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Thursday, December 29, 2005

Yeah For Botswana

Posted by on December 29 at 14:06 PM

I lived in Botswana in the late 80s (my mother was lecturing at the University of Botswana at the time), and it was a very happy experience. The desert dusks, the beautiful Tswana woman (Stella, where are you now?), the beautiful Swedish ex-pats (Asa, where are you now?), the heat, the cold, the rapid growth of the village—I simply loved the democratic country. Loved the name (pula) and color (blue) of its money, and loved drinking at the Sun Hotel, eating lunch at the President Hotel, debating politics at the Bull. Anyway, that is all in the past; what is in the present is the encouraging news that Botswana is making progress in the war against AIDS. If any African country is going to beat (or tame) the terrible disease, it’s going to be Botswana.


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Maybe you can get together with Kenneth Good and discuss the wonders of "democratic" Botswana with him. He's the professor at the U of Botswana who was expelled from the country on two days' notice for criticizing President Mogae for hand-picking his own successor and for his habit of overruling election results. See

http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=45713

In Botswana, democracy is only for black people.

Figures that at least one of the other Asas in the world would be a Hot Swede.

(I'm the Asa who was a student of yours at SCCC a few years back, by the way. Hi!)

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