Camp life

I grew up in a little town in Botswana called Selebi-Phikwe. Phikwe, like many towns in Botswana is centred around mining (copper/nickel in this case). The mine is involved in everything, from schooling to hospitals to the annual pantomime. For kids growing up, it was a dream come true. As everyone knew everyone else, we could run wild. No one worried about us or asked us where we were going, as our paents knew very little harm could come to us.

So for me to end up working just outside of Francistown is to truly come full circle. Francistown is about 200km from Phikwe, and the camp where we work is about 80km west of Francistown, toward the Kalahari Desert. It's dry, dusty, and sometimes incredibly beautiful.

The photo above is of the sun going down behind a section of our camp. Our tent is on the right. There are only about 10 people living permanently in the camp, so we really have to fight to make a life for ourselves and still manage to get along well enough to work together every day. We can't really walk around the area due to snakes, so we had to improvise to come up with a way to get a bit of exercise:

Most of the problems here arise from ego-battles between permanent staff (many of whom have never been to Africa before this posting) and contractors (who tend to know their way around the area but don't get all the perks). For example, the annual Christmas party is coming up on Friday. As the 3 contractors on site, who have been here for months, my boss Katherine, Ian and I expected to be invited without question. Instead, only Kat was invited, as our representative. She was told but a glorious accountant that she could invite a guest, but, "Not just anyone who happens to be in camp at the time" (i.e. us). So she went over his head to beg invites for us. It did not go down well. But we're going on Friday. We may dance on tables.

Bugs galore

With the rains just starting in Botswana, the bugs, snakes, spiders, scorpions, etc are out in full force.

Take one large bug:

Add a whole load of little ones that like hiding in the core:

And you get some fed-up geologists who keep muttering things like, "How can you expect me to work under these conditions?"

Hectic few weeks

Haven't updated in a while as things have been unbelievably busy lately. Recap:

Went through to South Africa for Ian's aunt's funeral, which was pretty awful, but at least we did get to see a lot of Ian's family, including his parents who we haven't seen since we got married. That was an insanely busy time, including a day trip to our last site (a 5 hour drive either way) to pick up our stuff and my poor cat, Grimma, who'd been living there for a couple of months. She was very glad to see us, until she realised it was going to mean a trip in the back of the truck and a visit to the vet when she got to Johannesburg... This life style certainly doesn't do our pets any good and we're seriously having to think about finding new ho,es for them, which is enough to break my heart.

We're in the last three weeks of our drilling programme at Matsitama, so tensions are starting to run a little high, especially as one of our geologists has just left, in true dramatic style. Mathieu, our resident Frenchman (hope you're reading this, Lenoir!!) was heading off to take up his new position in New Caledonia, so we thought we'd give him a night to remember in Francistown. Well, the night (most of which cannot be recalled) culminated in him losing his wallet containing his passport, credit cards, etc. Don't think he'll ever forget his time in Botswana after that.

Have just been told that we'll probably be based in Tsumeb in Namibia from the beginning of next year, which sounds good. It's a tiny little town right next to the Etosha National Park. We're keen as neither of us has been to Namibia before. Everyone we know who has been says it's incredible. So life changes yet again...

Kasane / Chobe Game Reserve

A couple of weeks ago some folks from work, Ian and I headed up to Kasane, the nearest town to Botswana's Chobe National Game reserve. How's this for a multi-national group: our Australian project manager Katherine, Afrikaans drilling supervisor Michael, French geologist Matthieu, me - South African (kind of), Ian - Zimbabwean and Finnish au pair Linda!



Was absolutely brilliant. A couple of pics:



This herd of elephant held us up for half an hour as they moved across the road in front of us. So much game in Chobe!

Sleepy lionesses who weren't too impressed at having their photo taken. Then again, neither were we at that time of the morning, which is why this is what we did when we got back from that game drive:

Kat, Matthieu and I relaxing in the garden looking out over the Chobe River. Like that picture!

How to begin?

I intend this blog to be the story of my travels with my husband, dog and cat around Africa, the things we see, the people we meet. However, I have a feeling that it may turn into a place for me to rant and rave a bit, which isn't always possible given our life style. Let me try and explain what that's like...

We live rather differently from most people we know, particularly people our age. For a start, we're married, which seems to be becoming more unusual by the day... our friends all seem to think we're crazy for that. We get divorce statistics thrown at us left, right and centre, but 6 months down the line, we seem to be doing alright!

My husband, Ian, is a geologist. We moved down to South Africa after sticking it out in Zimbabwe for a year, with absolutely nothing to our names except Ian's experience on a small gold mine, a rickety old car, some clothes, a dog and a cat. The Zimbabwean inflation rate had eaten away at any savings we'd made and we were getting desperate. It was hard to walk away from Zim, as we were very happy living there, even with all the trouble, and Ian's parents are still up there, but we'd reached breaking point.

Luckily my parents were good enough to put us up for a while. During that time we got married and started looking for work, with absolutely no concept of what our options were or what to look for. I am a linguist by training, which isn't the easiest field to find work in! So when Ian was made an offer with a small South African consultancy firm, which included part time work for me as a data processor, we jumped at it. Six months later, I find myself still working with geological databases and actually enjoying it! I've also come to enjoy the life that we lead, which I didn't think I would.

We don't know from week to week exactly where we'll be. Contracts come up very quickly and are always open to change, so we're not exactly settled. At the moment we're based in a bush camp outside of Francistown, in eastern Botswana. Will describe it more later.

NaNoWriMo

Is it possible to write a novel in a month? Well, I'm about to find out if it's possible to do it in 20 days... (I already know that given a few years you will never finish one unless something incredible happens to boost your output, will power or motivation level).

Every year NaNoWriMo encourages people to sign up to write a novel within the month of November. The word target is 50,000 words - perhaps a novella is a more accurate description, but it makes a fairly attainable goal. Check it out...there's still plenty of November left!