Break Time

25 June 2009

This is the coldest June that I can remember. You win Southern Hemisphere. You win.

It's 5:00 pm and I have some pasta sauce simmering away on the stove. I gobbled down the rest of my homeade bread with my supervisor's homemade quince jam, so it will just be pasta to go with the sauce. When Mike and I ate a fresh quince off the tree in the fall, I wrote off quinces (quincii? is it a fish-like singular-plural? Do I use hyphens correctly? Ugh, English is difficult.) forever. That delicious spread that is in my cupboard has made me a convert though. Food has become a big part of my life, as you can tell.

Anyway, I'm nearly through with my second week of winter "holidays." It has been a bit of a random one so far. I began break by going and spending a couple days with Melody, then travelled to Bloemfontein in RSA (Republic of South Africa) to have a few sitdown meals where the wait staff actually knows what's going on, see a mall and attend a Confederation Cup game. We saw Spain beat Iraq 1-0, but cheared heartily for Iraq. It was fun, and I had my first Budweiser. Ever. That's right, I had my first Budweiser at a soccer game between Spain and Iraq in South Africa. I'm not sure what to make of that, but it sounds poetic. Well, loosely poetic. Okay, I retract that. It's just a weird place to have an all-American beer that is owned by a Northern European clongomorant. But, I digress.

Back to the game. I think my favorite part of the game was towards the end when the largely South African crowd began chanting. The two chants that I had translated were, "Enjoy! Enjoy! Enjoy!" and "A team on the right. A team on the left. Play in the middle." It was very cool to see 15,000 people just there for the love of the game. There was no roudiness, just people cheering for their team, or if they didn't have a team, cheering for good play. I left the stadium with a good feeling.

I also bought a telescope. It will arrive with the Peace Corps Country Director when he visits in a couple weeks.

So, after waiting for 3.5 hours on the taxi before it even left Bloemfontein and another 2 hours in transit I made it back to Maseru. I was eagerly greeted by 4 packages. One of them was much awaited and contained the mini-projector from my pals at NGC. It is about the size of an iPhone and works great when the room is sufficiently dark. My principal is going to raid the trash bins in Butha-Buthe when he goes down to retrieve some cardboard for blacking out the windows. Then, it will be time to blow kids minds. Not only with Planet Earth, but also with some graphic pictures of STIs that I got from the PC Doctor. The Clap was never so scary. I also got a phenomenal package from my sister with long underwear, chocolate, books, socks, basically everything that is good in this world. Next was Maggie's package with backdated letters, which were a great read one cold afternoon and a world map that will be going up in the library. Lastly I got a surprise package from Mr. Dan Judnick, a dude who graduated a year ahead of my at LMU and returned to LA just before I left after studies on the East Coast. Thanks man.

Needless to say, all the other PCVs in the office were fiercely jealous. Support from home as been a real blessing. Thanks y'all.

The next day I had a meeting to talk with my program director about what kinds of secondary projects I can do that might utilize my talents (or at least let me use math). The meeting got me a ride to Appropriate Technology Services, a government funded group whose purpose is research, development and dissemination of technologies that are appropriate for Lesotho. This includes food driers, efficient ovens, briquette makers that use junk paper and eventually some biogas digesters and other more time, money and labor intensive projects. The food driers and efficient ovens are especially interesting for Ha Sefako because there are a ton of peach trees and many of the peaches go to waste and an enormous amount of wood is used for cooking year-round and heating in the winter. So, those projects will hopefully take up some of my time come Spring.

Then I returned home, where I had great weather for one day. Then a storm came. In 48 hours roughly 5 cm (judging by the amount that accumulated in the wheel-barrow) fell. The wind has been horrific and steady and the temperature has been maybe up to 40, in the sun, during the day. So, I've been reading and baking bread and trying to stay occupied. It gets lonely, especially when the sun goes down. I have to try to plan out those last 3-4 hours of my day to try to keep busy so that I don't get bored and depressed. Winter nights were bad enough in the US with electricity and TV and the internet and friends. But, I'm figuring out things to do.

Umm... I think that's about it for now. I hope everybody is enjoying warm weather and BBQs back home. Oh, and check out the US in the FINALS of the Confederation Cup on Sunday. They'll be playing South Africa or Brazil. They made it, I don't know how, but they made it. If they win, I will have some serious street cred in this part of the world.

Blessings.