Feature: Batswana employee witnesses Chinese firm's development

Forty-year old Batswana Saria Mmusi has worked for a Chinese company doing business in her country for over ten years. She was offered a gift by her Chinese employer last year -- a five-day trip with her husband to Beijing.

Her boss Nan Gengxu, owner of a construction company in Botswana, paid for everything of the journey and even arranged a driver and a translator for them.

"I like China so much, and I enjoyed every moment in China," Mmusi said, telling that they visited the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium and other tourist attractions.

A secretary for Mr. Nan, Mmusi could still remember it was in 2009 -- the fifth year she worked with her boss -- that she was given the promise of this trip.

"During a get-together I held with my Chinese and local friends, he said to me, 'I like working with you, with appreciation for your commitments, and I am willing to work with you for many years. If you work with me for ten years, I'll give you and your husband a ticket to China,'" Mmsui recalled.

Mmsui said she had never thought she would have the chance to go abroad, not to say a far away continent, but Nan made it true, the person who she said "changed her life".

"I like working with him. He is like a brother to me. We are working as a true team," she said.

Mmsui said she is a witness of the growth her Chinese boss's business in the African nation.

"I started working with Nan when his business here was in the early stage. I witnessed the formation of his business, to set up the company. It was also me who registered the name 'Miles' for the company," she said.

Initially, Nan was renting a place for business, Mmsui said, but now the Chinese businessman has had his own building.

"We have been together through tick and thin," Mmusi said.

Mmusi has contributed to the company's growth, which in turn has increased her salary year by year.

Not only her personal progress, Mmusi said, the charitable contributions Nan has done for her fellow citizens, is also a reason for her affection for the work.

The state-run Daily News early this year published Nan and his Chinese friends' feedback to the local people.

"They have sponsored different projects across Botswana," Motshwari Kitso, national coordinator for SOS Children's Villages Association of Botswana, was quoted by the paper.

The Association of Chinese in Botswana, chaired by Nan, was established in 2012. Up to last October, the total amount of donation made by the association has reached over 2 million pula, that's about 1.95 million U.S. dollars.

When attending a ceremony of the association's donation to local disabled people last October, the then Botswana's acting minister of youth, sport and culture, Vincent Seretse, who is now minister of trade and industry, said the association has set an example for business communities in the country. Endi