People
People
We have met so many people here whose lives are so different from my own, not better but different.
Some of them have led very exciting lives going to dangerous or very isolated places. It would take chapters to write about all of them and I don’t really know them that well yet but let me talk about one couple we have met here. It is early days yet so we don’t know that much but I am getting bits and pieces.
George met this couple first at the bird club and I have since met the woman at the WI and Pilates class and them both at the friends of the museum club. We have been round to their home for a braai. And it is some home. They bought it 16 years ago and built it over that time. They have a magnificent outside area for braais with a bar; fridge, thatched covered roof, no walls and enough room for thirty people to sit comfortably. We have some pics of it which we will put up.
They are in their mid to late seventies I would guess. She was born in county Mayo Ireland and was a teacher in London for a year and came out to Nigeria in her early twenties to do a year’s voluntary work and has never gone back. Ron worked for Barclay’s bank and was sent all over the world for them. When he was 30 he met Grace in Nigeria and they married and since they have travelled around Africa wherever his job took them. When they got to Botswana about 30 years ago they liked it so much he asked Barclay’s if he could stay here and they have.
They have two children who she educated at home till they were about 10 then they sent them to boarding school. He explained they had a choice to give the children a good stable education or move all over the place with the parents and so they chose the stable education for the children. The kids both live in the UK now. He said it was Grace’s teaching in their formative years that was the making of them.
He is retired and says he doesn’t do much but here is what I know he does:
He is on the board for the school for Deaf children. They raise money to keep the school going (it is the same one I have been to help give out clothes. I’ll tell you about that experience in another blog).
As part of the rotary club, he runs a food kitchen every Saturday where he feeds 250 children every week sometimes from his own pocket if they haven’t raised enough that week to pay for it.
He is a ‘friend of the museum’ and was the chair for 10 years. He was a founding member who got the museum opened in the first place. He, along with another woman, is raising funds to build a culture centre here around the museum. They want an outside building to host cultural events like dances singing or African story telling. He wants to have an education centre for children to come to learn about their cultural heritage. At the museum meeting I went to, one of the local Motswana people (he is a self proclaimed King of Kings and well known in Francistown) said he was angry that so many expats were on the committee (the chair is a local Motswana black man and the secretary and third generation white Motswana white woman). At the time I thought he made sense cos there were a lot of local people at the meeting. But none of them including the King of Kings volunteered to help. Ron was a bit peeved by the comments cos he has been trying for years to get more people involved especially Motswana. There is quite a bit about expats in the paper. Quite a number of commentaries ask for the expats to leave and that there are too many of them taking the jobs from local people.
He is an active member of the Catholic Church and helps with hospital visits.
He is working with another woman I have met (her story is amazing one of the pioneers here) to get a small nature reserve off the ground here to protect birds and animals from the encroaching town.
He supports some aids orphans directly.
And he is in various clubs like the bird club. Yet he tells me he doesn’t do much. Before you think he is a saint and really boring with self righteousness. Let me tell you he is not. He has a great sense of humour and drinks like a fish which in my book is ok.
He gets very angry when white people come out here and just take a good living from the country and give nothing back. He sees lots of white people come here and earn an awful lot of money (most are employed by companies from developed world and earn European style wages and often pay no tax). He and his wife certainly don’t do that.
They have lots of stories of the early days here when it was much less developed with fewer facilities. Francistown doesn’t have a theatre, cinema or many other leisure facilities but there is still plenty to do if you want to get involved.
He, like most others here, has had staff who have died of Aids. I think I have said it runs at around 68% for some groups. They all have theories about why it is so high here but most of them revolve around the Africans (at least here in Botswana) all like to have mistresses as well as wives. Apparently there is a growing trend here for educated black women not to marry. They stay with a guy till they have a couple of children and then get rid of him cos the men are lazy and spend their money on their other women so they just don’t marry them cos then the men can’t get their money or their dowry price.
I am loving hearing all the tales and different thoeries about this and that. People out here that I have met at least are not politcally correct. If they think it they say it. I juts love such openness. Just does not happen at home.
