June 23

JOLENE:

I guess I haven’t put my 2 cents worth in for awhile, so here goes. Last night we drove to Johannesburg and stayed at the Baptist Guest House, which we had stayed in various times when we were here before. After some trouble finding it, we had a good nights sleep. There was a bathtub, so this morning I did a VERY nice hot soak. We let the kids sleep in till about 8 (we’ve been getting up by 6:30 or so), packed up and ended up spending a bit of time at an internet café – seems like the outside world of home & bills to pay, people to contact, etc, now & then has to interrupt our otherwise forgetting of that world!

Late morning we went to Gold Reef City and after finding out the gold mine we had thought we’d go into was rather expensive & the tour didn’t start for two hours, we went to the Apartheid Museum which was there also. I think we were glad the mine didn’t work out because this was very worthwhile seeing. We followed a tour guide and were in there at least 2 ½ hrs & could have spent much more time than that. It’s amazing what it used to be like, and not all that long ago either. Blacks totally unable to go where they wanted without their passbooks, having to live in certain areas, not voting, etc. There are still many problems, but it seems that there is hope.

And now we are on the way to Gaborone, which is what we have all been waiting for. Lisa & Renae say they are going to kiss the ground when we get to the border! It is very exciting to be back to a place that holds so many good memories for us. Sometimes I wonder whey we ever went back to the states…. At least until the younger kids could have had that experience to remember too. We’ve met some Tswana people & have told them the girls Setswana names (all of them have a Setswana middle name since they were born here), and the people are so thrilled by that.

I’ve been unable to contact the Mennonite guesthouse in Gabs where we’ll be staying tonight to get directions, so I guess we’ll figure that out when we get there!!

Jolene

NICOLE:

Figuring out when we get there is right! We have been arguing about who gets to write about the night of June 21, 2007, and it looks like I’ve won! It was a night we will not soon forget. So after the Apartheid museum (which was amazing), we headed out toward Gaborone. We had been in email contact with the couple that is in charge of the Mennonite guesthouse there, and had reserved the next few nights there. However, by now we were all desperately hoping they had forgotten we were coming, or given up on us and were not staying up waiting for us, since we had spent a lot more time than we had anticipated in Joburg, and we had no phone number to tell them not to wait for us. We had also been told the South Africa/Botswana border closes at 10p.m, so we kept spurring the driver on, wanting to get over before it closed. Well, we made good time (or so we thought…) We got there a little after 9:30, thinking everything is just hunky-dory. However, we had forgotten about Botswana time. Apparently time doesn’t work the same way in our respective cultures. It had already taken Dad almost an hour to buy a few fuses and more than 2 hours trying to close a bank account. We should have known. Things went fine for awhile—we all piled out of Tau (we have finally agreed on a name for our Land Rover-it’s Setswana for “lion”), went into customs and got our passports stamped. No problem. As we were about to go over the border Dad noticed a sign that said “VAT refunds” (VAT is value added tax. It’s 14%). He had been told he could get that tax back for buying Tau, so he went into the office to check it out. He was in there quite awhile. Then he had to go back to get a paper stamped in customs. I don’t know what was going on in that place, but he did not come back out for quite some time. It turned out to be 9:55 before we left South Africa and entered into the Unknown between the two countries. Let me tell you, it’s a scary place. Once out of the gate of South Africa, we entered into this place with a few buildings, places you could park, or roads you could just drive through, and no signs. Mom and Dad kept laughing and saying, “Welcome to Botswana.” So Travis just kind of started driving, not knowing where he was going. It wasn’t long before we had a spotlight shining in our eyes and heard a man yelling. Oops, wrong choice. We backed up and decided our best choice would probably be to just park Tau and try one of the buildings. But before we could do that, another man started waving from another direction. Turns out it cost 60 Pula to cross the border, so we needed to change our Rand to Pula before we went into customs. He told us this then he said, “Sorry, we’re closed. You must sleep on the border.” It was `only 9:55 and his sign clearly told us he closed at 10:00. But I guess they can do whatever they want. Looking back at what happened that night, sleeping on the border might have actually been more pleasant than what actually happened…Anyway, Dad chased after him and worked his magic, somehow returning with 60 Pula. He probably said a few words in Setswana. That usually does it. We found that out a few minutes later, going through customs. The woman behind the counter was all business and no smiles until she glimpsed our Setswana middle names in our passports. The whole place came alive—everyone grinned at us and got really excited, with lots of exclamations of “Aye! Aye!” I knew those names would come in handy some day. But before we ever got to customs we ran (literally) to a wrong building once and the wrong side of the right building once. By this time, most of us were laughing so hard we could hardly run, thinking about what we must look like, running blindly to various buildings, trying to get somewhere that would just let us into Botswana. We finally made it, and only a few minutes late!

We still didn’t know where we were sleeping, and after many U-turns and confusing directions, we made it to the guesthouse we thought we would be staying in. But turns out there are locked gates everywhere, even in front of the Mennonite Guest House. We were just about to drive out of town and camp along the side of the road somewhere when we decided try out a B&B right across the road. Dad once again worked his magic, and we got a pretty sweet reduced deal (although we had some pretty significant problems with this deal come morning). We ended our crazy night around 1:30 a.m., seven of us cozily squished in a double room.

Nicole