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Thoughts on Gaborone, Botswana

Over the last week, Stii and I have been making a "draai" here in Gaborone, Botswana. Before coming, I was actually quite scared as I didn't know what to expect. After all, this is Africa. Not all places look equally great and you have to be a bit careful when travelling.

However, after being here for a while, I have to say that I am rather impressed with the place. The people around here are generally friendly and not as violent and dangerous as in many places in South Africa (particularly thinking about Johannesburg).

In most of this post, I will be speaking relative to South Africa as that's what I'm used to up to thus far. This is the first time I travel outside of South Africa in a looooong time so am glad to have been able to use my new South African passport (well, not that new, about a year old now) for the first time.

Firstly, when coming here with a South African passport, I didn't need a visa. This made the travelling really easy. We just flew in and had to fill in a little form after landing. The form even got handed to us while we were still on the aeroplane so that we could start to fill it in while we were waiting to land.

Gaborone is quite hot and dry relative to George. Surprisingly, a dry 35 degrees Celsius over here feels like 25 degrees to me in the humid George. But I guess this depends a lot on the individual. One thing for sure is that, even despite the fact that I'm still recovering from a flu, my asthma is much better up here. But it normally is in drier areas. I presume there isn't so much pollen over here either even though it's spring now.

Botswana is one of the better off countries in Southern Africa it would appear. The local currency is quite strong and seems more stable than the South African Rand. I'm not an economist though so I can't give you the full picture or make even reasonably educated statements about this.

Apparently meat is a lot cheaper over here than in South Africa. However, fruit and vegetables seem more expensive. In George we are used to paying about 5 or 6 Rand per KG for bananas. Over here it's 6 Pula per KG. At the current exchange rate this is definitely not as cheap, but not really that much more expensive either.

Actually, often we pay the same amount of Pula here as Rands in South Africa. In other words, if you pay R2 in South Africa you will probably pay P2 over here for the same thing. The rate at time of writing is such that you get 0.88596 Botswana Pula for 1 South African Rand though (if you don't count taxes/fees/etc).

It seems like prices are also quite relevant to what is being produced locally and what needs to be imported. The majority of fruit, vegetables, and other produce is probably imported. Meat is produced locally however. As a matter of fact, I'm sure a large percentage of the meat produced over here is exported to South Africa and other countries. This seems to be similar to technology; over in South Africa we pay a lot for hardware because it needs to be imported. Food is generally relatively cheap however.

Monopolies in Botswana do play a big role unfortunately, similar to South Africa. A South African produced car can be bought cheaper in Australia than it can be bought in South Africa itself for example. We pay twice the internationally accepted air flight taxes in South Africa. I shouldn't even mention South African telecommunication monopoly, Telkom (also often "lovingly" referred to by locals as Hellkom, Telscum, etc). The list goes on and on...

It is extremely dry over here in Gaborone. Apparently the last time it rained was January or February this year. That's why I nearly freak every time I see water being wasted (for example, a tap leaking).

There's a surprisingly large amount of South African chain shops over here. Nandos, Pick 'n Pay, Woolworths, etc. It almost feels like home. The only difference is that you need to pay in Pula which is quite pesky. It would have been much easier if they could just accept South African Rands. In South Africa I believe it's illegal to pay in a foreign currency but I could be wrong. If that's not the same case in Botswana it would have been really cool if some of the larger shops could accept Rands. That means less trips to the Bureau de Change. I'm sure enough South Africans visit this place to justify the inconvenience. It would be like in Switzerland where in many places you can either pay in Swiss Franc or in Euro.

The only thing I found so far that is really no good is the electricity. The voltage dips constantly and you have to keep all your PCs/Macs on UPSes otherwise you're screwed (unless of course your PC/Mac comes with a built-in UPS as with laptops, notebooks, portable computers, etc). Apparently they buy electricity (or at least some of it) from South Africa. Our electricity is bad but Botswana's is definitely much worse.

So in general, yeah I definitely do like the place. Would I stay here? Possibly. However, at the moment it's only spring and it's going to heat up a lot towards the summer. I would probably stick around in South Africa but in general this place definitely rocks in its own kind of way.

2 Comments

Comment by Stii on Sunday, September 09, 2007 12:01:00 AM

Charl forgot to mention that if the sun catches you alone, it will kill you! Thats why you always see people walking in groups of two or more. Never alone!

Comment by Charl van Niekerk on Sunday, September 09, 2007 10:30:00 AM

Eish, so the sun is out to get us? Serial killer on the loose on Gabs! Help!!!