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May 7: Gaborone and environs Today's cross-cultural experience was heading out to the village of Manyana (why a bunch of Setswana-speaking Africans would want to build a Spanish Village of Tomorrow is beyond us) to see some San rock art. Since our directions sucked, we undershot and had no clue where it was. The route we chose ended in a road being built, so we figured that wasn't the way to go. We therefore decided to turn around and head on a little farther to Thamaga, where they have a fairly well-known pottery works. The pottery was nice and the prices lower than Botswanacraft, the more-or-less official native craft store in town. Most of us got stuff. I picked up some egg-shaped salt and pepper shakers and a pair of small cups. On our way out of the building, I noticed that the location of the "Manyana bushman art" was marked on a map on the back of the Thamaga brochure they had handed us when we bought the pottery. The directions were nonexistent (the map just showed relative positions), but we left convinced that it was, in fact, out there. Retracing most of our steps, we took a different branch of the road and after another fifteen minutes found ourselves in Manyana itself. We picked up a passing schoolboy and his friend to give us directions, and he seemed pretty happy about it. As we got closer, we passed what looked like the rock art mafia, a group of slightly older kids hanging out at a bridge waiting for tourists to come by. Our guide, David, pointed us to the chief's house, where we needed to pick up a key, then off to a nearby cliff. David knew his material and seemed quite happy for the work. Despite my fondness for rock art, the most interesting bit was a gap in the rocks called "Kelly's cave." The local legend is that many years ago, a man named Kelly, fleeing from the authorities in South Africa, hid there and later brought his wife. The cave allegedly goes all the way to the next village over, a distance of about seven kilometers, but nobody goes in for fear of snakes. The evening's festivities consisted of "Mexican night," another Cinco de Mayo celebration, at the Marines' house: Mexican food, more-or-less Latin music, and a pinata at tables outside. We met more of the local expat community, but due to the slight chill, we spent a significant amount of time indoors playing 8-ball. As we set up, one of the Marines listed the flaws of the table (slanted, too small, cue tips rubbery, and so on), but I like to think that our poor performance was due to our own incompetence, not shortcomings in the equipment. |