KalahariLog

It’s been two weeks since we left Tucson. We settled in our new “flat”, which is really a 3-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom, 2 story semi-detached house. We are located in a neighborhood called “The Village”, which is the oldest part of town, where the original settlement began. It was known as Gaborone’s Village, after the local chief and now the entire town, which is the capital of Botswana, is called Gaborone (pronounced ha-bo-ro-nay). The Village is within walking distance from the University and most of our neighbors are University staff members. Within walking distance are also a fairly nice gym, a bottle-shop, and a mini-mart; slightly farther away is an American-style shopping mall with a few restaurants, a supermarket, a hardware store, and most kinds of shops one expects to find in a mall. After the utilities got connected and a leak in the bathroom was fixed, we started to make the house into a home by planting some colorful native plants in the back yard. We bought a sturdy 1998 Toyota Corolla from an Indian expat on his way to the US and took our first out-of-town trip over the weekend. We went to the Mokolodi Game Reserve, just 20 minutes south and quite beautiful. We saw half a dozen different types of antelopes, a couple of groups of warthogs, and lots of birds. They also have rhinoceros, giraffe, elephants, baboons, and many other “big game” animals, but we didn’t see them. The Mokolodi Reserve was made famous by Alexander McCall Smith in the 7th book of his “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series. The stories in the series take place in Gaborone and now there are even sight-seeing tours that take you to all the places mentioned in the books. It is the end of winter here and it feels similar to late winter in the Arizona high desert. Unlike Arizona, it doesn’t usually rain in the winter as most of the rains come in summer (November to January).