Week 23?

Marg:  Our time in Botswana comes to an end next week  (17th Dec) when we depart for our annual leave in the UK prior to terminating our contract on Jan 6th.  Andy feels he has done all he could for the company and has resigned in order to encourage the Board to find someone else with greater financial and business expertise (or maybe it’s magic that’s needed in this case).

So we’re quite busy at the moment finalising everything both at the hangar and in the house.  Much to my surprise the ‘items for sale’ list we put out on Tuesday last week was almost completely spoken for within 2 days.  The reason I think, is that we have many friends and contacts on the compound here due to the exercise sessions that have been running 3 times each week. And most people enjoy a bargain, so…..  It was just a minor misjudgement that led to me selling the tin-opener two weeks too soon.

Now, of course, we have let go as much stuff as possible and are living with the bare minimum, which means washing up the two remaining knives and forks at every meal and often using paper plates.  The only things left to sell now are the car, and a couple of electric heaters that are naturally not being considered when the temperatures are 36 deg C in the shade.

Now I have just returned from the most amazing tea party, organised by the exercising ladies, who wanted to say ‘thank you’ for the sessions, and loaded me with gifts that will seriously complicate our packing.  They variously claim that dietary advice and focussed exercises are changing their life, appearance, back pain and joint health, not to mention their families’ appreciation of the newly toned figures!  Most of all, though, they seem to appreciate the way the sessions have brought people together. Several of the ladies said they have lived on this compound for a year and hardly spoken to anyone else here in all that time apart from a vague hello.  But now having joined these sessions they have discovered new friends and people to visit, and for the first-time Mums of small babies, support from the older experienced ones.

The group are a good mix of expats from about 8 different African countries plus a few Batswana (plus me).  Maximum ever attendance has been 16, and the regulars are all determined to keep up with the exercise regime after we’ve left.  So I’m teaching them all I can about keeping themselves safe from ill-considered movement enthusiasms. And they are taking it in turns to try leading the group, thinking on their feet (or whatever part happens to be down) in front of a group who are poised for your every next word.  Fortunately I have a number of programmes written out for previous groups (in previous lives and countries) so have been able to photocopy most of what they need to carry on.

 Currently we have no plans for the future except to stay in the UK and recover, attend numerous celebrations of Christmas and a family wedding that happened in our absence, then chill for a while (probably too literally) until something else presents itself.  Many thanks for your interest, concern, and  (you know who you are) prayers.

Week 20

Marg:  There didn’t seem to be very much interesting to say during the past 3 weeks hence the gap since our last blog.  But now we can report some good news on the domestic front at least:

I am picking enough greens, beans and baby spinach to keep our meals supplied and there are many green tomatoes waiting to ripen.

A Rwandese family who escaped from the killings in 1994 and whom we have been supporting as refugees in Kenya (where refugees are not allowed a work permit) have just this week arrived in Canada as official immigrants .  We first got to know them when we were working in Nairobi in 1995 –1998.  They had relocated from their refugee camp in Rep of Congo for the wife to have a tumour removed from her spine, but she was still bed bound and had not had any follow up physiotherapy.  Which is where I got involved.   I was able to put to good use the various walking frames, crutches and sticks we had brought with us from the UK and get her walking and independent again.

That was 16 years ago and they have been attempting to return to Rwanda or move on somewhere else ever since.  The 6 children are now a lot older of course, and 3 are in the North American continent already. After the perpetual fear of police round-ups in Nairobi they are mightily relieved that Canada has agreed to start them on a new life as bona fide citizens with citizens’ rights and safety.

The exercise sessions here are bearing fruit as people report reducing girths, flatter abdomens, smaller clothes, easier walking and movement generally, release from chronic constipation (one of the regular benefits in the long list of the advantages of exercise!) and general increased wellbeing.  They are also bringing their friends from outside the complex so we enjoy a good number now….14 yesterday.

Andy: Things are much the same at the hangar, though we have had the rare occasion recently when a plane has returned from a flight without a list of snags to be fixed before the next take-off.  In general however we are never surprised by the high level of maintenance required by aircraft as old as these are.  This week we have colleagues joining us from Zambia and South Africa to assess possible ways forward for the organisation, so it looks like being a long series of meetings and discussions between managers, board members and advisers.  Must remember to check our stocks of head-ache pills.

