Botswana Bulletin #52
“Learning Processes”
June 6, 2012
Prayer
Requests
1)
School theft – Praise that after a costly theft occurred at our Aircraft
Mechanic school we were able to replace the items that were stolen with
insurance money. Pray that the Lord
would protect our school from future break-ins.
2)
Lesang – Praise that Lesang wasn’t injured during his attack and that
through this tough situation he saw the Lord’s hand in it. Pray for the youth at Open Baptist Church that
they would continue to grow closer to the Lord through the Bible Studies and
that they would continue to develop their musical skills and be able to lead
worship at church in the future.
3)
Rerotlhe – Praise that the orphan children were able to receive warm
clothes for the winter months ahead.
Pray that the children would continue to receive good care at the
village day care facility.
4)
Annual General Meeting – Please pray for the Flying Mission board as
they prepare for the annual meeting. The
meeting was postponed from June 9th to July 28th because
it was felt there wasn’t enough time to adequately prepare for the
meeting. Pray for wise decisions to be
made about the way forward after some tough issues arose last year.
Winter
is Here!
Greetings one and all from an increasingly
cooler Gaborone, Botswana! That’s right,
it actually can get cold in Africa.
Who’d a thunk it?! For those
coming from northern Canada this may not sound cold but the locals here are
definitely bundled up these days.
Daytime temps are still around +20C so nothing to worry about
there. Last night it got down to +4C
which doesn’t sound that bad either but when your house doesn’t have central
heating it can a bit chilly. I compare
it to the times when I’ve camped in the Rocky Mountains. Typically day time temperatures are
reasonable but those cold mornings can be pretty chilly. I’m very thankful for my warm showers in the
morning! Anyway, it’s been a while
since I last updated you all let me get right to it.
The
Airport ID Process
Those who have lived in Africa will totally
relate to this. For those who haven’t,
this will give you a little insight into some of the “procedures” we go through
to get everyday things done. One of my
duties here at Flying Mission is to support the IT infrastructure at our hangar
location out at the airport. Since the
hangar is located in a secure area of the airport you need to apply for a pass
in order to get through the security gate.
So, in order to do this you need to fill out an application and provide
a number of documents showing that you are who you say you are. No problem, right?
Well, I gathered all the needed documents
and went to the airport terminal to have them processed. It was at this point that I found out that
the office which processes the application is conveniently open only on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh, and also
just in the morning. Well, it just so
happened that it wasn’t Tuesday or Thursday when I was there so I had to make a
return trip later in the week. After a
few days I returned to the office to submit my application. Unfortunately, I was told my application was
incomplete as I hadn’t submitted a form from the police showing that they ran
my fingerprints to confirm that I wasn’t a criminal. It’s at this point when my brain starts to
tell me, “Well, they do this all the time.
The procedure should be relatively quick.” Think again brain! Since I knew I only had a limited amount of
time to get my fingerprints done before the airport office closed I headed for
the nearest police station which was the police station located right at the
airport. Once I arrived I was told that
they didn’t have the necessary equipment to do fingerprints and that I would
have to go to the police station located in a part of town called
“Broadhurst”. So, I drove to the
Broadhurst Police station. Once there I
got discouraged because there was a massive queue out the door of the
office. Apparently, once this technology
became available everybody wanted to use it.
So in order to get anything (even a job in some instances) they want you
to get your fingerprints checked. Well,
this means that everybody is going to this one office to do this. Since there wasn’t much I could do about it I
just stood in line and waited.
Eventually, it was my turn. There are a number of different scans he had
to do so the officer started guiding me through them. My right hand scanned fine but when we
started scanning my left hand it wouldn’t accept the scans. The officer told me that it was because my
hands were sweaty and he advised me to go and wash them. I didn’t think my hands were sweaty at all
but since he was the boss I went to go find a bathroom. I discovered that there was no public
bathroom at the Police station so I ended up finding a tap in the corner of the
plot and used that to wash my hands.
