Blog #25 – Why Monopolies Blow!

Today was an interesting day. Allow me to invite you to the world of travel planning in Bostwana.

I am not sure if I have written about it, but I have been planning a trip to Cape Town from Thursday (tomorrow) evening until Monday next week… except that planning here seems much more difficult than back home. I was planning on going with the last two Guelphites (Renn & Caitlin) as well as my friend Sarah, who has just completed her two month placement in Rwanda.

Renn & Cait had organized cage diving with sharks for Friday…so I wanted to make it to Cape Town for that. So, I looked into flights. Air Botswana was awarded a monopoly on the air market here in Botswana by the government back in the day. There are no other carriers or other options for getting in/out of the country. That is where my issues have begun. There was only one option for me. Thursday afternoon at 3:00pm. Normally I am not done my school visits until at least 3:00pm, so there was no way I would make that flight. I convinced my supervisor and got permission from the schools to reschedule the visits for earlier on Thursday.

Great. Now getting out of Maun to Johannesburg is solved. I had to book a connecting flight from Jburg to Cape Town. Not too difficult, but there were only a few flights that were actually logistically possible (even with six different air carriers between the cities!)…but that went down alright too.

Next I had to figure out my way back… I had to book Air Botswana first (as they are the limiting reagent, haha, in the realm of air carriers). I had five options on the schedule for AirBotswana from Sunday – Tuesday. Sunday, would make my trip too short. Tuesday, I would miss too much work. So, I looked into Monday. NOT A SINGLE SEAT was available! I was shocked! I asked around and basically that is the way Air Botswana works…they say there flights are full but they never are. Then they release a few seats last minute at high prices and people pay them because there are no other options!

Gah! I couldn’t take that chance, so I looked into Tuesday. That option was not direct and would take me ALL DAY to get back to MAUN…instead of the two-hour flight it should be! Regardless, there was only one seat there. Sarah wanted to come back to Maun with me and see the town so we needed two seats!

Sunday was looking best now and I would just make it a quick visit to Cape Town. On the two flights for Sunday there was only one seat in total available! Ridiculous! I guess I would just book my way there and solve my way back once I get to Cape Town – and hope some seats get released!

The rest of my day at work seemed like a piece of cake after taking a stab at that (which actually has been a work in progress since Monday..!) I spent some time doing some legal work, relating to the newly registered trust and lines of credit. I learnt a lot about different legal things…I think I will establish a trust for my belongings instead of a will…it seems much happier and more practical that leaving it all to the court system once I die :) …which hopefully won’t be for a LONG TIME!

I also think I have found the best route to walk to work. It takes around thirty five minutes (fifteen minutes less of the original fifty minute walk). Thanks to Renn and Caitlin that put in the effort to find and explore this path. I basically hope over the back gate of my place and then walk along the river up to the “New Bridge” and then weave my way through town on the back residential roads and school children’s walking paths – it makes that trek a lot better!

Today, I finally met our filmmaker – who is making a documentary on the program during the summer. She is from the States and has come with cinematographer and mother. They are all really nice – and quite interested in nearly everything – it will be neat to work with them over the next few months.
I had another two school visits in the afternoon. Then I had to travel to the First National Bank (pronounced.: effin’ B, haha!) to pick up my exemption certificate – which had been couriered there from Gabs (the capital). Now I was allowed to stay in the country until the end of August and not have to apply for residency. Then I got the call. That’s right – the call.

It was the lady I had booked my Air Botswana flights with. She had good news and bad news. Good news is that two seats had been ‘magicaly released’ on the Monday flights – so that Sarah and I were able to book flights home from Jburg to Maun (and we also got our Cape Town to JBurg tickets too). The bad news…that my flight on Thursday had been cancelled! Now, if I wanted to go, I would have to get on a place leaving at 9AM – that’s SIX hours earlier – to get me there.

First, this was WAY LAST MINUTE! It was almost only FIFTEEN hours before the new flight. What would have happened if I didn’t pick up or wasn’t around? CRAZY! Also, there was no compensation or accommodation made for this change. All right, I could deal with that, but now I had to cancel my school visits and everything else for tomorrow. I had to stay pretty late at the office getting things ready for tomorrow and making sure that everything would be alright. What a pain! My only consolation was that I would be in Cape Town for the weekend!

It was the first time that I have actually been frustrated while here in Africa…amazing at how chilled I have been. I cannot believe that local people deal with this kind of stuff all the time! The reactions I got were: “that is Air Botswana”, “sounds right!?” and my personal favourite, “Welcome to Africa!” I am really looking forward to Cape Town and all of the adventure there – you’ll have to wait until next week to hear about them.