Botswana Bulletin – Ninth Edition

Botswana Bulletin – Ninth Edition

“Namibimania!”

June 21, 2005

Hello again from the see-sawing between hot and cold, Gaborone, Botswana!  Well its official, I don’t like winter in Botswana.  Well, maybe it’s just my circumstances.  Every morning I’ve been getting up and making my way to the Flying Mission office on my beloved motorcycle I have appropriately nicknamed “Mighty Mouse”.  It was fine for a while but now that it’s really starting to get cold (nearing 0ºC) that 10-15 minute ride is beginning to be less and less inviting.  I know a lot of you will dub me a “weather wimp” but going from 40ºC weather for about eight months then to abruptly change to 0ºC was a bit of a shock to my system.  Luckily winter doesn’t seem to last very long here.  From what I’ve been told after July it starts warming up again.  The crazy thing too is that during the day it’s usually around 20ºC meaning you never really adapt to the cold.  It reminds me a lot of the Rocky Mountains.  Having had the experience of being a tree planter in northern BC I can recall waking up to very chilly mornings in my tent.  But, just like here in Botswana by midday it would feel like summer again.  I guess the difference is I wasn’t driving a motorcycle at 90km/h during those cold mornings!  Oh, how I miss my car!

Hmmm…I always seem to start off talking about the weather.  Strange.  Anyway, I imagine many of you are itching to hear about my travels to the country of Namibia.  Wow, what a cool adventure!  Once again I’ll try and keep things short, but you all know how I am. 

On May 19^th me and a fellow short-termer from Germany (Mario Kunze) travelled from Gaborone to a place called Kasane in north eastern Botswana.  It was a great ride, we had asphalt roads all the way up.  We did have a few moments of adventure once it got dark though.  Kasane is located in the middle of a park called Chobe National Park (named after the large river that runs through it).  Wild animals are very abundant in this area making it very dangerous to travel at night (and making us very foolish to be driving at night).  We had a close call with a giraffe that had decided that the middle of the road was a good place to park.  The worst part of the trip was when we came upon a tree branch in the middle of our lane.  Mario was going a little too fast and lost control of the car trying to dodge it.  Luckily there was no embankment and the thick sand on the side of the road slowed us down before we could hit anything.  The rest of the trip was relatively safe so it was good to get the close calls out of the way early.

We stayed at Kasane for the night and left for the country of Zimbabwe (the country just east of Botswana) the next morning.  We had heard about some beautiful falls in Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls) and wanted to check them out.  It definitely lived up to the hype!  It was beautiful!  I think Niagra Falls is bigger but these falls seemed to be a farther drop (about 100m I believe).  I especially liked that it was less commercial than Niagra Falls.  There were very few people there with us and civilization was nowhere to be seen.  When I went to Niagra Falls and had to hack my way through the thousands of people and the endless amounts of gift shops, it was nice to just be able to go and enjoy nature without all the hustle and bustle.  It was an extremely wet experience though.  The mist that is created from the falls is so heavy that’s its almost like its raining.  Mario and I were both soaked to the bone afterwards.  After drying off we drove back to Kasane and stayed there for the night.

The next day we visited a crocodile farm just outside of Kasane.  I’d never seen so many crocodiles in my life!  They had hundreds of them!  The owner wasn’t there so unfortunately we didn’t get much of a show.  Apparently the owner plays with the crocodiles when guests come.  It was still a fun experience though.  In the afternoon we booked a boat tour down the mighty Chobe River.  It was so cool, we were the only ones on the tour!  We saw lots of hippos, elephants, giraffes, crocodiles…it was crazy the amount of animals we saw.  We got to watch the sunset from the boat which was a good end to the day. 

The next day we traveled to Maun, a village located in north-central Botswana and the only other Flying Mission base in Botswana.  We stayed with some fellow Flying Mission missionaries and picked up our only other travel companion, Christoph, who is also a German short-termer with Flying Mission.  While in Maun we were able to take a game flight over the Okavango Delta which is a very popular part of Botswana because of its lush environment and density of wild animals.

We left Maun the morning of the 24^th and headed to a village close to the border of Botswana and Namibia called Mohembo.  Christoph new the owner of a boarding school there so we stayed the night at the school.  The school was more like a camp than anything.  There were a number of ex-patriots from Europe there so we were able to socialize with them in the evening. 

The next morning we finally crossed into Namibia!  Our destination was Grootfontein, a smaller town located in north eastern Namibia.  During my time in Johannesburg last month I met a fellow SIM missionary named Erin Kerber who works in Grootfontein.  She invited us to stay with her while we were travelling which was great.  She took us to a nice restaurant there and introduced us to some of her friends.  It was a great first day in Namibia!

The next two days were spent in Etosha National Park, located just northwest of Grootfontein.  This place was incredible!  Tons and tons of animals, no fences, you are literally out in the wild.  They have these amazing “salt pans” as well which are incredible to see.  Describing it sounds lame because of the bareness of the environment, but it was really interesting to just be out in the middle of nothing like that. 

After Etosha we travelled to a place called “The White Lady”.  Some bushmen painted some rock paintings there that are relatively famous so we decided to check it out.  The paintings were, as usual for Africa, in very bad shape.  They were hard to make out and didn’t seem to make much sense (horses with human legs, that kinda thing) but the hike was a welcome change from sitting in a car all day.

