Botswana Tour- Days 1-3

So:

Day 1- departed from Drifters Johannesburg Lodge at 6.30 all ready for our 12 hour bus journey. This was from Jo'burg to Nata where we camped for one night and then carried on up to Maun known as the 'gateway to the Delta'. So we finally arrived at Nata at 8pm. We had a really nice dinner at the lodge getting to know our group and then we went to bed all ready for the next day.

S.A. Mountain Range (Photos get better, promise!)

 

 

 

Day 2: Up early and off to Makgadikgadi Bird Sanctuary (part of the Makgadikgadi Pans) which are part of the Kalahari and are one of the largest salt pans in the world. Although we didn't actually see that many birds we did see some flamingos and some wilderbeast!  

 

Back to Nata Lodge we went to pack up our tents and load the trailer (here we changed from the big truck we travelled from Jo'burg in, to a land cruiser and trailer. This trailer was stuffed with everything we needed: our bags, food, tents, cooking utensils, cool box, camping chairs and yes our toliet which we needed when wild camping (simply a fashionable seat with a hole in the middle and a hole in the ground!) So off we went for our first night wild camping in the Makgadikgadi Pans.

 

About 20km after we have taken the turning off the main road Ed, our guide, stops to pick up some elephant poo and teach us all about its uses (including floor polish and insect repellent). It was then we heard the loud HISSSSSSS. Yes, you guessed it, we had a flat tyre. In the middle of the wild African bush. With elephants. And lions. And it was getting dark. But never fear, there was a spare tyre! So Ed, with the help of the one other guy on our tour, quickly whipped off the flat one and got the spare tyre ready to put on. It was then they realised that one was....also flat. Ed was out of mobile coverage range and the radio in the car wasn't working so we were stuck!

 

Meanwhile us girls were all taking photos of the nice sunset so forgive me for not knowing the ins and outs of what they were trying to do next (see photo of a few of us standing on a tyre, had no idea why they asked us to do that). The long and short of it was, we had to set up our tents right there on the side of the track. In the morning Ed got up at sunrise and ran back until he got mobile coverage to ask how to fix the tyre.

 

In the Pans feat. land cruiser

Very dry soil!

Flamingos!

Holding a dung beetle - dont worry its dead!

View (taken whilst the guys were fixing tyre!)

Helping fix the tyre (thats me in the background

standing on it)

 

 

Day 3- So after Ed managed to fix the tyre by changing something (typical girl eh) it was around 11 so we just went straight onto our camp at Maun. Once we arrived we set up camp, had some lunch and went into town to pick up some snacks and water for our next 4 days in the Delta.

Donkeys and Cows casually room the roads in Maun

The river view from the Maun campsite

Waiting for the truck after we bought our snacks in Maun.

 

The day I left MaP...

So, this was almost a month ago which feels very strange! My last day was also the last day of term and so the school timetable was a little different. It was registration for the pupils, then SPE sign up for next term and then a whole school assembly which was 1-2 hrs long. It had a lot of presentations/performances which were there to sum up the term. There was also a goodbye thing for me with two students making a speech which was very touching saying things like I am now part of the MaP family and will be sorely missed (am not ashamed to say I did get a bit teary!) They also gave me a present which consisted of a neckalace, waterproof (which they said was for the English weather!), t-shirt and a small quilt of the map of Africa which is very pretty and soon to be hung up in my room!

After the assembly I said goodbye to a lot of people, lots of hugs and photos. One year 7 came up to say thank you and goodbye to me which was so sweet. The whole day was a bit of a blur and it feels very strange to think that a lot of the people i met and became such good friends with I wont see again. I do plan to stay in contact with a lot of them though!

That afternoon I had my flight to Johannesburg. This flight was not great but as you will learn from my next post compared to the 4 seater plane into the delta its nothing! When I arrived at the airport there was a driver that was meant to be picking me up. BUT (classic African attitude) there was no one there...

Now if this was me stepping off the plane straight from the UK i would be panicking BIG TIME. But after spending 3 months in Botswana I was pretty used to this chilled attitude and i guess a part of me had got more chilled so i just kind of stood around for a bit. Then after a while I thought maybe i should ring the lodge to check someones coming and they rang my taxi guy and he turned up!

