Hille

Sunday October 28, sunset - in my head I hear this song about 'Heaven is a bar, a bar that never closes, everyone is there' - well, something like that.
Some months ago we thought right now we would be having dinner with Hille at Ma Wong's to commemorate his birthday. But we're sitting in front of his grave with a cold Castle and a cigarette, looking at the sunset we admired together so often.
Being back it felt like Hille could hop over any minute to hang out with us, and enjoy Dutch koffie & brandy. But than you realize he won't. We miss his stories, debates and jokes, his readiness to help out. Being the owner of a satellite tele, he was our window onto the world. By now we listen to the Wereldomroep every evening, which is informative, but ever so boring, compared to Hille's World Services.

Office Workers

Tswana dogs do not, never ever, enter the house. That’s unheard of, they don’t even dream about it. So either Maud managed to take a picture of a ghost-dog, or Bram’s new employee certainly has a funny face.
Than again, whenever the guestroom is used as our office, maybe it doesn’t count as the house, and they’re just discussing office-security.

Manure

Our guide through 'survival in the village' Bashi took Bram to get manure, and gave us the recipe for good garden-muti. So the next morning around six Bram and two very excited dogs were busy mixing and applying muti.
Meanwhile Maud extended our vegetable-garden, after which the excitement of 'will the seeds pop up' starts. After just a few days the kouseband-beans Maud's mom gave us peeked. Our spinach-like vegetables followed soon, and now, on the sixth day, the chilli-seeds we took from Tears last April seem to unfold.


It's really like everyone says: 'Anything will grow in Botswana, as long as you water it.' Our Passionflower, Bougainville, Franchipane and Guava blossom, and our fabulous view up to Gaborone is full of trees that turn from greyish & brownish to green. Soon we won't be able to see Jeff's house anymore because the green wall in between is coming back to life. The good rains that arrived with us surely pay off!

Cool-down

Once a year South Africa has it's heritage-day, also called 'nasionale braaidag', because barbie's is the shared heritage of everyone. In Botswana almost every Saturday seems to be 'nasionale braaidag'. Like when we hopped over to Geetha & Bart, who live in an area near to Gabs where the really big plots are. Actually we just came for afternoon-drinks, and sharing memories of Hille, our communal Dutch friend who suddenly passed away last July.
As it got kind of latish, we were invited to stay for 'a braai with friends'. This is one great things of Botswana. Because it's high (1000 meters and higher), and has almost always a fine breeze, the temperature goes down nicely after sunset. That's the ideal time to pour your sundowners, and start the braai-fire. After that, all you have to do is watch the fire, set the table, eat and drink - all in one, the big cool-down after a busy week.

Heavy Duty

Our workload is pretty hectic already. Without any marketing from our side prospects pop up left and right, so we have to discuss with them what they want and what we can offer. Old clients accumulated their design-needs, and have a pile they wanted done yesterday. For ADF's new offices a lot of signage is necessary, Lifestyle's new Francistown-outfit needs signage & marketing-stuff, and so on.
The hardest job of all is again Fashion Lounge Botswana. Yesterday we just popped in to deliver some posters - we thought. Morne happened to be experimenting with both cocktail-recipes and the creativity of his chief-cocktail-mixer. So every time we started to leave, he said 'But I just ordered another'. The first, something bluish, was kind of tasteless, so the three of us shared a glass, and still send back almost full. Thereafter came the 'Martini/Red Bull/secret ingredients'-mixtures: superb! Going home after a few, we crashed immediately. Coming Wednesday we have to take pictures for the new menu - and taste everything. How to survive a job like this?

Puppy-love

Abraham Unkwe & Maud


Morning-walk with the next-door dogs and Jeff's dogs - all of them love to hunt dassies, while Bram shoots his camera.

Broad Wireless

It's wireless and it's broadband (at least for African circumstances), so start surfing, babe!

Shopping

The dangerous part of our new series is that we only post the special dishes we eat. Our daily Morwa-food:


We are so happy with the Indians! Next to ensuring our kind of food is available (Trade Center broadened their range of Basmati-rice again), they supply almost everything.
Our problem with all the Fongkong-shops is you can just buy what you see. Whenever you ask 'do you also have a red one, or a bigger size', you run into the language-barrier. Let alone asking 'can you order 50 of this dark-blue polo's for me', or 'I see memory-sticks, do you also sell usb-hubs?' We keep wondering how the Chinese manage, neither speaking English nor Setswana. But somehow they manage, and push a lot of other shop-owners out of business with their incredibly low prices.


