School Trip to Gabs!

Way back in February we had a week long school trip to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, and possibly the furthest you can get from the school without leaving the country. Nevertheless, it was a really great trip and I'm sure the boys got a lot out of it - some hadn't even been south of Maun before never mind Gaborone.

After the President visited last October he asked if there was any special requests that the staff had and the idea of a trip to Gabs was floated. Straight away Mr Dow was contacted by a man in the presidents office who organised everything from then on. It was Saturday to Saturday and was filled with visits.

A government bus met us at the ferry and took all staff and students straight there. A journey of about 19 hours in total after having to wait for a few hours at a government fuel station to fill up. However the next day the visits started.

The state house, the parliament building, the house of chiefs were first. Their political system is very similar to ours apart from no where near the same number of MP's and their equivalent of the house of commons seems slightly more civilised than the green benches.

Botswana Television was visited on day 2 where all the TV studios are; sports, news and one seemed very like the set of Jeremy kyle - not sure it would take off here though. Botswana radio is also broadcast from there and each one of the boys was on RB1 saying messages to their family, or so I'm told as it was all done in Setswana.

Visiting the MET office was also pretty cool. We had a talk about all the instruments, the satellite pictures and discovered how shocking the boys' country geography. Obuile then volunteered to read the weather at the green screen place where you have to pretend to be looking at the map when there's actually nothing there - if that makes sense? - but he did a very good job of it. Surprisingly though sunshine was forecast with high temperatures all over the country.

 

University of Botswana (UB) was good to visit too, it is very similar to a European uni which is very encouraging and it had some great sports facilities including an Olympic sized pool which was very hard to resist jumping into.

 

 

Other interesting places included the 3 Chiefs monument, a soap factory, the national stadium, climbing Khali hill, the shopping malls, road awareness school and the Botswana Meat Commision where we saw a herd of cows get turned into corned beef and beef for export. The place we were staying was also where Mochudi Chiefs FC train, they are league leaders of the top division in Botswana, however it's safe to say there's not quite the same amount of money than in the premier league - all the players have day jobs and only a couple own cars.

 

 

 

 

Many companies also made donations to the school, the biggest coming from Builders World where the boys got many gifts, uniforms, towels, bags full of sweets, rucksacks, caps and more. They were very chuffed!

Overall it was a really brilliant trip and I'm sure no one is likely to forget it.

BB6. Sherlock the Dog.





Sherlock! Our new puppy from the local village of Sekanduku, kindly given to us by Mr Mosotho.

He eats a lot, plays a lot and likes chewing everything he sees - Sherlock's a bit like that too.

Born on the 5th February 2014. Hopefully he's enjoying the holiday back at the school getting fed and not being harassed by the boys. See you soon!

 

 

 

Back to School!

SWAZILAND!

Sibebe Rock

Table mountain!
 

 

The summer holidays are coming to an end and a new school year is just around the corner. Travelling has been amazing fun but a break from eating and drinking far too much and having such a good time is probably sensible...

 

We started back in November with a camping trip to Moremi game reserve with the german volunteers, Mr Dow, mp (a boy from school) and Leonard (the son of the carpenter). It was 2 nights camping at a place called 3rd bridge which is at the north of the park and at the very south of the delta where the water channels come to an end. We saw a lot of animals and many from the roof of a car
which was pretty incredible. We also took a boat trip on the delta which was very cool as there's lots of narrow branching channels, luckily the guy driving knew what he was doing.

 

Swaziland was next on the list and after a total of 22 hours on 3 separate buses and a rip off taxi drive at 10pm in the pouring rain we arrived at the girls project. We stayed at Clare's and Rachel's project for about 10 days where we had various trips around Swaziland. This included climbing Sibebe rock with a Sibebe beer in hand to drink at the top (unfortunately it wasn't ice cold after the 2 1/2 hour hike up), going caving and finishing in a hot spring, visiting the girls project and taking part
in the staff Christmas parties and eating and drinking far too much on an evening.

 

Next stop was Balito Bay in South Africa (I won't bore you with describing every stop) then on to Durban, Unzumbe, Drakensburg, coffee bay, Port Elizabeth for Christmas then Jeffrey's bay and finally Cape Town for New Year.

 

All of it was absolutely brilliant and ended far too soon! In 12 hours time we'll be driving the boys back up to school and I'm very much looking forward to starting the new school year.