many more times. There are multiple levels of security you must go through in order to gain entry to the representative who can give you your mail. First you must make an appointment before going and, at that time, you must provide the vehicle tags for the car you will be arriving in and the name of the person who will be driving. When you arrive, the guard at the gate will verify your appointment, and check the vehicle tags and the passports of the driver and everyone else in the car. You will then have and armed escort get into the car to accompany you into the compound and show you where to park. From there you will enter a lobby where you will have to deposit your cellphone and any other electronics, and you will then be patted down and checked with a magnetic wand. Then you can sit in the waiting room until you are called to be taken to your representative’s office, who will hopefully be able to retrieve your packages from the mail room. Then you will have to return to the lobby to gather your things and reverse the process in order to leave the compound.

The apartment is two stories with a kitchen, combined living and dining area, and combined laundry and toilet room on the bottom floor, and three bedrooms with a full bathroom upstairs. There is a small front walled courtyard, a gated parking space in the front, and a fairly sizeable fenced backyard with a concrete patio slab and shade structure. Like all houses in Gaborone, there are iron bars on all of the windows. Unlike many houses in Gaborone, there are no electric wires or hurricane wire at the tops of the walls and fencing. To go from the street to the backyard, you must do the following: unlock the padlock for the gated parking area; unlock the padlock for the barred door to the patio; unlock the padlock for the barred entry before the front door; unlock the deadbolt on the front door (the other lock is broken); unlock two padlocks and the deadbolt on the back door. (When I get to the back door, I can always remember the key for the top lock because it says “Fort Knox” on it.) Whew! This is why we have 7 keys just to enter the house! Actually we should have 9 but the key to the padlock for the front courtyard door is missing and the upper key on the front door is broken.

The apartment is nice enough, but certainly modest by many American’s standards. The linoleum tiles are old and many are chipped or missing and some of the light fixtures are missing shades. There is air conditioning however! And the previous residents (who were also Fulbright Scholars) left us lots of useful stuff including linens, a TV, a DVD player, and all the essentials you would need in the kitchen to prepare a meal. This has been a huge help. On the day we arrived there was a team of people in the house and yard from University Housecleaning Services. They swept and mopped and raked the yard, but there still was much cleaning to do (and there still is!) The refrigerator had sat closed for several months and was moldy, and the place is very dusty and musty smelling, but each day it gets a bit better. We are enjoying the birds and other animals that come through our yard. Our first night in the house, we touched a bad switch and it caused the circuit breaker to trip and all the lights went out in the house. That was pretty nerve-wracking because at first we didn’t know why the lights went out. Now we have a candle and a pack of matches in every room. We also have a security system but it has not yet been activated because the University must first get three bids from competing security firms. (And guess what? There are only three in town!)

So on our second day more teams of people appeared: maintenance people who *eventually* took the mounds of garbage that were sitting in the front yard; teams of people representing security firms (one of whom demanded hand lotion); electricians, more housekeepers? Who knows who came through the house? Finally yesterday, we got the lights over the front and back door and the bad switch repaired. This required numerous phone calls (~10 maybe) and several instances of the electrician coming by without notifying us first and leaving a note to indicate that he could not fix the problems because we were not at home.

We imagine that some of you are wondering about the need for padlocks and hurricane wire. From what we have been told there is much petty crime, but very little violent crime here. Many locals seem to place the blame on recent immigrants from Zimbabwe (a familiar story, eh?) Some of Jon’s students told him that the electric fencing and hurricane wire are “fashion”, meaning you are showing you are important and have valuable things to protect. No one has guns so it is mainly a matter of protecting that which is precious to you. For us this would be our health and our laptops. So we are careful that we don’t invite trouble my leaving our doors unlocked, etc. It is important to protect our laptops because they contain our work, our photos, and our means of communicating with all of you. Following the advice of others means we keep our curtains closed at night and we don’t walk anywhere after dark. These are all things that would be necessary in many big cities in the US and other parts of the world.

