The inside of my rondaval

Panoramaaaaaa

An update on the mess that is Lesotho politics

http://allafrica.com/stories/201502241284

6 December 2014: More practice teaching

                First, dear blog readers, let me apologize for being like two months behind posting. Now that I’m in the full swing of school, I am busy and don’t have a lot of extra time to retroactively write these posts. I’m just typing up modified versions of my journal, in which I have recounted all the things I’ve done and what I’ve thought about stuff. I realized I was behind when some people just now realized that I chopped all my hair off. That was in October. But this is probably my bad. Anyway. Onward with the blog.

                Yesterday was the conclusion of my first week of practice teaching, ending with a day of life skills. The form As told me they wanted to learn about gender roles. Perfect. I can go on and on about gender roles, being the gender role rebel that I sometimes am. I made some cards with some typically masculine or feminine tasks or qualities and asked the students to tape them up under the label “men,” “women,” or “both.” The cards had things like fetching water, cooking, being strong, herding animals, taking care of children, chopping wood, sweeping the floor, erasing the chalk board, drinking beer, being pregnant, etc. The first round, I asked them who normally does these things. The spread was pretty typical or gender roles here. Then I took them down and asked them to tape them up according to who is physically able/capable of doing these things. To my surprise, it was pretty much the same, except there were more cards under the “men” category. The point of this exercise is to realize, oh, everyone can do everything. I was confused if they had understood my question or if my English was not clear, but later the resource volunteer who observed the class said that they probably understood, but they are taught hat boys are physically unable to sweep the floor and that girls are physically unable to tend to animals or cut firewood, etc. I felt like I had kind of hit a wall, so I went through the cards one by one, giving examples of each. For “being strong,” I suggested that the women who carry huge buckets of water have to be very strong. The students saw my point, and I moved the card from “men” to “both.” I went through and suggested how I know of men who take care of children and women who cut wood and men who clean, and pretty soon all the cards were under the “both” category except the “being pregnant” card, which remains physically a female ability. I wasn’t about to make an exception by mentioning that transgender man who was on Oprah a while back who was pregnant. That would be too confusing at this stage. 

                I asked if ever a girl wanted to chop wood or to take care of the cattle, and some said yes. I told them that if they wanted to do those things, they should ask to do them and fight to do whatever they wanted. Both men and women can do things. What a revelation! The best thing I heard all class was some kid say at the end, “It should be 50/50.” Finally, some of them got what I was trying to say. Then I had a bit of extra time at the end because they don’t really like to talk in class, so I went on to try to explain the different between sex and gender, and how gender is a spectrum. If they were confused by the first exercise, they were completely lost in the woods with this next topic. Even if they didn’t understand everything, I felt like I at least sort of got through to them that you can be a girl who likes to do some things that boys typically do, and you can be a boy who likes to do some things that girls typically do. [Fun fact- colors aren’t really gendered here. Some of the cool boys walk around with pink backpacks and there’s not a second thought. If they were in an American high school, they’d probably get stuffed in a locker for that.] 

                Then the form B life skills class was about resisting peer pressure. I feel like a Mosotho co-teacher would have been helpful, because I was giving them English phrases to use in peer pressure situations, but they’re not going to use these in real life. Even though school is supposed to be taught in English, I think that life skills class should be in Sesotho so they know about things in the language that they will experience them in. Realizing this mid-way through the lesson, I changed my approach to teaching about body language, being assertive, and being confident in the face of peer pressure. I could tell they were enjoying this part of the lesson more. I thought that teaching assertiveness and confidence would be good to teach at my permanent school, especially to the girls and the other kids who are so quiet and will be walked all over.

1 December 2014: Thanksgiving, practice teaching, and makoenyas

I haven’t written in a little bit, but nothing really too exciting has happened. Thursday was Thanksgiving, so we all went to the country director’s house in Maseru. The food was incredibly mediocre, obviously mass-catered, but we all stuffed our faces anyway. The best part was definitely when we all (trainees, a bunch of current volunteers, and some staff) stood in a circle in the back yard under a tent while the rain poured down. We went around and said what we were thankful for, the staple activity of any self-respecting Thanksgiving. I happened to be last, and after I gave thanks (for the fact that all the trainees were all together now because I knew I would soon miss this when we all went to site, for a sweet, orange-checkered tie that I borrowed [Thanksgiving is a formal occasion, right? Not necessarily? Who cares.], and for my upcoming musical partner Jeff), Jeff and I launched into the rap/poem/rapoem that we had written the previous day. I rapped while Jeff accompanied on Alyssa’s ukulele. It was such a hit; everyone loved it. I’m sure I have a video somewhere…

The next day, we started practice teaching. Now that we had been to site and knew sort of what we would be teaching, we tried to teach the same grades during practice teaching. I had the form As and one class of the form Bs (the Bs are a big grade, so they are split into 2 classes, or “streams”) at a nearby high school. School was technically over, but the students stayed for us to practice on, and they also got lunch. The latter was probably a bigger attractant. They were pretty easy for day 1 because all I did was just explain the rules and expectations and I had them vote on their choice of a life skills topic. We would be teaching math, but one day we were expected to teach life skills, just for kicks, because some of us would be teaching that at our sites. I just tried to be very clear, outline the topics I would be teaching for the next week, and be firm about what I expected from them. Monday (today), it was actual math teaching instead of just intros, and it was pretty easy peasy. I’m going really slowly with them. However, to my surprise, midway through my Form A class, my observer lady (we were being observed by PC staff and ministry of education people) came up and whispered that a student had been raped on the way to school and that she had to go help take care of it, but oh no don’t worry, just keep teaching. Uhhhh, ok then. It occurred to me then that someone needs to teach thse girls some basic self-defense. Maybe I can do tha in my life skills class at site. Phew.

