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Pictures are: Me trying to stay warm in my down jacket. Kingsley Holgate (not Ben Kingsly like I said last week). The school choir in semi-traditional dress. An iconic Basotho dancer in front of the choir. He has covered himself in red for a reason I have yet to ascertain from ANYBODY.


Today started like most days, with me heading to the pit latrine before sunrise, crunching through the frost covered grass in my down jacket, fleece pants and boots slipped on. Also, the school day started on typical note. I entered the staff room where a few teachers were milling about chatting about this or that in Sesotho. Furthermore, class started in a typical manner, with students being a little rambunctious and taking a while to settle down. Then something different happened. I got a knock on the door, which is typical when students are late, but this time it was the principal at the door. He stood in the doorway with his typical good-natured smile while a herd of students walked towards the school gate behind him.

“Can I make an announcement?” he said.
“No problem. Announce away.” Said I.
He stepped into the classroom and faced the students, “The following students need to go to Sabala [the next village over]. It is all of the students who are single or double orphans, everybody who has lost one or two parents.” Then turning to me, “Sir, you’re going to lose most of your class.”

At that he began to read student names from a list. They one by one grabbed their stuff and shuffled past us, out the door, to Sabala. Over 20 students walked by me. Only 10 were left in A1, 9 in A2. There are 64 students split between those two classes.

The principal turned to me and smiled. “Sorry about taking most of your class,” he said. “This is heartbreaking.” That’s all I could say in a low voice. I stood there for a while looking at the remaining students. They just looked back, at first not sure what the big deal was, then looking a little nervous while I tried to take it in.

I knew that a huge portion, 30%-50%, were orphans of the single or double variety, but it is much different to have them called off a list and walk out a door. And I know that there are a lot of singe parent homes and broken families around the world, but not this. Not dead. Not when the kids are just 15.

The most difficult thing is that there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t be a parent to these kids. I can barely teach them multiplication; let alone dignity, self reliance and hope.

So, what about the less depressing stuff?

The Form A Honors Book Club I started is going pretty well. There are about 10 students who show up, and we talk about a three page chapter in the British English book we have about a girl who plays soccer with the boys. I showed them the Encyclopedia this week. They had never seen anything like it. Growing up in the Information Age has made me annoyed with actually having to flip pages in giant books to find my information, but that encyclopedia is the best source of knowledge available to these students. Tobelo asked me to look up engineering, so I gladly accepted the task, then realized that the language in the article was about 3 good years of English class out of his reach. He’ll have to use the children’s encyclopedia for a while yet.

I also got a DVD from my engineering friends at NGC. It has about 80 books or papers ranging from Neuroscience to Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World to Quantum Physics. Amazing. I nerded out hard just browsing the titles for a solid hour last night. It made me happy. Thank you. It is hugely appreciated by me and the other education volunteers who are often at a loss not having references and the internet at hand to look up information. The biology and chemistry books will be especially useful as sources for pictures and digital content for showing on the projector that will be here soon.

Winter break will be upon me in two weeks. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do to burn the time. There will be a few days dedicated to returning Mel’s favor, so I’ll be heading down to help her organize her library. I might spend some time with a volunteer who lives near her. He is borrowing my GPS to map some trails for a resort/lodge in Leribe that currently has no trail map.

Then I might spend some time making a small mockup of a little wind turbine, something functional but small that I can use for the demonstration of various physics principals. We’ll see. It might require some investment in tools, which would make me happy. My soldering iron has been therapeutic.

Okay, I’m rambling. Things are interesting, monotonous, infuriating and rewarding here. Same old same old. Cheers everybody.

Mental Health Day

Images above: Slaughtering a sheep for a celebration at a local primary school for a student who got top honors in his exam last year. Three of my students on the walk back from the celebration. They needed an escort because herd boys are back from the mountains and are generally harrassing and sometimes dangerous. Erik and a local principal at the shop later yet. I dressed up the principal like a "cholo". He loved it obviously.


I stayed in Ha Sefako last weekend. It went well enough. I finished organizing the library, put some local patterned fabric on the pads that constitute the seat cushions around my “Moroccan” table and finished a few books (I especially liked Franny and Zooe by J.D. Salinger).

