Three Weeks Down

Pictures: One is "cave paintings", I think some herdboys got bored. Another was a picture with a herdboy I met while on a hike and the last is when Mike and I made a phenomenal bannana/chocolate bread.

First of all, thank you for everybody who called me last weekend. It was amazing to get calls from back home. Forgive me if I was a little incoherent, there was a lot going on. We had a district meeting in Butha-Buthe, so some of us decided to meet up with one of our counterparts in a local pub, called the Hop In, to have some drinks and watch a soccer match. Things transpired.

The Hop In was made infamous when Prince Harry, who has made Lesotho his charity country of choice, fell upon the establishment while working on a local school with a bunch of his “blokes.” As we sat down in the large empty room (it was 4 pm), the patron of the place, Brian, came over to chat us up a bit and began telling stories of Prince Harry’s visit.

Episode 1: The meeting. So it was a Saturday night, the Hop In was hoppin’ (I’m really, really sorry) “… because we’ve got the disco and all,” says Brian, pointing to the disco ball and stage lights adorning the ceiling. “So I’m sitting behind the bar serving drinks as quick as possible when Prince Harry comes up, he waits in line like everybody else, he’s just a normal guy like you and me, and he says ‘Give me a beer.’ Well what kind do you want? We got Castle, Hansa (aside: Hansa’s motto is “Kiss of the Saaz Hops”, they might be a subsidiary of some company from the fine state of Wisconsin) and Maluti.” Brian looks at us, nailing his dramatic pause. “Are you British?” asks the Prince. “Yeah.” Replies Brian. “Then give me two F#@*ing Hansas and get out from behind the bar, we’re getting ripped,” explains the Prince. “So we went outside and just talked like two old friend, like us now, for over two hours.” Brian was both proud and still somewhat confused about the whole experience.

Episode 2: The Prince of Bouncers. So it was a Thursday night. The Prince and his entourage had been partying at The Hop fairly consistently and Harry wanted to see if he could score one of the Hop In staff t-shirts. “Why a Prince of England would want to have a Hop In shirt I’ll never know,” admitted Brian, “can you really see this shirt,” Brian pointed to the logo, “in the wardrobe of the Prince of England?” Brian was mildly exasperated. We laughed. Hard. I could not. “I mean, can you imagine seeing the Hop In logo on British TV, on the chest of Prince Harry?” None of us could. “Well,” says Brian, “only the staff get these shirts. You can get one, but you’ll have to work for me.” The Prince looked down at his shoes, befuddled, then looked up like a school boy who solved a riddle, “Can I work behind the bar for you on Saturday?” Brian thought for a moment, “Yeah, you can.” So Saturday night rolls around, and five Land Cruisers roll up to the Hop In and out jumps the Prince. He runs up to Brian, who was outside with the bouncers. “We have to have three bouncers on Fridays and Saturdays,” Brian explains, “… because we’ve got the disco and all.” The Prince urgently asks Brian, “Which one is the worse bouncer?” Brian was confused, “what do you mean?” “Which one is the worst of the two? I want to be the bouncer tonight!” Brian took off his jacket and gave it to the Prince. The Prince was happy. “And he proceeded to tell more than half of his crew that they couldn’t come in,” explained Brian, “’You’re wearing trainers’ the Prince would say, ‘or those trousers are a little tattered, don’t you think?’” There was a picture of the Prince, who looked tore-up, mounted next to the bar. It was taken that night. I will probably return to the Hop In sometime, just to get a picture of that picture, of course.

After the storytelling the evening continued, and it had been a while since I’d been around that many people, so that’s why I may have been a little incoherent when people called.

Anyway. Thank you for calling.

So, I think I’m starting to get in the swing of things. I’ve got a week’s worth of lesson plans done, some ideas for longer term teaching dealies (I do not have the education catch words down yet) and my first three exams written. I’m still trying to figure out how to teach ESL maths and science. It makes a lot of activities impossible because the students simply do not have the English to understand what to do. Plus, my Form A class is well over 50 kids and we have one microscope with zero prepared slides, no preserved specimens and they don’t have books yet.

