I have a book entitled "The Trouble With Africa". It is positive in its wonderful collection of stories of a game park in Zambia and of life in Africa. I find I can use it as a saying often. The trouble with Africa is you meet people whose faith in God belittles yours. The Botswana government collect refugees and place them in camps, referred to as prisons as they are effectively imprisoned until they decide what to do with them. In the Church we met Bwami, who's story of leaving the Congo I don't know. What I do know is that he was ridiculed as he started washing his clothes and announced God had told him he would be leaving in 3 days. It happened this way and he's found work in Francistown and now ministers in the prison where they have an informal church which even some of the wardens attend.

The rush to prepare everything to leave had left us exhausted at the start so a morning to relax in Francistown was very welcome. While Claris and Shirley and Jaco attended another church meeting we got to potter around and prepare ourselves for the next week.

Firstly we had to repair the pulley on the tensioner. This meant meeting Kgotse, a Botswanian and his sidekick, Cosmos, a Zimbabwean. I was led to believe on top of Botswana's meagre 1.7 million population there may be as many as 600 000 Zimbabweans who have sought refuge. We planned to meet at a petrol station out of town and when we got there he had a second hand part ready. We installed and tested it together using some of my tools and then the once the owner had arrived we could begin to discuss price. He claimed I could get a new one from South Africa for P2600 in 3 days so he'd offer me this one. I pointed out it was second hand and he dropped that price to P1200. Then began the process of making small talk about helping each other out ("it's not about the money" I was told many times) that perhaps I'd need to offer a similar favour in SA. At the end of the day I offered him P400, the price of a new one in South Africa since it was Sunday and I didn't want to shop around. After haggling over P600 he decided he was ripping me off enough and settled for P400. So, aircon working again, we were ready to hit the road.

Claris and Shirley lead a small church of the main road to Zimbabwe on the North-West end of Francistown. They were bringing on new elders when we were there so that was exciting to be involved in such a big day for both Riverside Church and Nix and his wife. It was great to see some of the other pastors in the city also attending the ordination service. We learnt a new song from the band and after the cake and juice it was 4:30 (church starts at 2pm as they share a venue with a morning church) and too late to start driving North so we had the pleasure of another relaxing evening in Francistown with the benefits of internet and the comforts of home soon to be missed.