Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
els (13 at last count, plus two novellas for younger readers) with names like
Morality for Beautiful Girls
,
The Ka-
lahari Typing School for Men
and
The Double Comfort Safari Club
. This is crime writing without a hard edge, a
delightfully whimsical and almost gentle series of tales that seems to fit perfectly within Botswana's relatively
peaceful society.
The author was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1948 and went on to become a leading international ex-
pert in medical law. Before turning his hand to crime fiction, he wrote a number of children's books (among them
The White Hippo
and
Akimbo and the Lion
). He lectured at the University of Botswana from 1981 to 1984, but it
was not until 1999 that his
No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
was published, changing his life forever and putting
Botswana on the literary map. Although he lives in Scotland, he has sponsored a number of projects in Botswana,
including Gaborone's No.1 Ladies' Opera House (
Click here
)
. And if you're a fan of the series, don't miss one
of the themed tours of Gaborone (
Click here
) and visit the author's website (
www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk
).
FUSION & HIP HOP
Other fusion sounds are
gumba-gumba,
a modern blend of Zulu and Tswana music mixed
with a dose of traditional jazz - the word comes from the township slang for 'party'. Al-
fredo Mos is the father of
rumba kwasa,
that African bum-gyrating jive that foreigners
have so such trouble emulating. Hot on his heels is
kwasa kwasa
king Franco, one of the
most successful artists in Botswana at the moment, alongside the Wizards, Vee and Jeff
Matheatau.
Wildly popular is Botswana's version of hip hop, championed by the Wizards, who fuse
the style with ragga and R&B. It's nearly always been the case that talented Batswana mu-
sicians have had to move to South Africa to make a living, but at the time of writing there
was still some decent talent here, including Kast, Scar, Vee and Stagga-Don Dada. Kwaito
music, the South African-township fusion of hip hop, house and all things that make
booties shake, is also hugely popular.
Botswana Cuisine
Local Dishes
Local Batswana cooking is, for the most part, aimed more at sustenance than exciting
tastes. Forming the centre of most Batswana meals nowadays is
mabele
(sorghum) or
bogobe
(porridge made from sorghum), but these staples are rapidly being replaced by im-
ported maize mealies, sometimes known by the Afrikaans name mealie pap, or just plain
pap. This provides the base for an array of meat and vegetable sauces like
seswaa
(shred-
