Tuesday, 9 April 2013

No Problem

Just a quick note and pics on getting our tent fixed in Kasane, Botswana, and some great people we met in that area:
Orffius, Mpofu and O's family. They were recommended to fix our torn tent. O didn't have a sewing machine, but took it to someone else who did, and did a great job. Just a young guy we had to trust, but it paid off. Mpofu was his friend, and had an English degree, teaching primary at the moment, but really wanting to start a safari business. We followed them through very back streets to O's home, a cinder block box with a torn-apart truck in the dirt yard, and his wife, kids and other guys all living there. Again we had to trust - it was a far from a touristy area - but it was a great window into how the people here actually live.  They're both Zims who left when things went bad, but still able to return there often.
Lincoln and Leni ran Lesoma Valley lodge, she of a local black business family, he a Ghanaian professor of microelectronics in Maun and astute businessman. We were their only guests, so had a great chat over dinner about their lives, quite different from less educated blacks, but also different from the white business owners we met so often elsewhere.
Also met a guy named Gomole while strolling the dirt tracks of Lesoma village, trying to find the source of some great music (a shebeen bar was blasting tunes). He'd just moved there from Gabarone, the capital, to work in the local quarry. It's managed by Chinese, who are making inroads everywhere in Africa, and in this case they're building a bridge to replace the Kazungula ferries, a big bottleneck in the truck route from South Africa to Zambia and beyond.
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