Holiday Part 1

Hey, just got back from vacation. I got tired of writing, so this is just the first installment. Both pictures are from Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary.

I went on holiday. It was awesome. We caught a ride to Qwa Qwa, the border town nearest me, with my principal and caught the first taxi to Johannesburg. It left reasonably quickly and we got to Joburg in about three and a half hours. From there we transferred to a taxi to go to Nelspruit. The taxi took a little longer to fill up, but was a larger minibus and much more comfortable. Surprisingly we left before the taxi was completely full, so Mel and I had the entire back seat to stretch out and try to get comfortable for the 5 hour ride to Nelspruit. We both started going a little stir crazy about 3 hours into the ride, then we got a flat tire. They got it changed out in about 20 minutes and we were on our way again.

We were both tired when we got to Nelspruit and it was dark so we took a 4+1 (private taxi) to the backpackers. A man in a camouflage jump suite of pastel greens walked into the office ahead of us, and we followed him in. He sat down at the desk and looked at us. We looked at him, then at each other, then at him.

“We have a reservation for a double,” I say.
He says something in Zulu to Mel. She tilts her head a little to the right to amplify her quizzical look. “I speak English.” He speaks in Zulu for a much longer time. Mel just shrugs her shoulders at him.
“Do you have a double?” I ask again.

“Yes. Follow.”
We followed. The backpackers was cool. There were gazebos and bbq pits and a pool and ferns and palms. We certainly were not in Lesotho anymore. At one point he turne his camouflage jump-suited body around to point and grunt at a step down in the path. A few moments later he found a spherical lamp that wasn’t working and in a fit of maintenance inspiration began pounding on it with his palm and yelling at it. He must not have hit it properly because it didn’t turn on. We moved on.

He opened the building that our room was in, which appeared to be an old house that had been converted into a mixed backpacker building. He showed us what must have been the master bedroom. “You sleep here.” Okay. Then we shut the door and he opened the door to another room. “Or you sleep here.” Umm… Then he opened another room’s door, “Or you sleep here.” Mel and I looked at each other. We were too tired to figure out if this guy was just entertaining himself at our expense or if somebody had actually left him in charge of a large hostel. “We’ll just take the first one.” A nod from Mr. Camo confirmed the deal and we made our way back to the office to pay.

We put down our stuff and headed off in search of food. To our surprise and unmitigated joy we found a Chinese restaurant. Orange Chicken, rice, Shrimp Fried Rice and a bottle of their cheapest wine. It was a delicious meal and the first Chinese food either of us had had in 8 months. We slept well that night.

The next morning we walked back to the taxi rank and caught a taxi to Mbabane in Swaziland. Maybe caught isn’t the right word because it might lead you to believe that it left quickly. In actuality we found it easily then waited for 2 and a half hours for it to fill up. The trip to Mbabane was about 4 hours and fairly painless.

More will follow soon. School starts Monday, which is scary. Um, that's it for now.

This week

It’s my birthday on Sunday. Call me. Seriously. I’ll have phone reception from Friday through Saturday, and maybe even on Sunday (big maybe). So give me a ring when you get a chance. I’ll keep my phone on.

I don’t think I have the stamina to write another Phil the Rat Killer post this week, so I’m just going to write quick anecdotes of the pictures I posted this week.

One of the pictures I should have posted last week. It is the whole crew from the rat hunting expedition except for Lechesa, who took the picture, which itself deserves a note. He seemed a little scared that the camera was going to steel his soul, except in reverse. Or, more accurately, that if he held down the shutter too long the whole thing was going to explode in his face. He would line the photo up on the screen then, quite gingerly, press down the shutter until something, anything, happened. Then, while steadily holding the camera with his left hand, would expediently and anxiously remove his right hand from anywhere near the camera while keeping his eyes glued to the screen, like he was watching his life flash before him on the screen. I’m going to have to sit him down and have a talk about what exactly is going on in that little camera.

