Mawnan Smith Women's Institute
3:14pm Wednesday 18th January 2012 in Mawnan Smith
Swimming with horses was one of the fascinating accounts of Gia Shaw and Sara Thomas’s informative talk with pictures and film of their adventure trekking holiday entitled Bareback in Botswana.
Fantastic aerial views of the magnificent Victoria Falls as the girls flew into Botswana from Johannesburg to Livingstone were followed by details of their Okavango Delta horse safari. Before meeting their beautiful Arab horses, they had crossed the great Zambezi where the four boundaries of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia meet, before taking a helicopter flight to their first camp. Wonderful close-up shots of Lion cubs, elephants, antelopes, hippos (not so close!), warthogs, giraffes and zebras were shown. With stunning bush and delta photographs, the Botswana experience was full of magical and unforgettable moments for the intrepid travellers. Gia and Sara’s informative and amusing presentation made for a brilliant evening. With the proceeds of a similar talk given at the Tolmen Centre in Constantine, they paid for a child’s schooling for a year at the Okavango Education Project.
At the beginning of the evening the large amount of members and guests present sang Jerusalem unaccompanied in memory of Phyllis Benney, a much loved ex-President of Mawnan WI and its pianist for many, many years until relatively recently her health prevented her from attending the meetings. During official business President Jenny Ragg read out a moving letter from Phyllis’ family thanking members for all their help in providing such a lovely tea in the Memorial Hall for the many who attended her recent funeral.
The next meeting is also the AGM on Thursday, February 9 at the earlier time of 7.15pm, and the evening will include a light-hearted quiz compiled by Sue Miner. Everyone is welcome.
