Gaborone revisited - December 2011

I’ve really enjoyed this week in Gaborone (four syllables, not three as in the Colonial name ‘Gabarone’). It’s been hard work (that’s normal, with teaching), but it’s been a delight to be in such a pleasant, kindly, polite, and aware place – and that’s relative to Cape Town!

The last time I came across such a ubiquity of genuine warmth, friendliness and helpfulness was in Seoul. I mean things like complete strangers greeting you with a smile and a cheery ‘Good Morning’ in the street; as a standard thing to do – in the Capital; in the CBD! I mean normal people, not beggars (I didn’t meet any), not hustlers, just people about their business.

I was obviously looking a bit lost in the Airport and a fellow passenger, noticing this, came up to point out where ‘Information’ was, suggesting that I might get help there. He wasn’t a taxi driver, a tout, and an airport employee, just a passenger, mindful enough of others to notice my mild air of confusion and, even more, to step in and offer some help. Brilliant!

I also liked the general sense of style – lots of elegant, poised, attractive women, but, more than that, many, not just the young and pretty, with an almost parisienne sense of self and style. The plenitude of multi-coloured parasols, necessary in the heat, lend a sprightliness to the streets, distracting one from noticing that the pavements are not, of course, in perfect repair.

Botswana is obviously not a rich country. I think that’s part of the reason. I remember the same sense of a people content with who they are in Burkina Faso.

Maybe the altitude (only about 300m nearer Sea Level than Joburg) has made me light-headed. It’s possible, the clouds, in the clear air, seems so sharp, so close, and the colours so luminous, that I might be off with the fairies – everything else, though, the projector that needed a tin of diet coke to stop it pointing at the ceiling, the airport, clearly Chinese built, with huge automated gangways made for 747s that never come and stand completely unused as the little propeller aeroplanes park amongst them are realistically African.

The air is noticeably clean and sweet, particularly, of course, after the heavy rain – amazingly, the whole week, I’ve had only one, single, brief whiff of cigarette smoke.

The feeling has been, though, palpable, good humour abounds – the sound of chat and laughter is ubiquitous. I think one could do a lot worse than end up here.

My only regret? I didn’t take a photo of the lively, rusted-iron sculpture, of two elegant ostriches, in the pavement, opposite where I was working. Silly me.

The last time I was in Gaborone

My last trip to Gaborone

I’m in Gaborone in Botswana for a few days next week. I’m looking forward to it. I was last in Botswana in early 1993 after travelling over-land all the way from Bristol. I’d already had plenty of adventures before Botswana and I had a few left after leaving it for my eventual destination – Cape Town. Unbeknownst to me, the reason I was sleeping something like twenty hours a day is that I had the terminal stage of Malaria – Black Water Fever – which made doing most things more difficult. It’s amazing, in retrospect, to see how I was so ill that I didn’t even have the self-awareness left to know that I was ill!

Those stories are for another time – though I’ve already written a draft of the ‘That’s Over landing’ story.

I’d come from Bulawayo to Vic Falls, thinking it’d be an easy matter to get from there to Botswana.  I hunted for buses and even spoke to tour guides, whilst marvelling at the monstrously huge prices the Vic Falls Hotel charged for everything. Eventually I gave up and, after half an hour’s negotiation got a taxi to the border for a slightly less than ruinous amount.

There was nobody there. I walked across the bridge from Zimbabwe to Botswana as if I was the last person alive. It turned out later that it was the off-season for the game reserves, so everything that could have shut down – it was February, so the heat was immense. As I walked across the bridge in the heat waves coming from the tarmac, I was reminded of the first scene, on the beach in Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ – but there were no Arabs, there was only me.

The border post on the Botswana side also seemed deserted, apart from it; there was no human habitation. It was a long bridge, so the taxi that had dropped me had long disappeared. So I sat and waited.

It wasn’t long before the Border Policeman came out of the building. He was surprised to see me. He stamped my passport and asked where I was going and how I was getting there. He could see I was a simpleton, so he explained it all to me; I couldn’t walk because it was too far to the first town to get there by nightfall. There were dangerous animals on the road and I couldn’t walk off the road because there was a danger of unexploded landmines – the area is in the Caprivi Strip where the old South Africa used to attack those wanting a new one. He was a kindly man, so, when he knocked off, at about four in the afternoon, he gave me a lift into town. To the only place open, the Pub.

I asked about busses. Yes, there was a bus to Gaborone – it’d be on time too, due in May.

The only workable solution, apart from staying there until the season, was to hire a car. Fortunately there was a Hertz rental station and they had a four-wheel drive. It was the first time I had driven one, but, when offered advice, I was too tired to feel up to absorbing it.

Even though it was off-season, I paid a huge amount for a permit to travel through the game reserve to a man who seemed very surprised that I was going at all, let alone alone.

I’d travelled for a couple of hours and it was late afternoon when I got stuck in the sand. The vehicle wouldn’t budge – the more I tried to drive forward or back, the deeper in the sand it sank. I tried the various levers that appeared to be something to do with four-wheel drive, but nothing happened. I got out to see if I could, perhaps, dig myself out – but the sand was like a pizza, fresh from the oven, painful to be close to, let alone touch. There was no sandmat – if there had been, all would have been well – I knew how to use sandmats from my earlier adventures.

So, I stood next to the vehicle and thought. I wasn’t very good at thinking and, as usual, I was exhausted enough ( from the anaemia consequent on the Black Water fever ) to fall asleep in an instant. As I was thinking, I looked at the vehicle that might be my last, trying to take it in, as if I was going to paint it. Thus it was that I noticed that there were markings on the wheel-hubs with some sort of indentation. Closer examination showed that they were a sort of switch. So, for want of anything better to do, I switched them and tried again. They were obviously a necessary part of the four-wheel drive system as the vehicle immediately climbed out of the sand as if it had never even considered being bogged down. I was delighted.

I drove on for about ten minutes. It was now dusk. I saw some dark, uneven shapes on the road ahead of me, they moved strangely. I thought that, with their size and movement, they were bears. When I got close enough, I saw they were hyena. My observation of the wheel hubs had cheated them out of a meal – but only just.

I travelled south, wondering vaguely where I’d be spending the night. An hour or so later, I encountered another vehicle. We stopped and chatted – as people do when there’s nobody else for several hundred miles in most directions. They were looking after a camp for the off-season. I was welcome to stay as long as I promised to pay for my beer. Beer! I enjoyed a night in a very, very plush tent in a camp bed that was more comfortable than I believed possible.

Next morning I drove through the magnificent, empty, game reserve. I forget all that I saw, but it seemed to be a game city, so many animals were about.

I got into Gaborone late the next evening. I dropped off the car and found a small hotel and slept. I lost a lot of weight from the Black Water fever – not from the illness itself, but because I seldom had any time to eat, being mainly asleep.

Next morning, I took a taxi mini-van to Johannesburg. My impression of Gaborone was a small, but prosperous and welcoming city. I hope I’ll find it like that again next week.