Poor goat

Driving up to the school in the truck, it's about a 6-8 hour drive (and one short ferry trip)

MP showing off his Hawaiian shirt, and these two steaks cost about £1.15 each

Africa's Worst Sales Assistant

So today we were driving down to Maun, as always we stopped at Choppies in a town called Shakawe to buy some supplies for the trip. After i had bought some crisps and coke from Choppies I nipped into a little shop next door that sold all sorts of bits and bobs. I was on a mission to buy some lipsalve, my lips were dryer than my fathers sense of humour. Anyway, in i went. I went up to the counter and soon spotted what i had come in for, right there behind the glass counter was a large jar of conveniently sized pots of lipsalve. I then did what any ordinary customer would do, I pointed very clearly at the pots of lipsalve, got my wallet out and said 'Dumella (setswanan for hello), could i get one of those please?'
The shop assistant just stared back, shook her head and said 'No'. I smiled awkwardly in anticipation of the punchline to the joke. But she said nothing. There was no joke. So I thanked her for her time and left. My lips are still dry.    

Swimming

Today to pool finally opened and it was beautiful. Half an hour of relief from the blazing African sun. The pool opens at 2 o'clock, at 2.01 it goes mental. Loads of boys just come jump in, they wrestle in the pool, have races and play tag. You have to understand that this pool is not exactly olympic size. It must be only 8 foot wide and 16 feet long. Oh well, this only makes the fun more concentrated! The boys have made up a game, it's called 'Trying to drown Mr Jack'. This is fun for about 5 minutes, then i need oxygen. Whats fun is picking up one of the small boys and just chucking them in the pool. But Botswana being a land-locked country and its rivers being full of crocs and hippos, most of the boys are not natural swimmers, so we do have to be careful! Defintely one of my favourite things to do at Bana Ba Metsi.

Shakawe

Another crazy week has gone by so quickly. This week Matt was on duty, this meant that he had to get up early everyday to serve breakfast to the boys, conduct the morning assembly, check how tidy the dorms are, supervise study on tuesday and thursday evenings and serve lunch and dinner. Stressful. The good news is that Matt has now finished his duty, the bad news is that it's my turn next week! While Matt was on duty i had to run a few errands, one of which was to drive with Maguowe to Shakawe to pick up a boat engine mechanic. The school boat suddenly sunk and both the engines we fully submerged in the river. We left after my lesson in the morning and got to Shakawe for around 10.30, i had a lovely steak and onion pastry (a lovely change from maize porridge) from choppies, I think it was worth driving all that way just for the pie. We managed to locate the boat mechanic in a nearby village and organised that he would drive up to the school after he had finished his current job. So Maguowe and I went back to Choppies to get all the things that the staff had requested. I treated myself to another pie. I met one of Maguowe's friends who is called 'Problem', after exchanging numbers he said that he would call me up about any business ventures he comes accross in the future. I asked what type of business he had was and he simply replied 'investing'. So then we started the drive back to the ferry, crossed without a problem and headed back down the dirt road for 50 minutes to the school. A successful trip without a problem with a car (although it did have a puncture the following day - but im convinced that it wasn't me).

The Goat

On our second day at Bana Ba Metsi we went out to find a goat. After we had stopped at a few villages to window shop, we eventually found a nice plump goat at a reasonable price. We then had to catch it. We all got into the enclosure which included about 50 goats and kids. We saw the one we wanted and grabbed it by the horns and wrestled it out of the enclosure. We then had to pay the man in the village, the price of the goat was 400 pula (which is about £30) which is not bad for a whole terms worth of meat. We took the goat back on the truck to the school where at Maguowe's house we started the process of preparing the goat. Ben (the german volunteer) volunteered to kill the goat, so after the priest had said a few words he took the knife and killed it. We then hung it up ready for Maguowe to skin and gut. I won't go into details of the skinning but at one point i was holding the goats heart and lungs in my hands - and they were still warm. It got messy. It was the first time that i had witnessed the gutting of an animal bigger than a fish. So i tell you this, the insides of the animal are not the thing that you find most repulsive. The thing you find most repulsive is the smell. As soon as you peirce the bag that holds all the intestines in, you get hit with the most vile smell you will ever smell. One other neat trick that Maguowe showed us was in order to get the left over waste out of the tube attached to the anus, you are suppose to blow air into it. This means that all the pellets of poo come raining down rather like one of those rain sticks you get in primary school orchestra.
So after all this we got hungry. So we decided to locate the liver and fry it up. We must have eaten the liver less than an hour since the goat had been killed. Fresh. Now, whenever we want some meat, we just go to the big freezer in the storeroom and choose the cut of meat that we fancy.