We went out to the Kalahari Desert last weekend to visit Kang and Hukuntsi, two villages where the language of the Kgalagari people is spoken.  We will be renting a home in Kang, hopefully moving out there in September.  We got to see the house in person, and it looks like it will be a great place for us.  There will be some renovation required on one of the buildings on the property to have it usable as a schoolroom, office and perhaps living quarters for a teacher/tutor.  Precisely what kind of renovation is yet to be seen - the owner did not have the key to open the building.

The village of Kang is a sandy, dusty place, but there are some trees and greenery here and there.  The town has a small grocery store, butcher shop, 'takeaway' prepared food shops and, to our surprise, a wholesale Sam's Club like place called Sefalana which has quite a bit available (in bulk however).  We did find that if you can swing the bulk price you get the stuff at about half of the retail price. 

The village of Hukuntsi is a very sandy, dusty place with hardly any trees.  The government offices for the Kgalagari District (like a state in the US) are located there, as well as a hospital, shops and so forth.  It is definitely out there.  The Lutheran Church has a mission site there that is proposed by some as a possible good location for the translation project to be based, as the Shekgalagari language is spoken there in its most esteemed dialect and Hukuntsi is central to a cluster of other villages with high concentrations of speakers of the language.  This may mean that at some point we would also move to Hukuntsi, but housing is not readily available there and would likely require significant renovation of an existing house on the Lutheran Church property or perhaps even construction of a new one.  Those are details to be worked on over the next months and possibly years.

All in all a good trip - lots of planning and logistical thinking now to figure out how to obtain furnishings for the house and get them to the house, which is 450km from Gaborone, the capital city (that's around 280 miles for you metrically challenged people) :)  So that is an item we request for prayer, that we have wisdom concerning that, that we make good decisions and that we are willing and able to cope with some of the inconveniences that we will inevitably encounter as we get that household setup.

Grace and peace to you.