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Botswana trip, part II: Hot in the city

Botswana, ,
Botswana trip, part II: Hot in the city
My lasting impression of Botswana will be one of heat. Not that heat is always a bad thing. I like heat. But even I, with the memory of a snowy New Year’s still far too close for comfort, found it a little oppressive to begin with. Once the first few days had passed, it was glorious. It is worth noting, though, that sunscreen and plenty of water are not optional on a December/January trip to Gaborone.
The beautiful heat also makes for beautiful rain. The thunderstorms can be spectacular. The first few days there was no rain. Clouds built up but nothing happened. The middle of the afternoon was the hottest, most uncomfortable time of day. Hot and oppressive, waiting, waiting, waiting for the storm to break. And then, finally, a few days in, we were all sitting in a hot, stuffy room when suddenly there was the sound of rain on the roof. The skies opened and it rained. People rushed outside and danced in the brief shower.
After that, it rained almost every day. Perhaps the most spectacular was New Year’s Day, mid-afternoon when the heavens opened in a great cloudburst and water poured down for ages. It was so beautiful and so welcome that the South African guys rushed into the rain – a picture-perfect moment of rain in Africa.
The event I was in town for was hosted almost exclusively at the University of Botswana, so I didn’t see much of the country. The UB campus is nice, with several new buildings and several more in progress. I couldn’t help noticing that an awful lot of the construction is being done by Chinese companies. I suppose South Africa’s economy is sufficiently complex that it is less obvious here, so I notice far more when I’m in other countries the extent of Chinese influence in Southern Africa.
Which is not to say that South Africa is not playing its own fairly significant economic colonialist role. The Mall we visited a couple of times was filled with South African chain stores. The supermarkets, the restaurants, the movie theatres all brands from home, their ownership pretty much all South African. We had lunch one day, a fellow South African and I, with a couple of Scottish visitors who were a little taken aback that the steak house in Botswana’s capital advertised as the ‘Favourite restaurant of the South African family’. As convenient as this kind of travel can be – there are ATMs in Botswana of my own bank, for example – it always leaves me a little uncomfortable.
One thing we seem to have definitely exported successfully is our liquor laws, particularly the ones about not selling alcohol on a Sunday or public holiday. In fact they seem to be more serious about it – some regions of South Africa have passed by-laws relaxing these laws a little in recent years. The only reason I know about Botswana’s draconian approach to alcohol is because we found ourselves trying to make a traditional punch over the New Year’s weekend. Twice. The first time was on New Year’s Day (a Saturday), which is a public holiday in South Africa, too, so not that surprising. The second was on the following Monday, when, much to our surprise, it turned out STILL to be a public holiday. Liquor prices have also increased 40% in recent months. Apparently the president is a teetotaller.
The time was too short, the schedule too hectic to form much more of a lasting impression, except to know that this is another Southern African country to which I have no doubt I will return. I sat in the departures area of Gabs airport, waiting for my flight, with several new friends, from the US, from Ireland, from Russia, from Cuba. Many of them would never be back. I would. I will. For me, Botswana is part of my world, part of my reality, perhaps even a part of my identity I hadn’t found until now. So I leave knowing I’ll be back, a smile at the heat and the tiny airport and pocket full of pula to bring back the next time around.

My lasting impression of Botswana will be one of heat. Not that heat is always a bad thing. I like heat. But even I, with the memory of a snowy New Year’s still far too close for comfort, found it a little oppressive to begin with. Once the first few days had passed, it was glorious. It is worth noting, though, that sunscreen and plenty of water are not optional on a December/January trip to Gaborone.

