I am thinking here of jingles like ‘After doing the nice and nasty at the Desert Race do not forget the constitutional visit to our pharmacies dotted around our villages and towns’. But I must ease up on talking about these peripheral issues of the race because last time I wrote about this part of the race, I received a very hot mail from an unhappy regular Mantshwabisi patron.
It was actually a warning disguised as a letter. The unhappy patron warned me to desist from poking my nasty, oxygen-sucking nose into the issues of the Desert Race and accused me of being a devil reincarnate of sorts. Ok, my nose is a bit on the bigger side I must admit but up to now I still cannot figure out how he knows this unflattering fact as I have never met him. He tongue-in-cheek threatened to remove every bone in my anatomy and feed them to the predators in the desert and rid the world of one meddlesome scribe.
The problem with winter activities is – listen very carefully – that they generally take place in winter. The Dune Challenge does not happen in June, thankfully, because the organisers are a bit smarter and they are more aware of the local climate than the Desert Race organisers. Hopefully in future they will study the weather patterns of this country or at the very least do a crash course in Environmental Science. Or better still engage the services of the guys organising The Dune Challenge to school them on issues like scheduling and hypothermia.
We can say that Mantshwabisi is marginally better than the Khawa Dune Challenge though. Granted, this is not high praise. It’s like saying that somebody is marginally nicer than Thabo Bester. But it’s something. What is better about Mantshwabisi though? For starters it is closer to what many people call civilisation. And another positive thing, people finally recovered from their dementia. Admittedly, the vast majority of the people who recovered from dementia suddenly remembered they had friends who reside in Jwaneng.
By now many in the little mining town have facial expressions of a man having his prostate examined by a hostile sea creature due to incessant pleas from people looking for weekend accommodation. They have been ignored when the race moved to places like Selebi-Phikwe and South Africa but are now suddenly getting a raft of calls from friends that have been missing them. The accommodation seekers do have their own set of problems. How do you apologise to a friend you have basically ignored for four years? Flowers and six packs surely cannot be enough. So I feel for the under-siege Jwaneng residents whose friends just remembered they have a friendship to nurture. Sports events do have some interesting and amazing issues. Only a few weeks ago in the Diamond League I saw a few athletes from Ukraine competing. Yes, Ukraine. How do you have citizens participating in a sport event when your country is under siege? What the heaven is that all about? Whatever happened to all hands on deck? In the aftermath of the race, spare a thought for the Jwaneng people who must have by now compiled a whole set of reasons to rebuff friends whose friendship only surfaces when the Desert Race is in town. ‘Surviving Mantshwabisi Friends’ could well be a publication that might hit the Jwaneng bookshop shelves soon. They need that. (For comments, feedback and insults email [email protected]) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email [email protected].