We have met so many people here whose lives are so different from my own, not better but different.
Some of them have led very exciting lives going to dangerous or very isolated places. It would take chapters to write about all of them and I don’t really know them that well yet but let me talk about one couple we have met here. It is early days yet so we don’t know that much but I am getting bits and pieces.
George met this couple first at the bird club and I have since met the woman at the WI and Pilates class and them both at the friends of the museum club. We have been round to their home for a braai. And it is some home. They bought it 16 years ago and built it over that time. They have a magnificent outside area for braais with a bar; fridge, thatched covered roof, no walls and enough room for thirty people to sit comfortably. We have some pics of it which we will put up.
They are in their mid to late seventies I would guess. She was born in county Mayo Ireland and was a teacher in London for a year and came out to Nigeria in her early twenties to do a year’s voluntary work and has never gone back. Ron worked for Barclay’s bank and was sent all over the world for them. When he was 30 he met Grace in Nigeria and they married and since they have travelled around Africa wherever his job took them. When they got to Botswana about 30 years ago they liked it so much he asked Barclay’s if he could stay here and they have.
They have two children who she educated at home till they were about 10 then they sent them to boarding school. He explained they had a choice to give the children a good stable education or move all over the place with the parents and so they chose the stable education for the children. The kids both live in the UK now. He said it was Grace’s teaching in their formative years that was the making of them.
He is retired and says he doesn’t do much but here is what I know he does:
He is on the board for the school for Deaf children. They raise money to keep the school going (it is the same one I have been to help give out clothes. I’ll tell you about that experience in another blog).
As part of the rotary club, he runs a food kitchen every Saturday where he feeds 250 children every week sometimes from his own pocket if they haven’t raised enough that week to pay for it.
He is a ‘friend of the museum’ and was the chair for 10 years. He was a founding member who got the museum opened in the first place. He, along with another woman, is raising funds to build a culture centre here around the museum. They want an outside building to host cultural events like dances singing or African story telling. He wants to have an education centre for children to come to learn about their cultural heritage. At the museum meeting I went to, one of the local Motswana people (he is a self proclaimed King of Kings and well known in Francistown) said he was angry that so many expats were on the committee (the chair is a local Motswana black man and the secretary and third generation white Motswana white woman). At the time I thought he made sense cos there were a lot of local people at the meeting. But none of them including the King of Kings volunteered to help. Ron was a bit peeved by the comments cos he has been trying for years to get more people involved especially Motswana. There is quite a bit about expats in the paper. Quite a number of commentaries ask for the expats to leave and that there are too many of them taking the jobs from local people.
He is an active member of the Catholic Church and helps with hospital visits.
He is working with another woman I have met (her story is amazing one of the pioneers here) to get a small nature reserve off the ground here to protect birds and animals from the encroaching town.
He supports some aids orphans directly.
And he is in various clubs like the bird club. Yet he tells me he doesn’t do much. Before you think he is a saint and really boring with self righteousness. Let me tell you he is not. He has a great sense of humour and drinks like a fish which in my book is ok.
He gets very angry when white people come out here and just take a good living from the country and give nothing back. He sees lots of white people come here and earn an awful lot of money (most are employed by companies from developed world and earn European style wages and often pay no tax). He and his wife certainly don’t do that.
They have lots of stories of the early days here when it was much less developed with fewer facilities. Francistown doesn’t have a theatre, cinema or many other leisure facilities but there is still plenty to do if you want to get involved.
He, like most others here, has had staff who have died of Aids. I think I have said it runs at around 68% for some groups. They all have theories about why it is so high here but most of them revolve around the Africans (at least here in Botswana) all like to have mistresses as well as wives. Apparently there is a growing trend here for educated black women not to marry. They stay with a guy till they have a couple of children and then get rid of him cos the men are lazy and spend their money on their other women so they just don’t marry them cos then the men can’t get their money or their dowry price.
I am loving hearing all the tales and different thoeries about this and that. People out here that I have met at least are not politcally correct. If they think it they say it. I juts love such openness. Just does not happen at home.
posted by George Herd at 11:38 AM
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