Hahaha clearly I'm not impressed with this chicken flapping around

Small thoughts 3

What's the point of baby cargo pants? What's the baby gonna do, pick up a nice rock, put it in his choice of one of the ten pockets, and save it for later?

Last night I ate a plain can of pilchards (fish in tomato sauce) and I almost barfed. I don't recommend it.

If you don't say hi to people every day, they will koko on your door until you answer it, and they'll just be like "I'm just saying hi." Then leave. It's annoying. 

There is not an egg to be bought in my entire village. Sigh. I guess I'll just be super farty trying to get all my protein from beans. 

Sweet, I got the pink party taxi to Quthing. Decked out in speakers, grill and windshield wiper bling, and little lights. I'm worried for the impending famu though...

Mucha bomba y poco chicle. All bark and no bite. (Describing the thunder here)

One of the latrines in my village has VIP painted on it- Very Important Potty?

"I have to do some work do now...for school...because, uh, you know, I'm a teacher and all." = get out of my house so I can watch a movie or take a nap in peace.

Just chillin with my door open for the breeze, and I don't even notice that a chicken walks in until it's like 2 feet away from me. Get out of my house, feather ball.

Whenever someone, like one of my siblings, leaves my house to go do something, they say, "I am coming." No, you're leaving. Unless you meant to say that you're coming back. Which you probably won't. 

The worst thing about watching movies is seeing the food. It's weird- no matter what's going on in the scene, I just can't take my eyes off whatever they're eating. Like once this lady was taking a simple cheese and meat tray outside for her son's birthday party. It had little decorative tufts of lettuce on the periphery of the dish. I was like first of all, I would kill for a tray of meat and cheese. Second of all, what a waste of lettuce that no one is going to eat. I haven't had lettuce in forever- I'd totally eat that lettuce that nobody's going to touch. And then don't even get me started on the feast scenes in Harry Potter. Drool. 

Speaking of HP, I'm helping my younger ausis practice reading by having them switch off paragraphs of Harry Potter. Little do they know that this is not only English practice, but an essential cross-cultural exchange.

Everyone picks their nose here like it's no big whoop. It's so dry, everyone's got crusty little boogers, so it's kind of essential.

A few years ago, when I would ask people their rules to live by, one person said, "Don't be a dirty pirate. Bathe more than twice a week." I am officially a dirty pirate. Especially if the waterfall counts as a shower. 

This small thought is entitled "Running on the road: a case of mistaken identity."

This morning I ran through my village and then onto the main road a bit to loop back closer to my house. As I was straying a bit farther from my usual hangout, the people obviously didn't know who I was. I got the entire spectrum of gender/age greetings: abuti (brother), ntate (father), ausi (sister), and 'me (mother). The moral of this story is that I am androgynous as hell, especially with this haircut. 

Then while walking up the hill from the road to my house, these two little boys (it always seems to be little boys who do this) kept calling me "lekhooa" (white person, literally English person). I said about ten times that no, I wasn't "Lekhooa," and that I had a name. No, not Lekhooa, I'm Senate. No. Senate. Shut up, you little snotty punks, I thought. Oh well. In due time.

New core breakfast: coat my shitty aluminum pot in an ungodly amount of oil (it's not so ungodly when you think about the burned mess I'm avoiding scrubbing off of said shitty pot), cook some chopped tomato and moroho, and pour in two beaten eggs. Nom.

Getting moroho out of my 'me's garden is becoming a risky maneuver what with all the squash or strawberry or whatever plants all over the place with spiky/stinging leaves. Yowza.

Update: I just fell in one of the two streams I have to cross to get from my school to my house. I literally did a forward roll down a minuscule waterfall. I'm gonna blame it on the fact that it was getting dark out. Good thing no one saw me do it. One 'me saw me climbing back up afterward, though, so naturally news will be all over the village by tomorrow. 

Update #2: I learned to knit

The PCV across the valley has determined that the cell tower must be somehow solar powered, because at night after a cloudy day it never seems to work. 

I find myself googling the weirdest things. For example, "how to wash white hair in sub Saharan Africa," you know, bc shampoo doesn't exist here. For now I'm just going with the water-only method. Bar soap makes my hair crunchy. Though it's a thousand times easier with short hair than the two times I attempted to wash it in a bucket when it was long. 

My principal is asking me to come up with a mission statement and vision for the school. Idk what her school is all about. If it were up to me, realistically it should be "To decrease teaching quality at the school and make classes turn into chaotic jokes by hiring a volunteer who doesn't have any idea what she's doing"

When my ausi was teaching me how to play this game kind of like jacks, I was having trouble catching the rock and she asked me what hand I eat with. An American would have asked me what hand I wrote with, so that shows the importance of eating over writing. 

People must think I'm the clumsiest person on the planet, what with slipping and scraping my leg on the way up the hill to my house about a month ago, falling into the stream last week, an now yesterday I slipped in the same spot on that hill going down, so now I have an even bigger scrape on my other leg. Sigh.