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A quiet visit to Grahamstown

Adventures, South Africa, ,

It is a dusty, warm winter afternoon as we wandered between the tombstones. I find cemeteries interesting. It’s not a fascination with death; it’s the history. This cemetery was used by the settlers in Grahamstown – those families who climbed off the boats in the 1820s and began a new life in what was to become a thriving educational, judicial and religious centre in the expanded Cape Colony and the young Union of South Africa. There are many important people, like the man who brought the first printing press to Grahamstown. To be honest, though, it is the ordinary people that fascinate me: the parents of Mr so-and-so who came over and lived their last 20 years here, the woman born in Dublin who married a Grahamstown farmer, the family that lost four children before any reached the age of 5. I was struck by just how many young children, infants rest here. There has been lots of talk about infant mortality rates in Africa just lately. We forget just how recently South Africa had the same, terrible problem.

Later, two of us went driving. Grahamstown is a university town and in all the very happy years I spent there, I didn’t explore very much outside of town thanks to lack of car. This time we could. We drove up past the monastery. The monastery wasn’t there when I was at varsity. Or, at least, I didn’t begin hearing about it until much later. It’s a landmark now. The road wound past and kept going, past crystal-blue dams and tall trees, through dips and up hills and over railway tracks, until we reached a point so high we could see for miles and miles. The road was beginning to get worse, so we stopped and got out. Not even the breeze was disturbing the incredible, breath-taking quiet. One of the things I missed so much, longed for so often in Korea was a quiet, empty landscape stretching to the horizon. This landscape stretched forever and forever – rolling hills right to the sea, a glimpse of which was visible in the distance. We could see a house far away to one side and the aloes and dry winter grass and thorn-trees of home. It was a perfect moment. The afternoon was warm and sunny. The sky was so huge and so blue above us. The view stretched all the way to the sea.

On the way back, we chatted – that gentle, rolling conversation of old friends. We went looking for coffee and found everything shut (except Wimpy) on a Sunday afternoon. Grahamstown was so quiet. It felt so familiar and so gentle. Grahamstown always does that to me. The beautiful old buildings – Commem, the Grocotts Building, the Cathedral – as you’re walking up from the bus stop. The University rising at the end of High Street, so reassuringly solid and the same. Getting the bus at Kimberley Hall, where I spent so many, many hours. Some part of me wishes I could live in Grahamstown but opportunities are scarce and chances are slim. That doesn’t mean I won’t visit again and again, particularly for as long as one of my favourite travel-mates is there to share those little moments of gentle exploring.

Sunday in Seoul

Adventures, Food, Seoul, , ,

After a lovely early dinner/late lunch in Insadong, we decided to head out to Itaewon, the expat ‘party central’ of Seoul. It was, of course, raining. And also Halloween, which although something I have never paid much attention to, is rather a big deal in a country that seems slavishly to follow American trends and definitely a big deal in an area of Seoul frequented by an awful lot of foreigners. As a result the evening was a little strange. I think the best way to explain it – which is unfortunately impossible because I simply don’t have enough pictures – would be a crazy collage of witches and monsters, devils and princesses, crowded pavements, spiderweb decorations in clubs, queues of people everywhere, rushing and wandering, and lots and lots of rain. Given the craziness it was, unsurprisingly, a rather late night, including a 2 hours wait in the rain to find a cab home. We both, consequently, slept in on Sunday morning.

Which was bliss. I was staying in the guesthouse at Anna’s university (where she lives and teaches) and the room was warm and comfortable and a lovely place to wake up on a chilly but (marvellously) not-raining morning.

Eventually we did get and after a cup of coffee, headed out into the world. We were off in search of some sort of yummy early lunch. We initially tried the area around where Anna lives but clearly the local places had all decided that it would be pointless to be open on a Sunday morning if your clientèle was students, so we hopped a bus and went in search of somewhere else. This was the first time I’d really seen the city without rain and looking out from that bus at the beautiful streets and houses, all settled into mountain slopes and dotted between tall trees, this may have been the moment when I started to fall a little in love with Seoul.

