Botswana

For Easter Robin and I visited her cousins (and my friends), Pete and Shelley and their two creative and highly entertaining kids. We originally had vague, but grand plans of visiting the Okavanga Delta or the Slat flats in the Northern parts of the country. But as soon as we got to Pete and Shelley’s house, we decided to stay. We both needed a restful vacation so badly!
During my brief return to Pretoria after Zimbabwe my discouragement with work and life in Pretoria was heightened as I received news that even more of my tentative plans were not working out. Without boring you with every detail, let me just say that I had been becoming increasingly disillusioned in my job and have been rethinking everything about what I will do after my internship is over at the end of July. I arrived in Botswana needing time to think, pray and play. And that is exactly what we did!
Robin and I loved playing with the kids, Malena and Caleb. We also enjoyed lots of laughs and storytelling with Pete and Shelley. We explored the town a bit, tasted an anthill, marvelled at the amazing array of baboons with deformities, hiked a hill overlooking the city and even visited a Game Reserve! I finally got to see giraffes, warthogs and different kinds of bok (deer). We also saw two hyenas and a cheetah, which were thankfully behind a fence. I now have an animal that I fear as much as racoons: hyenas. Creepiest animals I’ve ever seen.
At the end of the long weekend we returned to Pretoria with a renewed sense of purpose and vision for our time here and the energy to move forward.