Monday was pretty good too. We didn’t teach on account of another Cultural Day that was being held in honor of “tourists.” At first I was surprised that we would miss a day of school for tourists, then I realized where I was and just took it in stride. We got up there two hours after the invitation had stated and we were still an hour and a half early. Eventually the tourist convoy showed up in their fleet of Land Rovers, which made me laugh. These guys had probably taken an hour longer to get up to Mafika Lisiu, in their $65,000 customized Land Rovers, than the taxis take with 24 passengers. Later a full sized bus showed up.

When the convoy stopped, an oversized lawn gnome of a man stepped out of the lead vehicle. His beard was enormous and white. I packed up the remnants of my snack (dried fruit and oats) and headed down to inspect these unusual tourists. As I got closer to the convoy I realized this man was much less an oversized lawn gnome than an life-sized Santa Claus, a true-to-life South African safari Santa Claus. He was greeted by some half naked 9 year old girls and taken to the tent where the esteemed guests were sitting. I decided to head towards the back of the line of vehicles because I figured the less important chaps would be back there. The trucks were all covered in numerous decals, from Garman to Captain Morgan. One of the vehicles in the rear had a large decal on the hood with a map on it, and in the lower right hand corner of the map was our Santa’s photo with his alias, Ben Kingsley (I’m not really sure if that is actually his name).

Just then a couple of guys on $6000 full carbon cross country mountain bikes showed up along with their support vehicle. The two cyclists were soon whisked away like Mr. Claus and I struck up a conversation with their support driver to try to figure out what was going on. It turns out that one of the cyclists is a world class cross country cyclist, multi-millionaire and victor of the Seven Summits. The second cyclist was a bicycle shop owner in Durban who was a world class down hill rider named Shaun. And, this Mr. Claus fellow, also known as Ben Kingsley (I’m not sure if that’s really what his name is) is a household name in South Africa. He’s an adventurer and philanthropist who is on this current 110 day adventure to promote tourism, adventure, culture and education.

I had a great time talking to a number of people in the convoy and it turned out to be a much better reason to skip school than I had anticipated. I left the cultural day in high spirits.

I walked back a little early with another teacher, then walked further yet to the place where I get enough reception to send a text message. On the way back I ran into students who were walking home. It turns out they had run out of food at cultural day, and some of these students walked 16 km that day without an food for over 12 hours. The reply I got from the deputy principal upon my remarking on the grueling day was, “At least they are used to it.”

At least they are used to it.

Tuesday class didn’t go so well. Students lied to my face, were repeatedly obstinate and refused to cooperate. In a total reversal from the previous afternoon, I couldn’t stand being in Ha Sefako any longer. I left. We have a long holiday weekend this weekend, so I left a day early, and here I am in Ficksburg, South Africa, having a draft beer and a Greek salad, with crisp, cold lettuce and feta cheese. It is good.

Needless to say, winter break is fast approaching and I need it badly. I need time to get ready for next semester, stop worrying about school and building relationships with students and the community. I’m still pursing some different low-cost, renewable, rural power options and am hoping to spend a significant amount of time working on that.

Cheers all, and remember that your mental health is an important health.

Oops, I almost forgot. I am going to apply for the African Library Project (ALP, www.africanlibraryproject.org) and I need some people who would be interested in leading book drives and raising some cash (chelete) for the cause. If you're interested please send me an email or leave a note. THANKS!

Library and Transport

Last weekend Melody agreed to visit me in Ha Sefako and to lend much of her three day weekend to helping me organize our library. The before and after photos at the top of the blog may not look like much, but they represent a solid 25 man-hours of work. We color coded all of the books and created a master list on my computer so that we can easily see what books we have and sort them accordingly. During winter break I may become so motivated as to create a database of the books so that we can do legitimate queries of the library. That will require me learning a database program as well as a whole lot of time reviewing each book to create keywords and summaries. I think I’ll check to make sure there are some computer literate people around first…

Anyway, things have improved somewhat at Sefako High School. I introduced question jars in my class. In a fit of self delusion I told students that they could put any question, literally any question, in the question jar and I would answer it. This may have been a little brazen on my part, as I got some doozies, and also some non-questions. “Sir, I don’t understand the maths.” Not a question. Also, an understatement. “Sir, the HIV is get how?” Etc, etc. Aside from the bold statements of lack of understanding of my course material, there were a number of questions that were really good, and they finally give me a segue or cue to start talking about the life skills issues that will do these students much more long term good than finding the Highest Common Multiple (HCM) of 27, 84 and 113 (not useful to hungry students). So, now I have to review the monumental amount of information that Peace Corps gave me about HIV/AIDs, STIs/STDs, etc.

