30th April

I'm now arrived at Gaborone with Harold and Geraldine so I can safely tell you a bit about Ghanzi. If it was the wild west of America and not Africa it would be a one horse town, well make that a donkey. Like Gaborone it's a mixture of grandiose new buildings (always Government) and lowly shacks and everything in between. Most houses are built of breeze blocks with a corrugated tin roof and they're generally just square in design. Some have a solar power system and a satellite dish and others have a bowl of water in the yard and cook on a wood fire.
People really only pass through Ghanzi on their way up to the Okavango Delta or down to Gaborone so there are no lingering tourists yet there's a state of the art tourist office with a beautiful thatched roof which has been empty since the day it was built. There's a Spar supermarket which is quite good and two Choppies supermarkets, three hardware shops, three filling stations, a very few clothes shops and one pharmacy. Oh and the Kalahari Arms which is the only place in the whole of Ghanzi you can get a cup of coffee. The nearest book store is 750 kilometres away. I saw no make up on sale anywhere  and Nivea toiletries were kept behind a special counter and twice the price.
I took a photo of Reggie house which is fairly typical. There are thirteen living in a three room house and his grandma has a room to herself. This is because elders are always respected here. I had a soft spot for Reggie because we were paired up for my first couple of days and he was unfailingly friendly,  polite and respectful (to his elder!) which went a long way with me. He's a bright boy, speaks English, Afrikaans and Setswana and enough San to converse with the bushmen.
Next to the Spar is a shop called Topline which had some quite nice clothes. I bought a jacket there ( oh come on, I haven't gone completely native). Talking of clothes, these lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress and headgear of the Herero tribe and I'd seen one or two each time I was in Ghanzi. They look like extras in a BBC costume drama and they told me it takes them two hours to get dressed
With my new Kalahari bush routine it's been taking me all of two minutes..
Final blog tomorrow.