The morning here starts with the sound of brooms on concrete. But by mid-morning, the brooms have given way to something else — the low, constant hum of the A1, the trucks downshifting as they approach the Watershed Mall junction, the hiss of air brakes from the bus rank. I've been in Mahalapye for five days now, and I'm starting to hear the town's actual rhythm beneath the noise. It's not a destination, not really. It's a passage. And there's an honesty to that.
I walked out of the guesthouse a little after nine, bought a loaf of bread at a small tuck shop near the station — about twelve pula, which is less than a dollar — and just stood there for a moment, watching the railway line. This is the old Bulawayo line. It's why this town exists. Long before the A1 became the Gaborone–Francistown spine, the train was the spine. The station here was once famous for its open-air dance floor, back when the railway was the most glamorous thing in the Protectorate. Now it's quieter, but the trains still run.
I sat on a bench near the tracks for a while, and I got to thinking about how much of Botswana's story runs along this line. Everything comes up from the south, through Mahalapye, on its way to somewhere else. The trucks, the buses, the people. The town is a kind of ledger, a daily account of movement. And if you sit still long enough, you can read it.
By ten I was hungry again, so I walked over to Kaytees Restaurant, which sits right on the main strip — nothing fancy, but the kind of place where the food is honest and the tea is strong. I had a plate of seswaa with pap, slow-cooked beef, the taste of the Central District in every bite. It cost me about thirty pula, roughly two dollars, and I ate it looking out at the highway, watching the minibuses pull in and out of the rank across the road. You can learn a lot about a town from its lunch counter.
Afterwards I crossed over to the Watershed Mall just to walk through it. It's the main shopping stop on the corridor, the place where the Gaborone–Francistown traffic pulls off to stretch, fill up, buy data, grab something to eat. There's a Debonairs here, a Presto's, a handful of other food outlets. It's not a beautiful building, but it's a working one, and it tells you something about Mahalapye's economy. Retail, hospitality, fuel. The business of people on the move.
I stepped into one of the banks — First National Bank, which has a branch here near the mall — just to check something for a friend who's thinking of moving up this way. Opening an account in Botswana is a straightforward thing: passport, residence or work permit, proof of address. The banks here — FNB, Absa, Stanbic, Bank Gaborone — all follow the same basic pattern. In Mahalapye, the retail banking options are a bit thinner than Gaborone, but they exist, and they work. Worth knowing if you're planning to stay.
From the mall I walked back south along the highway to the Tropic of Capricorn monument. It's a small thing, just a marker on the 23rd parallel, set back from the road. At noon on the summer solstice, the sun stands directly overhead, no shadow at all. Today is not the solstice, but I got there around midday anyway, just to stand on the line. It's a strange feeling, being exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn. You're at the edge of the tropics, the border of the Kalahari. Everything south of this line is the temperate zone. Everything north of it is the wilder, hotter, more unpredictable Botswana — the country I'm heading into.
I stood there for a while, thinking about the rest of the journey. The plan is to keep moving north, through the Makgadikgadi pans, and then swing west to the Okavango Delta when the flood season comes. That's the long arc, the thing I'm building towards. But Mahalapye is also teaching me something about the country that the delta won't show me. This is where Botswana actually lives, in the working towns along the spine, the places that keep the country moving.
And this town has some political weight to it, too. Duma Boko, the president who ended the BDP's long run in 2024, was born right here in Mahalapye. There's a sense in the air of a town that has sent something important into the world. I've also been hearing some chatter about the local BPF faction — apparently there's a parallel elective congress scheduled for the end of August, which is a bit of a wrinkle in the local political scene. Nothing I can verify, so take that as the gossip it is, but it's the kind of thing you hear if you sit in the right places.
In the afternoon I walked through the market again, the stalls near the bus rank. It's the same market I described earlier this week, but it deserves another look because it's the economic heart of the town, the everyday ledger I keep coming back to. Here you can buy a head of cabbage, a bag of oranges, a phone case, a knockoff pair of sunglasses, all within the space of a few metres. The traders know their regulars by name. The prices are nothing like Gaborone — a bundle of vegetables for maybe twenty, twenty-five pula, which is less than two dollars. Life is cheaper here, and it shows.
Speaking of living costs, I looked into what it would take to settle in a town like this. A modest one-bedroom flat on the edge of the centre runs somewhere around nine hundred to twelve hundred pula a month — that's maybe sixty-eight to ninety dollars. A night in a mid-range guesthouse, like the places on the Matlhware side, is about six hundred to twelve hundred pula, around sixty-five dollars at the current rate. A guesthouse English breakfast will set you back about a hundred pula, seven dollars. It's one of the cheaper towns in Botswana, a good place to stretch a budget.
I stopped for a cold drink at The Braai Place - Mahalapye around four, just to sit in the shade and watch the afternoon do its thing. It's one of those spots that serves the traveller trade, decent food, cold drinks, a place to rest. I got to talking with a kombi driver who runs the route up to Serowe, and he mentioned the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, not far from there. He said you can see protected white and black rhino, which, I'll be honest, is a temptation. It's a short drive from Mahalapye, and it's the nearest major wildlife reserve to here. I might have to make a call about that over the next few days.
As the sun got lower, I walked back towards the railway station. There's a quiet that settles over the tracks in the late afternoon, the long shadows stretching across the gravel. A train came through heading north, the diesel engines pulling a long line of freight wagons, and I watched it until it disappeared around the curve. There's something about a train leaving that makes the place you're standing feel both more real and more temporary.
The evening here is cold, the kind of dry-season cold that comes in by five-thirty. I went back to the guesthouse, put on a warmer jacket, and went out again for dinner at Thyrsus, a place I'd noticed earlier on the main road. The food was simple, grilled meat, pap, a salad. I ate slowly, listening to the truck traffic on the A1 fade as the night settled in. It cost me about fifty pula, call it four dollars, and it was the right way to end the day.
There's a water story running through this town that I keep hearing about, too. The North-South Carrier 2.2 and 2.3 projects are apparently done or nearly done, and people say the water supply is more secure than it used to be. I noticed the pressure in the guesthouse shower was better than I expected for a dry-season town. It's a small thing, but it matters. Water is the currency of the future in this part of the world.
Tomorrow will be my sixth day here, and I'm starting to think about the next leg. The plan is to head north, maybe towards Serowe and the Khama Rhino Sanctuary, or further up towards the pans. But Mahalapye has a way of holding on to you. It's not dramatic, not full of spectacle. It's a town of small, steady things: the market stalls, the trains, the trucks, the sun at noon on the Tropic of Capricorn.
One last thing about staying practical in a place like this. There's no transit card, no metro pass — travel is cash-based, kombis for the local routes, intercity buses from the main rank. If you're flying in, grab a local SIM from Mascom or beMobile and register it with your passport, and check whether you need an e-visa before you arrive. Most nationalities get ninety days visa-free, but you should check your own situation before flying in. Everything I've mentioned, and where to sort it, is in the episode notes.
I'm back in the guesthouse now, the room quiet, the bed warm, the A1 reduced to a distant murmur on the edge of hearing. Tomorrow is another day on the corridor, another page in the ledger. But tonight, Mahalapye feels less like a passage and more like a place in its own right. Dumela, and pula — the rain, the blessing, the currency of this land. Until next time.