BUT alas honeymoons, like all good holidays, come to an end, and we were soon back in Johannesburg. For two-and-a-half years we endured the humdrum existence of commuting into the city.
We never seemed to have time for a proper holiday, and our only breaks were odd weekends, spent camping on the wild side of Loskop Dam.
We spent some lovely, peaceful weekends at Loskop, sitting and watching the water, with a fishing rod in one hand and a beer in the other. Fishing in the Transvaal was not, on the whole, a strenuous occupation, unless you chose to make it so.
You might just as well finish your beer first and rebait your line later – it was not going to make a bit of difference to your catch!
But occasional weekends don’t make a lifestyle and the quality of our daily existence left a lot to be desired.
Then, one evening, Corrie came back from work with a naughty look in his eyes. Like Peter Pan who has just been told he was right all along and growing-up isn’t necessary. Like a small boy with a frog in his pocket.
“How do you fancy the idea of two years in the Kalahari Desert?”
The question did not come entirely as a surprise. Corrie had been working on the design of the control system for Orapa’s new plant for some time and he dearly wanted to see the installation and commissioning stages completed.
He was also thoroughly fed up with leaving home at six in the morning and getting back at seven at night. Karen was then two months old and he hardly ever saw her, unless she cried in the night. Paul was in the Air Force and Penny, Jacquie and Richard were all living with their mother, so we now had only ourselves to consider. How did I like the idea of moving to Botswana? I liked it a lot.
To the question, ‘what is mined in Orapa?’ the standard answer was, ‘other people’s business.’
Certainly, when it came to the time-sharing of the population’s waking hours, gossip must have run a pretty close second to diamond production. As Orapa was one of the world’s largest diamond mines, I suppose one must conclude that Orapans were among the world’s worst gossips.
But, what can one expect in a one-shop town, linked to the nearest railroad by a 250km of dirt track? To visit a department store, one had to undertake a gruelling eight-hour drive and cross an international boundary.
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