Botswana Book Tour

When Ron and I arrived in Johannesburg we were pleasantly surprised to find a library at the Area Office containing a wide variety of history books, particularly about our current continent. As a break from deeper historical reading, we have completed nine of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series which are set in Botswana.

With all offices closed this past Tuesday for a public holiday, Ron and I were invited by another senior missionary couple to drive five hours west to view some of the landscape and sites mentioned in the series. This was a delightful tour in Gaborone and the village of Mochudi. Along the road we passed a family of small monkeys frolicing together. Our first afternoon we visited Zebra Way, Kgale hill, President Hotel and Riverwalk mall. Botswana is a pastoral country with cattle and goats grazing undisturbed at the border crossing, on main streets of the capital city and along roadsides.



The next morning we drove northward to Mochudi through a countryside of green grassland with trees. We found the hillside road closed which would take us to Phutadikobo Museum so inquired of the woman and her daughter walking toward us of an alternate route. The daughter directed us about six blocks back where we parked near the Kgotla or traditional court of Tswana tradition with Kgosi or Chief at its head. We walked a dirt path past some dwellings to a hillside where we climbed up stone steps cut in rock to the museum at the top. About halfway up the hill a baboon jumped from an adjacent tree to boulders alongside us and was gone.



In a former school dedicated in 1923, the museum contains remarkable historical displays, traditional life utensils and tools, and tribal relics from the 1800s. Our tour guide was a graceful, articulate 29 year old woman who shared some of the history of the Bakgatla-gaga-Kgafela people who migrated in the late 1800s to Botswana from South Africa. Returning to our car a woman tossing water from a basin into her dirt back yard smiled and waved at us as chickens scratched in the scruffy grass. It was a wonderful interlude among trusting and helpful people.












At a craft market of exquisite baskets we found this display of materials used by the artisans.



Autumn is upon us as nights get colder and days consist of sweater weather. This week found us again teaching missionaries at the Johannesburg Mission Training Center following a security assessment of the mission home.

Today in our Sunday School Family History class Ron completed registering three of our five class members into new.familysearch.org on a laptop with a 3Gcard as I worked with them on individual questions. These five women are in our age range with little or no experience on the computer. They are excited to be inputting the names of their parents and grandparents for temple ordinances to be completed for them.