I just found a bat in my curtain. That would explain all the flapping sounds last night...

Update: my ausis and I slid it off the curtain with a peanut butter tub, captured the tiny beast, and threw it into the bushes. 

A toilet haiku-

Found in my latrine:

Lizards, bees, and black widows.

Never poop alone. 

Sesotho seems like such a limited language. Not only do they use the same words for "a lot" an "too much" and "again" and "and then," there are simply not enough specific words to express what an English-brained person would like to express. For example, anything resembling nice, good, delicious, etc. is one single word in Sesotho. Also, the words for hear, feel, and taste are a single word. 

On the other hand, it has some crazy specific words like (let me just flip through the dictionary here...ok let's explore a few pages of T.) "tlou" means to either place a grain bag on a pack ox sideways or to lie on one's back with bent knees. "Tanya" is to throw balls of clay into a pool of water in such a way that they go in without disturbing the water. "Tanyetsa" is to eat bread and then milk a cow into one's mouth. "Thethetha" is to beat out meal left over in a basket. And another I mentioned in an earlier post, "titimela" which means to run away to initiation school and get circumcised without your parents' permission. 

Haha ok over to the Q section (by the way, the q is a click sound): "qaa" is to force papa into the mouth of a baby. "Qachela" is to catch thrown food with one's mouth. "Qapha" is to go up and down in a boiling pot. "Qathola" is to spoil a mud floor by trampling on it. "Qefetsa" is to crush something soft and fleshy. "Qoqa" is to choose cattle amongst those captured from the enemy. I could go on. 

Faux hawk? Shark fin? Either way, my hair is just long (and greasy?) enough to kinda do what I want.

Comparing western plumbing to my latrine

Uhhh...yes that seems to be the case, doesn't it?

23 October 2014: Food Questions

It’s 5:30 AM and the first bout of stomach issues has struck. I knew it would be inevitable. It’s not fatal, but not pleasant. I was gonna get up and do some exercise today before I went to the hub, but I guess that’s not happening. Maybe it’s from washing food in unfiltered water. I feel like I should on the one hand start getting my body used to his, but on the other hand, there are things like parasites and worms that you can’t just get used to. I was able to start drinking the tap water in Morocco after a while, and I drank the tap water in China for a few days without knowing that you were supposed to boil it. I was fine though. Hopefully I can sort of get used to this water, but I think it might take a few gastrointestinal workouts first before I will have no problems.

Also, I figured out why they don’t give us spicy food. . Everyone in the group had been complaining so much about the blandness of the food, and we just assumed that the Basotho didn’t cook with spices, until I learned that someone (who this uninformed Mosotho is, I have no idea) had told all the bo’me that Americans are afraid of spicy food. Do they not realize how often I come across the word “siracha” on the internet? The Minnesotan in our group is loving it, but since there are a bunch of us from California and Texas, the rest of were suffering from the lack of flavor. Except salt. The Basotho love salt. To excess.Blech. My moroho[swiss chard] the other day turned to me and was like “oh, would you like some vegetables with your lunch box of salt?” Yeah, I kinda would, thanks.

Speaking of food, here are some photos of our cooking session at the hub

Chelsea and Kyle

Jordan, Adrian squeezing oranges, and Alysa

Leonard's orange smile

Then Jeff tried a tomato smile

Going to Teyateyanent (TY), the camptown, for some shopping

Walking the streets of TY with two of our LCFs

These little shacks on the side of the road do anything from sell clothes and herbs to cut hair

Chilling at Blue Mountain Inn's garden

Back in the village, a photography lesson...

...of our beautiful Thaba Sefika

Bo-ausi already know how to carry things on their heads

Photos from the training village

 These grasshoppers are so cool! They're about 4 inches long, and when they jump, you can see their rainbow wings come out

My 3 year old ausi

Adventure through the valley

Hillary, Lee, and Tyler scouting out where we came from

Me at the top

"I really need to learn to stop standing like that..." Lee, checking the our elevation with his GPS

Neel's birthday- hand plates are the best plates

Hillary is digging the cake

Small thoughts 2

Idk why I thought I would escape the commercialism or Christmas here. It's still a thing. In the big grocery stores and in the hotel I'm at right now using the wifi, there are cheesy decorations and blaring Xmas music. I should have brought my headphones. 

Everyone watch out; I'm making moonshine. 

Midnight barf run: now I'm a real PCV. 

"It's colder than a witch's tit in a steel bra." -Kyle 

Yesterday 'me Lerato (LCF) pulled me aside and told me that she was worried that my boobs were disappearing because I exercise too much. Why is everyone so concerned about my boobs? 

Also, the LCFs call me Sushi now. Score!

After a night where people got a bit too crazy- clement: "we would like to talk about what transpired......the last ten weeks."

