Saturday With My Students

On Saturday I picked up my seven students and we spent the day at a pool outside of town.  After much swimming, soda, chicken and chips, screaming and shouting, and controlled mayhem I took them to town to get haircuts.  Their barber was a very sharp dressed man and we had a lot of fun squeezing into his hot, tiny shack.

before

our sharp dressed barber

the barber shack

after

Beautiful Sky

I walked into town this morning after milking my one goat to fetch my scooter. The sky was such an intense blue against the mophane trees.

I started milking one doe who dropped two stillborn kids on Monday. Yesterday I milked the colostrum out of her and today it looked like a mixture of milk and colostrum. She is a really sweet little doe but I doubt I'll get even 500 ml out of her. Other does in the herd should be kidding soon and I look forward to that. I'm very excited to start milking the goats but stillborns are always sad.

On the Road

I love road trips.  I drove with three of my friend’s children from Maun to Francistown where I dropped them off in the center of town.  I continued on alone to Plumtree where I crossed the border into Zimbabwe.  I spent the night at the Bulawayo Club, an old colonial institution where the bar is for men only but if women lurk around long enough outside in the atrium they will be served.  I was one such woman and I had a lovely g and t with Zimbabwean tonic that added a pungent, floral flavor.  The club reminded me of my old country club growing up.  It had the same fancy but shabby look and smelled of musty wood polish.  The building had the same rambling hallways with large receptions rooms, small parlors, and small guest rooms on the third floor where I stayed.  The next morning I filled up with diesel and continued on through Harare.  My favorite road signs in Zimbabwe were “Deadly Hazard Ahead” and “Road Failures Ahead.”  These were not temporary signs put up by road workers during construction but permanent signs.  Being the somewhat conscientious driving that I am I was very curious the first time I saw one.  Wouldn’t any self-respecting country close a road with “deadly hazards” and “road failures”?  But I breezed right through unscathed and concluded the signs were a bit dramatic.  I drove back to Botswana in one day.  I left the farm at five in the morning and arrived in Maun just after sunset around seven.  I saw zebra and ostrich near the road outside of Maun and it was a lovely way to return home. 

Dawn in Harare

Zebras outside of Maun

Food

On the road to Harare there are lots of farm stalls selling watermelon, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, butternut, squash, and oranges.  I bought lots for my stay.  Most days I didn’t have power.  Zimbabwe has no power and very little money to buy power from neighboring countries.  Also its elite citizens have a habit of not paying their power bills, a habit picked up by the government which racked up an outstanding bill of 200 million dollars from Mozambique for power.  So there were only two days when I had power all day and most days I’d only have power for a few hours at night which gave me a little hot water in the morning and kept my fridge from being completely useless.  Because I was getting up at three in the morning a lot I got used to going to bed at seven.  Having no power made that even easier.  Most evenings I would come back from the farm and make myself pasta with lemon zest, lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, and pecorino cheese and eat it by the light of a small candle and a gin and tonic or a glass of wine.  The day before I left I went into Harare and sampled some gelato that uses the raw milk that I was helping to collect every day.  I got a cone with coffee and strawberry gelato and it was very yummy. 

Roses from the British ambassador's residence 

Goat Dairy

I visited a goat farm where a woman makes all kinds of goat cheese.  I stopped by again the next morning to watch her two workers milk the goats by hand.  She even gave me two pounds of fresh Jersey butter (from her cows) and a wheel of goat cheese.  Both were delicious.  

The Dairy

I went to Zimbabwe a couple of weeks ago to learn about diaries because I’m eager to set up my own goat dairy and make cheese.  I stayed with a woman who has a beautiful small farm with cows on top of a hill.   She has Jersey, Holstein, and Aryshire cows and they are lovely, happy creatures.  I learned about the routine of a dairy:  up at 3:30 in the morning for the first milking and then farm chores for a few hours, then the same thing at 3:30 in the afternoon.  I also learned about systems and record keeping for each cow and her milk production.   I had so much fun milking cows, feeding calves, wandering around country farm roads, visiting neighbors, and watching many dawns break over the hills.