We got off the bus and went to look for a restaurant Anna had previously spotted that she was keen to try. It was a very pretty building serving, from what we could gather, Korean food. At the entrance, however, we got caught up in a crowd of other people and it all seemed very busy so we quietly slipped out and headed on down the road, keeping that for another day ‘yet knowing how way leads on to way’…

After walking for a bit we spotted a Chinese restaurant that looked interesting. We also spotted a branch of my bank, which made me happy as I could draw a little more money, just in case. Along the road in front of the Chinese restaurant and the bank were flowers in pots along a fence. This is a fairly common sight here. Korea does pavement gardens and most of them are pretty and, at least at the moment, full of flowers. This bit of pavement had flowers in some of the pots but alternated with them were – I kid you not – very pretty ornamental lettuces or cabbages.

The restaurant was on the second floor and we were led past a mini-garden with water features to a quiet table looking out over the road – a particularly pretty view – and brought jasmine tea and the menu. We decided to try the set-menu (minimum two people). Sets are fairly common in Korea and this one turned out to be a multi-course feast. We started with Wanton soup, followed by Dimsum – some prawn, some spicy vegetable. Next they brought out a seafood hotpot each – packed with all manner of sea creatures and delightfully rich. This was followed by one of my favourite Chinese flavours, sweet and sour pork. Along with this we each got a big bowl of onion and soy sauce noodles. Finally, dessert – sesame-coated sweet balls of something with the consistency of marzipan and a dark, sweet centre which may have had something to do with beans. And of course coffee. A very good meal, far too large to finish everything, at a very reasonable price. We went home happy and settled down to let the lunch digest. At that point, we split up for a while, Anna to sleep and me to wander around her campus with my camera.

I have mentioned before that I have a deep love for university campuses. Apart from the fact that they are generally (barring RAU) beautiful, there is a feeling of being away from the real world that I struggle to find anywhere else. As with so many campuses, this one is tree-filled and full of attractive sets of buildings and has a tendency to have strange sculptures dotted around, sculptures which I’m sure are very meaningful but which generally turn quite quickly into just another quirk of the campus, as with, for example, the bicycles at Rhodes.

This chilly autumn afternoon meander took me along just the roads of the campus. There is a very pretty mountain behind it, but I wasn’t feeling energetic after the large lunch, and anyway, there was so much to drink in, enjoy and photograph right there. I stopped for a few moments and watched a soccer match on astro, enjoying the sensation of normal students doing normal things on a Sunday afternoon. At one point, I found a water-feature near the entrance of the university complete with a statue of two dragons almost intertwined over a large, round ball. All around me, and looking up at the mountains, the autumn colours were brilliant and beautiful. Walking along past some benches, I was shouted at by a large crow, trying to make me go away. At some places on the campus, it is possible to look out over the highway passing below and other, autumn-coloured hills across the little valley. I wandered for about an hour and then headed back to the room.

By this time, Anna was up and we set off again to see a little more of the city. We did attempt to see another palace but it was closed, so we walked through a market instead. This market, like so many here, is really just an alley between buildings, or a road with hawkers on it – I’m never quite sure how to describe them. The shops sold everything from underwear to party-hats and the hawkers a range of socks and shoes and street-foods. We walked for a while, popping in and out of shops, and then decided to grab some early dinner at a Korean restaurant. I had crumbed pork-cutlets with cheese and spent most of the meal fighting with the chopsticks. I really am trying to become proficient with chopsticks but I still feel silly whenever I pick them up.

And then it was time to head home. We got a little lost and – because I was cold and ready to give up – took a taxi home instead of continuing to look for the bus and spent a very happy few hours drinking coffee and chatting. A lovely gentle Sunday in a lovely gentle city, and one I could happily repeat very soon.

The next morning I we got up and had an early lunch at the restaurant on campus – I had yummy seafood bibimbap with all sorts of sea things including delicious baby octopuses (octopii?) – before catching the bus back to Seoul station, buying a ticket and hopping on the KTX back to Daegu. All in all a super weekend with a lovely friend in a city I definitely plan to visit again.