This didn’t make sense though because now I’ve just made my hands wet
since I had no soap or towel. Wasn’t the
problem that they were sweaty, meaning that they were wet? Anyway, after performing this procedure I
returned to the office to have my left hand scanned. It still didn’t work. The officer told me that the left hand is
harder to scan because it is closer to my heart. ??? I
had no idea what he meant but I informed him that there wasn’t much I could do
about that without scheduling a massive operation to get either my heart or my
hand moved. Eventually I gave my own
opinion as to why I thought it wasn’t working.
When the officer went to scan my fingers he was grabbing my hand and pressing
my fingers down firmly on the scanner.
In my opinion he was pressing too hard and this was causing the
problem. I asked him if I could try
scanning my own hand without him mashing my fingers into the machine. He complied.
Before long my left hand was completely scanned. It was then that I was notified that the
printout of my scans wouldn’t be available until tomorrow. The reasoning is because the queues are so
long they just scan you and go on to the next person. Then at the end of the day they start the
printer and it prints out all the forms.
So the next day I headed back to the office and picked up my
fingerprints. I had assumed that they
would have scanned them through a database as well and that I would have been
cleared. Wrong! I now had to take this form and go to a
different police station clear across town.
So I drove across town to this other police station to see if I could
get my prints cleared. Once again I was
greeted by a massive queue. After
waiting about an hour it was finally my turn.
I handed the documents to the officer and he left that office to go to
another one. He came back and told me it
would take 3 days for my prints to be cleared and I could come pick them up
then. After 3 days I returned to the
office and waited in the queue again just to find out that my prints weren’t
ready and that I would have to come back again the following day. The next day I waited in the queue yet again
and after a long wait I had my cleared fingerprints.
Unfortunately, it was Friday which meant I
couldn’t submit my fingerprints to the airport office until Tuesday
morning. So I waited until Tuesday
morning and I went to the office to get my airport ID. My documents were processed and cleared so
the man took my picture then told me I needed to pay for the pass at the
accounts office. I couldn’t believe
where I had to go to get to the accounts office. It was in a secure area of the airport so I
was glad I already had a visitors pass or else I would have had to arrange
one. To pay for my pass I had to go
through the domestic gates meaning I went through security (the x-ray machine)
and then walked out one of the domestic gates onto the tarmack. From there I was just told to walk to the
left until I saw an office. So after
walking past parked planes and such I arrived at the account office. After paying and getting my receipt I then
had to walk back to the terminal, through the domestic arrival gates, past
baggage claim and back up to the airport office. When I showed him my payment receipt he gave
me my brand new airport id pass! The
entire process from start to finish took about 2 weeks. Fun hey?
Mathata
(Setswana word for “Problem”)
I’ve spent over 5 years in Botswana now and
it’s beginning to get harder and harder to have any “firsts” but I had one at
the end of April that I thought I should share with you. One morning I needed to go visit BTC
(Botswana Telecommunications Company) because we were having problems with our
internet connection. BTC is located
pretty much in the middle of downtown and it’s notoriously difficult to find
parking spaces as there is simply a lack of them. After driving around for a while I noticed
that close to the BTC building there were some people that had just parked
their cars on the side of the road.
Since that was what people were doing I assumed it was acceptable and
followed suit and parked on the side of the road. After going in to BTC and getting our internet
connection sorted I headed back to my car.
As I got in to my vehicle I heard someone
shout and looked to see who it was. It
was a police officer. He asked me a
strange question, “Is this your car?”
Considering I was sitting in it I figured the best answer would be to
say yes. Once I had said yes he asked me
for my drivers license so I gave it to him and he proceeded to copy my name
down on a form and then handed it to me.
It was a parking ticket! If
you’ve seen how people park here you’d understand my amazement. I mentioned in a previous letter that I saw a
Combi (taxi van) parked on a sidewalk before.
