It was around August in 1978 and it was fecking hot if I recall correctly. I was in Springs, South Africa when a call came through from a group of miners in Botswana who had arranged a rugby match with a group of loggers from Swaziland. They were short a couple of players and as they were affiliated to our company they put out feelers. I was going to decline when the Big Boss in our building made it a no brainer. All expenses paid trip (for myself and another Irishman Pat Welch) for one week with a bit of R & R in Gaborone after the match as a thank you for our hard work over the last couple of months.
So plans were made and we were booked to travel up on a Friday (400k about a 5 hour drive) and were booked in the Sun Hotel in Gaborone, play the match Saturday then have a blast for a week in the hotel travelling back the following Saturday. We got there and had a good night in the hotel, played the match on Saturday (we won by the way) then set about relaxing for a while.
However there is not a lot to do in Gaborone and we were a wee bit bored by the middle of the week so we took the miners up on their offer at the weekend. That was a visit to the Orapa diamond mine in the middle of the game park of the same name. Now we were assured that the site had a golf course, spa (yeah right) and of course trips to the game park. Now it was approx 500k so we were provided seats on a small company plane that afternoon.
We hit the camp late evening and had a few beers with the boys and were told that a trip was arranged to an advance research camp in the middle of the game reserve. This involved another light plane trip. For those of you who know this part of the world it is one big feck off desert and cars don't tend to last very long. We arrived there early Thursday morning and were greeted by a large mixture of miners and local people and spirited off to a camp to be treated to a display of local festivities. These consisted of some awesome mine dance displays and refreshments.
The mainstay of the refreshments was an alcoholic beverage that was a by product of the making of a maize based porridge that is left to ferment in the sun. Feck it was strong. Well we got into the swing of things and were even joining in the dancing as the sun began to go down. We got on great with the locals and were feted as if we were royalty, moving on from there with a few of the locals to another camp to continue the craic. The sun was blasting down outside a hut we were crashed in when we were shaken awake in the morning by a very large policeman with a few colleagues gesticulating very flamboyantly and pointing to a group of land rovers. We struggled to our feet with heads pounding and said our goodbyes to the locals who were giggling like school children. We were driven to the airstrip and poured onto the light plane that was waiting there for the trip back to the hotel.
"Great time" said the pilot
"Yep" we agreed in unison "Great bunch of people awesome hospitality"
"Must have been, you were dropped you off a week ago, the company's been going nuts"
To this day I swear neither of us remember that week at all...
Des posted on another thread that he "lost" a day while in Vegas with Sian, OK I reckon he will not elaborate. However I trump that, I lost a week on Botswana.
Priceless........