Yesterday, we had a weekend potluck where we normally have training. The dumb ones (me included) showed up on time, and proceeded to wait around for three hours, playing Pictionary on the white board and otherwise generally trying to amuse ourselves. After that, we played a most raucous game of Judgment (an awesome card game) where there was much spontaneous singing and banging on the table. Most of the time when I let a little crazy out, I’ve found that people catch on and add to the crazy. After the food, somehow the decision was made to go back to our houses and make more food. Makes sense, right? Today we decided to make makoenyas (“ma-kwen-yuh” fried balls of dough that they sell at some of the shops here), but instead of just plain ones, we would make them have fillings. After mixing up several combinations of apples, banana/peanut butter, and chutney, we formed and fried the little suckers. I was gonna bust from eating so much. They’re normally about the size of baseballs, but there was one that we put so much filling in, it was huge. We left it in for a long time to cook all the way through, but it kind of burned. It sort of looked like a little football. One day we shall start a makoenya stand. They look like they should be sweet, but every time I eat one and it’s not sweet, I get a little bit disappointed. Thus the idea to make a corrugated metal makoenya stand, but charge extra because we’ll put powdered sugar on top. Genius! There’s always money in the makoenya stand.

24 November 2014: Scene

I’m sitting here writing during boring boring training. Let me paint the picture for you. Some staff members and current volunteers they like to call “resource volunteers” are up at the front of the classroom we have appropriated from the school to use during training. 30+ of us trainees are sitting on either side of a U-shaped arrangement of tables. My partners and crime and I always opt for the outside corner. We are sitting in black plastic chairs that are too flexible, and if you lean back too far in them, there’s no way they will ever go back to upright. The walls are made of cinderblocks, and all the windows that open are open to let in at least a bit of a breeze in the heat. There are some tacky, blue and green flowered tablecloths on the folding tables, and most of them are starting to get little rips in them. A staff member is up at the front writing on a little easel-like white board, and occasionally tapes up big pieces of flip chart paper to the wall, none of which stay very well because packing tape on dusty cinderblocks is not exactly the best bonding combination. Sometimes I will get up and just stand by the window to avoid both my butt and my brain from falling asleep. After the shpeal, they will likely give us ten handouts that we will never look at again; an incredible waste of both time and paper. Later we’ll probably do some kind of redundant group activity, in which a select few will be really into it while the rest of us groan as we half-heartedly BS our way through the exercise. We will later probably come together and discuss what we learned or whatnot, with a healthy serving of snarky comments coming from a different select few. Some of us (the first select few) are rigorously taking notes, some are reading over Sesotho notes from that morning, some of us read, some doodle, some play things like dots or crossword-type games in our notebooks, some come up with Lesotho-themed Cards Against Humanity cards if they ever decided to come up with a Rural Africa extension pack, some wander to the latrine for no other reason than for something else to do, and some of us are blatantly carving chess pieces out of candles because it’s too much effort to pretend to care anymore. We have seen the light, as it were. We have seen our permanent sites. But now we are back Most people have given up on training because our longer-term futures are much clearer now. 

21 November 2014: Site visit part 2

               My first full day here in Ha Makoae- It is one of the last days of school here, so I got to school and helped some other teachers mark some science tests, and after invigilating (That means proctoring. No, I’m not running around trying to instill superhero justice around here), a test and doing some more grading and organizing, I met Lauren, the current PCV who lives across the valley in Pulane. She told me that the south get a lot of flak from the north for having the worst schools and that we have a reputation for being antisocial. It’s true that we are more spread out in the south, so we don’t get together as often, but she also said that PC puts the more self-reliant people in the south because there are often less resources like the big grocery stores that you might find in the north. She works with this British woman who runs an orphanage here, tutoring English on the weekend. After talking with her for a bit, we all went outside for a kind of welcoming party for me. They even gave out printed programs of a sort that said “’Me Senate’s Welcome.” I’m really lucky to have a school with electricity and a printer. If I were at a school without a printer, I would have to write tests up on the board and have the kids copy them onto pieces of paper as they worked out the problems. The school proprietor made a speech, as well as the principal, the history teacher, Lauren, and a student who lives near me. Then I had to stand up and BS a speech using my baby Sesotho, with which I was obviously unable to adequately express my gratitude and excitement to start living and teaching here. The school choir then sang several songs, complete with effortless multi-part harmony and dancing, like always. Then three of the girls did a traditional dance (I’ll find the name someday) where they wore short grass skirts with strings of bottlecaps underneath to make noise when they pop their hips back to the beat of a whistle. The other girls lined up behind them so that the boys wouldn’t see. Apparently, boys aren’t supposed to watch that dance. Then came the barbecue! Chicken and sausages on the grill, and papa and beans inside. We danced to house music (Basotho absolutely love crappy house music) and I showed the teachers how to do different dances like the robot and the electric slide. It started to get dark, so two of the teachers walked with me back to my house. Thank goodness they did, because I would have definitely gotten lost in the daylight, much less in the dark. 

                The next day, we marked exams like crazy and calculated the students’ final grades. Most of them failed almost all their classes (failing meaning below 40%). The standards here are so much lower than in the US, so most students just aim to pass, and if they do, it’s a godsend. The next day, I packed up all my stuff to get ready to leave after the parents’ meeting that they wanted me to stay for. One of the teachers told me that I should come early, and that the parents would probably show up about 20-30 minutes late. I was a bit suspicious of this, knowing how Basotho are with time, but I showed up a little early anyway. The meeting was supposed to start at 8, and by 8:30, there were like 7 parents in the room. I knew it. There were some who trickled in 1, 2, even 2 and a half hours late like it’s no big whoop. And here, it’s really not. I introduced myself at the beginning to the few parents who showed up only a little bit late and explained about myself and my situation in Lesotho. Mind you, I was speaking in Sesotho, and there were several confused/blank faces in the small crowd, so I don’t know how much of it actually made it across. After that, the next 3 hours of the meeting were a dull blur of Sesotho. I understood things here and there, but overall not much. My counterpart later told me that when they were talking about me, my principal told them to accept me and protect me in the village, and that they should not ask me for money or candy (everyone thinks all white people carry tons of candy on them at all times, I’ve learned) because I have no money as a volunteer. I do appreciate the effort my teachers are making to help me become part of the community.