I hate to plug this, but having one of those small projectors would be amazing. I can power it off a car battery and power inverter and begin to collect digital pictures of cells, animals, x-rays, GLASSES (which many students have not seen), stuff off howstuffworks.com, etc. The school has two laptops that I could build a digital library on so that the school would not have to invest in lab equipment, and the students would be able to see high quality images of plant and animal cells, etc. Planet Earth would blow their minds. I mean, it blew my mind. Okay, so that’s that.

Day to day stuff is going well. I’m still working on my daily routine and just waiting to see what activities are going to get going. Soccer should start soon, so I am very excited for that. I got a World Cup match replica ball in South Africa when I was there. Some students also said that they want me to help with their youth group. They told me they want to learn about HIV/AIDs, STIs and other life skills type of stuff. A few other students sound interested in tutoring. I’m pretty excited, but am just waiting to see what happens. I’ll try and keep you posted as often as possible.

On an exciting note, I think I can probably fit into the tux I wore to Senior Prom again. Having a diet of primarily fresh vegetables, eggs, beans, pasta, rice, peanut butter, bread water and the occasional glass of Tang sure will shed off the spare tire of Chipotle and Vinny’s, and the occasional beer…

Again, thank you everybody for keeping tabs on me.

Be blessed.

First Week at Work

First day of school.

I am within cell phone reception for the next 24 hours (until about 7 am Sunday Morning on the West Coast). Please give me a call.

Also, I finally added a section of stuff I need sent. THANKS!!

Not not what I expected, but not not what I expected. I was up earlier than usual, which is nice because it means that my internal clock is finally tuning in with the daylight hours here. Morning light comes around 5 am right now. I rolled out of bed around 6:20, did my grooming and ate some breakfast then read Dante’s Club (some very entertaining fictional history if you’re interested, Pa, you would especially like it) for 20 minutes or so to burn time before I walked over to school around 7:35 am.

School here begins with morning assembly at 7:45 where students get daily announcements, recite prayers and sing the national anthem, etc. When I arrived at school there were three teachers present. After morning assembly there were still only three teachers, plus me. The principal came by to say that we were to have a staff meeting after morning break, which was about three hours away, and asked the teachers to give the students something to keep them occupied so they wouldn’t disrupt our pending staff meeting. I’m still learning to cope with things not really starting when I expect, so I had to go home to get a book instead of having one with me. I read and a couple more teachers made their way in.

The staff meeting started half an hour late. I received a warm introduction from the principal and we proceeded to go through announcements and finally assigned classes. This process took a while as we are short a language teacher so the principal was trying to find a way to cover the classes until a teacher can be hired while also trying not to overload the other teachers. After that was resolved other assignments were dealt out. Forgetting Peace Corps’ advice, I am now a class teacher (I deal with semi-major discipline and listen to their complaints) for the Form A (8th grade) students, and am, in some capacity or another, a facilitator of ‘ball sports.’ I’ll also be teaching Form A maths and science as well as Form B maths. Each of these subjects has 6 periods a week, for a total of 18 hours. Most teachers are in the low 20’s, so by comparison I have a little lighter load. We’ll see what happens.

After some other discussion about study hours before or after school and on Saturdays, the three hour meeting wrapped up and students were sent home early. Tuesday we scheme with the region, which is to say that we will plan out what we will teach when for the rest of the quarter. Hopefully I’ll get introduced to my classes. Wednesday I’m gunning for my first day of class instruction. We’ll see how things go.

Four Days Down

So I have a full four days of school under my belt at this point, and am feeling pretty good. A lot of things have happened, so I’m just going to do some bullet points to fill you in.