Did we forget to mention the weather?  Occasional rain has been interspersed with very hot days, but at least we have had a break from the very hot nights (29 deg C – 84F - in the bedroom) of the previous week.  Fortunately the house has good air-conditioning available, but so far we haven’t got round to using it…

It’s just over 4 weeks until we return to UK for the Christmas break, and no doubt we shall get enough cold weather then to last us for a long time to come…  

Week 16

Marg:  It has been trying to rain here occasionally over the past couple of weeks but has only managed it once for more than about a minute. That time it kind of drizzled for half an hour and just about laid the dust.  But since then high winds have picked up the same dust again and covered everything in sight, especially indoors where windows weren’t completely closed and under doors even if they were. Yesterday I swept the downstairs floor three times before bedtime, to save carrying the dust everywhere else on our feet.

Despite the long dry season and the complete lack of rain since last time (whenever that was) many of the trees here, including the one at the front of our house, are recovering from their winter bareness with a fresh coat of flourishing green.  We have watched a couple of weaver birds building nests in other trees nearby, and greatly admired their neat craftsmanship (craftsbirdship?)   Unfortunately the next time we looked the nests had disappeared, presumably having fallen off the twigs for lack of superglue.  Such a pity after all that work and skill, but possibly these are learners of the art as yet – unless these are intended to be mobile homes and are somehow transported elsewhere when we are not looking.

News from the garden, which is a patch 1 metre by 5, plus two pots (the rest is a paved ‘courtyard’) : I  have picked the first bush variety bean (note the singular)– and we’ve eaten the first baby spinach leaves mixed in a salad.  The tomato plants are bearing flowers and the large brassicas are putting out big leaves for cooking later on.  I’ve discovered that chrysanths planted outside shrivel in the heat here, which has been going up to 37.5 deg C some afternoons, but marigolds thrive so we’ve just bought a few more of those.  So far we haven’t needed to use the aircon as the house is sideways on to the main direction of the sun, and feels cool when we enter, even though indoors gets up to about 28 deg.

The two-mornings-a-week exercise group formed when I asked a few people if they wanted to join me, is going well.   But so far only one man and two women have made it to the evening session, and the second week nobody had turned up by about 10 minutes after the starting time, so I abandoned it.  So the evenings have a doubtful future but I’ll give it one more try.

Andy:  Last week we enjoyed a brief 2 day visit from our son Rob, who had some work in Johannesburg and took the chance to fly up to Gaborone.  Fortunately the airport is only 10 minutes from our house so a lot easier to meet visitors here than in Dodoma which involved the 8 hour drive each way to Dar es Salaam.  I did try to take some time off work but it turned out to be a time when I was in particular demand and the phone hardly stopped.

Anyway, we enjoyed a visit to the little local game reserve on the edge of the city.  In one hour we saw a fair supply of antelope, ostriches, zebra, warthogs and monkeys.  We also had an impromptu picnic in the assigned parking area, and were surprised to learn from the large notice there that failure to pay the extra 60p picnic fee (presumably to pay for the bins to be emptied) could result in 2 years imprisonment.  An interesting variation on the idea of making the punishment fit the crime.

Last week we had two unfortunate cases of mercy flights being requested too late for the patient’s life to be saved.  In the first instance we got the sad news when the plane had flown about one hour of a two hour flight and were able to advise the pilot to turn back.  In the second case the news came through just as the plane landed at the pick-up point.  Both of those were daytime flights but to complete our run of unsuccessful sorties we then had a middle-of-the-night flight to an airport two hours away, where the patient was still surviving but plane was unable to land. This was because the official who was needed to open the airport and turn the runway lights on had switched his phone to ‘silent’ (for a meeting earlier in the evening) and couldn’t be contacted.  The plane had to divert to another airport, and by that time the pilots’ duty time was up so another operator had to collect the patient the next morning. It remains to be seen whether we can get any compensation for the losses incurred in that instance.

Week 13

 Marg: It’s really good living in this gated compound.  The idea of living in close proximity with over 200 other units of people/families is quite daunting at first, but the houses are so spacious and it’s all so quiet and orderly. As long as everyone keeps to the rules, which they generally do, it has turned out to be an enjoyable place to live. The houses are laid out in a broadly oval arrangement, with the central area landscaped and it’s a joy to see in this dry and barren land.  In the mornings before Andy goes to work we can go for a pleasant, brisk walk around, admiring the beautiful flowers and still-green grass, varying our route into figures of eight sometimes.  That’s at 7.15 am.  Then in the evenings (in the dark but with lampposts around) we can walk again in safety and security for as long as we have time for.

With 4 guards on every shift, one of them patrolling unobtrusively around the compound every hour throughout the 24 hour period, clocking into 10 electronic reporting points, it’s easy to feel safe and secure. Having double electric fences surrounding the whole plot also helps.  After the hassles we had with failing security gates and false alarms from electric fences at our previous abode it was an easy choice to pay a little extra to leave all that frustration and uncertainty behind.