                Then the 6 teachers, one baby, the van owner, his wife, and I all squeezed into a van with all our crap. Like tons of bags and things. We drove the 2ish hours on the rocky road to Mt. Moorosi (tiny town), then took a sprinter (a small bus thing) to Quthing town. My principal wanted to get her hair did before she went home, so I sat there in the salon shack underneath tons of fake hair hanging on the walls. I was thinking to myself, what if I got one of these purple weaves or dreads when my hair gets long enough, haha. So my principal and I took a small taxi to her house near the camptown where I would spend the night. Then we all piled into my principal’s husband’s truck and drove to see her mom in Qomoqomong. I love saying that- two clicks. It was about a 30 minute drive away on a super bumpy road. When we arrived, my principal’s mom was very surprised to see me. I spoke a little Sesotho with her, and she was so shocked at this that she gave me this big jar of peaches. Sesotho saves the day once again. We drove back to my principal’s house where we had an awesome dinner. Her son said that I should come over for dinner more often because they don’t normally have this good of food. The next morning, I woke up early and rode to town to get a taxi back to the training village. I’m so excited to move to site permanently in a few weeks!

18 November 2014: Site Visit part 1

                Holy crap is this real life? I just got to my new site for site visit and I’m super pumped about my village. Other than just eating peanut butter sandwiches and moldy China shop carrots for the next four days, I think it’s gonna be great. We left the hotel in my principal’s car, and after that, we stopped at a shop to buy some meat. When we were trying to start up the car again to leave, the little VW wouldn’t shift out of park. My principal was kind of half-heartedly sitting in the driver’s seat trying to get it unstuck, then she went wandering around supposedly going to find someone who might have been able to help. Half an hour later, we’re still sitting in the car doing what, waiting for some miracle to shine through the clouds, strike the gear shifter, and let us get going? I then had the brilliant (and I say that sarcastically, because any normal American would have done the same thing, right?) idea to turn to the good old Google machine. Boom, found a tutorial, it worked, and we were on our way. So then we were out of park and driving out of Mohale’s Hoek toward Quthing when my principal stops the car on the side of the road, and, without saying anything to me, she, my counterpart, and this other lady we had picked up were wandering around on the hill next to the road. My principal got back in the car and we drove up to a police stop where I guess they’re supposed to check if you have your license and whatnot We go on our merry way, and I ask where the others went. She says something like “oh, we’ll get them up ahead. The police would have thought something was fishy.” She used the word “fishy.” It’s at this point I’m really confused and maybe concerned for my well-being. Right after we drive past the police stop, we find my counterpart and the random lady walking along the street, and we pick them up again. Later as we were driving, my principal explained that with her temporary registration (she had pieces of paper in her windshields instead of permanent tags), she can’t have more than two people in the car. She still had some payments to make on it or something before it would be issued license plates. Ohhh, so I wasn’t riding with a felon in the back seat after all. Phew. This tricky drop-off and pick-up situation happened again at another police stop, but the third time, I guess my principal hadn’t seen the police stop in time to do the ol’ bait and switch (am I using that phrase correctly? Either way, it sounds good here.), so the police lady made my principal get out to talk to her. They were outside for a while when my principal motioned over to me to come over to them. I got out and talked to the officer in my infantile Sesotho, which I think she found entertaining enough to let us go. 

                Home free, we then made it to the Quthing camptown (also called Moyeni for reasons unknown) where my principal drove me around and showed me the important things in town. She lives just before Moyeni off the main road, and her husband works in town at the ministry of water and sewage or some such business. Teachers often apply for jobs all over the country and move to the school grounds and rent housing there, going back to their homes and families on school breaks and maybe weekends. She has a room near the school in our village, but comes back to the camptown to her permanent house. Our first stop in town was the South African-run store to get some charcoal for the barbecue [called a braai here]. This store is fantastic- it has so much stuff that you can’t find anywhere else but maybe Maseru. The thing that impressed me was that they had chocolate peanut butter. Blog follower, you probably have guessed by now that I am in a semi-serious relationship with peanut butter.

                We got a taxi [17 person mini bus] to Mount Moorosi, which is the tiny town between Moyeni and my village. There, we bought some more food, then got another taxi to Ha Makoae, my village. We turned off the paved road and followed a dirt/gravel/rocky road for about an hour and a half, snaking through the mountains as we followed the river. I hate the bumps, but the scenery makes up for it. I have been told that the road was much, much worse even just last year [as I am typing this up, it has been even further improved, which is really nice]. The taxi stopped on the road next to the school, and we got out and unloaded all of our food, drinks, charcoal, the grill, and all our bags. So much stuff. We wandered through the school campus, across two streams, and up the hill (which is the base of a mountain I’m jokingly trying to convince them to name Thaba Senate, as I heard the mountain has no name [I have since learned that it does have a name, with two Qs no less. Fun to say.]) We got to my rondaval and met my ‘me. My rondaval is awesome! The walls are painted yellow, and it’s a pretty good size, I’d say about 15ish feet in diameter. It has a thatched roof and ugly grandma curtains with flowers and bows (gag). I have a dresser, a big bed, 2 school desks and chairs, and a stove/oven combo. The view from my front door is unreal. The mountain tower over the valley, but they seem to wrap around it at the same time, rising high and green. It’s amazing. I hope I never get jaded by the beauty of the valley. Some of the teachers and I jerry-rigged a light bulb to plug into my ‘me’s power supply, so I have electricity! It’s just an extension cord that goes from my family’s house through their window, across the little span between the house and my rondaval, and through my window. Not the safest thing, I guess, but hey, it’s electricity; I’m not complaining. The water tap is super close too, up a little hill under a tree. I seriously lucked out with my site. I’ll talk about what I did today tomorrow morning- I’m too tired to keep writing. There are some roosters in a metal barrel outside my window that will make sure I’m up early, so there will be plenty of time to write more in the morning.

