KalahariLog

How to turn on utilities in Botswana? One goes to the offices of the water and electric utilities with one's passport and an "Allocation Letter" which assigns a flat to the person in question. One hands 250 and 300 pula, respectively, and fills out several pages of paperwork. One gets told that the utilities will be turned on the same day. One is duly impressed at the efficiency of the whole thing. Four days later neither utility is on and one seethes with the futility of the situation. Despite all the help from people at the University, who make phone calls to the utilities people and drive us around to the flat every day, there is no water and no electricity yet.

While waiting for the utilities to be turned on we are staying at a "lodge", which a euphemism for a motel/hotel. Naturally, the lodge we are staying at, The Planet Lodge, is about 7km out of town with no convenient transportation. The lodge provides meals. The way it works is they call you at 7:30am/noon/6:30pm and ask what you'd like to eat. They get perplexed when you say that you don't eat meat. They take 90 minutes and produce a piece of bread and a couple of slices of tomatoes and cucumbers. This is presented on a plate and wrapped in cling-wrap. This repeats every time ("no MEAT?!?" "are you SURE you don't want MEAT?") and it always takes at least 90 minutes to come up with the above piece of bread (cold) with the handful of limp vegetables.

To make life a little more exciting, on Saturday, they decide to do some work on the lodge. The hammers and drills start on at 7:30am, just as one falls asleep after tossing and turning all night. There are at least half-a-dozen staff members, knocking stuff around, adding new and exciting noises all the time and sending the cat scurrying under the bed at regular intervals.

The cat. Yes, our cat is here too. She flew with us in the cabin on the US-based portion of our trip. For the Washington-Johannesburg portion we had to take her as "manifest cargo" as South Africa doesn't allow pets in the cabin on incoming flights. Once we arrived in Washington we had to leave the airport and take a taxi to get to the cargo terminals. In there, we filled out many pages of documents waiving any and all kinds of rights regarding the cat and her safety. We left her in the terminal, hoping that she'll make it to Johannesburg 24 hours later. From there we needed yet another travel arrangement. South African Airways insisted that the last portion of our trip (Johannesburg to Gaborone) was on an Air Botswana airplane. Air Botswana insisted that it was on South African Airways plane. Neither offered any options for taking our cat. Apparently, we are not the first ones to run into this problem and to deal with it, several companies offer the service of collecting pets from the Johannesburg airport and delivering them to their final destinations. Naturally, they charge and arm and a leg for that, in our case 5000 South African Rand, which seems to be about 800USD. The flight turned out to be South African Express and I can't see any reason why we couldn't take the cat with us. It seems like a good way for pet-handling companies to make a pretty penny.