Weekend update

It's 7:30PM so I don't want to get too bloggy. I try to keep that to daylight hours, a quirk of mine. But I thought I should give a quick update on the weekend events.

We made it to Sepopa, no adverse events due to the broken parking brake (which was fixed today, yippee). The Rueta Festival was amazing. I hope to have the pictures ready for viewing soon. Maybe tomorrow. I had to give a speech on Saturday, about 6 minutes (double, if you count the translation). I spoke on the value of speaking your mother tongue and teaching it to your children. Maybe I'll post my speech text up here... who knows? It went over well. The days were long but we were in the shade both days (Saturday and Sunday) so that was fine. Saturday was speeches, Sunday was the competitions (dance, choirs, poetry). Just amazing.

Also I met a really cool gal named Cynthia, a minority rights lawyer. She's doing amazing work and is also funny and sweet. We enjoyed our time with her very much. Made some other great contacts as well. More on that will probably come in a future newsletter.

And Friday night, while we were in Sepopa, someone tried to break into the house where we've been staying in Francistown. They didn't succeed. They somehow got the gate (massively heavy, electric operated, with a security alarm) off the tracks, making enough space for a person to fit through. They did not, however, make it into the house. We figure that the 3 dogs finally deterred them, once they entered the yard. I'm still trying to figure out why the dogs didn't deter them sooner. Is it possible that those 3 dogs, who bark all night long if you don't kennel them, somehow managed to stay completely silent while loose in the yard while someone was lifting the front gate off its track? Truly, my mind is boggled. Sigh. I suppose I should just be glad that they deterred them, at any point in the process.