Weekend in Botswana
on Z for Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe), 05/Jul/2011 15:26, 34 days ago
Last weekend I was in Francistown, Botswana. Francistown is the second largest city in Botswana. It seemed very modern - almost like places in South Africa. Apparently every weekend many Zimbabweans go to Botswana to do their shopping, and especially around month-end, when everyone gets paid. It seems that when people here receive their salaries they hurry up to spend all of the money :) kind of weird, but I guess it's the culture, and maybe this behavior comes from the times of hyperinflation, when people's money was getting devalued literally by the minute...In Francistown, I walked around some of the shopping malls and saw a few of the stores, but it didn't seem that they were much cheaper than those in Zimbabwe, maybe just a bit better stocked.The trip was great. It took about 6 hours to Bulawayo (from Harare) and then another 3 hours or so from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe to Francistown, Botswana. It was a short trip but we got to see a bit of Francistown and also some of the countryside of Botswana. The only impression of Botswana I had before was from the movieThe Gods Must Be Crazy and it wasn't really much like that :) but then again, we weren't anywhere near the Kalahari Desert. Something that surprised me a bit was that there seemed to be a lot of road construction in that part of Botswana, and all of it appeared to be done by Chinese companies :) which is becoming pretty common in this part of the world...For all of my (few) photos from Botswana, clickhere.