Gaborone, The U.S. Embassy, and Other Stories...(Updated with Photos)

June 30th to July 3rd:

 We woke up and got ate a nice little breakfast at the place we were
staying then started packing up, planning to hit the road for Gaborone
at around 10:00 am. Our maps had a variety of different supposed
distances from Lobatse to Gaborone, but they all ranged from roughly
68-80 km, so we knew it was going to be a relatively long day of
bicycling.
 However, the biggest problem was that the cold I (Aaron) had been
trying to fight throughout the whole journey was starting to catch up
with me. My cough was getting pretty bad, and I was extremely
congested. But even worse was that I was also developing bad stomach
problems and a flu. In an effort to combat my illnesses, we rummaged
our medical kit to search for potential medications. We got a bit
carried away and I ended up taking 11 pills- some to treat each of my
different symptoms, but most importantly I started a course of
antibiotics.
 Despite my health problems, we had to get to Gaborone, and we knew
that I could rest and get better upon arrival. We set out optimistic
about a hopefully easy, flat ride to Gaborone but were quickly
bombarded by heavy headwinds and large hills/mountains. It was not
fun. We decided to switch off drafting every 10 miles in order to save
our energy, and slowly pushed through the elements. However, about 30
miles into the ride I began to start feeling extremely weak and sick.
I managed to gather my strength and make it 10 more miles, but then I
felt so weak I thought it would be impossible. We decided to stop for
a while to see if I would start to feel better and luckily were
greeted by a Botswanan government vehicle inquiring what we were
doing. After we explained, they told us that Gaborone was just 6 or so
more miles from where we were!
 Relieved to be so close, I managed to pull myself together and carry
onwards. It was definitely the most miserable bicycling day of my
life, but when we saw the big buildings and malls of Gaborone I got a
renewed strength, knowing that a bed was near. We rode through the
city towards the center of town and passed all sorts of large
government buildings and embassies until we finally found a small
little guesthouse by the side of the road. Exhausted, I made us stop
there and I went right to bed to rest while Eric took a brief walking
tour of our surroundings. It had ended up being a 50 miles ride to
Gaborone, but we had made it, and we were happy to finally be in a
city.

Gaborone:

