Site Arrival

Today I arrived at my site.

Yesterday was the day after Christmas, and I came down with another 24 hour bug, this time with puking and diarrhea. Bugger. Luckily I got over it in time for today’s travels to be as painless as could be hoped for.

The day began with frantic packing by all the Trainees. The goal was to be packed up in the Land Cruisers and on our way by 7:00 am. In an Honest-to-God miracle, four of us, all our stuff, and the driver somehow managed to get on the road by 8:00 am. It was like being in a coal mine during an impending implosion; the roof rack was packed 3 feet high over the entire roof, there were bags on laps and the entire back, every nook and cranny, was filled with our crap. You can take the Americans out of America… etc, etc.

Everybody was feeling pretty good about our feat, and then we stopped at the gas-mart to get gas tanks for our stoves. The entire roof rack was unloaded, then reloaded with four, 19 kg propane tanks added. With the stability of an inverted pendulum, we headed out onto highway.

We dropped off Melody first. It took 4-wheel low to crawl up the road (read rock face, not rocky, much of the road was just one big polished hunk of rock) up to her compound. It is a Catholic Mission, but with the seclusion and oddness of the surrounding pine trees and labyrinth of barbed-wire fences looked more like something out of a bad slasher movie set in the Eastern Cascades. We unloaded her stuff, used her toilet (she is one of four volunteers in my group to have a toilet), and I chased away a spider the size of my palm while everybody waited outside. I quickly informed the group that the spider did indeed jump, shoot venom and fling spider-webbing out of it’s front two legs. This may or may not have helped the general arachnophobia that resides in my fellow trainees.

I thought it was funny.

Next was Meg. She was only about an hour away from Melody in private car and had a cool ronda-mansion (rondaval + mansion = ronda-mansion). Black and white checkered floor, great stamped steel, 70’s era white and aqua cabinets, an wardrobe, she is basically living in a thatched-roof diner.

Mike and I were next to be dropped off. We are both in Ha Sefako, the second to last village on the most northerly route to South Africa. We left Meg’s and headed back down south towards the direction we had come. The right turn we took off the main road immediately became a dirt road and we traveled on that for the next hour and a half. That is to say, we are much more secluded than I had thought.

However, the drive in was gorgeous. The closest thing I can compare it to is a slightly smaller, less sheer rock faced Yosemite valley. Out my front door I look at South Africa and a peak that towers maybe 2500’ above me. The Caledon River (more of a creek right now) is just a couple hundred yards away and is the Northwest border between Lesotho and South Africa. The village is quite small, with a small shop, a secondary school and a primary school.

My supervisor met us along the road and got Mike and I both settled in before taking us to meet the Chief, the police and the owners of the local shop. Unfortunately the trip to the shop (or shopong, how I love cognates) culminated in the purchase of 1 liter of coke, which is why I am still awake writing this. I guess one good thing was that on my return from Mike’s house, two women stopped me, asked for a drink of my coke, and proceeded to polish off the last third of it between them. I think I’ll probably hide stuff in bags from now on unless I’m not interested in consuming it.

So, I’m sitting in my living room, a sizeable 15’ x 15’ room with a single school-sized desk in the middle with two plastic chairs typing by candle light. In the corner are a pair of slightly worn rock-climbing shoes (just my size!) and a pair of Birkenstocks that were left by the last occupant. The two windows are covered in curtains that are made up of old dolphin sheets and a single map of Southern Africa adorns the walls. I am sitting in an orange plastic chair, opposed by another orange plastic chair. The other rooms of the house are a kitchen, bedroom (with a firm mattress, my back is overjoyed) and sizeable storeroom.

I have nothing to store.

Big dreams for the new abode include sizeable chunks for acoustic foam and a giant L-shaped couch for the living room. Realistic dreams are going to have to require some research. The road to South Africa is apparently only passable on foot or with four-wheel drive and a death wish. The other volunteer in the area calls it the ‘Trail of Tears.’ Perhaps some paint, an area rug and some pillows to sit on will be good enough. Who knows what my inner-interior decorator will come up with.

In short, I am extremely excited about this site. I have a couple volunteers who live within 15 minutes (Mike is like 4), the scenery is post-card worthy and my supervisor is super cool.

Cheers all, and thanks for reading. Post a comment. It makes my day!