So I’ll admit that my understanding of legal and illegal parking is a
bit shaky. So I asked him what I had
done wrong and he told me that I was parked in such a way that I was
obstructing traffic. As cars were
whizzing by us uninhibited I asked for clarification as I couldn’t see how that
was happening. He showed me the barely
visible paint on the road and explained that my drivers side tire was across
the line thus parked in the roadway. I
tried to explain to him that there were many cars parked on the side of the
road like this all the time and he showed me a stack of tickets waiting for
them as well. It seemed unfair but I
could see that he wasn’t going to budge and let me off the hook. So I asked him how much the ticket was
for. “1000 Pula.” My heart sunk. For my Canadian friends reading this that is
about $130 Cdn. I think the largest
parking ticket I ever paid was something like $35. I told him the fine was outrageous but at
this point he spotted another person heading to their illegally parked
car. It was a beautiful white South
African woman. I thought perhaps she
could use her beauty to sway this officer from giving us tickets. However, after arguing for a while it was
clear that even this woman’s beauty wasn’t going to be enough. The officer did explain to us though that the
fine is a fixed traffic violation fine.
Basically what that means is if you doing something illegal on the
roadways, regardless of what it is the fine is 1000 Pula. I told him that I should have done something
worse like running over a pedestrian because then I would have at least been
getting my monies worth! Anyway, considering
that there are a few times when I should have been paying speeding tickets and
got away with it, I went to the police station and paid my fine.
School
Theft
For those who don’t know, Flying Mission is
currently running an Aviation Mechanic school to teach young people how to
repair airplanes. Part of my workload
shortly after arriving was to equip the school with 2 computers in their
library which would allow students to do research and assignments while at
school. Shortly after installing the 2
computers somebody decided it would be a good idea to break into the school and
take the computers. The school also had
2 TV’s in their classrooms which were stolen as well. Thankfully, all the equipment was insured so
we didn’t have to find new funding to replace the stolen items (the cost of the
stolen items totaled about $3000 Cdn).
About a month after the theft I was able to get my hands on 2 new
computers and 2 new tv’s and was able to get them setup back at the
school. In addition I was also able to
get a photocopier for the school which also works as a network printer which
gives them the ability to print off assignments as well as make photocopies of
textbook pages as there is a shortage of textbooks. It was a good feeling knowing the school was
back up with the tools it needed.
Easter
Visit
I had my first chance to play host to
friends of mine from Namibia during Easter holidays. My friends Gilbert and Sara Collins along
with their 2 young boys stayed at my house for a week while they were visiting
friends in Botswana. Gilbert works for
the Peace Corps in Windhoek, Namibia but before that post he was stationed in
Gaborone. While in Gaborone the Collins
attended Open Baptist Church G-West which is where we met. It was great to see them after a long time
apart and I look forward to “returning the favour” and visiting them in Namibia
in the future.
Lesang’s
Attack
I have been volunteering my time at Open
Baptist Church G-West as a youth leader on Saturday afternoons. Typically we do a bible study at 2pm and
after an hour or so we have been doing worship team practice where I’ve been
teaching 2 young guys how to play the drums.
The youth are excited to learn and the goal is to form a worship team
consisting of young people that can lead worship on Sunday mornings. During one of our bible studies a young man
named Lesang shared a testimony which I’d like to now share with you.
Lesang was walking in an alley on his way
home from school when he noticed a few rough looking guys walking towards
him. As the lead man got closer to him
he watched in horror as the man pulled out a long machete and proceeded to swing
it at him. Lesang did his best to fight
his attacker off but being a smaller guy his attacker eventually overpowered
him and they began to wrestle on the ground.
As the seconds ticked by the inevitable happened and Lesang ended up
pinned on his back with his attacker on top of him. It was at this point Lesang realized that
fighting was futile and as the man began to raise his machete for the finishing
blow, Lesang yelled out, “Stop it! I’ll
give you whatever you want!” At this the
man lowered his machete and got up.
Lesang rose to his feet and began giving his attacker his phone, his
money and handed him his backpack. The
man took the phone and the money but wanted to be shown what was in the
backpack. “What’s in the bag?!”, he
shouted. Lesang thought for a moment and
said, “Just some school books and my Bible.”
Lesang wasn’t sure why he specifically singled out his Bible, it’s just
what came out of his mouth. The attackers
demeanor changed, “A Bible? Did you say
you have a Bible?” “Yes”, was the
reply. “Are you a Christian?” “Yes I am”, was Lesang’s answer. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…” the attacker started
handing back Lesang’s phone and his money.