The view from my front door

To the left is my family’s house. To the right is my rondaval. Notice the janky extension cord going from their house to mine through the windows. Behind is the mountain I can’t wait to climb

My school

The view down into the river valley

17 November 2014: Supervisor and counterpart workshop / cultural comments

                We are at Mount Maluti Hotel [fun fact: the Maluti mountains are a mountain range in the northwest of the country and they are also what Lesotho’s currency is named after] in Mohale’s Hoek for a workshop with our counterparts and principals from our schools. The sessions are useful, but somewhat tedious as always. The food here is amazing; I’m stuffing myself to the max every meal because for the next few days during my site visit, I will subsist off of the peanut butter, bread, and carrots that I bought here and will take with me. There is a super rude and strict Afrikaner lady who runs the dining room here. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, so perhaps the reason she outlines her eyes so profoundly with eyeliner is that you need extra help finding them, since her soul has been lost many years ago. She tells us as we’re kind of hanging out after we finish eating, “can’t you people socialize somewhere else?” Come on, we weren’t even being loud. 

At the table, fellow trainee Neel and I were using toothpick shards to read people’s futures. Like tea leaves or something like that, but with toothpicks you toss out onto the table. It’s a skill I found I have a natural talent with. Other boredom entertainment tactics during sessions include playing MASH (remember MASH? Middle school…good times…) writing angsty poems about the mean food lady not letting us get seconds and about King Moshoeshoe at Thaba Bosiu, and playing this mega tic-tac-toe kind of game that the herd boys play. 

When we weren’t trying to keep ourselves awake, some of the sessions were quite eye-opening. I met my counterpart and supervisor and sat next to them the first day, and hearing the comments that my principal whispered to me during some of the sessions along with hearing that my counterpart asked if I was married made me think that perhaps this working relationship is going to take some time. I wasn’t sure if my counterpart was asking because he was interested or if he was just curious, but in order to nip that potential mess in the bud, I made sure to make some comments during the cross-cultural session about needing to feel that I am being respected as a professional and not seen as a romantic object just because I am a female. Someone else’s principal said that men and women specialized in different tasks at home, and this translates over to the school. He said that men are the “authority by nature,” and I wanted to kick him in the teeth right then and there. I made sure to stand up and speak loudly and clearly for any potential language barriers that in America, women expect to be given the same level of respect and authority as men regardless of the task. It was just necessary for me to lay down the limits of what I will tolerate.

Some other cross-cultural topics included the protocol for going into someone’s office: just “koko” or knock knock until they answer. It’s normal to stop everything you’re doing to talk to someone at the door. Eye contact while talking to supervisors: direct and prolonged eye contact to a superior is seen as disrespectful, especially for women. Timeliness: teachers should come “in time,” not “on time” for work, but a lot won’t [remind me to make a blog post about the nature of time here]. Phone calls during teaching: a teacher might answer their phone during class, say that they’re busy, and hang up instead of just ignoring the call. Calls are not ignored here (I have since discovered the non-existence of voicemail, so that may be why), just like interruptions during anything are entertained.  Meetings: no, they probably won’t start on time. Duh. Appointments: they are rarely made (see the first point of this paragraph), or kept because time management is obviously not a thing here. Initiative: subordinates normally wait for or ask for instruction instead of taking the initiative to do things further on their own. Conflicts/disagreements: they are handled very passively, and following the chain of command is important. Communication styles: indirect. Getting to the task vs. human interaction: people greet and socialize first (and will get offended if you don’t), then they get started on the task. Working together vs. independently: it’s such a collectivistic society that working together is kind of built into everything, but it also depends on what the individual person prefers and how they work best. If men and women are treated equally: de jure, sort of; de facto, nope. 

Other things that the Basotho were concerned about us doing that they brought up were getting into relationships with students, losing control of our emotions and crying in front of the students, and that we would travel too much and forget about our school assignments. Where are they coming up with these things? American media? I don’t know. Some comments that were made that we had to straight up shoot down were comments like, “they should go to church with us in the village. We are all Christians!” and almost every comment about corporal punishment being good for the children. (“A child is born like that [needing to be beaten because they are spoiled unless you beat them]” and “nobody has ever been killed by punishment” were direct quotes from some of the Basotho.) Phew. From these interactions in the sessions, it sounds like it’ll take a lot of getting used to and being assertive on my part

