Au­gust 26 marked the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the Mafeny­at­lala (a shop­ping com­plex at Mole­polole Vil­lage in the land-locked Botswana. Mafeny­at­lala trans­lat­ed from Setswana to Eng­lish im­plies "Pover­ty Erad­i­ca­tion." Shop­pers were en­ter­tained by the likes of Botswana pop artistes Skaven­ga and Meli­to among oth­ers. The "high point" of the en­ter­tain­ment was, how­ev­er, the ap­pear­ance of the Kaiso­ka Moko­jumbies which on this oc­ca­sion in­clud­ed two past stu­dents of the Marang Com­mu­ni­ty Ju­nior Sec­ondary School in the per­sons of Kamo­ge­lo Tshek­iso, 25. Tshek­iso sub­se­quent­ly at­tend­ed the Gaborone Sec­ondary School, and the Uni­ver­si­ty Of Botswana and who is now em­ployed with the Gov­ern­ment as an Ad­min­is­tra­tion Of­fi­cer in the Min­istry of Youth, Sport and Cul­ture.

The oth­er per­former was Akanyang Mot­su­mi, 24, who lat­er went to Ledu­mang Se­nior Sec­ondary School. He is cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing his stu­dent tenure at Bais­a­go Uni­ver­si­ty (the al­ma mater of San Fer­nan­di­an Hol­lis Clifton, their tu­tor) in Gaborone, the cap­i­tal of a land­locked Botswana. Both stilt walk­ers honed their skills un­der the tute­lage of Clifton, a for­mer teacher of Pleas­antville Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School and now a talk show host at WACK 90.1FM ra­dio sta­tion in San Fer­nan­do. Clifton, who for a num­ber of years taught Moral Ed­u­ca­tion at Marang Com­mu­ni­ty Ju­nior Sec­ondary School in Broad­hurst, in the north­ern sub­urb of the cap­i­tal Gaborone, was at the fore­front of the found­ing of the Kaiso­ka Moko­jumbies in Carl­ton Lane, San Fer­nan­do.

He took the art form back to the African con­ti­nent with his three chil­dren who by then were ac­com­plished stilt walk­ers (cum pi­o­neers). The par­ent body of Kaiso­ka Moko­jumbies is now man­aged by co-founder Ju­nior "Ter­mites" Bis­nath. The Kaiso­ka Moko­jumbies left for­mer Bar­ba­dos prime min­is­ter Owen Arthur, who was in tran­sit to Ma­puto, Mozam­bique for an ACP con­fer­ence, in awe at a re­cep­tion in his ho­n­our.

Greet­ed by the moko jumbies and a steel­band, the for­mer PM was no­tice­ably sur­prised when he learned that the stilt walk­ers were born and bred in Botswana, tu­tored by a fel­low "Caribbean Man" in Clifton. Botswana pres­i­dent Fes­tus Mo­gae Arthur left the fol­low­ing day for Mozam­bique.