Three Weeks Down

Pictures: One is "cave paintings", I think some herdboys got bored. Another was a picture with a herdboy I met while on a hike and the last is when Mike and I made a phenomenal bannana/chocolate bread.

First of all, thank you for everybody who called me last weekend. It was amazing to get calls from back home. Forgive me if I was a little incoherent, there was a lot going on. We had a district meeting in Butha-Buthe, so some of us decided to meet up with one of our counterparts in a local pub, called the Hop In, to have some drinks and watch a soccer match. Things transpired.

The Hop In was made infamous when Prince Harry, who has made Lesotho his charity country of choice, fell upon the establishment while working on a local school with a bunch of his “blokes.” As we sat down in the large empty room (it was 4 pm), the patron of the place, Brian, came over to chat us up a bit and began telling stories of Prince Harry’s visit.

Episode 1: The meeting. So it was a Saturday night, the Hop In was hoppin’ (I’m really, really sorry) “… because we’ve got the disco and all,” says Brian, pointing to the disco ball and stage lights adorning the ceiling. “So I’m sitting behind the bar serving drinks as quick as possible when Prince Harry comes up, he waits in line like everybody else, he’s just a normal guy like you and me, and he says ‘Give me a beer.’ Well what kind do you want? We got Castle, Hansa (aside: Hansa’s motto is “Kiss of the Saaz Hops”, they might be a subsidiary of some company from the fine state of Wisconsin) and Maluti.” Brian looks at us, nailing his dramatic pause. “Are you British?” asks the Prince. “Yeah.” Replies Brian. “Then give me two F#@*ing Hansas and get out from behind the bar, we’re getting ripped,” explains the Prince. “So we went outside and just talked like two old friend, like us now, for over two hours.” Brian was both proud and still somewhat confused about the whole experience.

Episode 2: The Prince of Bouncers. So it was a Thursday night. The Prince and his entourage had been partying at The Hop fairly consistently and Harry wanted to see if he could score one of the Hop In staff t-shirts. “Why a Prince of England would want to have a Hop In shirt I’ll never know,” admitted Brian, “can you really see this shirt,” Brian pointed to the logo, “in the wardrobe of the Prince of England?” Brian was mildly exasperated. We laughed. Hard. I could not. “I mean, can you imagine seeing the Hop In logo on British TV, on the chest of Prince Harry?” None of us could. “Well,” says Brian, “only the staff get these shirts. You can get one, but you’ll have to work for me.” The Prince looked down at his shoes, befuddled, then looked up like a school boy who solved a riddle, “Can I work behind the bar for you on Saturday?” Brian thought for a moment, “Yeah, you can.” So Saturday night rolls around, and five Land Cruisers roll up to the Hop In and out jumps the Prince. He runs up to Brian, who was outside with the bouncers. “We have to have three bouncers on Fridays and Saturdays,” Brian explains, “… because we’ve got the disco and all.” The Prince urgently asks Brian, “Which one is the worse bouncer?” Brian was confused, “what do you mean?” “Which one is the worst of the two? I want to be the bouncer tonight!” Brian took off his jacket and gave it to the Prince. The Prince was happy. “And he proceeded to tell more than half of his crew that they couldn’t come in,” explained Brian, “’You’re wearing trainers’ the Prince would say, ‘or those trousers are a little tattered, don’t you think?’” There was a picture of the Prince, who looked tore-up, mounted next to the bar. It was taken that night. I will probably return to the Hop In sometime, just to get a picture of that picture, of course.

After the storytelling the evening continued, and it had been a while since I’d been around that many people, so that’s why I may have been a little incoherent when people called.

Anyway. Thank you for calling.

So, I think I’m starting to get in the swing of things. I’ve got a week’s worth of lesson plans done, some ideas for longer term teaching dealies (I do not have the education catch words down yet) and my first three exams written. I’m still trying to figure out how to teach ESL maths and science. It makes a lot of activities impossible because the students simply do not have the English to understand what to do. Plus, my Form A class is well over 50 kids and we have one microscope with zero prepared slides, no preserved specimens and they don’t have books yet.

I hate to plug this, but having one of those small projectors would be amazing. I can power it off a car battery and power inverter and begin to collect digital pictures of cells, animals, x-rays, GLASSES (which many students have not seen), stuff off howstuffworks.com, etc. The school has two laptops that I could build a digital library on so that the school would not have to invest in lab equipment, and the students would be able to see high quality images of plant and animal cells, etc. Planet Earth would blow their minds. I mean, it blew my mind. Okay, so that’s that.

Day to day stuff is going well. I’m still working on my daily routine and just waiting to see what activities are going to get going. Soccer should start soon, so I am very excited for that. I got a World Cup match replica ball in South Africa when I was there. Some students also said that they want me to help with their youth group. They told me they want to learn about HIV/AIDs, STIs and other life skills type of stuff. A few other students sound interested in tutoring. I’m pretty excited, but am just waiting to see what happens. I’ll try and keep you posted as often as possible.

On an exciting note, I think I can probably fit into the tux I wore to Senior Prom again. Having a diet of primarily fresh vegetables, eggs, beans, pasta, rice, peanut butter, bread water and the occasional glass of Tang sure will shed off the spare tire of Chipotle and Vinny’s, and the occasional beer…

Again, thank you everybody for keeping tabs on me.

Be blessed.