The highlight of this week has been the start of a sort of Keep Fit class on the compound, for some of the women who walk round the houses regularly and get a bit bored with the same old route and routine day after day. Feeling rather bored myself with a lone exercise routine a few times a week I thought of inviting some of the walking women to join me in a structured session at the compound ‘Club-house’   The second session was Thursday morning, and now some of the ladies are asking if their husbands could have a class (apparently it is the men-folk themselves who are asking).

Andy: The focus has definitely been on aircraft maintenance this week, with several major projects getting completed and new ones beginning.  Due to unexpected additional work being needed on our main medevac aircraft, we are temporarily unable to respond to any calls from the Ministry of Health. This probably means another dent in this months revenue (and a welcome boost for the another operator who will be happy to take any such flights).

Our quota of pilots will be back to full strength next week following home-leaves and holidays, so we have to hope that all of the aircraft will also be reporting fit for duty very soon.

Week 11

Marg:  The weather has been doing some strange things in the past week or two.  When everyone was claiming winter was over, suddenly we had several mornings of distinctly chilly 7’s and 8’s (degrees) on the thermometer, and the air conditioning unit was pressed into service as a heater.  The sun always shines, of course, so doesn’t feature in weather descriptions as we know them in the UK.  Then a couple of days ago we woke to 18 deg warmth in the morning air warning us of a really hot day ahead.  And so it has continued.  Some people are walking around under umbrellas, and many more sun hats and improvised head coverings are evident.  Rain of some meagre sort is expected in October so gardens are being made ready by the keen vegetable growers, and I have just planted out a dozen tomato plants.  I don’t expect them all to survive, hence the number of plants.

For those interested in birds we have identified quite a few local specialities since being here – pigeons and doves, rollers, two types of wagtail, blue waxbills, hoopoes, plovers, mousebirds, emerald coloured starlings, and different types of sparrow (including the usual garden ones we see at home.) Having one of the few trees on the compound just outside our house gives us an advantage in pursuing this interest. Southern Africa requires a completely different set of bird books, and in many cases the names are familiar but the birds claiming them are very different – in most cases much more flamboyant and colourful. Not being tourist types we don’t have a camera permanently slung round our neck so often miss the chance to take a picture.  You’ll just have to believe us.

A variety styles of child care can be observed among the fellow-residents of our compound, most of whom appear to be expats from around the globe, here on short term contracts much like ourselves.  At the play area today there was a little 2 or 3 year old with his mother, attempting to take his ‘scoot along’ bicycle up the steps and down the slide. Naturally she tried to stop him, but seemed to give in rather easily I thought. He was just poised at the top of the slide when I went over and told him ‘no!’ which did stop him in his tracks, possibly averting a nasty impact between himself and something hard and injurious to his well-being. I felt rather guilty for interfering, but as the friend who was with me pointed out, in the culture of this family the father is probably the only one who gets listened to – plus passing grandmothers evidently.

Andy:  Life at the airport has been quieter than usual lately, as we have had nearly two weeks without any calls for medevac flights. We do check the phones periodically during such times, to make sure they are still working, but there seemed to be no logical reason for this lengthy interruption to what is usually a steady average of 4 flights per week.  Of course it’s a good thing if no-one is seriously ill or injured, but it’s expensive for us to be standing by too long with no work at this end of the country.

Fortunately for our cash-flow and our pilots’ sanity we received a call yesterday to transfer a mother with childbirth problems from Maun to the superior medical facility in Francistown, a smooth hour’s flight in our King Air as opposed to many uncomfortable hours by road.

Week 8

Marg:  It's more than 2 weeks since we last wrote and as that time has included a house move and a weekend away in Francistown for Andy's work (visiting an aircraft owner – 430km by road each way) you can imagine a bit where some of our ‘spare’ time and energy has gone.

We’re getting to know where most things are in our ‘new’ house, and the kitchen especially has been much easier to adapt to because a multiplicity of cupboards makes a logical choice of location for everything more straightforward (and gives Andy a good excuse for not putting things away). We've had to purchase a couple of saucepans due to the buckled bases of the two old ones we brought with us not connecting properly with the solid electric rings of the cooker supplied with the house. I flattened the base of one of them with a series of thumps, but I fear the moment when it may ping out again and launch itself off the stove.

