The last stage of our “pre-Botswana" life is now completed as we finished our temporary work assignment in Columbia SC and made the 25 hour drive back to Denver. We were only gone three and a half months but it has taken some getting used to being at home again. I forgot how to turn on the TV!! Granted we have three remotes in Denver and had three different remotes in Columbia.
We now have the next 23 days to focus on packing and clearing up the loose ends. It was really helpful to have done a lot of the cleaning and organizing of the house before we left, so it is going to be much easier now.
We have received our pre-departure packet with some details. We leave Denver on April 16 for Washington DC where our staging will occur on the 17th, with departure to Johannesburg, South Africa on the 18th. There are 60 volunteers including 9 couples in our Botswana group. We are affectionately known as Bots 8 since we are the 8th group to go since the Peace Corps was re-invited back to the country in 1999. We thought sure that we would be the oldest volunteers in the group, but we found out today that there are several people in their 50’s and 60’s with one who is 70. Still the vast majority are in their 20’s and 30’s.
For those of you who have an interest in Botswana, you may already know of the world-wide series of best selling novels by Alexander McCall Smith “The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency”. They are a delightfully easy read and give a nice flavor of the country—or at least so we are told. HBO is beginning a TV series based on the books and the first movie episode is this Sunday March 29 at 8 PM Eastern time. We are very much looking forward to it.
I expect that we will be beginning to make more frequent posts to the blog in the coming months.
Kip and Maureen
