An example of Botswana’s rock outcroppingsTravel on the two-lane Sir Seretse Khama Highway (named for Botswana’s first president) is uneventful except for encounters with those animals who prefer meandering in the middle of the road. Singing, talking, eating and dozing in the sun streaming through the windows of the Mothers’ Union van help us pass the time. There’s a seemingly endless supply of hard candy; the little sugar jolts are nice as the day goes on. Of the assorted flavors, I quickly develop a partiality for mango. Our entrance to Jwaneng, on the fringe of the Kalahari Desert, is announced by signage asking visitors to not feed the baboons. Baboons, indifferent to the warning, are sitting on top of the sign munching on food. The little monkeys are cute but the big ones, with their long muzzles, powerful jaws and long, sharp canine teeth, scare me. Jwaneng, which means “a place of small stones,” is a mining town. Diamond mining. The De Beers company, headquartered in neighboring South Africa, owns the Jwaneng mine, which it describes as “the richest diamond mine in the world”. A guaranteed conversation starter in Botswana, besides cattle, is who should control and profit from this precious natural resource. Some of my traveling companions share stories about what they’ve heard of the mine’s elaborate security measures for both employees and visitors. Just a hint of the scale of the operation is glimpsed through the van’s window. 
Residue from Jwaneng diamond mineBotswana has lots of rock formations and variously sized hills so it takes me a minute to realize that what I’m looking at, something resembling a mesa in the western part of the U.S., is not a natural phenomenon but instead the buildup of earth removed as part of the open pit mining process. It’s massive, football field after football field after football field long. It appears to be about as deep as it is long, and I’m only seeing one piece of one end of it. There are many other such “mesas.” We fantasize about what just one diamond extracted from that pit could do for the ministries we represent.
Hills of south central Botswana