I will try and post pictures soon, the internet connection in Botha-Bothe is lackluster.

The Current Situation

The last number of posts have been about specific experiences, so today will be a more general post. For the last three weeks I have been at Community Based Training (CBT), which is to say that I have been living with a host family in a village (Ha Mofoka). My family is made up of a ‘M’e (mother), whose first name is Mabokang and surname is Qobo (Cobo, where the C is a click). She takes care of two grandchildren and a great nephew. The two boys are eleven and the granddaughter is 3. She calls them all her kids. The family structures here are blurred and the typical exactness that Americans use to define relatives is not used here.

The first two weeks of CBT were focused around practice teaching. This was essentially our student teaching condensed into two weeks of two, forty minute teaching periods. After practice teaching in the morning we had Sesotho lessons in the afternoon. It was intense, informative, at times discouraging and energizing. This week has been Sesotho in the morning, followed by HIV/AIDs training or cross-cultural training, which has been informative, saddening and motivating. HIV/AIDs is destroying the communities in genocidal ways that are difficult to grasp considering how privately and round-aboutly the cultural approaches and accepts it. And how covertly HIV/AIDs attacks. It is not an obvious disease, but something that you have to almost take on faith.

We will head back to the Training Center in Maseru the 24th to celebrate Christmas as a training group. The 27th we head to our respective posts for a site visit. I have been posted in Ha Sefako in Botha-Bothe district, way in the North of Lesotho. We will be there for four days before returning to Maseru. Soon after we will have our language test (I must perform at least at the Intermediate-low level), then swearing in, final training, and then finally head to our posts January 9th or 10th.

School starts January 19th.

I have been placed at Ha Sefako high school. We met with our respective counter-parts today and I learned that Ha Sefako High School is an Anglican funded school. I will live on the school compound in a three room building without running water or electricity. My counter-part said that I will probably be teaching the Form A and B (8th and 9th grades in America) science and maths classes. It will be a challenge to teach at these levels both because the students have limited English experience and the Sesotho language has limited means of communicating science and math concepts. I am going to have to relearn what it was like to learn things like surface area.

Not so easy.

It has been nice to cook for myself again. The last few months in LA was a lot of eating out (Taco Tuesdays at El Torito, Chipotle (how I miss barbacoa burritos), etc). So it has been nice to create food again, especially when so much of it has been fresh and organic (in the sense of a few very basic ingredients). I have been cooking with turmeric and cumin more than I have in the past with the results being some pretty decent pasta sauce and fried rice. Cabbage, onion and carrot is a surprisingly delicious combination and a fair egg-drop soup happened one night despite the lack of celery and chicken or tofu. Perhaps some inventive recipes will result out of the next two years.

All-in-all things are good. The Sesotho language-proficiency test is coming up in a couple weeks and I am a little worried about it, but things will probably be okay. People are great and I’m building some solid relationships. I have been very lucky to be placed almost across the street from another volunteer (Mike), so I will have an English language, American outlet close by, which will help with getting through the inevitable tough times.

Thank you everybody who has written (especially you, Amanda), it is a great pleasure and encouragement to receive letters and correspondence. Many blessings and Merry Christmas all!

The Greats

The Great Biscuit Riot of '08: There was a riot. I wouldn't call it a quiet riot, but it wasn't quite an uprising or coup either. Maybe it was more of a skirmish, or even just mild disorder. Regardless of semantics, it was not business as usual. At the end of each day of practice teaching each student is given 3 biscuits (cookies), or a banana, or what-have-you. We had been directed to give out biscuits at the door as the students were leaving in order to avoid possible bedlam. Well, as the foreshadowing probably indicated, things went awry. There was rain, and lightning, and thunder. Nothing atypical for this students, which is why they were just socializing in the room waiting for biscuits and the rain to subside. A female volunteer decided that giving out the biscuits in class would help calm the restlessness and stop the hunger pangs, as students do not bring lunches. Pandamonium. I started off well enough. Students were eager bug remained in their seats as the three biscuits per were granted. There were extras. Students saw. And understood. Some of the students were large, as they were 18 year olds in the 9th grade (some boys must tend to the herds for a number of years before returning to school). The teacher tried to calm the mob that was forming, students pestering and poking. After some time she relented and asked a student to hand out the rest of the biscuits to those who were behaving well. One of the large students began circling. "SIT DOWN!", unphased he continued to "sneak" his way over to the other side of the room, while his slouched over 6'2" frame, now standing at 5' 7", squeeked and bumped his way over toward the bag of biscuits as he pushed desks and chairs out of the way in the overstuffed classroom. The actions of the unwaivering Frankensteinesque student prompted similar stalking by other students. A pack formed and surrounded the cookies like they were mana. They most assuredly were not (John may argue this point, he rather fancies them). I arrived on the seen just at the end of this, as the teacher was leaving and sounds not that different from haenas were making their way out of the classroom. Someone may have lost a hand.

