Gabane Pottery Village

Gabane is a nearby village that is famous for their pottery. We went on an adventure to Gabane to buy some souvenirs. We parked next to the outdoor kiln.

We were warmly greeted by a friendly artist who was carving a tall vase.

One important purpose (besides supporting local artists/women through our purchases) of our fieldtrip was to take Flat Stanley around on a tour of areas of interest in and out of Gabs. Flat Stanley left his friend, Lisa (Beca's friend's daughter), in Jamaica Plain to join Beca on an awesome journey to Botswana. You can join him on his amazing adventures at his blog (the link is listed under Friends' blogs on my blog site). Stanley has really revitalized our hourhold's interest in exploring the greater Gabs area and renewed our zeal for taking silly pictures. Here is Beca positing Stanley for a kodak moment.

I wish I can say that Stanley took this picture of us (Julie, Beca, Kate, the artist, me) but alas, his hands were too 2-D to handle the camera.

Here is Beca treating Flat Stanley to a delicious meal of lichi Chillah drink & pasta arabiata at the Italian deli in town.

Sense of direction

Story #1: On a call night, a nice resident sent me home early around 4am. I was on my way home when I noticed that the last part of the freeway to my house was blocked off. That was the only way I knew how to drive home so I had to sadly turn back to the hospital.
Story #2: One way I often know that I have driven too far south on my way to clinics in southern San Diego county is seeing the sign for Tijuana.

Story #3: I met a nice Korean family in a grocery store in Gaborone. They told me to come visit them in their shop called Photo House. They started describing the location of the shop but I had no idea where it was. Since I worked at the hospital, they told me that their shop is very close to the hospital, that it has a conspicuosly bright yellow roof, and that I can ask a collegue. Turned out, the photo shop was literally 5 feet from my house and had a very large yellow roof one cannot easily glaze over.Story #4: I was at the South Africa-Botswana border once with work collegues. As was the custom, we had to get off the bus to process our visa and walk across the border and get back on the bus. I was the last person to re-board the bus so my friend Beca asked me why I was late. I explained that I almost boarded the wrong bus because it looked similar to ours. Just then the wrong bus (that I almost boarded) passed our bus so I pointed it out to Beca. Beca said "yes I can see that... except that bus say AMBULANCE on all 4 sides and is painted red." F.y.i: our bus was white and had "Africa Tax" sign posted on all 4 sides.

Story #5: On the way home from the hospital during my first week in Gabs, I suddenly could not recall where I was or how to get home. So I decided to take a combi (a minivan bus or sorts) home in the general direction of home (or what I thought was the general direction of home). The combi ended up at the bus rink (totally in different part of town) and I had to take a taxi back home. f.y.i. my house is 5min by walking from the hospital.

Interesting road signs

The ubiquitous donkey cart

Sign #1: warning about the ubiquitous donkey cart

Sign #2: Shanti prefers this sign because the donkey cart is included within the triangle, thus making it more aesthetically pleasing to the eyes of the driver.

I was tempted by this offer... I'm kind of tired of the cemented houses; arn't you?
I wonder how long that Out of Order sign has been up there on this railroad traffic stop...

The state of sports bars in Gabs

I'm not the biggest sports fanatic by any stretch of the imagination. But I do follow one professional sport closely and I also enjoy an occasional outing to a sports bar.

There's soccer matches going on now & I set out with Aaron, a huge fan of the Barcelona football team, to one of two "sports bars" in town: Bull & Bush (the other one being Linga Langa).
Level of enthusiasm in the house? Aaron was the only person in the joint sporting a jersey. People wern't even wearing team colors, never mind a jersey.

Quality of the sports viewing experience? The entire joint had three tv sets. However, they insisted that the sets are connected on some complicated cable network and that all three sets must play the same channel! Even though we kept seeing different channels on each of the three sets everytime the barman felt like flipping the channel.

So did we get to watch the game? We requested Barcelona but we were told that they can only play two channels but that Barcelona was not on one of these channels.

We still had a good time, chatting while being occasionally interrupted by Aaron's new "friends" who were supporting Mann U loudly.

Beijing Olympics

Gabs is not a big place. Once you start living here, sooner or later you see the same people at the same hang-out spots. There are good and bad aspects to this. If one is a fan of Cheers philosophy (where everyone knows your name), the familiarity is nice. But sometimes one just yearns to meet some new people.

I met a nice couple a while ago who moved here from China. I met them at a lounge recently and it was really nice to have something exciting to do on a week night and to talk about things both near (Gabs) and faraway (Asia NOS, Boston, Philly, etc).

Certainly the company was the highlight but I was also ecstatic to receive a small gift of a golden Beijing Olympics pin! I have a small collection of pins at home & I've been collecting some here (Robben Island & Cape Point to name a couple) .

Can't wait to go home to add these exciting new additions to my pin collection!

Madoda's Birthday

Tuesday was Madoda's birthday. We kicked off the celebration in our front yard.

After much debate, we decided to then take the party to Chutney's, our favorite spot for South Indian food.

Even though Madoda had the sniffles, we couldn't just let him loose after dinner. So we went to the tried and true Bull & Bush for some champagne and pool.

Here's Mads making pool look good.

Funny Names

In case you can't read it, the back of the truck says: "Get it up in Botswana with High-Rise Scaffolding Erectors."

Does this really need a label?

Not sure why this name seemed funny at the time...

Zero Carbon City exhibition

Sorry for the misleading title, people.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail invite to "the Zero Carbon City exhibition" at the Main Mall. The e-mail announced that this exhibition featured images from 10 regions around the world, captured by 10 magnum photographers, that will illustrate the solutions to climate change. The e-mail then continued to urge me to come down to check out the exhibition saying that the exhibition has been shown in 60 cities across the world since '05 and that the exhibition will be moving onto Maputo and Lusaka VERY SOON.

Bottomline, there was no exhibition. Yup. I went down to the Main Mall (in the heat) with my camera and there was no sign of the exhibition anywhere! But I thought I'd take the opportunity to capture scenes from the Main Mall - where I spend most of my lunch.
This is the entrance to the Main Mall. Beyond the gates, you can see the civic center.

Here's the open space where they might have had the exhibition - if indeed they ever actually came to Gabs (of which I'm now skeptical).

A picture of the balcony at the President Hotel. Favorite Sunday hang out joint for Mma Ramotswe.

Qwest cafe - where it takes 3 hrs to receive your meal. But the coffee is good & only takes about 1 hour.

For a country that prides itself in the quality of their meat, there seems to be a total domination of the market by fried chicken joints. Here are the three pillars of diet.

1) Chicken Lickin

2) Hungry Lion: sorry, no lion on the menu.

3) Finally, KFC: good ole Colonel Sanders. I must admit, I do love the mini bread loaves they give with the meals. They don't taste like anything but they are so flippin cute! Who knew I could be so into cutely shaped baked goods?

Freshly Ground

On last Monday morning, I got a message from my housemate, Sarah, asking if I wanted to go to a Freshly Ground concert at GICC (Gaborone International Conference Center). Freshly ground is a popular South African band that plays Afro jazz. I had missed the chance to see them in concert in Cape Town (in Kirstenbosch Gardens) so I was pretty stoked to go.

The band was really awesome to see live because they were lively on stage, dancing and grooving to their music while singing and playing instruments.