We left for the Atlantic coast the morning of the 29^th.  The city we stayed in is called Swakopmund and is right along the coastline of the Atlantic.  We stayed in a great guest house right on the beach.  It was good to see the ocean again.  It reminded me a lot of my time living on Vancouver Island.  The first day we basically just checked out the town.  Namibia used to be a German colony so my travelling companions felt right at home.  They found a nice German restaurant for us to dine at.  Being so close to the ocean I had to order fish.  Translated into English the fish I ate was called a “Stone Biter”.  I had never heard of it, but man, was it good!  Once again it reminded me of Vancouver Island and all the fresh fish I ate during my time there. 

The next day it was time to get rowdy!  We rented some quads and took them out into the sand dunes which are some of the largest in the world.  It was great to be on a quad again, I haven’t driven one for a long time so it was fun to ride one again.  We also did some “Sand Boarding” which was another familiar sport to me.  The sand is so fine that its just like tobogganing on snow.  They give you a thin piece of wood with a bunch of wax on one side then you lay down on your stomach facing head first down the dune.  As your life flashes before your eyes someone pushes you and you fly down to the bottom of the dune going around 80km/h.  Were talking super fast tobogganing here!  The only bad part was climbing back up the dune.  Have you ever tried climbing a sand hill?  It’s so frustrating because you keep sinking!  Its a great workout though and a lot cheaper than buying a stair climbing machine. 

After a fun couple of days in Swakopmund we left for the capital of Namibia, Windhoek.  Windhoek is a very developed city and it was strange being back in “normal society” again.  With each of us being “city slickers” we did what came natural when in a developed city, watch movies!  The movie theatre was super cheap so we watched 3 movies in two days!  I hadn’t seen the new Star Wars film yet so we watched that.  We also watched Vin Diesels new movie (well new to me) The Pacifier.  We also watched Bruce Willis’ new movie “Hostage” which was a great thriller.  I thought some of you may find it humorous that these are “brand new movies” here in Africa.  I imagine some of these movies have been out for months already.  We also found a really cheap mini-golf course which I really enjoy so we checked that out.  I found out Germans don’t seem to excel at this sport.  I totally destroyed both of them!  They didn’t even know how to hold the club properly!  Come to think of it I can’t think of any German’s in the PGA so I guess it shouldn’t have seemed strange to me that they wouldn’t know how to play golf.  We also had a chance to visit the church that the directors of Flying Mission (John and Yvonne Lubbe) started about 10 years ago.  It was cool to see the fruits of there labour and how the church had developed over the years. 

Well after Windhoek it was time to start heading home so we drove back to Maun and dropped Christoph off, then headed back home to Gaborone.  It was interesting arriving “home” in Gaborone.  You don’t realize how you get accustomed to your surroundings after a while.  It was a good feeling to feel at home in Botswana.

Well, after arriving back in Botswana it was back to work.  One of the latest developments in my responsibilities here has been leading the youth at Open Baptist Church.  Some of you may remember me asking for prayer about this.  After prayerfully considering it I decided to accept the position and do what I can to help develop the youth group.  I’m hoping I won’t get burned out taking on this new task.  I am happy to help but I know that sometimes I get too involved in things and end up in over my head.  Please pray for me as I take on this new responsibility and that leaders would rise up in the church to help me take on the burden. 

With that in mind, I have also been officially accepted as a church leader at OBC (Open Baptist Church).  This means that in the near future I will be either an elder or a deacon in the church.  If you told me a year ago that I would be an elder in a church in Gaborone, Botswana I would of told you that you should be institutionalized.  What a responsibility!  However, after discussing it with current church leadership and with God it seems the right thing to do.  So, I’m officially a leader now I’d say.  No more fooling around, no more sitting in the bleachers, its time to lead.  And I’m scared to death!  I’m thinking that I’m entering another moment in my life where I have no choice but to depend on God.  What safer place is there to be?  Time to hang on to God for all I’m worth!

Ok, my last letter was kind of rushed because I was preparing to go to Namibia so this time I’ve remembered to put in my prayer requests.  I’m hoping that people didn’t think that I had no prayer requests that month and stopped praying for me!  Here they are in no particular order:

1)  Pray for my responsibilities as the new youth leader at OBC.  Pray that I will be able to budget my time between FM and OBC well.

2)  Pray for my responsibilities as a church leader (elder or deacon, not sure yet).  I feel pretty inadequate in this position and will need encouragement. 

3)  Pray for my duties as acting IT Manager.  Pray that I will fit into Richards spot well while he is away.

4)  Pray for this country.  The currency here (The Pula) has depreciated recently.  Pray for the effects this has on the people (food prices have already begun to rise).

5)  Pray for a spiritual revival in this country.  The national football team won an important game yesterday so the streets were littered with people partying.  What a joy it would be if the city would rejoice like this in the churches!  Pray that these people will stop partying and start turning to God instead of alcohol which is helping the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS.

Ok, I think that is it for now.  Once again I want to close by saying how much I’ve appreciated all your support.  A friend of mine (sorry to embarrass you Nicole) sent me a simple letter explaining that she is praying for me.  The fact that someone would take the time to send me a letter just to let me know that there praying for me was a huge encouragement.  So thank you Nicole, and thank you to the many others who have been corresponding with me through snail mail and e-mail.  One day I may actually send you a reply!  Thanks again everyone, and God bless you.

Peace and prayers,

Graham Crawford <><