You can get virtually everything in Botswana (except for delicacies like stroopwafels, golden syrup, muntendrop, and nice bilton) - if you figure out where to buy it... The needles for Maud's sewing machine for instance had to be flown in from Europe, until we discovered this small, dark shop, hidden behind the bus station. Mr. Nadeem disappears under his counter, and reappears with little papers, in which needles in every size imaginable are folded. Enter an Indian-owned shop, and you can explain what you want. If they don't have it, they probably know where to go.


Sometimes it's frustrating and irritating, this hunt for stuff. But mostly it's an excellent way to meet people and explore every inch of Gabs. As a bonus some clients consider us shopping experts, and commission us to find frames for our designs, intriguing stuff like swirls and menu-binders, and so on. Getting paid to shop - we know people who would kill for a job like that...

Morwa

It's Saturday morning and life has returned back to normal.
The neighbours' dogs are sleeping on the porch. They are of course on alert: every cow, goat, and anything else that passes, is warned off fiercely. Bram is sketching for clients and helping Tshepo with the model plane his dad send from the States. Maud is doing the textile-part of our shades to be, ironing and writing, while she listens to all the new music the Potch-pelle gave her.

After some days in Morwa we perfectly adjusted: paraffin lamps, candles, matches everywhere, and two jerry cans filled with water in the bathroom (in case of a water cut). We're even happy with the rain. How else are we going to raise our morogo (spinach-like vegetables), tomatoes, pumpkins and green beans? To give us a head start Bashi already put some tomato-plants in our yard.


Now that everything is unpacked, we remember what we don't have: a good mattress, an ups (uninterrupted power supply), fresh Fongkong-dvd's, etcetera. We decide to join Jeff to Maun another time, and to concentrate on shopping and meeting people next week.

Meet & Feed

Part of life returning back to normal is hanging out in News Cafe, because of their fabulous American Iced Coffee and free wireless Internet. And whenever we have lunch in the city with Tears and Andre, we seem to end up there. Creamy pasta Vesuvius, beef burger & salad, stir fried chicken & veggies, and a spinach, mushroom, mozzarella wrap with fries - Bram & Maud really had to keep their dinner-appointment in mind...
Mien (who runs the Dutch consulate) and Bernard (who leads the Botswana University geology department) invited us over for 'een borrel en een prak'. To call Mien's vegetarian moussaka a 'prak' is far from the truth; it's a culinary achievement! (Note the Boerebont cutlery, a traditional Dutch design.) After the chocolate chip ice & fruit salad we almost couldn't move home anymore.
The Dutch consulate in Botswana by the way is by far the friendliest representation we ever encountered. Where else can you just walk in, get more help than expected, and coffee & catching up on top?

And we are back...

... is what we constantly say because of this fabulous spring, according to Batswana. Planting season starts now now, and together with us came plenty of rain, accompanied by heavy thunderstorms, which means power cut after power cut. But we're back on electricity now, so I'll grab this chance to write blog posts.
Back in Joburg I didn't feel like even looking at a computer. Back in Potch it was the same. Being back in Morwa, Botswana, four days by now, is a time-consuming project, but we have to post something tomorrow because next week we might join our neighbour Jeff to Maun (900 k's up north). If so, that will be another computer-less week... So here's Joburg and Potch.

I'm sitting in Newscafe now, having my first American iced coffee since last April, greeting everyone, and trying to update the blog. Text goes fine, put there's a problem with the pictures, so I might have to add the visuals later.
Bit later: some pictures get uploaded now, but in the blogpost I only see the border. Might be my funny internet connection, but if you also only see the border, just go with your mouse into the border and click to get the picture on your screen.

Johannesburg

After one of the smoothest flights we ever had, Bram managed to find a perfect cab & driver while Maud guarded our pile of luggage and had her first skuifie in like 20 hours. Smokers beware: Heathrow's overseas terminal doesn't have smoking area's anymore!
Hassan drove us to Heintje's Joburg apartment, where our small Nissan 1400 bakkie was waiting for us in a very well protected garage. Getting the bakkie started was a bit of a hassle - we needed a mechanic to tell us you have to put the clamps on the battery very tight. We felt ever so stupid.


After a nice lunch with Heintje in Sandton we went to Nick, who as always offered his house as ours. Arriving in South Africa means 'get used to braais'. Nick organized us a nice braai at his house, and even produced lekker veggie wors! We old travellers had to go to bed early, around one a.m., but the others partied on until daylight.
Saturday Nick joined us to Oriental Plaza to look for cloth. To upgrade our Botswana-house we need, among other things, a lot of textile, and that is one of the few things you better get in RSA. Loitering in Oriental Plaza is addictive, if only for the mouth-watering Indian snacks, so Maud got the guys to join her hunt for a nice sareeh for sugar feast, and 'just a few' Indian bracelets.
For a change of scenery we had dinner at a hip new chain: Cape Town Fish Market (now open in London also) in Cresta Mall. In Botswana we have these bar-restaurant clients, so Bram managed to get permission to take pictures.


