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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.