Moral of the Story: Biscuits are Gold, do not hand them out in class.

Disclaimer: Parts of The Great Biscuit Riot of '08 may or may not be slightly dramatized.


The Great Oil Catastrophe of '08: Ugh. So I had a dinner party on Sunday as part of our celebration that marked our liberation from being totally dependant on our 'M'es. Don't get me wrong, it was great not having to think about what was going to be made for dinner, or having to buy food or any such activity. But, for a bunch of American 20-somethings who take their ability to do what they want when they want how they want, it is a difficult thing to grow accustomed to. So upon our freedom to cook what we wanted we had a dinner party. Seven of us squeezed into my humble abode and I worked on a delightful little red sauce to go with some whole wheat penne, Gwen made bruschetta, Elen apple sauce and Kelly devilled eggs. I borrowed plastic chairs from my 'M'e and people were having a good time speaking in English and being generally loud Americans, when the plastic chair that John was sitting in 'melted.' Now, we have a history of these chairs from the Peace Corps Training Center where the back legs of the chair have the inexplicable tendency to curtsy, leaving the occupent on a smooth yet rapid descent towards the ground. This is called 'melting.' This would have normally been another situation for pointing and friendly ridicule if it had not been for the fact that there was a brand new 1-litre bottle of sunflower oil directly beneath the freshly melted chair. The aptly named Valdezian spill spread everywhere, especially towards my clothes which lined the adjacent wall. Due to our altered state of jubilation, laughter and general vacuum of quick action the slick spread and touched most of my clothes. I decided we needed a binding agent and poured a kilogram of whole wheat flour on the floor. John and I rolled up our pants, freaking out a little bit, while most everybody turned back to their conversations and left John and me to kick around the flour. Surprisingly the flour actually worked well and soaked up most of the oil, creating a pleasant pedicure material. I threw all of my clothes into the giant, red, washing tub and began scrubbing furiously. My host sisters laughed quite hard and told me just to leave it for my 'M'e, because I clearly was not going to get the oil out. This was only mostly true. I had a go at it and after everything, decided that I had to leave one pair of pants out to dry while I would soak the rest overnight.

Needless to say, the pants I left out are ruined. My 'M'e generously agreed to scrub my clothes again and was able to save many of them. But, 3 shirts and a pair of khakis were lost in the ecological disaster that was, The Great Oil Catastrophe of '08.

So all-in-all things are going well. Practice teaching has been difficult as the language gap has made teaching more difficult. The younger kids have neither a solid grasp of English or fundamental exposure to scientific vocabulary or concepts. Trying to do both simultaneously while just trying to get a grasp on basic teaching skills is a somewhat daunting task. I think things will be okay though. When I have a class that I can spend enough time with to learn my accent and for me to get accustomed to what their needs and background are I think things will smooth out.

First Week at Village

So I've been at village for the last week and a lot has happened. I'm just going to give you a few snapshots.

Village Day: On Saturday the 29th we arrived in the village of Ha Mofoka to start Community Based Training. The village is about an hour outside of Maseru and during our drive up to the meeting place the truck ahead of us, which held all of our bags, got stuck in a large bog that had been created by the recent heavy rain. Soon a large crowd of children surrounded the truck, the numbers of which were swollen due to the fact that the truck had repeatedly flagged its arrival with heavy honking, and the truck slithered back and forth in the mud as it tried to rock its way out. After a lot of anxious shouts from the bus holding all of the trainees, the truck finally got freed and it was our bus' turn. We got through without event.