The small tomato seedlings (in a pot) that I've been nurturing have survived both the house move and even 2 days and nights of neglect out in the back yard while we were away. There’s a small patch of soil in our otherwise paved back ‘courtyard’, from which I removed thick, tough grasses using my little trowel and a strong arm.  With a bag of compost it should be ready for the seedlings and some beans and spinach. Some rain is expected in September they say, so with that and the rising temperatures I’m hoping for a smidgen of horticultural success.

We did mention previously what a performance it can be buying a kettle at the supermarket here….appliances once paid for cannot be released until they have been tested, so the shop girl finds a tap to fill the kettle, trots along to a far corner where there’s a socket, we watch the kettle boil AND switch itself off, then she empties it and we depart clutching a hot damp appliance and a soggy till slip. The iron, bought later from the same shop, suffered a bit of a meltdown when tested because the shop girl had forgotten to remove the plastic covering from the base plate.…  she kindly swapped that one for another, successfully tested, and although it goes very cool when trying to maintain a constant temperature, at least it works if you wait for it to heat up again (and it’s guaranteed to do that for a year).  There’s hardly anything electrical here that isn’t from China, as we may have mentioned before.

A little light laughter from the front page of the Botswana Advertiser – a nice smiling lady is advertising printed name badges, but unfortunately the large capitals say NAME BAGDES.  I phoned up the manager and asked if he really expects to sell his goods in the circumstances, but he claimed he hadn’t seen the advert, although he expressed gratitude at being advised of it.  

Andy:  Work at the hangar has been slowed down a bit this week by a team of auditors from the national aviation authority checking our maintenance department for it’s final approval under the newly introduced array of regulations.  Flying has also been less busy than in previous weeks, though we can’t tell whether it’s because there are just fewer serious cases needing medical emergency flights or the health department’s flight budget is getting depleted towards the end of the month.

Week 5

Marg:  The past two weeks have been a mixture of recovering from the flu and catching up with some of the neglected activities while we were down and out.  A slight easing of the winter temperatures has helped our recovery - night times are now varying from 8 to10 deg and daytimes are up to 20 at mid day.  

Yesterday afternoon, apparently encouraged by this slight improvement, the people next door started a 24 hour outdoor party. Canned music blared out at top volume from a sound system right beside our boundary wall, limiting the possibility of sleep until exhaustion set in.  Apparently there is a law limiting noise after 10.30pm but you have to call the police, and of course, we didn’t and nor did anyone else apparently.  

Something that gets my attention a lot here is the way most of the younger women are very fashion-conscious and appear to be vying for height.  Shoes with platforms and/or 4 inch stilettos leave most of them tottering in a disturbing way, causing me a lot of concern for their musculo-skeletal futures.

Negotiations for a house (in a gated complex) which we hope to move into in a week or two, developed in a rather bizarre way this week.  The owner of the house we were to look at on Wednesday morning wasn’t available, so the ‘Estate Manager’ was detailed to show us around.  However she was reportedly in the local clinic seeing the doctor for high blood pressure and was expected to be unavailable (lying down) for the next two hours.  Someone suggested we might go along and see her there in the clinic.  

Much amused by this idea we did venture cautiously into the clinic and asked for the said lady. ‘Yes, go in and see her’, the nurse said.  So as she lay there trying to de-stress and relax she agreed for us to be shown round a second house in the same Complex, which we duly did and decided we liked it. On reporting back to her at the clinic she told us the owner of that house had just been phoning her, begging her to find him a tenant, so she was able to inform him that a ‘very nice couple’ had just gone off to see it.

So with the imminent possibility of agreeing the lease etc we’ve been looking at furniture, fridges, etc,and buying kitchen stuff and bedding - generally spending money in small amounts in preparation for spending large amounts when we definitely have a place to furnish.   

Andy: My predecessor in this job has returned from leave to take up his ongoing official position as Flight Ops Manager, so I’ve been feeling rather less vulnerable about things he knows about but I don’t as yet.  However, he’s been flying nearly every day since he returned so I still have a lot of questions to discuss with him.  

Aircraft reliability seems to be improving, fortunately, though not through any conscious activity on my part.  We have faced a lot less doubt about availability for flights over the past couple of weeks, which has improved our confidence when responding to medical emergencies.