Also, I’m going to have to try to find ways to explain the immune system, viruses and other such biological issues. When I started to try to explain basic atomic theory, e.g. atoms exist and are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, I realized that despite all of the “paying attention” that these kids can muster, the absorption of such radical and abstract concepts is going to be very, very slow. It is not obvious that most of the volume of concrete is actually empty space. At least it was never obvious to me and is only real to me on a non-realistic level, i.e. only when I’m talking about chemistry and physics, not when I’m talking about, or falling on, concrete. It certainly doesn’t feel empty. I’ll keep you informed about how that goes.

Yesterday I was sent to help set exams (write tests) for the district. It was a fantastic case study in Lesotho’s fledgling transportation system. First, some background on the taxi system here. It consists of a massive fleet of Toyota mini-buses, which are 80’s Vanagan-sized vans with custom seats (sheet metal with some vinyl over the top and 5 inches of legroom). Now, a substantial portion of the fleet has been stolen from South Africa. The police have sporadic inspections of the taxis, and on those days the taxis don’t run. It is worse in and around Maseru. Observing police inspection day around here is impossible because the ‘term taxi’ schedule has yet to be translated into this society.

The fleets are also apparently run by small mob bosses with their own territory or routes or whatever. This is no big deal unless you try to run your taxi on their route, in which case various intimidation tactics and violence options are used to show you the errors of your ways. If there is any logic or reason behind how the taxis here are run, the lay people are unaware, and the outsiders are especially not privy to it.

Okay, back to the story. I started waiting for the taxi at 6:10 am. It was still dark, and quite cold. One taxi passed me at about 6:40 and yelled something indecipherable. It was empty. I almost went back to sleep and called it a day. The next taxi came just 15 minutes later. A 45 minute wait for a taxi in Ha Sefako is my shortest wait time in 10 weeks. 3-4 hours has not been uncommon. So off to Botha-Bothe we went with only one inexplicable 15 minute wait at a junction. We made good time to town and disembarked the taxi around 9am. I ran around town to make a few purchases before returning to the taxi rank to find the Moteng taxi which would take me to St. Peters, the location of the workshop. I saw a coworker in the taxi who had come from his home in Leribe. He looked bored, so I asked if he thought it was going to be a while before the taxi filled. “… I think so… I’ll call you when it gets close”. This was fine by me as I had some more errands to run. I ran around, checked some emails quickly and returned to the taxi at about 10:30. Half an hour later we were on our way. Half an hour after that we had been dropped off and made it through the maze of 2 track roads and trails to arrive St. Peters 3 and a half hours late and roughly 5.5 hours after I began the journey. St. Peters is only 65 miles from Ha Sefako.

To cut the story short, we got out a little late, waited 2 hours for a taxi, it got dark, we got in town too late and missed the last taxi to Ha Sefako, so I crashed at another volunteer’s house, woke up at 5am today to catch a taxi back to school. Ugh. “Transportaiton is a problem in this country” is a common Basotho understatement. In fact, ‘understatement’ in that context is an understatement, perhaps an overunderstatement is more apt.

I want to make sure I thank everybody for your continual support in emails, comments on the blog (keep ‘em coming, they make me happy), phone calls, text messages, cards, packages and good vibes. They help keep me grounded and help me to just chill out. I’ve never been good at reigning in my expectations of myself, or others for that matter. So, thank you. This experience would be much less interesting without all y’all at home keeping tabs on me. But, know that in exchange for this aperiodic blog-tainment I fully expect to sit down and have a beverage and meal with each of you upon my return. Cheers.