We arrived at our destination, a horseshoe of white plastic chairs that faced a line of bo-'M'e (women) and a throng of villagers that grew with the incoming crowd from the mud lake we had just forded, a la Oregon Trail. All of the trainees who were staying in Ha Mofoka exited the vehicle and began unloading our stuff out of the truck. We milled around about while one of the trainers figured out what was going on. We eventually sat in the white chairs facing the crowd. The trainer gave a speech in Sesotho, the wife of the village chief gave a reply and the trainer spoke a little more. A second trainer translated as the trainees sat smiling, whelmed and content.

Soon we found ourselves being paired up with the bo-'M'e. It all happened very fast and I soon found myself on the other side of the white chairs, surrounded by many village children and trying to figure out what my 'M'e had just said my new Sesotho name was, and if she had mentioned what here name was. All I knew was that there was a click in some part of the name, and was plotting as to whether or not I could communicate some fabricated physical ailment that would explain my inability to master this essential sound of the language. I decided I should just take a few pictures instead.

After packing all of my stuff into a truck and being escorted across the road, I found myself in a lovely dusty green room, with widely spaced, dark stained, rough hewn 2 x 6 stringers with a corragated tin roof. There were large windows on opposing walls, a twin bed across from the door and a lace cloth on the table at the center of the room. Diagonal from the door stood an old wood fired, green enamel stove with a twin-gas burner stove on top. On the wall across from the bed was a table for preparing food and storing pots and pans.

My 'M'e helped me organize my stuff then left me to rest and settle in the rest of my stuff.

First Day of Teaching: So Tuesday was my first day of practice teaching. Students are on summer break, but many have been showing up at St. Joseph's school in Koro Koro in order to get some biscuits in exchange for watching the Americans attempt to teach. The first day was not encouraging. My Form E maths class (equivalent to seniors in high school in America) slowly filed in over the 30 minute class and stared at me blankely as I tried to introduce Algebra and do a little review. I got zero response, and they seemed genuinely disinterested in me. My Form B science class was even worse. Their English is new, and their mathematical background is not thorough. These kids had just finished their 7th or 8th grade year and could not divide 100 by 5, they struggled with my English, and their vocabulary does not extend into the scientific realm. All in all it was eye opening for what I am going to be facing for the next two years, and also what I need to think about in order to help Lesotho's students pass their external exams (high school exit exam). It was rough, but I was reassured by the current volunteers who observed us that it was a fairly typical response by shy students who needed to get to know us and our accents.

The second day was much better, and I finally saw some engagement and response when I tossed out some candies to the winners of a mental math game. I think teaching will be okay.

Donkey Day: So I was teaching my abuti (brother, also boy) Bohlokua how to play frisbee, when a neighbor boy rolled up on his donkey. I got very excited and asked if I could ride the beast, at which point my abuti looked at me, smiled, and communicted, quite effectively, "really?" I adamently nodded that I did, indeed, want to mount the dirty donkey and go for a ride. The neighbor boy consented, gracefully dismounted by pushing himself off the back of the donkey and held it while I deftly and gingerly got on the sagging back of the mangy donkey. I was very excited and visualized myself galloping around the village, bareback, and waving to the bo-'M'e and bo-Ntate, and them proudly responding with encouraging and accepting waves. This was my avenue for moderate celebrity status in the community. The boy grabbed the donkey's mohawk, turned it to face down a long, straight path, surely I was going to reach top speed down this path. I did my best to stablize myself while trying not to touch any of the rough, patchy fur that was motled with unknown substances, probably feces. The boy began pulling hard at the donkey's mohawk, trying to get the donkey to move.

The jackass didn't budge.

I dismounted. Today when we got on the bus to go to the school, I told everybody that I had ridden a donkey. They were jealous. But less so when they found out the jackass wouldn't budge. Still, I got on a donkey.

Village life is good. It is heavily dictated by daylight as the night is black and dogs roam about. It is unfortunate that we cannot be out at night, as the nights are spectacular with stars and thunderstorms, sometimes in the distance and sometimes rolling right over the homestead here, pouring buckets of rain and lighting up the night.

We will be in village for another three weeks, and begin cooking for ourselves tomorrow. All the trainees are very excited to be self-sufficient and productive adults again. Also to be able to cook for themselves again. I will assuredly adopt the Bosotho breads and cabbage, but will probably eat more raw vegetables and fruits.

Well, that's all for now. I will be getting a cell phone by the end of the month, so everybody should start getting phone cards now, so there isn't a run on them at the end of the month.