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!