8 October 2014: The Beginning

Hello, people. I know a lot of you are eager to hear about what I've been up to in detail. Now that I have electricity at my new site (woo!) and a data hotspot from my phone (double woo!), I will sort of retroactively post modified versions of what I've been writing in my journal. This first one is from the first day in Lesotho. Enjoy!

8 October 2014

After many, many months of applying, getting legally and medically cleared, and spending all my money on Amazon and at REI, I found myself on a plane to Philadelphia with my school backpack, and somewhere underneath was my big hiking backpack and my rolling duffle bag. I made my way to the hotel where we would have an orientation of sorts called staging. It was horribly boring and not country specific at all, but I think the point was to get us all together in the same place so that we could go over the general goals of PC and get to know each other a bit. The 2am bus ride from Philadelphia to NYC was ridiculous, but I guess PC has some kind of deal with this Philly hotel and they have had staging there for many years, and it’s probably cheaper there than trying to put us in a hotel in New York. We got to the airport at like 4am, many hours before the ticket counter was even open, so we all kind of lined up with all of our bags and did things like play cards or read, and of course I did handstands and wandered around barefoot (this detail will become important later). And while we waited at the terminal, one person was off to the side doing pushups. It was then (and after several conversations during staging) that I knew we were practically the same person. This turned out to be Lee, who instantly became my go-to friend during training in the village. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, the flight to Johannesburg was super long. I probably shouldn’t have watched The Fault in Our Stars though, because it was way too sad for how mentally exhausted I was, and previously having to say goodbye to everyone at home (especially Mom who would not stop crying but always denied that she was crying). We landed in Johannesburg and I was literally running through the airport to get the plane to Maseru [capital of Lesotho]. After being dumped out onto the runway and going through the laughably small airport (aka tiny building with a bathroom, an office, and a little luggage area next to the tarmac), we were greeted with staff and current volunteers, tiny Basotho hats, fruit, and eager photo-takers.

We rode in the little PC busses to the training villages. There are ten districts in this Maryland-sized country, and we would be training in Berea. The area specifically is called Ha Koali, which includes several villages that our host families were spread through. As the busses pulled up, we were greeted with ululululu souds from all the bo’me [“bo-may” = women] rushing outside to see us. They were all singing in fantastic harmonies, dancing to the beat, and seemed genuinely overjoyed to see us. At the second illage location, we were greeted with similar song and dance, but everyone there also wanted big hugs from all of us. After a short ceremony of welcome by the chief and the bo’me, we got to see who our host mothers would be. They announced us one by one, and each ‘me [woman, literally “mother”] told us our new Sesotho name. My name here is Senate [“se-nah-tay”], which doesn’t mean anything (all the other volunteers’ names meant something, like Rethabile, we are happy, or Neo, love, or Karabo, answer, or the longest one Thlohonolofatso, blessing) but it’s the name of King Letsie’s oldest daughter. My ntate [“n-tah-tay”= man/father] is the son of the chief, who is somehow distantly related to the king, so they can get away with naming me after Lesotho’s princess. There is also another Basotho girl in the neighboring village named Senate, and she is the daughter of the chief. Notice the trend here.

I walked with my ‘me, who thankfully spoke a decent amount of English, to our house. On the property, there is a larger, square house made of cinderblocks and a tin roof next to two rondavals [round house made of cinderblocks or stones with a thatched roof]. Next to the square house is the latrine, a keyhole garden (I will explain this later), some sort of thatched structure that I later learned was for growing mushrooms, and past those are rows and rows of fruit trees. I am in one side of the square house. The room has things like a TV and a stereo, and there is a light bulb wired up on the ceiling (nothing hooked up to electricity though), so I’m wondering if they sometimes use a generator or something. They also had a little solar panel out front charging this big lantern inside to use for nighttime light. At first it was kind of awkward when I was left with a nine year old and two three year olds, one of which is my little ausi [“ow-see” = sister]. The two three year olds were chanting,  “one, two, three!” and jumping off my front step into the grass. After I got kind of bored watching them do this, I was all like “Hey watch this!” and I did a handstand in the yard. Little did I know that Basotho girls all know how to do handstands like pros.  The nine year old immediately did one too, and I was surprised at how long she could hold it. She was in her maroon school jumper and sweater, and her skirt flew up revealing her underwear, but I guess that isn’t a big deal, because soon my front yard was filled with little girls in skirts doing handstands. There were about thirty or forty kids in the yard, all doing excellent handstands after the count of three. After a while, the girls had gotten out a long string and were playing what I later learned was called “skippy,” a game where you jump over the string touching it once, jumping over it not touching it at all, or jump over it landing with the string in between your feet. The string gets progressively higher each round, and it was impressive to see the girls fling themselves over it so deftly.  Then the boys came in, one with an elaborate wire car, and played amongst themselves, mostly hitting each other with their hats. Here, there are few ways to entertain yourself other than playing with the other kids, so they all played so well together. The oldest ones looked out for the younger ones (no bo’me in sight here- these are free-range children), and took care to make sure that the youngest were staying out of trouble. Playing with them definitely got me some laughs from the adults passing by.

After a briefing from one of our language and cultural facilitators [LCF- PC is full of acronyms. Learn to appreciate them now.], I took a bath in a huge bucket with stove-warmed water, then ate a dinner of rice, tomatoes, sweet carrots, and chicken in my host family’s side of the house. I tried to reorganize my clothes, but my ‘me was like oh, just put your stuffed bag over on the other side of the bed and just live out of that, even though there were empty cabinets in this giant thing holding dishes and the aforementioned tv/stereo. I was lucky that I organized my clothes in canvas bags in my suitcase, because that’s how they are organized now, in bags on the floor lined up against the wall. Then I did a little bit of stretching that was very much needed after so much cramped transportation. I’m so exhausted now and I’m gonna wake up at like 5am tomorrow. I also haven’t brushed my teeth since I left Philadelphia. Gross. Now I know to use the water for things like that before I use it all to take a bath. I also really have to pee, but I don’t want to venture out to the latrine at night. Yes, the first orders of business tomorrow will be to work out, brush my teeth, and pee. Goodnight.