Sunday morning we had to leave in time to make it to our 12:00 braai in Potch. As always Maud had to shed some tears over leaving our Joburg buddy and home, but it was nothing compared to Nick bringing us to OR Tambo last April for our flight to Europe. Boy was he sorry he forgot sneesies as he got it all over his shirt!

Potchefstroom

It's tempting to bore you with all the details of our first Aardklop-experience, but I'll try to stick to the big picture.


Louis asked us to arrive elevenish, so we could settle before his pre-Aardklop braai started. Settling is easy in a house that feels like home; after a quick shower we were ready for Potch-pelle and braai-food. Oh these Sunday afternoons, floating away in good company and ditto food & wine! This tradition we should try to introduce in the Netherlands...


Than comes Monday, busy Monday. This one included: start of Aardklop (kunstefees, cultural festival), and heritage day. To start with the last: it's a South African public holiday, interpreted by some as 'nasionale braai-dag', cause that's what every citizen has in common. The idea was to have a small braai at Monika's, just Potch-friends. It ended up being a big do - what else can you expect when your son is very much part of the Aardklop-organisation?


Monika, Bram and Maud then rushed of to do the Kunste-safari. Our friend Richardt organized this 'visual arts'-tour, and tickets for us three. It's of course always fascinating to see a couple of expositions, and for us it has the extra dimension of doing that in a different culture we got to know and still don't know. That extra dimension we had by the way with all of Aardklop, and have with all of RSA.


Tuesday Bram and Monika got tickets for the one thing Bram was exceptionally interested in: Friends of the Malts. Imagine sitting in a classic university classroom, with 6 glasses of single malt before you, at noon - they were happy afterwards! Meanwhile Maud joined Anel to the 'stallekies'. Maud knows a comparison only for the Dutchies: combine a kermis, braderie en carnaval, take out the kermis-attractions and the carnaval-dress up, and there you have it. We were happy also: finally a chance to catch up, and strawberries & ice for lunch, and boekeparadijs (books paradise), and just browse around. After dinner (Anel's first quiches ever, an experiment worth repeating over and over again) at Anel's new house we fell asleep very content.


Wednesday morning we saw Die Generaal, a play by Mike van Graan: an impressive performance, especially sitting in between these white tannies, watching such a political play. (Tip for the Dutchies: Mike will be attached to the Appel-theater in Den Haag.) In the evening we cooked dinner, left a plate for Louis, imprisoned by work at home, and hopped over to Rich&Steve's to feed them two poor Aardklop-organizers. Bram has mixed feelings about this evening: it was nice, but also led to these guys giving Maud a mountain of music he doesn't like.


Our big event Thursday was Amand(l)a Strijdom singing the blues. Great! Afterwards Bram decided to tuck in early while Maud had a night out with the girls.
Friday we drove to Vanderbijlpark en Vereeniging to get more cloth. There's this concentration of shops owned by Indians selling textiles (the one market the Chinese didn't take over). Now we have everything to make our shades, curtains and couches. The couches are convertible to extra guests-beds, so feel welcome! Friday evening we should have gone to an apparently fabulous blues-band, but after a small stallekies-tour we were just too tired.


Saturday morning we had coffee with Anel's parents - meeting them you know where she inherited being such a good person. Interesting: most of our RSA-friends have parents slightly older than us, meaning they're much younger - how come? After doing a zillion 'leaving South Africa'-errands we caught up with Hettie (again the mom to our friend Gerhard), and than went to Rich&Steve's 'Aardklop is over'-party, a 'designers only' do. It was too nice to leave early, so we skipped the blues-band and a rock-festival. (Keuzestress:-)
extra
Sunday morning was again tear-drenched for leaving (Maud & Louis always babble about these party-dresses they're going to put on for saying bye but op die ou end they forget), but happy for going to Botswana.

Appie & Mussadi

We'll do the 'Back 2 Bots' post later, but we've got one piece of breaking news for concerned friends & family now: 'not our dogs' Appie and his mom Mussadi are alive!
They belong to the neighbours, but took our dog-less yard into their territory (this might have something to do with the grub we offer when there's nobody around next door). We saved the poisoned mom from dying last X-mass (this SAS-survival-guide is a must), and later took almost dead Appie to the posh dog-hospital. As soon as we drove into our yard they rushed towards the bakkie, overwhelmed with joy we're back - and looking kind of healthy for Batswana-mongrels (except for the tick-, flee-, worm- and etc-infections, but we'll see to that).