(you can click on pictures for more information)
New year 2022 found us in Botswana. We continued to work on staying
safe from Covid-19, which had landed with a new variant—Omicron. Taking precautions
by, as much as possible, wearing masks and never leaving our house without a supply
of sanitizers, we managed to stay safe throughout our visit.
While
in Botswana—for close to three months—we visited the Tuli Block, first alone,
later with Kalahari Hash House Harriers, and finally with Lotta Arvinder and Ingmar
Virta—good friends from Härnösand in Sweden. Tuli is a region of Botswana
which we had not visited as much as we had wished. Our focus had been trips to
the western part of the country—where is abundance of wildlife. But Tuli had more
to offer than we remembered from earlier visits—we saw elephants, zebras, giraffes,
wild dogs, and a variety of other wildlife. The Limpopo River, which was full
following good rains, treated us to entertainment by hippos. We had a nice and
relaxed bush outing.
Apart from being in Gaborone, we spent considerable
time with Julia’s siblings in Masunga—deciding on the distribution of their mother’s
estate among nine siblings. Easier to deal with cash than division of livestock
…
Following three months of fun in the sun, we headed back to Sweden
and, alas, a few weeks after landing, we got Covid. Luckily, it was the gentler
Omicron variant. We were able to engage and enjoy our retiree group (PRO)’s activities:
playing minigolf, boule, pole walking and learning orientering. To have a break
from the dark and cold evenings, we joined forty other members of the association
on a pub evening—a new activity greatly appreciated and enjoyed by all.
Midsummer
celebrations took us to North Jutland Region in Denmark, with our friends from
Botswana’s 1970s: Anne Marie & Roger Bergström, Mats & Merete Boberg,
Tor and Agneta Eriksson Groth, Gerd & Gunnar Settergren and Christina Skarpe.
There, we rented a beautiful house in Tornby by the North Sea. This provided a
nice location for daily excursions to interesting places, including Skagen—famous
for its painters. We had, together with two other families, travelled by car—making
it easy for all to move around.
The highlight of the year was a
family boat cruise around the Mediterranean. We booked the cruise through Royal
Caribbean International for an August 2020 adventure … but Covid grounded us for
two years. When we finally converged in Barcelona with our children and grandchildren
from Botswana, Italy, United Kingdom, and Sweden, we had a memorable seven-day
cruise, on Wonder of the Seas, a 7000-passenger ship—the biggest in the world.
We cruised from Barcelona and docked in Mallorca, Marseille, La Spezia (Pisa),
Civitavecchia (Rome), and Naples, before returning to Barcelona for our flights
back home. An adventure for life …
MFG, Per’s dancing group, arranged
a hemligaresa that took us on a weekend to Enköping. This followed two years
of a break from the usually annual event because of Covid. We greatly enjoyed
the “reunion” …
Martha and Kneen Charlton, friends from Botswana’s
1980s, visited us from Dorset in England. We had a relaxed one week in Sigtuna,
extending to an overnight boat trip to Åland and mushroom and blueberry
picking.
BOTSFA, the friendship association that has kept us connected
with Swedes who have worked and lived in Botswana since the country’s independence,
commenced a process of dissolution early in the year. As part of enjoying what
has been characteristic of the association, BOTSFA members, Christina Skarpe and
Per, organized a weekend visit to Vänersborg. This turned out to be another
great success, following the 2015 get-together in the same town.
CONTINUE TO STAY SAFE
Per and Julia