Up until now we have had to walk everywhere we go, as many other people do here. There are also minivans that travel set prescribed routes throughout the City and are known as “Combis.” The Combi drivers are purportedly the worst, most aggressive drivers in the City and people are really packed in there so haven’t worked up the courage to take one yet. As a rule, we greet every person we pass on the street with “Dumela”, and are rewarded by big beautiful smiles and Setwana greetings. People have been friendly and helpful with very few exceptions. We live just two blocks from a grocery store, a bakery, an internet café, and a very nice gym which we visited on Sunday. Although the internet café is conveniently located, it is often crowded and there is little privacy, so we are looking forward to getting internet service in our home eventually. We live about six blocks from the National Botanic Gardens, where we saw lots of birds and a family of rock hyrax on Saturday

On Sunday, we were kindly delivered our car which we purchased from another former Fulbright Scholar before arriving here. Now we are in the process of attempting to have the registration put in our name and getting car insurance. We had to go to the police station downtown to get police-certified copies of our passports. You would think that having the actual passport might work, but you would be incorrect. So we went into the police station, only to find out that we first needed to go to a copy shop to get copies, and then take them to the police station and wait for someone to certify them. Queues here are incomprehensible to us, because many people who come in after us go before us, so we just wait until someone kindly nudges us. Our officer’s name was Rra Magaga, which would be pronounced “Ma-Ha-Ha.” He was feeling poorly but was very kind.

Driving on the opposite side of the road is a bit terrifying, but actually perhaps less so than watching your partner attempt it! For the moment we will suspend our driving practice until we get the car insured, but at least things seem to be moving in the right direction. Also, yesterday, Jon finally got his employee number, which means he can now use the library. We think we are still a long ways off from getting our residency permit, however, and many things here require that we have a residency permit. For example: getting a phone line for DSL service in the apartment.

Well, we fear our readers are growing weary of these mundane tales so we will sign off here. In our next posting we’ll share more about our impressions of the people and landscape. Till then, stay safe dear friends and hug a loved one closely each and every chance you get.
Priscilla and Jon

One step forward, two steps backward, then, three steps forward????

Well, since we last wrote we have been moved (on paper only) from Apartment 5A to Apartment 6, then back to 5A, and now to Apartment 4715-32 (well maybe). All of this involved hours and hours in various lines at the power company and the water bureau having utilities disconnected, reconnected, disconnected again, and (we hope) reconnected again. With multiple deposits that were not refunded, of course. Tomorrow may reveal whether or not we will actually live in the hypothetical Apartment 4715-32 (which, incidentally, was some entirely different number on the paperwork.
On a more positive note, a doctor determined on Friday (for the meager sum of $15) that neither of us in an imbecile or an idiot! (Who knew?) This is a requirement for the application of residency.
But, by far, the best day was Sunday, when our new marvelous and angelic friends Karin and Pat took us to the relatively nearby Mokoloki Private Wildlife Sanctuary where we were able to hang out and enjoy the landscape and all the amazing biota it supports for 12 hours! We'll try and post a few photos from that adventure, but with the small bandwidth here and the fact that every employee of this hotel is probably on Facebook at this very moment, we are not exceedingly optimistic.

So until we find a permanent residence and obtain more reliable internet access, please be patient with these brief postings dear friends and family. We love and miss you all!
P&JP

ps: That is Jon, literally in deep do-do up above!

We are here, we are here, we are here!

Well, to say it was a long strange trip would be a vast understatement, but the miracle is that we are indeed here in Botswana, and are healthy and seem to have all of our luggage intact. We are currently staying in a Hotel (Planet Lodge) quite a ways out of town, which makes accomplishing all the various things we need to do more complicated. Folks here are very lovely and friendly. At least in town, the landscape looks remarkably similar to Tucson. Except that, of course, the African daisies are native here! We are hoping to see our apartment tomorrow, which will be located about 1 km from the Campus, and if all goes well we will move in on Monday. Sorry to make this such a short post; gotta run now and may not have internet access again until tomorrow. Hope this finds you all well and happy.

xo

P&J