- Form A is maybe at a similar level of English as I am at Sesotho. It is teaching ESL math and science. Also, they don’t have TV, or media of any sort. This means that most of my examples are not useful and require so much new vocabulary that it would muddy the concept I am trying to convey. They did not know what glasses were (or spectacles in their British English). I tried to explain X-Rays and ultrasounds. I don’t know if they explanation of X-Rays being, “Like a kind of light that you cannot see” was comprehended by anybody. Echolocation may have been similarly poorly received. It will be a while before they get used to my English, and for me to stay only on the points they need to know and not go off on the tangents that I think are interesting. Stability and equilibrium are part of the curriculum. I think Lyaponov might be a little bit above them.

- Yesterday after school there was a ruckus. It was not biscuit riot, but it was a serious commotion. School was over and I could here a lot of yelling and cheering and jeering, but none of the students were visible. Soon nearly all of the boys in the school burst out of a classroom. The younger ones ran away while the older ones were chanting a bit. Factions broke off and there seemed to be some posturing for authority while they students with less political pull were trying to get face time with the leaders of the pack. “’M’e, what is happening?” I asked another teacher. “They are choosing sports committees.” “Oh,” I said, as if that cleared everything up. After a male teacher went and talked with the older boys, making it very clear that they were not to ‘beat’ (haze) the Form A’s, they went off on a bootcamp-like jog, chanting and clopping along like a heard of gazelles in perfect unison, in their school uniforms (grey wool pants, white button-up shirts and blue sweaters). By this point I was in my home. Then the girls went by. Oh boy, there was similar earth shaking clopping, but this time it was accompanied by some shrill ‘lalalallalalalalalalallalala’. It was a sound to behold, and if I hadn’t witnessed they jogging by in their dresses I don’t know what I would have done. Locked myself up waiting for the pale horse, with the name ‘Death’ written on him. It was not first day of athletics like I have ever experienced.

- The rules of arithmetic are not ingrained. Apparently I have to teach them.

- We schemed with science and math teachers from around the region on Tuesday. There is a chance that I was married during a break. At the very least I am supposed to pick up this other female teacher a laptop when I am in South Africa. I can’t afford the amassing harem on a Peace Corps salary. I may need to pick up a wedding ring somewhere and fabricate a wife. Any advice on this fictional character put in the Comments section would be greatly appreciated.

- A 25 minute walk to get spotty cell reception, and a max of 3 days of cell companies holding text messages before deleting them, means that I will not be in phone contact except when traveling. I will probably be in a town with reception 2-3 times a month. I will do my best to post that information on my blog as soon as I get into town and let you know when I’m available. Mail will also be especially slow getting to me, but please send it. It makes me happy.

- Mike and I have had dinner every night so far. It has been cute. Last night we even watched a movie and waited out a rain storm. It was cute.

- Another volunteer got back to his site today. His name is Erik and he is doing Community Health and Development. A temporary tripod is in place (this is an inside reference, sorry to everybody else).

- Absent from my bed is any padding between the fabric and springs. I have begun to sleep on the floor. I wish my Thermarest had not been pilfered.

- Trying to explain airplanes, without pilots, that land on boats has been entirely ineffective. I guess it doesn’t mean much to people who haven’t been on planes or boats.

That is all I can think of for now. I put a few items in a new section named “PLEASE SEND ME THESE THINGS!!” on the right side of the page. Planet Earth would honestly blow some of these kids’ minds. Also a headlamp.

I miss and love you guys, thanks for staying up to date on my life.

Site Update

So we got to site yesterday, and headed for South Africa (Qwa Qwa, the city of) today. We were told it was close, and it is only maybe 25 clicks as the crow flies. In actuality it was a 2.5 hour hike, a 45 minute wait for the taxi and a half hour ride into town. There is a strip mall here, but everything is too expensive to seriously consider. But, we had KFC and it was like cocaine (I assume). We have approximately 3 hours to get everything done we need to get done then must try to find the single taxi that runs between the border and town before the border closes at 4 pm. I might be writing again soon if things don't work out.