13 November 2014: Site announcements

                Yesterday afternoon, with much pomp and celebration, we had site announcements. One staff member stood at the front of the room in front of the big Lesotho map, called our names, there was a bit of a drumroll moment, and they announced what district and school we would be placed in, and they pinned our name on the map. If I were organizing site announcements, I would do it differently. It would be Harry Potter style. You go up, sit on a stool, they place a raggedy Basotho hat on your head (the hat is like a woven straw cone with a little ball at the top), the hat contemplates for a moment (When it would be my turn, the hat would have said something like this: “Hmmm, I see self-sufficiency, a sense of adventure, fondness for the mountains…better be…QUTHING!”), and you go sit with your fellow district-mates. As the Basotho sorting hat already told you, I was placed in Quthing (the southernmost district) in a river valley with high, rising mountains on either side. I messaged with the current volunteer who is already there across the river from my village. She said that the valley is beautiful, but the previous volunteer in a village near me suffered from isolation because the cell tower had not been built yet, the road was much worse, and I have since learned that she was really culturally insensitive, which probably didn’t help. However, I probably won’t have issues because my village recently got electricity (I lucked out hard core on this), the road has been much improved, and the valley got a new cell tower. It’s listed as “extremely rural” (aka remote), which means that it takes about an hour and a half to get to the closest mini town, then another hour to get to the camptown via taxi, totaling 56 Rand  = $5.60. There are people who are much farther from their camptowns, though, so I’m not complaining too much. Now it feels like the impending adventure is actually coming to life. We are going to site visits next week with our counterparts and supervisors, which I’m really excited about!

12 November 2014: Morningtime

                It’s mornings like this when I’m awake (due to donkeys, chickens, taxis honking, and rain bulleting down on my tin roof) and have little to nothing to do, so I’m killing time by writing. Some of those little girls have been doing the rain dance a little too much, because it’s really coming down. Yesterday we had a session on how to teach math to ESL learners and how to make tests, which was by far the most useful session of training. We should have a session like that at least once a week, not once a training. Yesterday we also had the first bout of Sandal Camp, which I think I made a little too intense. I will scale it down for next time, it seems. More instructional and less death-inducing. My friend’s mom sent an email saying that from the photos, it looks like PC is a glorified scout camp. Yeah, basically that’s what it is. Thanks, American taxpayers ;). Later today we find out our site placements for after training is over. I’m so pumped! We’re having a lunch potluck to celebrate this and the fact that we are all cooking our own food now. It’s also mornings like this where I’m so cold that I’m rating my ability to get away with dirtiness against the merits of having a bath. I did just dig some dirt out of my ear, however, so maybe I should…bathtime it is. Later, y’all.

9 November 2014: TY food shopping / “readiness to serve” assignment

                1^st point of business: it’s officially been a month since I’ve been in Lesotho. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

                Yesterday we were able to go to Teyateyaneng (TY), our district camptown [by the way, if I didn’t explain, a camptown is like the capital of the district. Sometimes it’s the only thing resembling a town in the whole district.] to shop for more “exotic” foods other than the basics we could find at our village’s pink shop. Finally we will be able to cook our own food! No more papa and incredibly salty moroho. No more bread and fries for dinner. The only thing I might adopt is the lesheleshele [sorghum porridge]. I did find some oatmeal in TY, but I think lesh is more protein-ey. I also found some almost legit peanut butter. There are a few widespread brands and they are all shitty, but there’s one rare beast called Nutty P, which actually moves when you tip it around instead of being one static mass of hydrogenated peanut product. After shopping, the usual crew (me, Chelsea, and Kyle), went to Lee’s house for cards and cooking. This has been our afternoon routine lately. We made burritos and what we called a “group muffin,” aka a mini banana bread smothered with peanut butter and melted chocolate. Nommm. We are all getting quite good at playing Canasta too. 

                While stuffing ourselves with group muffin and playing cards, we talked about the “readiness to serve” assignment we have to turn in. It’s basically a bunch of super politically correct/culturally sensitive BS questions to prove that you are “integrating well” and that you will use PC methods for doing your projects and all. It’s like “how did you overcome such and such culture shock blah blah blah diversity womp womp coping mechanisms and behavior change models and icebergs and whatnot.” It’s just too much. I overheard, “if I rolled my eyes any harder, they’d pop out of my head,” regarding this ridiculosity. I’ll probably just write it while they’re making us sit through another pointless training session that does not teach us anything practical. I have heard that in other countries, the trainees spend way longer on language every day and they actually spend more than a total of two hours over two months teaching you how to teach in this cultural context. I guess that’s not the case here. Why don’t I tell you how I really feel, you ask? This is probably the point in our program where the PC would like me to remind you that this blog is my opinion only and not the formal position of the PC or US government or whatever. Duh. Now back to the show. Again. 

                The other event of the day was that in the morning a few of us went to Thaba [mountain] Sefika. On the way up, there were a bunch of awesome geodes and cool looking layered and speckled rocks. After the schlep to the windy summit, it was such a beautiful view and so refreshing after the climb. Somehow there’s a big concrete pillar up there with no obvious purpose, so of course I decided that I needed to sit on top of it and play queen of the mountain

7 November 2014: Gender / diversity panel / sandal camp

                Perhaps the most interesting thing to happen in a while was when I was walking back to the school after changing into my shorts and tshirt to do a yoga session that Mary Beth was leading. So as I was walking past, these women in a little house called me over to say hi. One of them asked me if I was a boy or a girl (which isn’t weird here. None of the kids have hair and sometimes it’s hard to tell if they have a neutral-looking face. Sometimes the only distinguishing characteristic is if they are wearing earrings or wearing a skirt with their school uniform. Also it’s important to address people as ausi [sister] or abuti [brother] or ‘me [mother] or ntate [father] when you greet them, so people want to know). In my case, I’m a white person with short hair, and they expect non-African females to have long hair. I also don’t wear earrings and I was wearing a big shirt and a sports bra, which squishes down my already small boobs. As such, one of the women asked, “but where are your breasts?” to which I replied that they’re there, just small. [Cultural note- breasts are not really sexualized or taboo to talk about here- they’re just another body part, and honestly I think that’s how it should be everywhere.] When I reached the classroom we were going to do yoga in, I told some people the little encounter I just had, and one girl was really shocked and wondering why I was laughing about it instead of being offended. If you can’t laugh at stuff like that, you won’t be able to survive here or anywhere, really.