So I arrived at the lodge and opened my bag to sort it out and found out there was a MAJOR SHAMPOO EXPLOSION. nightmaree. But i sorted this, I met my group, we had dinner and then went to bed ready for our early start to begin our tour!

The TAs (back left and front left are the day
TAs)

Shams (other PE teacher) and I

Me and Clara

Me and some of the basketball guys

Miss Mange (boarding house mistress)

Naomi (currently qualified for swimming youth Olympics)

Bruce (his hair has been dyed yellow because he lost a bet where he said the house team L could not win inter house football and if they did he would dye his hair yellow, and then they did)

Last Weekend and Week at MaP

So the last week has been and gone and it all feels very strange! Tomorrow is our last day but consists of only next terms SPE sign up and a whole school assembly which is about 2 hours long with various performances, speeches and presentations.

But back to last weekend! Saturday was the Fun Day. This was, as the name suggests, very fun! Us TAs and boarders helped out with many stalls, I helped with candy floss and front of house. I also took part in the Basketball Tournament 3 on 3 and although spent most of the time wondering what an earth was going on and chasing after the person i was meant to be marking i did actually score a basket! Although sadly my team did not win the tournament (I was with two of the American teachers, Pete and Mike). On Sunday i skped, went to one of the malls with Adjoa and Tamara to by some things for my trip and we grabbed some lunch at Nandos. Monday evening all the TAs that board and Vas (she TAs but doesnt board) went to Bull and Bush for our last meal out together. Monday night is 'rib night' where you get two racks of ribs for 6 pounds! I could only eat about half of mine-it was so big! This week in PE lessons they have been 'free lessons' aka let the students pick what they want to do and we oversee. I have taught them Belly Rounders though and they all love it! I think that shall be my legacy haha. I have also been preparing a short powerpoint to show the Drama Students as there is a Drama Trip to London in the holidays. I am just telling them a bit about London and the UK aka it rains a lot and we love sandwiches and cafes (there are almost no cafes here and supermarkets dont have a whole aisle dedicated to sandwiches, unlike us.)

For some reason this week seems really busy when actually i havent been doing any more than usual! I have been also doing the make up for the school production called Shaka Zula. It was on Tuesday, Wednesday and tonight is the Teachers performance which should be very very funny! I watched the performance Tuesday with all the boarders (we got in for free woop) and it was very good, they even use a real baby rather than a doll in one of the scenes (and he played his part very well, crying the whole way through!). Last nights dinner was Nandos, paid for by the school as its the end of term, as you can guess this caused much excitement within the boarding house!

So just to remind y'all i dont really know when I am next going to be able to update my blog. I leave for my tour thing Friday and as its camping for the majority of it I wont have internet access. I think I will get it when we stay at a lodge in Victoria Falls (for the 25th,26th and 27th) so i might be able to tell you all about my travels then! Otherwise if you are desperate to hear what I am doing go hunt my family down as I will be texting them updates. Wow this is very strange, I am very excited for my travels but it feels very weird to be leaving MaP!

Right, now I need to get on with packing and many other things. I cant believe I leave tomorrow!

I hope you all have a fantastic few weeks!

This just gives you some idea as to how busy i have been, I wrote this yesterday morning and I am only posting it now. Sorry for the lack of photos- I havent had the time to upload them!

Time is Flying! :(

So last weekend it was the Easter break. So we broke up Thursday afternoon and then came back to school on Tuesday. I was originally meant to be going camping with Virginia and her family and some of the other families to Moremi Gorge but this fell through when one of the cars broke down about an hour before we left so we couldn’t go and instead I just stayed at Virginia’s house for the weekend. Nevertheless it was really nice to just chill and have nice home cooked food! Some of the things that we did included watching films, playing board games, playing basketball and baking with Clara (Virginia’s daughter) including making foccia bread (so fancy I know) we even had pancakes for breakfast one day mmm. Friday evening we went to the Jobson’s (one of the other families who live on MaP site as the parents are teachers) for dinner - to eat up the bolognaise that Sally had cooked for us to eat at the Gorge! Monday I went to the cinema to see Lincoln which was fun. Then one of the best parts of the weekend was the fact they asked if I wanted to stay for Monday dinner before I went back to the boarding house and we had ROAST CHICKEN. I was in heaven!

