On a roll now

This is great, being online and having access to this site. So much to write about.

Shoes and cars are always very shiny, which is quite a feat because it is drastically dusty here and hard to keep either clean. Shiny shoes always make me think about Mma Makutse from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books. I am truly amazed with the effort it takes to keep things undusty.

People generally dress more formally here. This was not so different from Namibia when I typically wore only skirts or pants. Actually, its not so different from many places outside of the US. Shorts are for the house or when we go out in the bush or on vacation. That’s hard sometimes but skirts are a cool relief in the ever increasing heat.

Here is what Africa time means: you will wait in long lines for most everything. You will not find immediate answers. Paying the water bill can take up one afternoon. I have stopped wearing a watch. What's the point?

There is some effort to recycle here even if not with cans, bottles, and plastic. There are cloth bags for sale in the supermarkets and plastic bags cost money if you have not brought your own. We of course are saving everything to use again for some purpose, much more than we did in the States.

On a whole, Gab feels tired. Many of the buildings downtown are from the sixties, and the ones in the outlying areas look like they were put up too quickly in a western-style mall pattern. The suburban malls are bustling and I am sometimes taken aback by the uber-consumerism here. A lot of people seem to have a lot of money to spend. Oh, and the Christmas decorations are already in the stores. Any thoughts that we left that in the States for something else is sadly naive.

From what I have seen and from what locals have told me, there seems to be a smaller gap between rich and poor. Even in the poorest areas of the city, everyone still has a house, as opposed to cardboard boxes seen in shantytowns throughout the rest of Africa’s cities. Crime is reportedly much lower than in neighboring countries. Botswana is rich with a small population and the government seems keenly interested in sharing the rewards of their mineral production. The current President is the son of the first president Seretse Khama, who is highly revered. The son seems to be doing a pretty good job at living up to the legacy.

Most people I have encountered are genuinely friendly. It helps to greet them in Tswana: Dumela mma/rra. Likae? (ketang is the response). I am getting informal language lessons from the cleaners at the school whose English is really good and they have a good command of Tswana grammar and sentence structure.

Some of the things that I love here - bread is baked in the stores and sliced right in front of you. It is always fresh. I can even find real whole wheat bread (before it was just "brown bread"). At petrol stations, it is always full service which personally I just think is great. Of course we are paying over $4 a gallon too. It is nice knowing that I can find just about anything in the store that I want; it may just be that it is more than I want to spend. I did find local (full fat) milk and nonfat bulgarian yogurt. There are growing organic and free range options that we never dreamed of in Namibia ten years ago.

A few things we cannot find: m&m's, chocolate chips, paper bags, splenda. But these are small inconveniences. Really, our food selection is pretty good. Again, produce is hit or miss but I will spend a little more for that.