t of Cecil John Rhodes “From Cape Town to Cairo” happened to trespass the village in which I was born.
Living in this modest environment, I went through the normal Tswana primary school, learning both at Palapye Primary School and Morwalela Primary School respectively. In between I spent a year at Nyangabwe Primary School in Francistown. My primary school learning lasted for seven years before I went on to do my three year Junior Secondary School Certificate at the Mmaphula Community Junior Secondary School. To finish I did my two-year Cambridge Certificate where I was privileged to be part of the pure science class in Lotsane Senior Secondary School. During my primary school learning years, I had the privilege of living with my father as well as his older brother who were both in the army at the time, which played a very important part in my life. To this day I appreciate these years very much. At the time, Botswana often had to defend parts of its territory against our neighbors and on several occasions my father was seriously wounded during those skirmishes. 
It was hard work and patience throughout my learning years that later enabled me to secure a placement as a student for a Diploma in General nursing at the University of Botswana (Institute of Health Sciences) located in the capital city Gaborone. The institution is attached to Princess Marina Hospital, the main referral hospital of Botswana, where we all gained invaluable experience. After having successfully completed my three-year diploma I was placed in Botswana’s second largest referral hospital (Nyangabwe) where I worked as a general nurse in the following departments: surgical, orthopedic and oncology. I later left the central government and went on to work for the Ministry of Local Government where I got placed in Maun and the surrounding villages within the Ngami Land District. In this regard I worked as a registered nurse for the following facilities: Sehithwa Clinic, Thito Clinic and Boseja Kubung. It was there that I gained more experience than one would expect in general nursing, since I was given the opportunity to practice independently. I was privileged to cover services ranging from general consultation, wound care and management, to suturing, as well as minor surgical excisions, from safe male circumcision, to keloid and lipoma excisions, all under the supervision of a senior medical officer.
Later, in the year 2012 I decided to resign from my formal nursing career, as earlier, in 2011, I had started our Church Ministry ‘Gates of Heaven Network’ in Maun and was now overwhelmed by my duties. I therefore decided to give my full attention to the Ministry with the hope that I would find stability and more time in the future to allow me to go back to my profession as a nurse.
My strongest backbone in our Church Ministry is of course my wife and our three children, for whom we wish this planet to remain a nice place. However, we as the parents must also understand that they will not be wise and thoughtful leaders, managing the lands and resources which God has given us, if we do not give our children a good and proper education. We therefore must be diligent and ensure that we pass on, what our elders have taught us when we were children, as well as all everything we are learning on a daily basis in our lives!
However, despite of all the work at hand, I nevertheless decided to enroll in one of the Paralegal Diplomas in 2015, which would later enable me to get registered with the International Association of Forensic Nurses, based in the United States of America, which was the second Diploma I held. I thereafter obtained my certification in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and went on to study for a third Diploma in Mental Health. I pursued both these courses with ‘Allison’, an online education platform. After completion of the aforementioned courses I enrolled with the ‘John Moore University’ of Liverpool to pursue a Master’s Degree in Psychology. As per October 2022 I have completed 60% of the course.
In late 2019 my life took another important turn when I joined Okavango Air Rescue and was offered an understudy program by the company’s two founders, I worked for almost three years as a volunteer and without a salary. The reward came in 2022 when I was made a director and shareholder of Okavango Air Rescue in June of the same year.
I love people and wish to see everybody prosper, especially in the right direction. I am happy and willing to learn from all at the same time because life is an endless journey of learning.
As I have outlined here above, I very much had an average childhood and upbringing.
My father had passed away when I was still very young at the age of thirteen, thereafter my mother always had food on the table, ensured that I went to school and I walked barefoot like all my friends. The weekends were spent at the cattle post and overall, I was a quite happy young chap.
Towards my late teens I started to realize that outside Botswana there was life as well and I started to get glimpses of this whenever I had the opportunity to watch television on one of the few sets that was owned by someone in the village, or if I managed to get an old discarded glossy magazine from some far away place with those beautiful color pictures of beautiful homes.
