Rob's blog: 5.17.2006

A picture of Botswana showing off it's "California-like" quality.

Early Morning
Dawn arrived with tan light in the window.
That's all I could see from my aisle seat: tan light. The pilot
announced that we'd be on the ground in Johannesburg in less than an hour.

I got perhaps four hours of sleep on the flight. I remember
looking at my watch at 3:00 AM, then having my mouth suddenly
completely dry. Looking again at my watch, I saw that it was 6:00 AM. I got up, drank some water, then lay back down. Then I noticed that my arm had gone to sleep in its awkward position on the seat rest. Looked at my watch. Just after 7:00.

Evening
I was picked up at the airport by LBT missionaries Richard and John Cook and Kedra Larsen. On the way out of Gaborone, we stopped at several places to pick up needed things. They made a stop for me at the one Apple store in Botswana to pick up some software I could use to diagnose my computer's continued inability to stay started up. The manager of the store told me they didn't have any software in stock and he'd never heard of "Norton Utilities." Not sure what to make of that.

I had heard that... and was strangely pleased to see that... Botswana looks much like Southern California where I grew up: A thick carpet of yellowed grass, scrubby green trees, bouldered mountains off in the distance. I even saw a lot of the small, flat-roofed buildings you see all through the inland part of the state. Richard told me that a lot of fruit is grown around here. "I can't eat bananas in the States anymore. Not after eating these!" And sure enough, the banana he handed me was among the finest I have eaten.

I made it until 7:45 PM before, so exhausted that it seemed like I was looking at the world through an agitated swimming pool, I took my leave and retired to the attic bedroom which had been prepared for me.