Cray participants: "phew"

Being in another culture is like being on the outside of a giant county-wide inside joke that you're trying to break into. 

After the potluck- "tasty food doesn't taste good anymore." Referring to the fried and sugary things. 

Basotho nighttime legends: thaba bosiu growing at night, the tree in the horizon that walks around at night, and the latrine that turns carnivorous at night (ok that last one I made up. I'm integrating so well.)

Ginger beer through the water filter = super fail

The last day of training sessions was so painful. Lee and I straight up left to fry up some makoenyas (kind of like doughnuts) in the other room. No regrets.

Taxi name: "Don't Touch", mr. Peace, q ball, black ball, the geologist, take time to know me, facebook, Ben ten, it's me again, never mind (in dripping Halloween letters), mind your own, anaconda, get down, scream, top dogg, celebrity, toy car

"Ho titimela" = to run away to initiation school and get circumcised without your parents' permission

"Milk everywhere." "Story of my life."

Successfully got water from the tap for the first time and carried two buckets back (one at a time) without spilling everything or falling on my butt downhill. It's the little victories. 

It's amazing how in my metal roofed house I could hear every rain drop. With my thatched rondaval I didn't even know it was raining this morning. 

I've got a janky extension cord, a good cell signal, and the water tap within throwing distance. Posh Corps here I am. 

Every time I look at these damn grandma curtains, I kind of want to gag.

Hah. I'm going on a goose chase trying to find who is supposed to give me a gas cylinder. Maybe I'll just take a nap instead. I don't need to cook, do I?

The swearing in ceremony was played on the news on TV (that alone tells you the amount of newsworthy stuff going on here). Several people have said they were recognized. We're famous!

So far, the handstands in my permanent village are nowhere near as good as those in the training village. Those girls were awesome!

I just walked maybe 1/2 hour each way up and down a muddy, rocky, path, crossing two streams, carrying a wheelbarrow with a heavy ass propane tank to the shop to get more gas. I'm pooped. Def not the posh corps life today. 

My Bo-ausi discovered my exercise ball and my jump rope. They're probably gonna want to play with them every day now. 

I was just woken up from a nap with sounds of running and squawking to find three boys chasing a chicken around my rodaval trying to catch it. 

"Hey Thomas, those are some nifty glasses." "Yeah that's the good thing about getting old- you get to wear nifty glasses."

I just got asked to go to church by my two oldest sisters. I was like haha nope. A (probably very long) religious service in a language I barely understand? Maybe I'll go as a cultural experience one day, but I'm really not up for that right now.

Tertiary project: after trying rather unsuccessfully to filter the little particulates out of ginger beer, we thought we would start a "will-it-blend"-esque YouTube series called WILL...IT...FILTER!?!?

I made a bookshelf out of stones today. It rocks. Womp.

I had a quality dance session in the grass with a bunch of village girls. My 'me comes over and is like, "are you teaching the Basotho to dance or are they teaching you?" Definitely both.

To a little girl, maybe 3 years old, that I met yesterday: "Do you remember who I am? What's my name...who am I?"

Her response: "Lekhooa!" [white person]

Close enough...

I was playing jump rope with two of my ausis and then they started playing with my hair, then they got combs and proceeded to release the snowstorm of dandruff that had apparently been dwelling on my scalp. In any case, it was quite therapeutic, like a head massage.

Chakalaka (yes that's the real name of spicy canned vegetables) is good but the "mild and spicy" (which is a contradiction in itself) is so frikin spicy! Gahh!

TV Lesotho's new hit show, a spinoff of "between two ferns": between two abs

Stuck on a non main road bus, overstuffed, hot, huge bags in my lap, blaring famu. I have found hell. 

I drank unfiltered water at Lee's site. If I die, that's probably why. 

Post Xmas update: on the taxi from Mt. Moorosi to my village, I put my bag in a seat while I ran to get some groceries. Then I came back as its leaving, and someone said they put my bag on the next (empty) taxi so I had to wait and wait. But I used the time to write in my journal. Then later I got out and was trying to climb the hill to my house, but it was so slippery and I fell in the mud a few times. Two of my ausis saw and came running down to help me haha.

Ugh I'm so grimy all the time. What I wouldn't give to be at a Moroccan hammam right now...

Earlier today it was hailing (I could tell because I actually heard stuff hitting the thatched roof. You don't really hear rain on it.) and I went to the window to close it, and the outside smelled overwhelmingly of pine, even more than the smell of pine when I was walking through the pine forest. Weird. 

A collection of the natural features around here: little mountains, big ol mountains, river, valleys with streams, pink mini cliffs, pine forests, big waterfall, geodes/awesome rocks, 

Have fun lesotho-ing it up this year. #hashtaglesotho2015##hashtag#

-text from Lee (Walter) from the US

Yesterday I legitimately saw like a six year old drinking a beer. Then I saw another one. Apparently this is perfectly normal.

Sporadic Basotho dance parties make any day better.