Blog #36 – National Holiday(s)

Today is a double celebration. It is Canada Day (back home), but it is also a national holiday here in Botswana. Today is Sir Seretse Kahama Day – a day celebrating the independence and work of Botswana’s first President.

I spent the morning sleeping in – what a great feeling waking up to the warmth and bright light of the sunshine. For the remainder of the morning I cleaned and organized my room. As some of you know, I have a slight obsession with rearranging my furniture and decorations – and this was one of those days ☺ I guess is followed me all the way here to Africa. It is amazing how much dust collects in absolutely everything. After sweeping my room, I must have collected at least two pounds of sand! I also knocked out all of my blankets and rugs, which was slightly irritating on the eyes and may have reduced their weight by half, haha!

The rest of the morning was spent preparing and packing a big picnic lunch! We were going to spend the afternoon having a family picnic in the Maun Game Park. It was a delicious mix of homemade foods – some traditional and some I was more familiar with. We packed up the van with the food and all of the family and drove over to the park. We found a nice little shaded opening in the trees overlooking the Thamalakane River.

Unbeknownst to me, we were meeting up with some different families in the area. I met Ruth and her son – which is the family that owns the local Rollerhockey rink (which now I am definitely going to need to check out before I leave!) Michelle, an old family friend of Ruth’s was also here visiting. She is on her vacation time from being a full time tenured Faculty at a university in Indiana. She is an anthropologist who has looked mainly at gender within society. She spent a few years here back in Maun for her dissertation looking at the impact of gender of HIV/AIDS rates, which was fascinating to talk with here about.

The most impactful thing that she told me was that she remembered one weekend when thirty people all died in the community. Everyone just went about it as if just one person had died, going consecutively to the next person’s service. They did not connect the deaths together – they thought it was merely the way it was, a coincidence. They would not face, or acknowledge that all of these deaths with because of AIDS. These feelings were not isolated, but could be seen and experienced everywhere and all the time. Crazy! We enjoyed our food over good conversation to say the least.

Another family eventually came as well – this time bearing a big cooler…I was wondering what they had brought, just when the mother whips out this massive piece of meat. It was an impala leg, that she had shot on her plot the day before. The lady was a fair-skinned local Motswana, who had grown up learning about the traditional medicines in a small village. She knew all about the different customs and practices and it was a lot of fun talking with her about Botswana culture. Plus, the impala leg was delicious. She had cooked the entire thing – which was huge, but had stuffed it with garlic and other spices. We just ate the meat with little bit of mustard – delicious! First goat, now impala – I am loving the local meat scene! Why do we only have chicken, pork and beef back home?!

After lunch I had to head into the office to get some work done. There was a package for the new lab arriving on private courier into the Maun airport today. Little did I know how difficult it would be to pick this up! First I went into the airport and NO ONE had any idea what I was talking about. I had to eventually get a temporary permit to be let into the airport. After that I was taken to the lost baggage room, which was completely useless. But the lady would have let me take any of the hundred bags that were there – I feel sorry for all those travelers! Eventually I just gave up and decided to find the office on my own. I started wandering around the office looking for the customs office. Eventually I found it and asked the lady working at the desk whether a package had arrived for us – nothing. As I kept her in conversation about it I started looking around the room for different boxes. I eventually spotted one that looked like ours and it had some printed off emails with our names on it. This was it.

The problem was that the shipment was a bunch of drugs used to dart the large predators, I think…haha! Anyways, it was supposed to be kept refrigerated and it was just sitting out on the desk in plain sight and in the hot midday Maun heat. The lady had no sense of urgency when I explained to her that I needed them quickly to get them in the fridge – or if she could keep them cold for me, while we ‘processed’ the package. She gave me a really hard time getting the package. First, I only had a photocopy of the permit to pick them up and she wanted the original. Next she wanted to know what was in the box, stupidly in haste I said “drugs”…that was evidently the wrong answer. I tried backtracking and explaining what kind of drugs and what they were used for. It was received with a high eyebrow. Now she wanted a list of what the contents were and the cost of them, etc. – which I did not have. It basically looked like I had come to pick up a unmarked box of drugs with no official paperwork trail…great. Funny thing was after hastling each other back and forth for twenty minutes she gave up and decided to give them to me. I don’t know whether it was that I convinced her, had persuaded her, or she was just bored of it all. All that mattered was that I had them.

I ran them back to the office and quickly tossed them into our snack refrigerator, as the lab was all locked up and I didn’t have keys to it. After the escapade of successfully smuggling drugs into Maun from South Africa, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing light work and then spent the evening just relaxing at home with the family. An interesting day to say the least!