Ha Sefako is still beautiful and I feel pretty well settled in. The closes access to internet will be a minimum of 2.5 hours away. The only cell phone reception is actually via a South African tower, but you have to climb a tree and perform some yogic pose that properly amplifies the cell phone reception. Text messages will be the best way to communicate. I'm not sure if the South African rates will be cheaper or not. I will post the new number in my contact info along with the mail address for mail (not packages). I hope all is well and promise the next post will be more informative.

Cheers.

Some Forgotten Basics

So I got a call from Mr. and Mrs. Hinkle the other day, and realized that I hadn't gotten around to a couple of the basics that people might be curious about.

Food.

The staple food here is papa. You can probably guess from the term 'staple' that everybody eats it. Papa is a finely ground maize meal, combined with hot water and stirred to a consistency of stiff mashed potatoes. It is the only food not salted as if iodine deficiency were being combated. When asked what the top three reasons are that the Basotho love papa, the typical response is, "It's cheap."

Moroho is greens. Indiscriminate leafy greens. Often it is cabbage, some onion and some carrot thrown in, cooked in equally liberal amounts of sunflower oil and sodium.

Pumpkin is squash, mashed.

Nama is meat. Basotho love meat. Chicken, beef, mutton, goat. The species is unimportant.

Lesheleshele is a gelatinous Cream of Wheat that is churched up with copious amounts of butter and sugar.

These are the five major food groups of the Basotho.

Clothes.

Generally people are dressed in clean, if sometimes tattered, western style clothes. Some older women wear seshweshwes, which are the traditional dresses. Heardboys wear gumboots, a blanket and a beanie (worn like my Uncle Flick, which is to say pulled lightly over the crown of the head with a large dollop of hat left swinging about at will).

Marriage Proposal: The most common of occurrences.

So a couple days ago I was in an establishment that vended adult beverages. Whilst browsing the inventory a proprietress approached me and inquired into my national origin and time in Lesotho. I courteously informed her that I was from America, in the Peace Corps and would be teaching in Lesotho for two years.

"You have wife in America?"
"No."
"You have girlfriend."
"No."

This was my fatal mistake. Without pause, "I will be your girlfriend."
"No."
"I mean friend. I be friend. We talk. You take me America."
"Nope."

The conversation turned back to her immanent enrollment in nursing school and soon the encounter cordially ended. Eventually I chose a beverage and went to purchase it. A different proprietress handed me a phone and said, "Put your number in for her." Uh oh. I had just purchased a phone and don't lie well to strangers. "Um... I just bought a phone and don't know the number yet..." I crossed my fingers, said a prayer and looked up from the phone. "Oh okay, yo don't know your number yet." She finished processing the transaction and I briskly made my way across the plaza without looking back. Crisis averted...

All this to say that I've gotten much more handsome, charming and rich since I've been in Africa. Also, many Basotho are desperate to get to America, and Americans are clearly the easiest way to achieve that goal. Nearly everybody in the group has had a marriage proposal of one form or another, and everybody has experienced multiple iterations of the "How do I get to America?" question. For now it's flattering.

Quick Update

So, I passed my language proficiency exam at the Intermediate-Mid level (we needed an Intermediate-Low). Basically, what an Intermediate-Mid level proficiency means is that I can badly translate various forms of signage and say things like, "I from United States. I like soccer. I like books. I like ice-cream too much." www.engrish.com might give you some more ideas of my Sesotho level.

Everybody passed the exam, so we were in a relieved and festive mood yesterday, which led me to finally buy a phone. It has an LED flashlight on top. Neat. Apparently international texting isn't too bad, but word on the street is that calling cards are the way to go. The number is on the side bar under 'Contact Info.' I may have an additional/different number at site because we get South African cell service better than Lesothon service. I'll keep you updated.

Not too much is going on here. The rest of the week is pretty open. We have swearing in, a supervisor workshop and an all-volunteer conference. Other than that we have free time to pick up supplies for our sites and just get prepared to be not living near such a large group of Americans. Everybody is in book-hording and electronics-charging mode, and I think most people are pretty anxious to get out to site and just get started.