Those of you that keep up with my blog (God bless you, every one), have read some references to keyhole gardens. I’m not sure if I ever adequately explained what exactly a keyhole garden is. It is a small, raised garden roughly 2 meters in diameter with a walkway into the center. The idea is that it is a small, very fertile and productive garden that you don’t have to bend over to water or weed or plant. It is a lot of work at first to minimize effort later. A little delayed gratification if you will. We are hoping to spread the idea to get a few more students self sufficient as far as food goes. About 6 or 7 students expressed interested in it, including one girl, George Pullane. She came to look at my completed garden a few weeks ago and said that hers was only shin high. I was still impressed, because I didn’t expect any students to actually complete one on their own. So, I thought I’d stop by her house on my way back from tutoring to give her some encouragement and maybe some help. When I arrived at her house I found a completed keyhole garden. I was very impressed and told her as much. I’m picking up some carrot, spinach and beetroot seeds this weekend for her.

The two great hunters, Sello and Lechesa stopped by my house the other night on their way back from another safari. “What did you guys kill this time?” “Ah, we got a wild cat sir.” I looked at the dead animal in the beginning stages of rigor mortis (I’m going with phonetics, spell check can’t even help me I’m so far off) and said, “You mean feral?” Quizzical looks, then very slowly, “Wwwiiiilllldddd cccaaatttt, sir.” “Oh, a wild cat.” Sello’s prized hunting dog had apparently nabbed this unlucky fellow just across the Caledon River in a little nighttime excursion. Sello is the one in the left in the picture. He said that he got that sweatshirt from someone in Waukesha. Go figure. I had to show him where Wisconsin was on the map though.

After tutoring Kemelo on Monday I made my long promised trip to visit his home in Pamong. I cold wind was blowing, which is not foreshadowing, just a description of the walk. Saballa, which is a 45 minute walk from me, and also a 45 minute walk from his house, lies between two small rivers at the base of a small peak. We headed down the road, then down a long hill, crossed the river, then headed up a hill. His house is actually on the Saballa side of the river, but the geography is too steep and rough to traverse the mountain to his house. So, we followed the road up a while then cut off to the left along a well worn trail. About a kilometer upriver we crossed again and climbed a very steep patch of trail up to his house. Kemelo is a double orphan and his current caretaker (I use that term loosely, from what I gather he farms his own plot of land is fairly self-sufficient) is his grandmother, who is a healthy 77 years old. She quickly told me, well, told Kemelo in Sesotho, that she was born in 1932. She was utterly gracious and very happy to have me there. Then Kemelo’s aunt came over and invited me over for some tea and warm sorghum porridge (requires copious amounts of sugar, but is a lot like cream of wheat). I gladly accepted as I was a little hungry from the walk. She got out her china and set out a full platter for my cup of tea then brought in the bowl of porridge. As I was drinking and eating she brought over a picture of Kemelo’s mom when she was in primary school. A girl at Sefako Primary is probably wearing that uniform now… Anyway, some more family stopped by and I did my best to communicate how great a student Kemelo is and that they should be very proud of him. They were excited to hear that and continued to ingratiate themselves. I ended up leaving with six ears of corn and adamant protests that I return soon to visit. I sent them a banana bread with Kemelo the next day and his current assignment is a family history interview with his grandma, which might be more for me than for him.

On my way back from Kemelo’s I stopped by Teboho’s place. Teboho his Eric’s host father who lives near Saballa. Teboho is one of the most ambitious and industrious people I’ve ever met. He has a fish pond, a forestry operation with two private forests and a sapling farm that he uses to grow saplings for the Ministry of Agriculture, cows, chickens and other unknown ventures. In fact, he tried to make his own wind turbine using an alternator, but doesn’t have the technical background to make that work. Anyway, after he expressed the need to get water from one side of the mountain to the other, and I told him that unfortunately physics says that he’s going to get a pump, but that he can use wind or his cows to turn it, he gave me a bag of beans. As is typical, the beans are of different varietals and have rocks intermixed in them. The Basotho utilize the wind by just pouring the beans out of a bucket onto a plastic tarp to help get rid of the bean casings and other debris, but the rocks make it through with the beans. So, I’ve been sorting beans and rocks for a couple nights.

