The US Embassy in Gaborone confirmed yesterday that she is coming to discuss and promote education, health, and wellness. Daughters, Malia and Sasha, and her mother will join her. It would be odd if the first lady of the world's remaining superpower were to go back to Washington without visiting the world's wonders in the Okavango Delta, Makgadikgadi, Chobe National Park and indeed the diamond mines from which the diamond ring or bracelet she would probably be wearing came from. That begs the question: Who will accompany Mrs Obama? Our circumstances are surely different from those obtaining among South Africans who may decide to assign a different first lady to accompany Mrs Obama to each of the different provinces. To be fair, to at least five provinces.
In the event she was not forewarned, Mrs Obama should not hope to find a first lady with a great taste for fashion when she hits our shores, no, the soil at the Sir Seretse Khama International Airport. She will discover that Botswana has no first lady. President Ian Khama remains a bachelor and had in at least one unguarded moment said that "wives would be a distraction" to his duty of serving the country during his term. The man has politely parried his uncles' insistence that he should bring home a wife who will bear them and the Bangwato Royal House an heir. Khama is also the Bangwato Paramount Chief. Perhaps Vice-President Mompati Merafhe will avail his wife.
