LOOKING FOR A HOME

After working for the Botswana Government through British aid schemes for nearly 12 years, the time came when the British Aid agency quite rightly felt that the time had come when a Motswana could take on my post. Although I was offered a renewal of contract on local terms in 1982, I felt that this was the spur I needed to venture into a dream that I had held for quite some time, namely to form an agricultural contracting company that would do all the traditional contracting jobs that I was familiar with from home.

It was a difficult time to branch out since, only that year our twin daughters reached the age where they had to move into secondary schooling and we had earlier taken the decision to send them to boarding school in England, so at the same time as I gave up my job, we faced for the first time boarding fees overseas and three return air tickets every year for two children - daunting or what?

I had started "testing the water" so to speak by buying a one big tractor (at least I thought it was big in those days), a tipping trailer and a threshing machine while I was still employed. I recruited a tractor driver and started threshing grain for farmers around Gaborone and this is a time fondly remembered. I can still visualise standing in front of the radiator of the tractor with the wind and roar of the fan in my ears, watching piles of rather dowdy maize being converted into bags of golden grain. Trouble was, rural Botswana was barely into a cash economy at that time and few farmers were able to pay cash for the service and the rule of thumb was to pay with one bag of grain for every ten threshed - quite biblical really! I then had to cart this grain off to Gaborone on the trailer and get as much as I could for it at the time.

Of course a major problem was looming namely "where were we going to stay?". Gaborone was a fast expanding town at the time, houses were very hard to find either to buy or rent and prices were high. I remember playing a rather cruel trick on the kids at the time by pointing out a mud hut on the rather deprived outskirts of the town and saying, " That's the house we hope to buy" - I don't think they took it as a joke at the time!

Sylvia has this theory that I am so laid back about problems that I always seem to fall on my feet just when things look at their blackest and this was no exception. On my various trips to Mochudi to supervise threshing operations I had seen this big new house being build on Gaborone North, a 3000 hectare ranch 9 km out of town and I had heard that it belonged to the Rector of the University of Botswana who had recently taken up a post in Malawi and it was rumoured he was looking for someone to look after the property. A little bit intimidated, I took the bull by the horns and drove up to the impressive house, introduced myself, and gave the lady of the house a potted history of my career and asked if it was true that they were looking for someone to look after the property. I swear it was 30 seconds before she replied after my monologue. All she said was "God must have sent you - come in!"

In a matter of a few hours we found ourselves established in a magnificent house with five bedrooms at a peppercorn rent, with a tractor and a range of agricultural equipment thrown in to expand my business! I undertook to look after the ranch, their herd of Brahman cattle and manage the marketing; we had the run of the property and Sylvia arranged to graze a string of horses to indulge her passion for horse riding. To say our cup raneth over would be an understatement!

This good fortune gave us a tremendous boost and set us on the road to a very enjoyable period of nearly 7 years in the private agricultural sector of Botswana.