Next-to-last Blog

About 3 weeks ago my infrastructure colleagues threw a going away party for our consultant's Project Manager who resigned, and me. There were some very nice speeches, a slaughterhouse of meat and an adequate amount of booze. Everybody had a good time.




Here are Ntsane, my counterpart, and I. We've become good friends over the last year, but I'm sure he'll come visit the states sometime soon.


Thanksgiving was kind of strange day because it was 85 degrees and I had to go to work. I had an invitation to go to the Ambassador's house for dinner, but we opted to roast a chicken and kick back instead. It was a bangin' chicken, by the way.
After a year of struggle on this Rural Water Supply and Sanitation project, contractors finally got started. This is a picture of a spring that has been caught. The contractor has to excavate until he gets down to rock, where there is usually a spring "eye". They then make a concreate catchment around the eye. The water coming out of this spring was perfectly clear.

Gender equality in Lesotho isn't perfect, but there are many instances where equal opportunity does exist. For example, you can see both a woman and a man digging trenches below. Casual Laborers make roughly $8/day.

This picture is of the sanitation portion of the project. This mason is building the sub-structure for a Ventilated Improved Pit-latrine (VIP). They made it a little to short the first time, so he was digging out some earth to push the wall back. Every household in the beneficiary communities will receive a VIP, which totals to about 26,550 for the whole project.

This trench was roughly 4 km long. The spring was right behind where I was standing when I took the picture, and the storage tank will be placed on a hill that is obscured by the ridge here.

It was very satisfying to get out into the field and see work being done. Many of the smaller systems will be handed over in mid-January, and the majority of the systems should be complete by April.

Moving from that excitement to my medical procedures as I exit Peace Corps, I received my PPD on Friday, which is used to determine if you've been exposed to Tuberculosis. Based on my expert opinion, which has been informed by 3 different online articles, I'm going to have to go on antibiotics for roughly 9 months to get rid of the TB in my system. Thank you cramped-taxis-where-nobody-would-open-the-windows-because-they-didn't-want-to-"catch the sefuba"-(cold),-while-people-were-hacking-their-lungs-out-and-spreading-TB-to-everybody.

Below is a picture of the affected area. It's difficult to see the slightly raised, swollen, tender area in the middle. I hope they let me on an airplane. Ugh.

*UPDATE: I have a 13mm induration. I'm not contangious, but I do get a chest x-ray and 9 months of antibiotics when I get back.

Anyway, my time here is short. Just three days left. On Wednesday at 2pm local time I will takeoff from Maseru to begin my 40-hour journey home. I'll write more then.