                A few days ago, a bunch of the current volunteers came to our training to explain their experiences with them not being the heterosexual/white/rich American that most people here think of when they hear “American.” There were some Chinese- and Indian-American volunteers who said that they get assumptions about their respective races all the time. Since many shops or businesses here are Chinese and Indian run (and these businesses are very much looked down upon, thinking that they are taking money away from the Basotho businesses), they have a hard time because people think they are exploitative business owners or that they are just plain scary looking (esp. by children, because a lot of the rural kids have never seen someone who looks like them). The Black Americans had interesting perspectives also, saying that they are often held to a higher cultural and linguistic standard, expected to already know Basotho culture and Sesotho. They do enjoy avoiding the harassment that the non-African heritage volunteers experience like constantly being asked for money and getting “lekhooa” [white person] yelled at them. A volunteer who jokingly said that he was asked to come to the panel to represent the typical white volunteer said that you can never really escape the assumption that you are a rich Afrikaner. It’s hard to convince people here that you don’t speak Afrikaans. Some Basotho just ask him for money because they don’t really know what else to say to start a conversation. The only interaction most people have had with white people is from rich Afrikaners with servants and such. People automatically assume an inferior position when they are with him, but he has to convince them that, as a volunteer, he is probably worse off financially than most people he comes into contact with. Also, he said that a lot of people say that they want to be white or that they want to live in America. The other volunteers commented that they either laugh it off, remind the people that they would have to be away from their families, or simply convince them that they have a better live in Lesotho with the means they have than they ever could have in America with the same amount of money. One said she just rattles off numbers- rent is equivalent to R8000, then you add water, gas, food, etc, and it is clear that America isn’t the land of the easy life and easy money. If they actually have real aspirations and the potential to make it happen, you can direct them to the American embassy where they can find scholarships and whatnot. 

He also reminded us not to take ourselves too seriously. We’re gonna get into bizarre conversations and have strange, horrible, and amazing experiences. Just roll with it and be able to laugh at yourself and your situations. I really need to remember that. 

In other news, I have appointed myself as Peace Corps Personal Trainer (or PCPT, since PC always has an acronym for everything), and will soon start, with other people’s help, holding workout sessions after training just like how Mary Beth does yoga sessions. They’re gonna be mostly instructional and not as intense as something like boot camp, so we are calling it sandal camp. Catchy, huh? No sandals required.  Then after training is over we will send out workouts over Whatsapp (a messaging app that everyone in Lesotho uses). 

Political update

 http://m.mg.co.za/article/2015-02-19-ominous-rumblings-from-lesotho-army-ahead-of-election

One week until the rescheduled election and things ain't lookin so good...

Small Thoughts 4

"Tsatsi lena le leng le le leng le lelelele" means "y'all are tall every day." Heh heh.

My nkhono (grandmother) just gave me a big ol container of motoho (sour sorghum porridge). I'm sure it will be edible warmed up with a crap ton of sugar in it. Hopefully. As is, it is like lukewarm, sour snot. 

Update: I used the gloppy motoho as the base for some sort of batter, baked it in a pot, and it turned into some kind of flan consistency. Actually edible!

People are always asking me what I cooked that day. No matter what I say (unless, of course, it's papa and moroho), I get a laugh or a head shake and a disapproving "Ah, che (no), ausi Senate." Come on, people. I can't eat that stuff at every meal like you all do.

Basotho walk sooo slowly. Yesterday a bunch of other people and I were helping my 'me carry stuff up from the road and I was apparently walking too fast for them, an they kept telling me to "stop running". I was not running, for the record, only walking at my normal pace. Well I was the only one to make it to the house before the rain hit. Hah. 

And people (especially my youngest ausi) always ask me if I'm not tired because I walk fast. But no, I'm not tired. Just be shh.

I was trying to look up motoho (Basotho sour porridge) on Google and the first few links are urban dictionary entries for slutty girls who only hang out with motorcycle guys hahaha

Overheard on Whatsapp:

Lee: Just saw a "Crop it like it's hot" t shirt.

Cassie: Was it a crop top lee?

Lee: *looks up crop top*. Yup, sure was. Makes it less interesting. Thought for sure it was about corn.

Text from Milea Re: my new hair style- "Faux hawks in Lethsoto. Could be a band name"

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL! [imagine Finding Nemo gif here]

I thought form A math was going well until I collected their notebooks with their homework. Nope. Yeesh. They can't follow directions very well and they don't take notes.  Gonna get mean today.

I am keeping up my clumsiness reputation. I was trying to get the attention of a big group of students by standing on a chair. Little did I know it was missing a leg. Down I went right on my butt. Nice. 

People are always so confused why I go to the waterfall. I tell them that I like to see it. Really today I just wanted to take a (freezing) shower haha.

ALSO- my 'me and ausi were super confused why I hang up my clothes inside (in addition to not believing that I can wash clothes by hand). The reasons are simple- there are freak rain storms that make hanging clothes up outside risky, I don't have to babysit them so that no one nabs anything, I don't have to bother with clothes pins, no they don't need sunlight to be "sterilized," and I simply squeeze them out enough so that they're not dripping on me. Logic!

Received text re all this confusion: "People are easily confused here." Truth.

Lesotho life forces resourcefulness. I got some beets last weekend in town and I noticed some of them were moldy. Normally I would have just tossed them. But I'm in a village where you can't just buy whatever produce you want whenever you want. So, I cut the mold off, chopped them up, and put them in the pancakes I was making. 

Lettuce turnip the beet.