Whew, that was longer than I expected. Things are good and warm during the day and still exceptionally chilly at night. This may be my last post for a while because Melody and I are heading up to Swaziland and Mozambique on vacation next week.

We just have two and a half months left to collect books for the African Library Project so that we can get some more books in my school’s library. So, if you’re interested in helping out, let me know so that I can get you in touch with the right person. Cheers all, and don’t forget to call me for my birthday!!!

Phil "The Rat Killer" Youngren

I awoke this morning to a beautiful day. The storm had passed, and although there wasn’t any smog here for it to have pushed out, in its wake were a clear blue sky and the sun. You big, radiant, welcome ball of burning gas, oh, how I love thee. On my usual morning venture to the latrine I noticed that the ground was frozen solid, as is often the case when the lack of clouds allows it to irradiate its heat to the cold, black, night sky. This welcome change of weather got me motivated.

I made breakfast, used my new drill (retail therapy?) to put up some hooks for my pans, and I did my laundry that had begun to smell fetid despite the cold weather. As I was reaching the climax of my laundry high, which happens when you have just 2 shirts left to rinse the soap out of, signaling the end of near frostbite conditions in your hands from cold pump water, Sello came up and sat down. Sello is one of the first students I met in Ha Sefako and is one of my favorite. He is 24 years old and will sit for his Form E exit exam in October. He had his two dogs with him. “Sello, are these your dogs.” “Yes, Sir.” “They look hungry.” Most dogs in Lesotho look hungry. Because they’re hungry. “The dogs run, Sir.” “Run for what?” “They hunt the ibex. I am coming from hunting, Sir.” Sello had a piece of rusted all-thread with an old faux-leather dog collar as a grip and one end beaten into a rough point. “Um, Sello, when was the last time you got an ibex?” I don’t have much of a hunting history, but from what I’ve seen on South Park, you usually need a rifle or assault rifle to hunt deer like creatures. I didn’t think his heavy piece of steel was going to do much when his dogs scared off some ibexs (ibexi?). Sello pointed to the less emaciated of the two dogs, “this one got one just here in the forest.” He then pointed to the 2 acre tree farm that the school has for growing firewood.

Naturally I was surprised. “I want to go. When will you go hunting again?” Sello laughed and showed his cartoonishly large, endearing smile and said, “next Saturday. I will come get you.” Awesome. I’m really gunning for some beginners luck. Anyway, we continued to chat about this and that and I went to hang my laundry on the line. Then I asked him what he was up to for the day. “I’m going to hunt rats.” “You mean rabbits?” Sello’s English isn’t fantastic, but pretty good. “No, rats. R-A-T-S. Rats.” “I want to go.” Again, the Sello laugh and smile. “Okay, I will come to get you at about 2” Again, Awesome. I had made a banana “bread” (what a misnomer that is with a cup of sugar in it) before laundry and cut half of it off and plated it. Then we headed up to Sello’s to see his 2 year old son that I had been bothering Sello to meet and also to say hello to his wife.

Needless to say his son is adorable and his wife is very funny. I know you’re all just going to skip down to the rat hunting anyway, so I’ll just get on with that.

I met up with Sello and Lechesa at about 2 as they were preparing their spears. They had each felled some saplings that were about 2 and a half meters long and trimmed off the branches, cut off the tips and pounded 8 inch pieces of steel fencing wire (3/16th inch diameter) into the ends. The spear tips were sharpened by first flattening them by mashing the end with a 5 lb sledge then grinding them with stones. I was to use Sello’s previously mentioned all-thread spear, which Lechesa laughed at because it is blunt and heavy. Not the preferred characteristics of a rat spear. We collected a few more boys and headed down to the fields.

