Maybe it pepped up on Sunday. The other event was the Family Fun Day and Urban Obstacle Course Fund Raiser – I take that official title from the report in The Voice (August 14) – which, I was told, was brilliant, genuine, hugely enjoyable and not at all a BMW affair. The latter comment may puzzle many people. Our experience may differ but when a vehicle is flashing its lights to warn everyone to move over to the inside lane as it is coming up fast, it is bound to be a BMW. If we meet a driver who is aggressive, devoid of road manners, selfish, and arrogant, he/she will, almost certainly, be behind the wheel of a BMW. I have no idea what it is about BMWs that attract owner-drivers who so often behave in this manner. Is it something about the car or something about the owners? But what I do know is that for us it is an unusual trip into Gaborone which does not prompt a single query, ‘it was a BMW wasn’t it?’ And to get the almost inevitable reply, ‘of course’. If this little digression has still left you baffled, I will be obliged to repeat the observation that the Obstacle Course Day was, by report, the genuine article, wonderfully low key and totally without arrogance.
If you are still unable to follow me wait until the next vehicle tries to edge you off the road. But where speed is concerned, Oodi, in the last few months, has seen tensions rising while the new bridges are being slotted into place. In the interim, which seems likely to be for the entire year, vehicle drivers, who are obliged to use one or other of the two diversions, are keen to get through the village at maximum speed whilst the residents are dead set on slowing them down, reducing the enveloping dust clouds, and the possibility of young children being killed. With the authorities – whoever they might be – unable to act, people took matters into their own hands and erected home made speed bumps along the now, main user roads.
