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.