The maize fields here are separated by boundaries of grass about 2 meters wide, and those was our hunting grounds. The six of us split into two groups. Sello took me under his wing, as the other group wasn’t real interested in the newbie blundering around while valuable rats ran past. The other group headed down the grass row about 30 meters and sat down and rummaged around in the grass for a minute. Sello said something to the other boy in our threesome and they started to sing, then they started to walk down the grass row doing the traditional Basotho man dance. It’s not an easy thing to describe, but here it goes. The right hand holds the spear towards the bottom with the upper arm parallel to the ground and elbow slightly bent so that the spear waves above the warrior. The back is straightened as though over compensating for a fear of Quazi Moto Syndrom while the knees are a little more than slightly bent. Locomotion is achieved by a kind of bouncy, but robot like, walk on the warrior’s toes. That description definitely didn’t nail it, but let’s move on with that picture in your mind. So we begin walking towards the other group, let’s call them Group 2, singing and stomping through the grass in an attempt to herd the rats towards them.

Recall, Group 2 is sitting down with their spears pointed directly down the rat runs that zig-zag through the grass. As we close in on Group 2 the anticipation is killing me. I’m expecting a massive skewering of rats. We’re 7 meters away, then 6, then 5, then 4, then 3, then… everybody just gives up and walks to the next patch of grass. Bugger. Two more mini-hunts go this same way before, as we’re just closing in on Group 2, one of the boys slings his spear down a rat run and yells, “TEO!” I don’t think ‘teo’ means anything, but sure enough he had a rat on his spear. Let’s be straight about this, it is not a NYC sewer rat. This is a Lesothan field rat. It doesn’t get pepperoni pizzas and bagels to eat, he gets plain field corn. He is small. Like pet mouse small. Everybody is pretty exited though and we move on to the next patch of grass.

40 minutes and 2 rat skewerings later I have been relieved of my spear and given a 2 foot long stick to just try whacking the rats with. What the Basotho boys don’t understand is that I have had training at this very thing. Never did I realize that all those games of Whack-A-Mole were training for rat hunting in Africa. But, there I was. Group 2 came singing, trampling down the grass and all the sudden I see little Fievel bolting down his run. WHACK! It really is just like the game, except no tickets come out. I raised both arms in victory. They laughed. “I’m not going to touch it.” Quizical looks. “Will you carry it for me?” I ask a small boy who isn’t allowed to carry a spear. He shrugs his shoulders and puts Fievel in his pocket.

We hunt a bit longer with no more success and decide to call it a day because the sun is close to dropping behind the mountains. On our way back up the hill towards home Sello asks, “Do you eat rats in America?” “Umm… no.” “Why?” “Um… have you ever heard of the bubonic plague?” “Buubonk… what?” “Hepa virus?” “Sir?” “Well, uh, rats in America carry diseases. Also, there isn’t much meat.” “Oh, yes, if you get maybe 5 or 10 rats you get some meat.”

As we rounded the corner to my door and Sello and Lechesa threw their spears into the ground and began to talk in Sesotho. “Sir, do you want 1 rat or 2?” “Well, I don’t know how to cook it, so why don’t you take my rat to your son.” More Sesotho, and I thought that bullet was dodged. “Lechesa and I will teach you how to cook it here.” Crap. Sello began to skin the rat, which surprisingly just consisted of him pulling the skin off, breaking the feet, head, and tail off and breaking the sternum to expose the vital organs. I warmed up some oil in the ole frying pan, added some salt and pepper and sautéed Fievel until he was golden brown. As I was cooking Fievel, Lechesa began to look nervous. I said as much, and Sello laughed and said that Lechesa thought that eating rats was for little kids. “Oh, rat hunting and eating is for little boys.” “Yes, Sir.” That made more sense.

When Fievel was done, we cut him in half and I chose the meaty looking hindquarters. Well, meaty might not by the right adjective. I mean, there was meat. And I ate it. But it was kind of like trying to get the meat off of the end part of the wing of a chicken. You can do it, but you burn more calories trying to eat it than you actually ingest.

So, there it is. I ate rat. It was okay, but if anybody ever tells you it tastes like chicken, they’re a liar.


In other, less interesting, but maybe more significant news, I finished my keyhole garden. I think it looks pretty good for my first building experience with stone. Next week I’m going to start visiting students’ homes who said they were starting to build gardens of their own. Hopefully I’ll have more pictures of gardens to post, and a few months they’ll have all kinds of delicious vegetables and herbs in them. Be well, y’all.