The first time I played hearts (on the computer, before I knew any rules), I accidentally shot the moon. Haven't been able to since.

My ausi just helped me bake my first loaf of bread in a pot on the stove. Nom nom. This after making cornbread muffins and chili this morning. They should rename Sunday as Food Day.

I was just informed about the super bowl. I didn't even have any idea that was still a thing. 

Text from PC security people: Alert- shots fired in Maseru this afternoon. Conflicts may continue on streets. Avoid Maseru if possible today. If you are in Maseru, stay off streets, away from political gatherings, and seek guidance from SSM or Duty Officer.

Jeeez...

I have a lot of issues with my school library. One of them being that someone thought it would be good to donate A Clockwork Orange to kids who barely pretend to speak English. I can hardly understand the language, so how do you expect a Mosotho 13-year-old to? But I do thank you, random donator of said book, that you are keeping me entertained when I am bored at school. You lucked out that your complicated-language book donation landed in the hands of an idle American. 

In order to prevent everyone from always being all up in my biznass, I have started writing notes to myself and to do lists and whatever I write at my desk (other than lesson plans) in French. Or Spanish or Arabic, whatever pops into ma tête. 

"What is life?"

"A mere blink."

My 10 year old ausi is learning about the past tense in school. Our conversation, half in Sesotho and half in English:

"What's the past tense of snake?"

"Like the animal snake?" *looks up 'snake' for her in my English/Sesotho dictionary to confirm*

"Yes, snake. I want the past tense."

"Uhh...it's not a verb. It doesn't have a past tense. Do you know what a verb is?"

"No I don't know. What is the past tense of snake?"

"There is no past tense!" *tries to look up 'verb' in the dictionary. It's not there.*

"You don't know? Snake. Snake!" (As if I didn't hear her properly)

"I know about past tense, and I know what a snake is, but that's not how past tense works."

"Yes, what is the past tense of snake!?"

*sigh* "I don't know, ausi, sorry."

The other teachers think that everything I do will be detrimental to me in some way. Don't go out in the rain, you'll catch a cold. Don't read in the sunlight, you'll damage your eyes. Don't sit on the ground, you'll hurt your butt. Don't take your shoes off at your desk because the floor is too cold for your feet. Chill, people!

Basotho are really good at waiting and doing nothing while they wait. Sitting on the taxi doing nothing, waiting in line at the bank doing nothing, waiting anywhere and doing nothing. Not even talking. Just standing.

Adventures in food: I think I ate like a corny dog, but instead of a hot dog inside it was a fish spine and bones. Mmm...not. 

It's amazing how many times a week I have to tell a random 'me that no, I won't marry your son. Go away. 

Grading quizzes makes me very worried for the future of this country. 

In the fastest mode of transportation, How long does it take to cross a country? America: like 8 hours max? Lesotho: probably longer. Imagine taking 8+ hours to cross Maryland. Ridiculous.

Lesotho's hottest music festival: Famupalooza. Three days of kobo-sporting, stick-shaking, ear-bleeding misery. 

It was oddly quiet today during lunch. Why? Because the teachers are enforcing "English only" today. The kids would rather be silent than speak English. 

Kid with a rolling backpack- "no, I am not a tourist. I am a person." So tourists aren't people, eh?

I just saw two kids playing seesaw with a log in the crook of a tree. Brilliant!

Life skills assignment: write about your future 

"I will build a house as big as a hotel near the road. When the people pass there they ask my daughter how much money for a room. When she answers them she says, sorry this is not a hotel but it is my father's house."

"Obviously, I want to be educated but there are some risks that can stop me from reaching my aim. Like the shortage of money, clothes, and food. But so far I have tried. And no one to help me with such thing because my parents left me. When I was 9 years old my father left and my mother left when I was 14 years old."

"The ones who will help me are my parents because they are the apples of my eye."

Last week a 17 year old in form B had to leave school and go to the clinic for treatment and a pregnancy test because of what is being called child abuse (since she is a minor) by her husband. She just got married a few days before school started (even though her parents didn't want her to, so the marriage is technically illegal), and last week she went back to somewhere in the mountains to live with the dude again and probably won't be coming back to school.

Multiplying fractions is no problem,

Top times top and bottom times bottom!

It's Friday Friday gotta get down on Friday

Email from Mom:

Have you been eating the local mushrooms or something?
I am going to bed. Good night. I love you anyway.

My taxi this morning had a girl collecting money. It's pretty much always a guy. Interesting.

What's the deal with those lumpy creases on fatish dudes' heads? They're gross looking. Like your brain farts need to be stored somewhere before you can find a place to deflate. 

Taxi strategies: get (or pretend to get) a phone call so they turn the music down. Avoid the back seat for the sake of your head crashing against the roof bar and for the sake of the rest of your body having any room whatsoever. Get a seat by the window, open it, and when a Mosotho inevitably asks you to close it, close it a bit and then pretend it's stuck and that it won't close more, this for the sake of your being able to breathe.

Taxis: dogg pound, romantic, born again, tazz

Just taught my form Cs "haters gonna hate" and how to Z- snap. The essentials. 

My principal is a Jehovah's Witness, and therefore is not supposed to vote. What?

My principal is standing right outside whacking kids' hands with a stick two or three times each for coming to school late. Hello, corporal punishment.

It bothers me when people wear button up sweaters as shirts. 

Overheard on Whatsapp: "Want to start a hide and seek league in Lesotho. Basotho think we are hiding all the time anyways."

You know how in old cartoons you could always tell which part of the animation in that scene was going to move because it was a slightly different color or texture from the background? I want that for real life for the rocks I'm about to step on. Is it gonna stay put or is it going to slide and make me fall on my butt?