This week has gone very fast and I cannot believe it is Friday tomorrow (a week till I leave MaP). I’m going to save the nostalgia for my last post but I can’t believe how fast the weeks have gone by! Today it was the ISSSA Swimming Gala and MaP won for the 7^th year in a row!! I was a timekeeper (v.important of course hehe) It was very fun coming back into school with Shams holding the trophy up and the driver beeping the horn. All the kids hanging around the front of school were clapping and cheering. On Saturday there is a fun day (aka a fete to us Brits), organised by sixth form with all proceeds going to the services the school runs like Makgassa Reading and Naledi Feeding. The money raised means these services can firstly, keep running and secondly buy things like more books. Anyway I will tell you more about it and how it goes in my next post. Can’t believe it’s my last weekend at MaP!! L

ISSA Basketball Weekend

This post is a short one sadly as not much to say due as i did a mid week post.
The only other thing i can remember from the week was being the scorer for the friendly U19 basketball game against another school on Wednesday. Little confusing at times considering I didn't always understand what hand signals the umpires were doing...

So the previous weekend I went with the U19 Boys, a U19 B Boys team (which was actually our U16 team) and Girls basketball team to ISSA, a school in Mafikeng South Africa. It was another tournament but unlike last time we left Saturday morning at 6. The tournament started on the Saturday and was the pool stages. I spent most of the time with the boys as Bruce wanted me to do a stats sheet for each player i..e how many baskets they made, how many they missed-things like that. Our U16 team lost all their games but put up a good fight considering some of them were only 14, the Girls lost 2 out of the their games they played on Saturday and the U19 Boys won all theirs coming top in their pool. That evening we went out to the Mall to get dinner-many of the Senior boys buying three main meals (and they ate them all that evening!) The next day it was the semi finals for the boys whilst the girls and the junior team played their position play off.  The senior boys sadly lost the semi final-they were all very angry with themselves after and so was Bruce! Nevertheless it was a fun weekend but unfortunately I did come away with rather bad sunburn on my back-although it isn't painful which is a good thing!

Today I was also scorer for the U14 basketball games after school which are actually hilarious to watch because they are so bad (sounds harsh but very true!). At one point the other team attempted a shot at the wrong basket!
This week is only 4 days due to Easter (they dont have creme eggs here!!!!) and this weekend I'm going to Moremi Gorge with the Parkers and some of the other families which will be fun.

Hope you all have a good Easter! xx

Makgassa Reading

So today was the last Makgassa Reading so i took my camera only to get some pictures. I cant remember whether I have previously mentioned but we do two things at the school. We read with the students and teach them basic computer skills as well. Today there were a lot of primary school kids and some even younger. They were very curious with a. the books and b. my camera so what started off with reading slowly progressed into a photoshoot with them holding up their books! When we left i couldnt get on the bus as there were about 5 kids actually hugging me around the waist and on the shoulders, I dont know whether this was an attempt to see the pictures/take more pictures or just stop me from leaving but it was very funny. Chaba and Milton also told me after that they were all saying "white girl, white girl" in Setswana. Imagine if in the UK a load of white primary school children starting saying "black girl, black girl" to someone-that would probably make the news!



Chaba and Milton teaching
some of the Makagassa students about Excell





Some of the Makgassa Students (they are holding their
lunch in their hands-chicken)



Botsalano Pictures



South African Sunset




Waterbuck (recognisable by the white ring on its bum!)




Giraffes!




RHINO





Wilderbeast




Kudu (recognisable by distinct large ears)




Friday morning sunrise



We went out for a meal Friday evening to Primi
Piatti. For some reason in this photo my
cheek looks really swollen but its just sunburn and
the flash-not a good combo!

Adjoa was in a tennis tournament Friday afternoon we went to
go watch. She came 4th in singles and 1st in
doubles!



View from our campsite



View #2



Camp





the toliet-an experience!




view from toliet (just to clarify i didnt take this whilst
i was on the toliet!)




Samantha, Clara, Safiya and me!




Cooking our breakfast on the fire



yum!