  Gaborone is the capital of Botswana and has a population of roughly
250,000 people, which is quite large considering the entire nation has
only 1.7 million people. Botswana is a model for the rest of Southern
Africa in terms of its current economic success and stability. It has
great infrastructure, a stable democracy, extremely low crime rates
(including much less violent crime than the US), and very friendly
people. This is in large part, according to the government officials
and people I have talked to, due to the fact that Botswana was never
really colonized. They allowed the British to build their railroad
through the country without any resistance as long as the British
agreed to stay out of the borders (for anything other than railway
building) and protect them from any other European conquest. This
"British Protectorate" scheme turned out quite well for them. The
other reason for Botswana's current success is that unlike other
nations in Southern Africa, it is almost entirely comprised of one
ethnic group, the Tswana people, so there is very little tension. The
Tswana people also happen to have a very peaceful culture, and have
historically ruled themselves with a semi-representative government
even prior to the arrival of white people to Africa.
  The city itself is quite strange as there is no real city center.
There is a central region that consists of all the government
buildings, embassies, and financial centers, but there are no hotels
or shopping areas there as is normally expected of a "downtown" area.
Instead, there are several modern, very upscale, malls located on the
fringes of the city. All the people live between the city center and
these malls, and then travel out to the malls when they want to go
out. It took us quite a while to figure Gaborone out, but we now have
a favorite mall, "Riverwalk", where we have spent each of our
evenings.
 Our main priority in Gaborone was to make contact with the US
Embassy and the Botswanan Tourism Board in order to get some media
coverage and assistance in traveling through the country. Our direct
emails to Botswanan papers had been unsuccessful, but the US Embassy
was very helpful and arranged for us to come in and meet with the
Public Affairs Officer.
 We hoped to film our visit to the embassy but as soon as the guards
saw our camera that got extremely upset, checked the footage to see
what we had filmed, and then confiscated the camera. We were confused
about the situation with the guards mostly because they were all
Botswanan, and we had always thought that US Marines guard the
embassies, but we later were told that it is only in movies that the
Marines stand in front of the building. Instead the marines guard the
building itself and not the perimeter, and when we entered the
building we were assisted by a US Marine who was very nice and showed
us to our meeting spot.
 We were promptly met by Dan Saint-Rossy, a tremendously kind and
helpful man who also happened to serve as the Public Affairs Officer.
He immediately set about to try to help us as much as possible with
anything and everything he could. He first introduced us to some of
his colleagues including Asistant Attache Anthony Walker, and
Bilateral Affair Officer Major T. S. "Syd" Shinn who were both very
friendly as well. We then went into Mr. Saint-Rossy's office to take
care of some business.
 First Saint-Rossy made phone calls to the Botswanan Tourism Board
and gave us contact details to meet with them the next morning. He
then helped us register our journey on the State Department website
and gave us contact details should we run into any problems along our
ride through the rest of Botswana. He then gave us a great map of
Botswana as well as a map of Gaborone, as well as a pack of
high-protein energy bars. And just when we thought there was nothing
more that anyone could possibly due to help us, he decided to make us
some awesome business cards for our organization, and call the local
bicycle shop and cell-phone store for us. He then walked us out of the
embassy, and we thanked him profusely for all his help. We decided
then that we were going to stop by every embassy we could, as it had
been an awesome several hours for us. The only disappointment had been
that the Ambassador was out sick for the day, and Mr. Saint-Rossy had
told us that he was a really cool guy who would've met us. However, we
did get to listen to a long phone call between Mr. Saint-Rossy and the
Ambassador, so there was only one degree of separation...
  Our next task was to contact the Botswanan Tourism Board the next
morning, but it was still early in the day so went to check-up on our
bicycles and buy a local cell-phone. When we arrived at the bicycle
shop it turned out that they had not only finished all the necessary
repairs, but had decided to do it all for free in support of our
journey. We were very thankful since our funds were running low. We
then managed to get an extremely cheap local cell-phone, and decided
that we were done with business for the day.
 We went to Riverwalk Mall again to get dinner. The day before we had
gone to see Transformers 3, which we both agreed was one of the best
action movies ever made. To anyone who has not yet seen it, you are
making a huge mistake as it must be seen in theaters to fully
appreciate the elaborate action sequences between major US military
equipment, Decepticons, and Autobots, all set in amazing scenic
backdrops. But anyways, we had also met the First Princess of Botswana
that day, a girl named Emma Wareus, which apparantly meant she was the
runner-up for the Ms. Botswana Beauty pageant. Despite the fact that
in our initial introductions she lied about her age (she said she was
21 but we later found out she is really 19) she turned out to be a
great girl, and even used her local fame to let us skip the enormous
line for the movie and make it in on-time. We had then gone out for
dinner and drinks with her and her friends, but had left pretty early
in order to make it back for our 11:00 pm bedtime.
 However, this night we decided to try a Brazilian restaurant that we
had seen the night before. We had  invited a girl we met at the
internet cafe to join us for dinner to interview her for the Botswanan
Maketing position in our organization, and she arrived at the
restaurant just in time to catch the tail-end of the all-you-can-eat
meat feast. It was an amazing dinner, and she definitely passed the
interview, so we will see what One (that is her name) can do for us.
Again, we returned home for our 11:00 pm curfew and went right to bed.
 The next morning we woke up early because Eric had a 7:00 am
Physical Therapist appointment and I had to call the Tourism Board
when they opened at 7:30. The call went well, but the only problem was
that we had to meet at 8:30 since the head of Communications, who we
were in contact with, was going to be busy for the day starting at
9:00. I scrambled to try to find Eric in time for the meeting but he
was not back from the appointment so I had to jump on my bicycle and
go solo.
 The meeting went incredibly well. I was met by Marketing Manager Joe
Motse, Public Relations Officer Thabiso Leshoai, and Communications
Manager Keitumetse Setlang. I felt a bit underdressed since they were
all in suits and I was only in bicycle clothes, but once we got
underway things went extremely well despite my attire. I explained our
organizations purpose to them and gave them our nifty new business
cards, and they were extremely appreciative of our mission. The Public
Relations Officer immediately went off to start contacting all of the
media outlets in the area. I was then given a list of direct contact
numbers to all of the other Tourism Board Offices in Bostwana that we
will be passing through in order to get received upon arrival. They
told us that they were arranging appearances for the Sunday Times,
radio, and maybe TV and would call me as soon as they had arranged
things so I went back to the guest house to find Eric and fill him in
on the news.
  Within minutes of finding Eric we already had a phone interview
from the main local radio station for their 1pm News Show, and we are
now waiting to hear back from the rest of the media sources. However,
it was a wonderful day and we have been very impressed by how kind and
helpful all of the government officials as well as the Botswanan
people have been so far. We are about to head off and continue our
journey, but in the next post we will go into detail about how the
rest of the media exposure went.
 Hopefully the bicycling will be better now that I am feeling healthier!

-Aaron

(Us at Gaborone Cycles with some helpful workers and the co-owner)

(A few of the embassy workers we met, but we were not allowed to film there)

(Our new business cards that we made at the U.S. Embassy with the help of Public Affairs Officer Dan Saint-Rossy)