When a highway is manace

KUMAKWANE: The year was 1990 when the first Murray and Roberts earth movers rolled into the village and with it the hope of transforming life in what was a little developed village. For two years, pupils from the only primary school and their parents would set aside their tasks and converge on the construction site to watch the plant operators and their earth-moving machines at work day and night.

In a country of exceptionally lax labour laws, many of the plant operators and labourers spoke in clicks - not the Sesarwa variety that is fairly easy on the palate, but a harsher, rapid-fire version that puts the tongue through acrobatics. The men who were building the A10 Highway to connect Gaborone and Kanye were Xhosas and Zulus from South Africa. Predictably, camp followers from the village came to make the men of 'Ko Mmari' feel at home. Today, the women's brothers are burdened with a crop of nephews and nieces who form a living testimony to that episode of development.