Mabutsane

The wheel is still spinning but the hamster has left.
That about sums up our abfab outing to Mabutsane.
Thursday afternoon Lans phoned and asked if we felt like joining him to Mabutsane – a combination of visiting his girlfriend and seeing a potential client. After record packing and quick last minute shopping we were on our way into the Kalahari. Why so hasty? You don’t want to drive that road in the dark, because it will be quite impossible to miss all the cows, goats and donkeys; they also like to travel via tar.
Mabutsane is a small Kalahari-village with a huge government building because it has a district-function. Melissa works as a Peace Corps volunteer in a hiv/aids-project.
The first evening we decided to keep it mellow – just get beers, an ice-block to keep them cool and firewood to keep us warm. To get Melissa accustomed to the Dutchies the men made kroketten. It’s so fokken marvellous, these Kalahari-nights: the air gets cold but the sand is still hot, and in the total darkness you look right into the Milky Way.
Getting awake was a bit of a struggle, but we managed to drag ourselves into some clothes and over to the Cool Joint to sit under a tree. The trick is not to move except for sipping your drink. The wheels were spinning nicely, but our hamsters took the morning off. Around lunchtime they came back so we could whip up an omelette and start working on the biltong-project. That evening we were supposed to have a braai with the Afrikaner boer who wants to sell big quantities of biltong (dried beef). Lans is doing the marketing and we pitch for designing the packaging that must be a hit in the tourist-industry.
The evening started a bit confused. Our boer got stuck in Zeerust and we decided to create a salad and have another bonfire evening. The boys went out to get beers and firewood – and didn’t come back. We figured they got stuck in a bar too. Antoinet phoned to tell she refused to sell them firewood because she wanted to braai anyway. And yes, our men got stuck in a bar too; she could see the car in front of the Cool Joint. Which isn’t as far as Zeerust, so accompanied by Antoinet's dog, which joined them in the bar, they managed to fetch us girls. By the way, who’s that white man that bought all the Amstels in Mabutsane?
It’s exactly like Holland: say ‘let’s bbq’ and men who refuse to enter a kitchen ever suddenly are zillion-star cooks. After an excellent braai and party night we ended up in our hot home sand again for one last cigarette and iced klippies & coke. And another. And another. These stars do that to you, you simple can’t go to sleep when there’s something so wondrous to see.
Due to his head start in the bar Bram went to bed after the first last. A brilliant idea, we discovered the next morning, when he was the only one whose hamster wasn’t on strike. He managed to get us safely back to Gabs, and is now sound asleep with a cat on his legs and a dog at his side.