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!