Blog #14 – End of a Chapter

Today was my last real day in Gabarone before I would be leaving back to Maun to start my placement! We had a little bit of orientation left to do at the WUSC office and wrapped that up in the morning. We talked about logistics, formalities and requirements of my placement and participating with the Student Without Borders program. After reviewing all of that paperwork we had an open discussion of my other interests and goals for my summer here. We talked about possibly getting in for a few days at different HIV/AIDS organizations in Maun – trying to maximize my time and experience – it was really exciting and encouraging.

The last part of orientation was explaining and actually using the public transportation system – which consists of combis (little buses), taxis and cabs. You can tell who are official carriers because they all have blue license plates. Government vehicles had red and everyone else has white and yellow ones!

Combis are the most common form of transport and only cost 3 pula (fifty cents to use!). They are definitely less organized and on less of a schedule than our city buses back home, but still seem to work well for people. You can just tell the driver where you are going and they will stop at the closest place on the route for you. It is amazing how packed they get though – every possible seat gets filled and then people have to get out of their seats when someone crammed into the back needs to get out…just seems odd they don’t get really full buses?!

After combis come taxis and cabs, which are fairly similar. The taxis are basically cars for hire to go to a certain place, but you pay per seat – so if you want to just go by yourself you can pay for all of the seats in the car – around 15 pula, or you can wait and then it will make whatever route it needs to. There really isn’t any sense of fare reading or cost per distance, which is neat – but probably because this is one of the most circumstantial ways of getting around. Finally, there are cabs, which we are all used to. You can arrange and barter for the cost of the trip (before you leave!) and they will take you wherever you want. They are on-call 24 hours a day – not that I have needed them though!

So, back to me :) I had to go get my exemption certificate from the government immigration department (so that I could stay in the country) – so I did that first. After that I took a combi to the main bus terminal – which is HUGE and PACKED and actually quite similar to the Toronto Food Terminal when it is busy, but imagine it packed with people, buses, mini-buses and cars instead! There are tonnes of street vendors and shops as well, which just helps with congestion. You basically have to ask your way around to find the appropriate route number and route name (the combination of those two is what will get you where you want to go). After you find that stand the buses basically function on the principal that once they are full they will depart…which is definitely most cost and energy efficient, but also part of the cause that contributes to Africa Time…. A neat concept that would definitely drive North Americans crazy!

After those adventures I was released from WUSC with the details of my flight for tomorrow – 8AM in the morning, which meant an early wake up, pack and depart from the hostel! In the afternoon I met back up with my four Guelph remaining peeps – Marena, Sarah, Caitlin and Laurenne! We all chilled for a bit in the afternoon and then headed to the National Museum of Botswana! It was free, which is great for us, haha, but also really neat. It basically covered the history of Botswana from the creation of earth until present times…needless to say it took a while to get through. There were some really cool sections describing the culture and tribal developments over time, then the colonization of Africa and finally independence. There was also some really cool animal and plant life displays! It was a nice way of wrapping up the end of my time in Gabarone (at least my time for now!)

It was just before dinner-time when the most amazing thing happened!

It got really cold…okay only like five degrees…but it was windy and the sky clouded over. It started to rain…one local told us that it hadn’t rained at this time of year for FIVE YEARS! While it wasn’t pouring it was interesting to see most people take to indoors and the streets relatively cleared! We decided that we would have a nice dinner tonight to finish our time together. We found this fabulous Portuguese restaurant tucked away back into a small residential area. With a bottle of wine, locally grown ribs and a wonderfully intimate ambience (not that kind of intimate don’t worry!) we spent a good portion of the night just eating, drinking and reminiscing about our time so far and what was still left to come!

The end of our night was spent watching a movie as a result of just wanting to crash and that we had frequent power outages. It was also a fantastic evening because the sky lit up with lightening and there were huge crashes of thunder – what a classy final note to depart on!