Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Gaborone - the market on Main Mall

From the little bit I saw of Botswana you could really tell that it is a country which is doing very well (In fact Botswana is the most stable country in Africa). Even flying over Gaborone before landing you could see a huge difference with the other countries in southern Africa. There was no slums, no garbage. It looks clean and organized. And my couple of days in town confirmed this original "fly by" impression.

As an example here are some shots of the market at Main Mall (basically the downtown of Gaborone) I had never seen such a spacious, open, clean market...not anywhere, never mind Africa.

 In this shot you can see the sign for the Spar grocery store who was selling the mopane worms in tomato sauce... In case you get there and you want to try some. Thought I would be willing to bet that if they had it most grocery store with deli section has them.

 Downtown Gaborone is very modern and you can see the building. You can also see a very African thing: the huge line up to the ATM machine.

 See how clean and spacious it is!?!

In the background you can see the line up to the other ATM at the same market.

I have to say that from what I saw Botswana is to Africa what Switzerland is to Europe. Here is my idea of what a market in Africa should look like.:
One example from Ethiopia

and one example from Mozambique

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