Back to the Land of...

We're leaving Botswana permanently tomorrow. (I guess I'll have to change the name of this blog.) I still haven't posted about our trip to Vic Falls in September or our trip to Kruger Park this year. I will have to finish the posts I started once I get back to the States.
Now that we are leaving, I can think about all of the things I will enjoy about being back in the US. Here are the first few that come to mind:
-- High speed internet access at home!
-- Grocery shopping when I feel like it, even if it's 2 a.m. on Sunday!
-- Gyros!
-- Customer service!!!
-- Sci-fi channel!
-- Fast food that IS fast! (We waited for our sandwiches for 20 minutes yesterday.)
-- Houses surrounded by views instead of walls with electric fences!
-- Mexican food I don't have to make myself!
-- Good Chinese food! (sorry for all of the food references, it's lunchtime :)
-- Limes at the grocery store more than once a year!
-- High quality appliances!
-- Good pizza!
-- Houses that aren't made of concrete!

That's all that comes to mind at the moment. I'm sure I'll think of more later.

To be fair, here are some things I will miss about Botswana:
-- The people
-- Rooibos tea (also called red bush tea)
-- Inexpensive meals at good restaurants
-- Good wine that's low in price
-- Inexpensive, high-quality steaks

Computer problems update

Our computer at home can be used again. Mike was able to recover the most recent pictures and most of our music. He also bought a RAID system online, so now we have 750 GB we can use for pictures, music, and home videos, in addition to the 250 GB internal hard drive. If one hard drive crashes, we won't lose all of our data. Awesome!

Computer problems

Our computer at home is unable to be used at the moment. We bought a 250 GB hard drive from woot.com, so we would have more space for all of the pictures of wild animals we've taken here in Africa. In the process of formatting the new hard drive, the old one that we had all of our pictures and mp3's on was formatted, instead. Doh! I'm just glad I didn't do it. Mike has been trying to restore the pictures and mp3's. It's taking a while. A lot of the mp3's I have on my computer at work, but most of the pictures weren't backed up anywhere. All of our 35mm pictures from about 2001 until we left to come here are online at snapfish.com, luckily.

New Year's

Happy New Year!!! I know I'm a little late. I did start this post right after New Year's. Honest.

Since we had a four day weekend over New Year's, we went camping. We drove about 2 hours, to Botsalano Game Reserve in South Africa. It was pretty nice. Botsalano isn't very large, but that's good when you just have a few days. We're pretty sure we saw every rhino in the place half a dozen times each! We ended up leaving a day earlier than we had planned, because there was nothing new we could see. It rained about half the time we were there. Then the stupid zipper on our tent broke. We've had the tent for years, so I guess it was due to fall apart soon. Now we have to find a new tent. The selection and quality of the tents here isn't that good, though.

Interesting meats

One thing I forgot to mention when I was posting about my first trip to Cape Town was the interesting meats I tried. One night I had what I like to call the Southern Africa Atkins special: ostrich, warthog, kudu, and springbok, plus an antelope sausage. It was all on one long skewer and was basted with quince jelly sauce. It was absolutely wonderful! I probably could have finished all of the meat if I had ignored the rice that came with it. The restaurant was called the City Grill. It was right on the water at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. I had seen crocodile on the menu when I was there the first time, so I went back there again before I left. Unlike the African Atkins special, I wouldn't recommend the crocodile. Maybe it was the sauce they used (cream and black pepper). All I could taste was black pepper. It didn't taste bad, but it was boring.

Back to Stellenbosch

I went back to Stellenbosch, South Africa on August 21. I spent the week working with a contractor down there on the new IPT Register (this one is a .NET version). The goal was for me to bring back a prototype that I could work on. We accomplished the goal.
It was cold and wet the entire time I was in Stellenbosch! The heater in my room certainly got a workout. I got to the hotel (Lanzerac Manor) at 6:30 Sunday night. I didn't feel like driving around to find someplace to eat, so I ate at their restaurant. It was pretty good, actually.
Even though I left the office at 2:30 on Friday (but didn't stop for lunch), I still worked 8 hours of overtime that week. After I left the contractor's office on Friday, I went to a cellar tour and wine tasting at the hotel. I ended up buying two bottles of late harvest wine. One thing I like about being in southern Africa is the price of wine. You can get a decent bottle for much less than in the US. I've bought bottles of wine that I like for US $5-10!
The bad part about the trip was that within a week of getting back to Gaborone, I was sick.

Quick South African business trip

At the end of June I went on a quick business trip to South Africa. My boss, a co-worker, and I left Wednesday after work to fly down to Pretoria for one night. We had an all-day meeting with our CDC counterparts down there, then we flew to Cape Town. We had a meeting with a contractor on Friday, in Stellenbosch (it's the wine country, about an hour drive from Cape Town). Even at the beginning of winter, it was very pretty. We stayed at Lanzerac Manor, which is a working wine estate. When we checked in we received a letter worth a free wine tasting, but we didn't have a chance. We chose to go shopping at Century City (also called Canal Walk) instead. That mall must be close to the largest, if not THE largest mall in Sub-Saharan Africa. It's got everything you could imagine, including a 12 screen movie theatre, and an amusement park across the street. I wanted to go to the mall just to find a leather jacket (which I did).
Saturday morning my boss and I had a meeting with someone else in Cape Town. My flight was at 3. Not only did I not get to eat lunch, but I barely made the flight. There were only 2 people who got on the plane after me. The person we were meeting with would not stop talking! It was 2, I was walking to the rental car, and he was still talking to me!
Friday night we ended up at this Indian restaurant in Stellenbosch. We walked around until we found something that looked good. If you're ever in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and you like Indian food, I highly recommend the Bukhara Indian Restaurant! The garlic naan is not to be missed!

Botswana names

I have been doing error audits of the IPT logbooks for the TB program here in Botswana. (IPT stands for Isoniazid Preventive Therapy, it's to prevent HIV+ people from getting TB. TB is one of the biggest killers of HIV+ people in Botswana, yet the IPT program is free for the patient. It's currently funded by the US government. It's been going for almost three years, but this is the first time the data from the program is going to be analyzed.)
The audits are soooooooooooooo boring! Just about the only thing that makes it interesting are some of the first names (the ones that I can pronounce, anyway :). Some of the interesting English names I've seen: Rope, Editor, Sithole, Pinkie, Stompie, Mosquito, Witness, Striker, Baby, Beauty, a male Lesley, a female Thomas, One, and Oboy. Here at work we have a Tiny and a Spoon. I know Spoon is the English translation of her Setswana name. Probably some of the names in the list above are the English translations, but I'll never know for sure.
Someone told me that Batswana with names of common objects (like Spoon) are from the Northern part of Botswana.