Flyover

It’s Vocabulary time!

Here in Botswana, they have some fun/different words and phrases for things back home.

Tomato Sauce = Ketchup

Flyover = Overpass

Take Away = To Go (at a restaurant)

Robot = Traffic Lights (usually used in “The Robots are out” meaning the traffic lights aren’t working)

JoJo = Water Tank

Hootering = Honking. Usually on a sign that says “No Hootering”, meaning don’t honk your horn.

Lay Bye = Rest Area

Our mission has a complement of 100 missionaries.  That means we can have up to 100 in country at any time.  Right now we are around 70.  Through the end of January, we will lose 8 missionaries. Great missionaries, to be sure.

But there are problems.  More missionaries means more areas will need to be opened.  That means more flats will need to be secured.  Each area needs a SIM card for telephone access.  Each flat needs a WiFi router.  Every new missionary needs their linen bag.  And finally, there are so many missionaries coming that their pictures on the transfer board will overwhelm the available space on the board!  So the pictures will need to be resized (smaller) so they will all fit.

Only one of these problems (the areas to be opened) will be managed by the Mission Leaders.  The rest fall to the Mission Secretary, the Mission Finance Secretary, and the Housing Coordinators. That’s Sister and Elder McCuistion.

These are 1st world problems.  Problems we happily work on.

When driving, you have to watch out.  The first thing to watch is you are on the British-Protectorate side of the road.  Always look right before turning right to the far side of the road.  Next, driving school here is done in fields beside the road with traffic cones as practice lanes.  Thus, the skill level is not universally high.  Then you have the minibuses (called Combi) that dart in and out of the lanes and streets.  The economic level is not high, so many people walk.  They surprisingly do not have many sidewalks, so people are walking on the road. Don’t get us started about the speed bumps and potholes.  Then there is the livestock, and other creatures that graze beside and sometimes in the road.

But the Elders walked away without a scratch, even though both emergency bags deployed. We know the Lord watches over his missionaries.  We also do our best not to drive at night.  We spent last night in Palapye because we did not want to drive after dark.  Incidentally, that is where the mission van met the cow.

Palapye was formerly spelled as Phalatwse which means the place of Impalas.  We didn’t see any impalas, just cows and goats and 3 or 4 donkey pulled carts.  It was a pretty major place until 1902.  Now we refer to it as a growing place.  The church has only a few members.  It is called a group.  They meet in an elementary school and the elders are in charge.  The two of them are the speakers almost every week.   We were there to sign a contract on a second missionary flat.