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