It was around that age that my contemporaries and myself, we started counting all the things we did not have, which seemed to be omnipresent in all the other countries outside Botswana and a certain sense of not being privileged started to set in. However, I was young and I was not going to be beaten. I was going to get those things that glittered on the horizon and all these far away temptations became very motivational in my young head. I thus started from an early age to do various menial jobs and eventually, to drive a mini bus for one of my uncles to earn some cash during the time I studied to become a nurse.
Throughout these important, character building and all-encompassing young years I continued to count ‘what we did not have’, the list became longer and longer and I could not wait to travel the world, to see and be part of this abundance that seemed to prevail outside our country.
The day came when I could finally travel and over the years I have been to China, Europe and the United States. The first time I was in one of these huge modern airports I walked the seemingly endless, air conditioned, shiny corridors and coming out of it, I was in awe of the glass tower buildings that surrounded the same, with 6- or more lane highways meandering in between, all framed by unaccountable amounts of streetlights – it was awesome.
At first my list of ‘what we did not have’ grew daily and it was only after quite some time and mixing with the people of those countries, that a new realization started to set in. Whilst visiting many duty free shops to bring home presents for my family and friends, but especially my nephews and nieces for whom I was buying those beautiful soft toys, I could not help noticing that the world over, those toys were little elephants, lions, leopards, giraffes, even crocodiles. I came to understand that millions of children all over the world were presented with soft toys that depicted animals that roamed in my country freely, but not in one of their countries.
Speaking to the people in these places it suddenly dawned on me that they too had long lists of ‘what THEY did not have’. I was questioned about elephants, lions, leopards, giraffes, crocodiles and if it was true that they really roamed free in Botswana. I was questioned if we really had such open spaces to allow these animals to go about and many said, that should they ever save enough money to travel to Africa, they would want to come and see this wonder of nature for themselves.
I also sat with friends in their flats in sky rise buildings, feeling a little claustrophobic, knowing that we were far above the ground, with neighbors not only to our left and right, but also below and above, which was the reason why we could not make any noise, or sing and dance, as the neighbors would invariably complain. They were not allowed to have dogs and their children could only play in the corridors of those huge buildings as downstairs in the streets it was too dangerous because of crime and endless traffic. All of them did not know what a cattle post was and the notion of walking the land freely, as far as one wishes was completely incomprehensible and alien to them.
Some of them asked me about our sunsets, which to me was a given, only to realize that some of them had never seen one, as actually most continents do not have sunsets like we do. In the contrary, in the northern countries the sun disappears for the whole winter months and other countries have so much rain and fog that people start suffering from depressions.
They told me how envious they were about the African’s gift of singing and dancing, which none of the other folks in this world have in them like we do. Until then I had never thought about this, but it is the bleak reality, they cannot dance and they cannot sing as freely and happily as we do. There is also African art for which, unbeknown to us, we get great admiration in many circles of the big wide world.
They asked me if it was true that we had diamonds in the ground, besides, gold, silver, copper, coal and all the other substances we are mining, as most countries have no, or only limited natural resources. In our conversations I came to realize that on their lists of ‘what they did not have’, they almost imagined that we all get paid in diamonds – just like I was thinking the people outside Botswana were all living in huge, luxurious apartments and that they were endlessly rich. It was then that I came to understand that poverty, as well as the life of the middle classes, in a huge city of shiny glass towers was the much bigger burden than living in the country side with modest financial means.
Reflecting on all of the above, it more and more occurred to me that it is a major shortcoming of mankind to only count ‘what we do not have’, but we seldom consider what is in front of our doorstep.
As I grew older I also came to view the big glass towers as temples built by men, whilst what we have here in Botswana is not manmade, but are actually gifts from God and God seems to have given us more than he gave to most other nations or continents.
I wonder if as a country we are stagnating because we do not show these gifts enough appreciation, for if we do not cherish and develop what we have, we will not be able to grow beyond of what we are.
For this reason I have decided to create this platform, to bring ‘what we have’, closer to all of us.