19 November - D'Kar

19 November

25 Miles

Ghanzi – Sehithwa

Steph:

The wind was crazy last night! I think I spent half the night awake thinking I could hear someone stealing our bikes. At one point I did get up to check on them and GUESS WHAT!? The neighborhood cat had ripped open a bag of "biltong" (really good beef jerky) that was hanging from our bikes and eaten it all. Why did we hang that there in the first place?! Stupid.

Anyway, we woke up on time but realized that we had forgotten to adjust the gears on my bike the night before. We ended up leaving around 7:30, which was ok because the clouds were pretty thick and we didn't really have too far to go.

Oh last night we met Maureen! We were walking through the restaurant and she recognized us from couch surfing. Small world. We chatted for a while. She's here in Botswana with the Peace Corps and was kind enough to give us the phone numbers of several other PC Volunteers farther up north. That brought our spirits up even more!

Also! I got to talk to my mami! She had just finished her second Ironman and told me all about it. She improved her time substantially even though she only did half the training she probably should have. I love her and she's my hero.

From what we had heard, D'Kar was this cultural hub for the bushmen and other surrounding tribes. The signs boasted of a museum and a tourist center, etc etc. :) Not so much.

That night, we had dinner with the one german GIZ volunteer in town and his boss, Nina. It was very nice and we learned a lot about the community in D'Kar and the kind of work the GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit - German Society for International Cooperation) does here in Botswana. Nina is the Botswana project manager and oversees all the community outreach programs around the country. It sounds like a very interesting, sometimes very frustrating job.

Erik:

We arrived in D'Kar at around 10am. After wandering we found the "hostel". It was overpriced, but we figured the money goes right back into the community so we paid it as our contribution. The floors were covered with dead bugs. After a nap, we went exploring. We noticed that people in the village don't really do anything. Everyone is laying around in the shade. We wondered what the village does to sustain itself. The GIZ has been around D'Kar for a while now and they had no idea. The woman at the hostel had told us to make sure we visit the art shop and the museum. Both turned out to be closed.

We didn't really like this town very much. I looks like they are just using the San (bushmen) for their own profit and not treating them very well in return. At least that's the impression we got. Later, we actually learned that this is very true. There is a set of organizations that take all the profit from these people's culture and leave the

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