I can remember in US history back in fourth grade some passing reference to the tsetse fly and the sleeping sickness that it caused.  It was about the only bit of history of Africa we got in our history class back then - Africa was a place to be avoided where slaves eventually came from and that had that dreaded tsetse fly that caused sleeping sickness.

My reading lately has been in Botswana history, a volume by Tlou and Campbell that reconstructs a lot of the early history of the area based on archaeological evidence and research.  The area was first inhabited by people known generally as San - the folks with the heavily clicked languages like in 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'.  The first 'Bantu' settlers - called so because of their language and its relatedness to many other languages of Africa were farmers and cattle herders and probably came south so that they could be more successful herding cattle and to escape . . . the tsetse fly and its dreaded sleeping sickness (which apparently impacted cattle significantly).  These early Bantu settlers are the forefathers of the Bakgalagari - the people that we are beginning our work with here in Botswana. 

Now about the combi's.  We were in a traffic accident our first week here when we were hit by a combi (the vans that provide public transportation in Botswana, sometimes called 'minibus').  Our van finally got in the shop on Tuesday and is still there getting fixed and in an ironic twist of fate, our family rode to and from our outings today in the combis.  We probably wouldn't have done it if we'd had our car, but we needed to get out to get groceries, (and just get out of the house) and it was a most expedient way to do it.  Everybody with us thought it was a pretty good time to see a large white family flagging down, getting into, riding in, and getting out of the combi.  We also got to talk to a few people and practice my very rudimentary Setswana.  So we come full circle from being struck by combis to riding around in them.  God is good.