I was gonna rant about the 3 hour staff meeting

which prevented me from doing a ton of important stuff I needed to do at home, but I'll just post this sunrise instead. 

Alone in the staff room...

Where do the teachers go? I need to find out their secrets. 

Photos

Mini quiches

Squash flowers and corn

My new lunchbox

Sunflowers

Cloudy day

Dope dress, shirt, and pants

Chicken burger! My stomach was so happy. 

Jeff and I visited Gloria during HVV (host volunteer visit)

22 October 2014: HVV [Host Volunteer Visit]

Now, citizens of the internet, I shall tell you the tale of HVV [Host Volunteer Visit- in which the trainees visit current volunteers to get a glimpse of what their future may hold]. Most people went one trainee to one volunteer, but I got buddied up with Jeff to go visit Gloria in ButhaButhe [northern most district]. Thank the stars that she met us in the training village or I would have been quite lost. We met up with a bunch of other volunteers in the ButhaButhecamptown [a camptown is pretty much the only town in the district, and all but two camptowns are named after their district], did some food shopping, then went on our way to our separate sites. On Saturday morning, we decided to go for a small hike to the caves. We went down, up, and alongside mountains to find them. When we were walking, we saw some girls getting water from the only tap in the area that wasn’t completely dry (the north has water issues sometimes). They were just wearing flip flops on the steep path, carrying water buckets and laundry basins on their heads. Maybe one day I will be skilled and flat-headed enough to carry a 20 liter water bucket on my head. At the cave, we encountered a tiny, lost lamb who was overjoyed to see humans. It followed us around for a bit until we found its herdboy, and we gladly handed it over to him.

The boy warned us not to go to the highest mountain because there was initiation school [a traditional school where boys stay in the mountains from a few weeks to a few months and get circumcised and otherwise learn how to be men, whatever that means] up there.  When we got back from HVV another trainee said how the house next to where he was visiting was being used as the initiation school’s central hub in that village. He said that they put up a huge wall, and that he could hear chanting and speeches in the morning before they left for the mountain, their faces painted black. Gloria says that she thinks they just smoke weed and fight each other up there for a few weeks, then come back initiated as a Basotho man. They try to keep it pretty secretive though. She said that if we saw them or stumbled into their camp that they would kill the women (me and Gloria) and either beat up or initiate Jeff.

Back to the climbing, Jeff sped up the mountain on this rock incline, and I, jello-legged as I scrambled to the top, was exhausted at the summit. I said that my legs were hurting and he said that no, I was misinterpreting the feeling of my legs having a romance with the mountain as pain. My legs were so in love with the mountain that I had to sit and rest. He wanted to go to the next little peak, and he said that he would climb it, come back, and meet me here again in ten minutes max. An hour and a half later, he still hadn’t returned. I had watched him become smaller and smaller on the side of the mountain until I couldn’t track him anymore, so I had no idea where he was. I texted Gloria, who was not about the climbing life and stayed at the base. She told me that we should probably head back, especially since we hadn’t even eaten breakfast yet, and joked that if Jeff gets initiated, he can handle himself. I found a piece of trash up there, pulled a sharpie out of my backpack, and write in big letters instructions to go back to Gloria’s house. I put it under some rocks and hoped that he would get the message (miraculously, he somehow found it and brought the trash note back to me later). He appeared at Gloria’s door about two hours later with two bo’me who had led him back. Apparently, he went back from the mountain to the village some weird way that forced him to basically descend a sheer rock face, which he admitted that he almost legitimately died on. We promptly wolfed down a fantastic breakfast of banana bread French toast (drool) and bacon.

The next day, we went to Gloria’s school where we witnessed her teaching form A and B math classes. I helped her lead an activity outside where the students put rocks on the soccer field as the x and y axes and stood on the grid, plotting themselves as points. It was really creative on Gloria’s part, and the kids were getting really into it. I definitely want to incorporate interactive activities into my teaching like that. All three of us sat in on a horribly boring business class where the teacher was basically reading straight out of the book, making the students memorize definitions as she repeated them over and over. When one kid couldn’t regurgitate the definition of “cash book,” she looked like she really wanted to hit him (corporal punishment is a common form of punishment for kids if they misbehave or get an answer wrong, and as PCVs we are supposed to encourage the teachers not to do this), but Gloria said that she didn’t hit him because we three were in the room. I heard also that teachers can take out their general feelings of anger with corporal punishment even if the kid wasn’t so bad, but just to release their own tension. It’s sad that some teachers have to hit kids to maintain their respect and authority, whereas I feel like in other places respect is earned through showing leadership and knowledge. And besides, psychological studies have shown that rewards work much better as incentives than punishments anyway. I’m sure I’ll talk more about corporal punishment in another blog post, so stay tuned.

That afternoon, all the ButhaButhe volunteers and their trainee visitors decided to get together at Keegan’s huge rondaval just outside of the camptown for a night of hanging out and, more importantly, tacos.That morning, we headed back to the training village, and a ‘me said that the girls missed me because I wasn’t there to play skippy with. Apparently, I have developed somewhat of a (good) reputation for playing with the kids, doing handstands, and generally being friendly, which is great to hear.

I think after HVV, we are finally getting to see the bigger picture of living here long-term. The people in the training group are also getting closer: people are eager to start entertainment committees for things like Halloween and birthdays, people are going on group runs to the nearest mountain, Thaba Sefika [thaba means mountain], and I have arranged for a group of girls to chop their hair off. Another plus is that I am more optimistic about the food now that I have bonded with my ‘me of our mutual like for spicy food. Today my rice and beans actually had some flavor, hallelujah.

Shearing a sheep

Jeff, king of the mountain

Girls fetching water and washing clothes, Gloria in the foreground

5734 Gloria is pooped

Summit Selfie