For some reason a lot our medical flight requests arise during the evening, presumably when doctors at the regional hospitals start to worry about caring for their most serious patients through the night and decide to get them transferred to a higher level medical facility..  This means that a certain amount of oversight of night flights falls to me, which includes taking text message updates and tracking aircraft on the computer system.  We’ve found these activities not always compatible with us both getting a good night’s sleep – and with the all night party this week it can be a bit much…

Week 3

Marg:  Sorry we didn’t get around to any blogging last week…  A virulent kind of flu is doing the rounds and we have been among its victims.  We took it in turns to suffer – my bout started last Friday and is only slowly losing its grip more than a week later.  Andy’s attack was rather more short and sharp, starting on Monday night and just about abating this weekend..  The medical advice was bed-rest and keep warm, but the latter is easier said than done in an unheated house in the middle of the Botswana winter, where the outside temperature has been between about 2 and 8 deg C in the night.  OK, the sun is always up in the day but the houses here are specifically designed to keep the inside cool, which is certainly true of this one. The inside of a cave is more like it.

We have been very glad of the little blow heater we brought with us and have bought a few other things to try and keep snug – including an electric kettle for the bedroom.  It seems all electrical goods here are made in China, but so far the cables haven’t melted like the extension lead we bought in Tanzania.  An odd thing here is that most of the houses including this one are equipped with UK type 13 amp sockets, but the only appliances available have round-pin 15 amp plugs, which is the South African standard.  Until recently appropriate adapters were available, so there was no problem but they now seem to have been withdrawn, presumably because you can’t logically get 15 amps out of a 13 amp socket, or something..  Anyway, suffice it to say that while we have been transferring equipment between the bedroom and other rooms during our sick leave it has been a minor nightmare trying to get everything plugged in.

Andy:  It’s been a bit of a struggle keeping up with work needs while trying to stay home and warm, as there is a never-ending need for me to sign things.  My office at the hangar isn’t the warmest of places in the mornings, so I have been glad of the reason to keep my visits there to a minimum.  They have kindly provided me with a small electric heater, but so far the lack of an adapter has prevented me using it – just when I needed it most.  It would be easy to just change the plug, but that would invalidate the guarantee, of course. (Remind me to describe the palaver you go through getting your new kettle or iron tested at the supermarket before being allowed to take it home…)

The flying programme suffered its own down-turn this past week, as one pilot was declined his work permit in the final stages, leaving us with 3 operational Cessnas in the north of the country and only one and a half operational pilots.   Meanwhile spares and maintenance issues have been affecting our KingAirs used for the medical mercy flights from Gaborone, and the engineers are struggling to keep them ready to answer the emergency calls.  Hopefully things will pick up during the coming week, ourselves included.

Week 1

Well, here we are beginning another blog, this time from Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, which you probably know is a landlocked country of 2 ½ million people surrounded by South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.  We arrived on June 25th via Nairobi, and were once more amazed that all our luggage (6 pieces this time) arrived intact, though among the very last items on the carousel after all but 2 other passengers had left the airport. We are here for a job very similar to that in Tanzania, with similar numbers of expat and locally employed staff, plus a similar fleet of small and slightly larger aircraft.  The main difference at the moment is the weather, as  we have arrived right in the middle of a southern African winter with temperatures plunging uncomfortably low from evening to mid morning.   Central heating is a rare thing here because 'the cold only lasts for 2 months' we're told!  So it is encouraging to hear that later on the summer temperatures will shoot up to 40 deg C.

Marg: We seem to be settling in reasonably well, though being in temporary accommodation (house of a family on leave) means that we shall have to do all that again later. Quite a bit of stress and time wasting has been caused by the electric gate whose remote controls don't work reliably, raising doubts as to ones chances of re-entering after leaving.  Climbing over the wall isn't an option either due to the electrified fence! To complete the security array we negotiate an outer grill door with padlock and ordinary front door with dead-lock.  Not a place to exit in a hurry and I'm not sure what it says about the gentle people of Botswana to be so heavily fortified.  However, unlike Tanzania, nightguards are not normally engaged for private residences.

Another domestic highlight featured the washing machine, which turned out to be broken the first time I tried to use it to spin some hand-washed laundry (which came out wetter than it went in).  A reliable handyman duly pronounced the machine completely dead - bits of locking wire and screws from the pockets of an aircraft engineer living here before we arrived had disabled the pump and due to its age parts are no longer available.  It helpfully and enthusiastically rinsed the floors of two rooms during the damage assessment, all adding to the excitement. Never having had a washing machine in Africa before it's not a problem for us but will be for the returning family who have 3 small children plus a new baby.

Andy: Work has had it's moments of excitement and stress, much like the MAF Tz experience, and since Tuesday evening I have been left in charge as the previous (interim) Manager departed for leave in USA. Maintenance issues seem to cause more delays here than I am accustomed to, partly because the lack of stock and finance means that parts are only ordered when we can afford it, and then there is often a long wait for parts to arrive, mainly from USA.