Gordon’s Sister
Because my mother-in-law was
lonely with no one else around the house she went and “adopted” a little
girl. Her name is Grace or No-no as we
all call her and she celebrates her 7th birthday next week.
I am not quite sure how this all works
but mom has company and the little girl is looked after and is attending school
in Standard (Grade) 1. The biological
mother lives about a 20 minute walk from here and apparently was 17 when Grace
was born. She was not bothered about the
little one getting an education and is pregnant with her 4th child.
Grace and Gordon have become best
friends and are usually not more than 5 or 6 feet apart. Of course it helps that Gordon has an IPod
with games and videos on it that must be totally fascinating to the little one.
Surprisingly Gordon is happy to
hang out with Grace and in the evening he will help her go through her school
work book and practice her English.
In a classic case of irony,
several times I have heard Gordon say “pay attention” or “focus!!”, something
that I have said to him myself too many times to count. Now he should have a feel for what his
parents go through back in Trenton.
Primary School
School starts at 7:50 a.m. and I
decided to walk with Grace to school to see where she has to go and what her
school looks like.
In her little backpack she had
her metal bowl and a spoon. For the meal
that they get at the school. Mid-morning
if I am correct. She carried in her hand
2 slices of plain brown bread, with nothing on it. Apparently her breakfast although she had not
touched it by the time we reached the school gates.
It was a 20 minute walk along
dust laneways and across a tarred road before we got to the school. As we got closer and closer, more and more
kids were emerging from different directions heading for the main gate.
Being winter they all had on
their outer grey school uniform which seemed to consist of grey sweat pants and
grey hoodie with the school name on the shoulders. Many had small backpacks and some had toques
while others had on gloves.
As I turned to walk home, I
passed what I assumed to be a teacher. A
young lady carrying an IPad. We
exchanged greetings and I headed off to have breakfast.
Dust – the good
Walking back from the school to
Mma Binnie’s was easy in theory but significantly difficult in practice. We had followed various laneways and paths to
get to school and without my little guide to follow I was trying to retrace my
steps but backwards. Several times there
were points of decision. Which way to
go, left or right. Then I got the bright
idea that if I looked down in the ground, in the dust, I should be able to see
my earlier footprints.
Sure enough, my New Balance
running shoe has 3 distinctive bars on the rubber sole at right angles to the
foot. A close examination of the ground
indicated from which direction I had come.
A little trick I will have to remember for future walks.
At just before noon today we met
the “architect” for our new house. When
Binnie was getting directions to her office it was indicated she would be
waiting for us outside. After a couple
of wrong turns we found ourselves outside Abdulo and Associates. Waiting in the car park was Baye.
We were introduced to Baye by Binnie’s
sister Tonic. Baye is the wife of the
Minister at Tonic’s church.
Anyway it turns out Abdulo and
Associates is an engineering/design firm employing about 25 employees. Baye is one of the 4 computer draftsmen in the
firm.
Thus she was moonlighting and not
running our project through the business but doing it on the side. Thus the reason to meet in the parking lot
during her lunch hour.
She indicated that she uses AutoCAD
and has a range of templates. She had
studied and learned her skills at the University of Botswana.
With a copy of our deed including
the surveyor’s plan and some notes and rough sketches made by Binnie and myself
she indicated she would draw up a first set of plans for us to consider and
then email them to us as PDF’s.
So I am surmising that she is
going to use the resources at the office to prepare the plans. The question is whether this is going to be
on her time, or the company’s time?
I have to admit that this is not
a new phenomenon in Botswana. It seems
everyone considers themselves to be a business man and has work on the side of
their “day” job.
Binnie’s youngest sister works
for the water authority in a water treatment plant. Not quite sure what her position is. In addition, she and her husband are building
and selling houses around the capital.
If that was not enough, earlier
this year she and a friend went to Hong Kong to buy goods to ship back to
Botswana to re-sell. Apparently the two
of them filled up a shipping container that will take several months to get to
Botswana by sea. I will have to check and find out what line of products they
are investing in.
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