I've updated the GPS coordinates for Ha Sefako. It should be within 20 ft or so of my bedroom window. Checking it out in Google Earth should give you a good idea of the size of the mountains around me and such.

Okay, not much else for now. I'll try to post a couple more times before I head to site and figure out what the best address is to send letters. Packages should still be sent to the Maseru P.O. Box.

Site Arrival

Today I arrived at my site.

Yesterday was the day after Christmas, and I came down with another 24 hour bug, this time with puking and diarrhea. Bugger. Luckily I got over it in time for today’s travels to be as painless as could be hoped for.

The day began with frantic packing by all the Trainees. The goal was to be packed up in the Land Cruisers and on our way by 7:00 am. In an Honest-to-God miracle, four of us, all our stuff, and the driver somehow managed to get on the road by 8:00 am. It was like being in a coal mine during an impending implosion; the roof rack was packed 3 feet high over the entire roof, there were bags on laps and the entire back, every nook and cranny, was filled with our crap. You can take the Americans out of America… etc, etc.

Everybody was feeling pretty good about our feat, and then we stopped at the gas-mart to get gas tanks for our stoves. The entire roof rack was unloaded, then reloaded with four, 19 kg propane tanks added. With the stability of an inverted pendulum, we headed out onto highway.

We dropped off Melody first. It took 4-wheel low to crawl up the road (read rock face, not rocky, much of the road was just one big polished hunk of rock) up to her compound. It is a Catholic Mission, but with the seclusion and oddness of the surrounding pine trees and labyrinth of barbed-wire fences looked more like something out of a bad slasher movie set in the Eastern Cascades. We unloaded her stuff, used her toilet (she is one of four volunteers in my group to have a toilet), and I chased away a spider the size of my palm while everybody waited outside. I quickly informed the group that the spider did indeed jump, shoot venom and fling spider-webbing out of it’s front two legs. This may or may not have helped the general arachnophobia that resides in my fellow trainees.

I thought it was funny.

Next was Meg. She was only about an hour away from Melody in private car and had a cool ronda-mansion (rondaval + mansion = ronda-mansion). Black and white checkered floor, great stamped steel, 70’s era white and aqua cabinets, an wardrobe, she is basically living in a thatched-roof diner.

Mike and I were next to be dropped off. We are both in Ha Sefako, the second to last village on the most northerly route to South Africa. We left Meg’s and headed back down south towards the direction we had come. The right turn we took off the main road immediately became a dirt road and we traveled on that for the next hour and a half. That is to say, we are much more secluded than I had thought.

However, the drive in was gorgeous. The closest thing I can compare it to is a slightly smaller, less sheer rock faced Yosemite valley. Out my front door I look at South Africa and a peak that towers maybe 2500’ above me. The Caledon River (more of a creek right now) is just a couple hundred yards away and is the Northwest border between Lesotho and South Africa. The village is quite small, with a small shop, a secondary school and a primary school.

My supervisor met us along the road and got Mike and I both settled in before taking us to meet the Chief, the police and the owners of the local shop. Unfortunately the trip to the shop (or shopong, how I love cognates) culminated in the purchase of 1 liter of coke, which is why I am still awake writing this. I guess one good thing was that on my return from Mike’s house, two women stopped me, asked for a drink of my coke, and proceeded to polish off the last third of it between them. I think I’ll probably hide stuff in bags from now on unless I’m not interested in consuming it.

So, I’m sitting in my living room, a sizeable 15’ x 15’ room with a single school-sized desk in the middle with two plastic chairs typing by candle light. In the corner are a pair of slightly worn rock-climbing shoes (just my size!) and a pair of Birkenstocks that were left by the last occupant. The two windows are covered in curtains that are made up of old dolphin sheets and a single map of Southern Africa adorns the walls. I am sitting in an orange plastic chair, opposed by another orange plastic chair. The other rooms of the house are a kitchen, bedroom (with a firm mattress, my back is overjoyed) and sizeable storeroom.