Confused, Lesang asked him, “What are you doing?” The attacker replied, “You are not the one we
are looking for”, and he even started to wipe the dust off of Lesang’s
clothes.
Lesang’s comment after telling us his story was
that he now knows that God truly is watching over him and that His Word is
mightier than any machete. I thought
about it for a bit and asked our youth pastor Ngugi, “How many sermons do you
think that incident was worth?”
Sometimes the best teaching we can receive is teaching without words.
An interesting factoid regarding this story
is Lesang’s name. Lesang is the pluralized
form of the word “Lesa” which roughly translated into English would be like
saying “Stop it!” Since this is
pluralized it would be like “Stop it all of you!” Most Batswana children have stories that
explain why they were given the names they have. I’m not sure what his birth story is but in
this case his name seemed to fit the story of his attack.
Rerotlhe
I was privileged to be invited along to
hand out warm clothes at one of our orphan projects. The project is called “Rerotlhe” (roughly
translated “We are together”) and is located in a small village called
“Segerelela” about an hour northwest of Gaborone. The warm clothes were donated by the United
Free Church of Scotland. It was great to
see these orphan kids being well taken care of at the day care. The chief of the village was there to thank
Flying Mission for organizing the clothing.
Trip
to Zambia
Last month I had the privilege of heading
up to Lusaka, Zambia to help with some of the IT needs at the Flying Mission
base there. I was there for a full week
and had a great time and was glad we were able to get a lot of work done given
the short time frame. I thought I’d
share with you a quick little story of something that happened during my time
there.
Our base is located to the southwest of
Lusaka in an area known as “Makeni”.
It’s a rural area and our base is situated on an old farm where we have
some housing, an office, a hangar and a runway.
On the farm we have a large mast where at the top we have a wireless
antenna which provides us with an internet connection. further down the mast we have a few other
wireless antenna’s which beam our internet connection to various buildings in
the area. One of those antenna’s beams
the internet to our hangar. Well one
day this connection stopped working so Joel, our chief engineer, asked if I’d
take a look at it. After doing some
testing which included climbing up to the top of the hangar to check the
receiving antenna, I figured there must be something wrong with the cable that
goes from the receiving device to the chief engineer office. The cable runs down the side of the building,
then goes underground and comes up on the other side of the hangar close to the
office. Upon inspecting the cable it
became clear what the problem was.
Something had chewed on the cable!
Either a mouse or a rat decided that our network cable would make a nice
snack which in essence destroyed the cable.
I tried to cut off the eaten part of the cable but the cable then became
too short to work. Thankfully, we had
thought ahead and buried 2 cables under the hangar in case one failed. So we just switched to the second cable and
all was well. Joel mentioned he’d get a
trap and try to get rid of the rodents.
Well, as luck would have it the rats/mice were quicker than Joel and
they ate the second cable before we could get traps laid. Unfortunately, this happened just before my
boss, Richard, and I were due to leave so we didn’t have time to lay new
cables. Fortunately there is someone
there that has experience making network cables and so he should be able to
repair the broken cable. Just one of the
many fun things you get to see being a computer techy in Africa!
Annual
General Meeting
After much discussion the Flying Mission
board decided to postpone its annual meeting from June 9th to July
28th. Please be in prayer for
our board as they prepare for this meeting.
Flying Mission has been going through some tough issues so pray that at
this meeting we would be united as a mission and that we would make wise decisions
about the way forward.
Thank
you
In conclusion I want to take time again to
thank all of you who support me as I continue to do the work the Lord has given
me. Thank you for reading this letter
and for praying for me. Thank you for
your financial donations which have allowed me to work in the country for over
5 years now! Your efforts are most
appreciated! God bless!
Peace and prayers,
Graham Crawford <><
For more info on SIM Canada visit: www.sim.ca.
For more info on Flying Mission visit: www.flyingmission.org
The opinions expressed are
my own opinions. They are not
necessarily the opinions or views of my employers, SIM or Flying Mission.
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