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!
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