I have nothing to store.

Big dreams for the new abode include sizeable chunks for acoustic foam and a giant L-shaped couch for the living room. Realistic dreams are going to have to require some research. The road to South Africa is apparently only passable on foot or with four-wheel drive and a death wish. The other volunteer in the area calls it the ‘Trail of Tears.’ Perhaps some paint, an area rug and some pillows to sit on will be good enough. Who knows what my inner-interior decorator will come up with.

In short, I am extremely excited about this site. I have a couple volunteers who live within 15 minutes (Mike is like 4), the scenery is post-card worthy and my supervisor is super cool.

Cheers all, and thanks for reading. Post a comment. It makes my day!

I will try and post pictures soon, the internet connection in Botha-Bothe is lackluster.

The Current Situation

The last number of posts have been about specific experiences, so today will be a more general post. For the last three weeks I have been at Community Based Training (CBT), which is to say that I have been living with a host family in a village (Ha Mofoka). My family is made up of a ‘M’e (mother), whose first name is Mabokang and surname is Qobo (Cobo, where the C is a click). She takes care of two grandchildren and a great nephew. The two boys are eleven and the granddaughter is 3. She calls them all her kids. The family structures here are blurred and the typical exactness that Americans use to define relatives is not used here.

The first two weeks of CBT were focused around practice teaching. This was essentially our student teaching condensed into two weeks of two, forty minute teaching periods. After practice teaching in the morning we had Sesotho lessons in the afternoon. It was intense, informative, at times discouraging and energizing. This week has been Sesotho in the morning, followed by HIV/AIDs training or cross-cultural training, which has been informative, saddening and motivating. HIV/AIDs is destroying the communities in genocidal ways that are difficult to grasp considering how privately and round-aboutly the cultural approaches and accepts it. And how covertly HIV/AIDs attacks. It is not an obvious disease, but something that you have to almost take on faith.

We will head back to the Training Center in Maseru the 24th to celebrate Christmas as a training group. The 27th we head to our respective posts for a site visit. I have been posted in Ha Sefako in Botha-Bothe district, way in the North of Lesotho. We will be there for four days before returning to Maseru. Soon after we will have our language test (I must perform at least at the Intermediate-low level), then swearing in, final training, and then finally head to our posts January 9th or 10th.

School starts January 19th.

I have been placed at Ha Sefako high school. We met with our respective counter-parts today and I learned that Ha Sefako High School is an Anglican funded school. I will live on the school compound in a three room building without running water or electricity. My counter-part said that I will probably be teaching the Form A and B (8th and 9th grades in America) science and maths classes. It will be a challenge to teach at these levels both because the students have limited English experience and the Sesotho language has limited means of communicating science and math concepts. I am going to have to relearn what it was like to learn things like surface area.

Not so easy.

It has been nice to cook for myself again. The last few months in LA was a lot of eating out (Taco Tuesdays at El Torito, Chipotle (how I miss barbacoa burritos), etc). So it has been nice to create food again, especially when so much of it has been fresh and organic (in the sense of a few very basic ingredients). I have been cooking with turmeric and cumin more than I have in the past with the results being some pretty decent pasta sauce and fried rice. Cabbage, onion and carrot is a surprisingly delicious combination and a fair egg-drop soup happened one night despite the lack of celery and chicken or tofu. Perhaps some inventive recipes will result out of the next two years.

All-in-all things are good. The Sesotho language-proficiency test is coming up in a couple weeks and I am a little worried about it, but things will probably be okay. People are great and I’m building some solid relationships. I have been very lucky to be placed almost across the street from another volunteer (Mike), so I will have an English language, American outlet close by, which will help with getting through the inevitable tough times.

Thank you everybody who has written (especially you, Amanda), it is a great pleasure and encouragement to receive letters and correspondence. Many blessings and Merry Christmas all!