"GOING TO GABS" a Gaborone Travel Page by Sininen

The bus to Botswana’s capital city Gaborone or Gabs like locals call it left at 6.00 am, so I asked the girl in the reception to call me a taxi as the mini buses didn’t run that early. I did all my packing in the evening and in the morning I was ready when the taxi arrived. The drive there was colourful. First couple of hours were ok mainly because the road was good and wide, but even then the driver drove very fast and had to make emergency braking when there were donkeys, cows, goats or other animals on the road. Several times I was sure that we would hit the animals and the bus would be out of the road. Then the road changed into much narrower one and it looked like as the paving had been poured on the road and left there like that! The sides of the paving were not even at all. In some parts there was just enough of it for a bus to drive on it and at others there was enough for two buses to drive. Although the road was much worse and also there were lots of curves it didn’t make driver to drive any slower. Quite frankly there were times when I was afraid that we would never make it to Gabs and would end to the hospital or in the worst case to the mortuary. The conductor played his CD’s of typical African music at very high volume. A man preached about salvation in some African language and I was happy that I couldn’t understand a word. Then he noticed me and began to translate everything into English. He didn’t know that I am a lost case. To make it even worse the conductor gave him the microphone! I really think that the passengers should be able to travel in peace without any religious pressure. A woman from the back of the bus came running and just when she was passing me she vomited. I was lucky and didn’t get any of the vomit on me but the lady sitting in front of me wasn’t as lucky. There was vomit all over her clothes. The bus stopped and those two women could clean up a bit. Nobody cleaned the vomit from the floor and before the journey was over there was really terrible smell on the bus especially because it was such a hot day. Though it was daytime and there were several small children on the bus they showed us a very violent movie (from Hong Kong/China). A young girl sat next to me whole trip and we talked a little. She even bought me a small bag of crisps but didn’t want me to get anything to her. Finally we arrived in Gabs when it is getting dusky.