The kettle's just boiled in my new flat, and I'm standing at the window watching the last of the morning light spread across the dusty veld. It's day three, and I've finally got the place feeling like mine, not just a borrowed room with my bags in the corner. I rented a modest one-bedroom place in the blocks west of the railway line, about 4,500 pula a month, which is roughly three hundred and thirty dollars. That feels reasonable for a capital city, especially one where a coffee runs you about thirty pula, around two dollars, and a local lunch with a drink sets you back maybe eighty to a hundred and fifty. The first couple of days were all admin, the kind of form-filling that follows you across borders, but now the paperwork's done and I'm starting to feel the rhythm of the place. This is what I came for, not just to tick off the sights but to understand how a city breathes when you're living in it, not passing through.
I took a walk this morning down to the Main Mall, the pedestrian strip that runs from Parliament to the Pula Arch. It's a strange, wonderful hybrid, office workers in suits weaving between stalls selling mopane worms and phone cases, and the air thick with the smell of frying fat and diesel from the bus rank just beyond. I stopped for a coffee at a small place near the Cresta President Hotel, just a counter with a couple of plastic chairs, and watched the city go by. A woman was selling dried fish from a blanket, and further along, a man was sharpening knives on a pedal-powered stone, the sparks flying in the cold morning air. Prices here are what they are, and I've learned to ask before I buy, a plate of seswaa with pap and morogo will cost you anywhere from seventy to two hundred pula, about ten dollars, and honestly, it's the best food I've had in days.
There's a particular kind of light in August, low and sharp, that makes everything look like a photograph. The jacarandas are still a month away from their purple explosion, but the acacias are already dusting the streets with yellow. I'm told that by October the Main Mall will be a tunnel of jacaranda blossom, but for now it's all browns and golds, the city's winter palette. I spent the afternoon at the National Museum, which is free, just wandering the ethnographic collections and the basketry, which is genuinely some of the finest I've ever seen. The gallery had a small exhibition of contemporary Batswana art, and I lingered longer than I meant to, a painting of a mokoro gliding through reed beds, a watercolour of the Kalahari at dusk. It's a reminder that this country's heart is not in the city but in the landscapes beyond it, the delta, the desert, the river.
I paid my first visit to the Bank of Botswana on Independence Avenue this morning, not to change money but just to stand in front of it. There's something about a central bank building that makes a place feel permanent, and this one, all concrete and glass, could be anywhere in the world. But the real banking happens in the streets, in the mobile money agents and the tiny forex bureaus tucked between shops. I opened my account at one of the big banks, Absa, which used to be Barclays, and the process was smoother than I expected. Bring your passport, your permit, proof of address, and a reference, and you can get a local account in a couple of days. The teller, a woman named Boitumelo, asked me why I was moving here, and when I told her I was planning to spend two years travelling the country, she laughed and said, 'You'll never see it all.' She might be right, but I'm going to try.
The evening took me out to the Old Naledi Fiesta, which I'd been told about by a friend in the city. It's a music and arts festival that runs on the Old Naledi soccer field over the first weekend of August, and the vibe is pure local, families on blankets, teenagers in their best clothes, and a sound system that's been rigged up on the back of a truck. I paid about twenty pula to get in, which is less than two dollars, and drank a St. Louis lager while a local hip-hop group warmed up the crowd. The sun went down and the lights came up, and for a moment I felt like I was part of something, not just a tourist looking in. These events are the lifeblood of the city, and I'm told the Maitisong Festival later this month will be even bigger, a condensed weekend of theatre and music at the Maitisong Theatre.
There's a plan forming in my head, a route that will take me north once the rains come, but for now I'm happy to be grounded here. I drove out to the Gaborone Game Reserve this afternoon, which is remarkable not because it's a safari park, but because it's a working reserve inside the city limits. Five kilometres from the CBD, you can see zebra and wildebeest against the backdrop of office towers. I didn't do a guided drive, just walked one of the shorter trails, which cost me about fifty pula, and watched a pair of kudu pick their way through the acacia scrub. It's a strange, wonderful juxtaposition, the city hum behind you and the wild in front. The reserve's restaurant, a thatched place by the waterhole, was packed with families having late lunches, and I sat there with a cold drink and watched the afternoon fade.
Tomorrow I'm planning a longer hike up Kgale Hill, which they call the Sleeping Giant. It's about an hour to the top, and the views over the city are supposed to be spectacular, especially in the clear winter light. I'm told to watch for baboons, and to go when there are other people around, so I'll time it for mid-morning. After that, I might drive out to Mokolodi Nature Reserve, which is ten kilometres south, but that's a full-day thing and I want to check the opening times first. What I'm learning is that Gaborone rewards a slow approach. The city doesn't throw itself at you, it waits, and as the days stack up, the layers start to peel back. I'm starting to get a sense of the districts, the leafy eastern extensions, the busy blocks west of the bypass, and the village feel of Tlokweng across the river.
I had dinner tonight at the Bull & Bush, a pub on the edge of the village that does a decent steak and has a fireplace going against the cold. It's a bit touristy, but the steak is good and the crowd is a mix of expats and locals, watching a rugby match on the big screen. I ordered a three-course meal, about two hundred pula for one person, and thought about what this city offers. There's a proper book festival coming up, the Gaborone Book Festival, which is returning after three years, and they're adding a children's writing programme and an environment theme for Botswana's sixtieth year of independence. I'll definitely cover that. And there's a comedy festival at the GICC this week, which might be worth an evening.
The cost of living here is lower than most SADC capitals, about thirty-eight percent of US levels on the World Bank index, but that doesn't mean it's cheap for everyone. A monthly transit pass is about three hundred and fifty pula, and a taxi across town will run you fifty to a hundred and twenty. The combis, the shared minibuses, are the lifeblood of the city, and they'll take you almost anywhere for nine pula, which is less than a dollar. I've been using the GRT municipal buses, which are comfortable and frequent, but the combis are an experience in themselves, always full, always moving, a cross-section of Gaborone in a white van. It's an efficient system, if you know the routes, and the drivers are a law unto themselves, but it works.
As I sit here in my flat, the last of the sun gone and the city lights starting to prick the darkness, I think about the year ahead. The dry season is the spine of everything, it runs from May to October, and it's the backdrop for the floods in the Okavango, when the water arrives from Angola and spreads across the delta. That's what I'm waiting for, the chance to ride a mokoro through those reed beds, to sleep under the Kalahari stars, to see the wildlife that gathers at the waterholes when the land is dry. But that's months away. Right now, I'm just getting to know this city, one street, one taste, one conversation at a time. And I think that's exactly the right way to start. Dumela, Botswana. I'm here for the long haul.
This is Kabelo Molefe, from Gaborone, and this is the Botswana Travel Podcast. I'll talk to you again soon.