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journal entries22 Oct 04: [TS] Etosha Nat Park
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botswanaWe entered Botswana on the Trans Kalahari Highway where we saw more vegetation than we expected and soon found out that Botswana has a big public transportation problem. That is the lack of it. So our first hitchhiker was a school teacher on her way home to vote in the federal elections on the weekend. She told us that the last elections were in 1999 and the ruling party (Botswana Democratic Party) have been in power since 1966. She also said that three leaders of the BDP have died in that time which doesn't surprise us as the average life expectancy in Botswana is 33. Imagine if you could compress one of our lives into 33 years. School would only last one third of the time of ours but would still feel like it goes forever, your teenage years would last just a little over two years, you'd be married at 11, divorced at 14, have a midlife crisis at 16 and retire at 27. Further down the road we picked up a guy aged 15 to 20. Them two chatted in the back in their native tongue until we dropped them off at the next town. I let them out and asked if she enjoyed her ride and then asked what they talked about. She said that he was going to court and then jail next week for killing a man two months ago. Really! And why did he kill him I asked? She said "because the man had stolen his wallet". We got some supplies at that town and kept going as we had 900 kilometres to cover to get to the Okavango Delta. We shredded a tyre this day and have a slow leak in another. The quality of tyres here are not that great and there's a lot of heat that comes off the road. We weren't able to get that one fixed or get a new tyre until we left Botswana, so we were pumping up tyres for a few days. Reading road maps, I've noticed Damien has his own unit of measurement. It goes from the end of his thumb across his palm to the end of his little finger but not fully stretched out. He uses it on maps to calculate distances by crabbing his way around the map. It reminds me of the biblical measurement the cubit so I've called his the "damo cubit" or "d cubit" for short. I think Namibia is 5 d cubits high by 2 and a bit wide. Our road atlas frustrates him as he can't accurately crab from one page to another. Ever since we've been here he's been looking for a full size map of Africa so he can put his hand to work. Villages in Botswana are made of straw huts and clay mud with no electricity or running water. We have seen communal taps and hand bore pumps in the villages. Botswanan people are friendly and appear happy with things and are not that keen with change as past election results show. With the elections being on there seemed to be a lot of activity around with people either moving into their electorate or just supporting their party. Its colour coded here with the BDP being red and its supporters crammed on the back of utes(they're called bakkies here) driving around singing. We picked up many more hitchhikers in Botswana and felt like we were doing our part for the country. We found out later that the BDP won the election easily with 44 seats of the 57. So life in Botswana of standing on the side of the road and the we'll get there when we get there attitude will carry on at least for the next five or six years. The tally so far on the number of uses for the spare broken drivers side mirror that we are still carrying around. 0. |
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email us!tom@stuckintoafrica.com.au | damien@stuckintoafrica.com.au
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