Whenever
there is an unplanned change in the set routine, that normally stresses me out,
especially if I have planned something like, oh I don’t know, having class at
its normal time? In preparation for my mokete (which I mentioned in the last
post is a feast/celebration), in which the school was going to formally welcome
me to the valley. Nevermind that they had already done a miniature version of
this exact thing five months ago at site visit. So anyway, the afternoon
classes were cancelled and somehow no one managed to inform me (story of my
life). I was grabbing chalk to go teach form B math when another teacher was
like “where are you going?” “To class…?” I replied. “Why?” she retorted,
confused. In my head I was like well, it’s on the schedule that form B has math
class right now, and I actually have a plan for these kids to get through the
syllabus for once, and if classes keep getting knocked off for no good reason
like they are all the time, that ain’t gonna happen. I did not win this tiny
battle and the form Bs slithered away that day without math class. Instead of
having classes, the kids were cleaning the classrooms and doing god knows what
else around the school to prepare it for the next day’s mokete. The afternoon
proceeded with some bontate slaughtering and cutting the guts out of a sheep
right outside the staff room. That was cool to see, but the whole grounds
smelled like sheep stomach acid for the rest of the day. After lunch (yes, I
managed to eat lunch after watching them disembowel that sheep. I have
developed a bit of an iron stomach here.), the students were either singing,
practicing dances, or playing soccer in the grass. What a great use of
cancelled class time. I was kind of weirded out that they were making so big of
a deal out of everything, and that I was the reason why. I promptly went on a
good run after I got back home to sort of deal with all the craziness that was
going on, but I couldn’t really escape, as the songs the choir was practicing
earlier echoed through my brain to the beat of my stride. On my way back, I ran
into a bunch of little kids playing a game (somewhere between hide and seek and
carin building- one kid tries to finish building a rock stack while another one
runs and hides and another tries to knock the rock stack over by throwing
another rock at it…or something like that) and they promptly abandoned their
game to follow me, running behind me all the way back to my house, racing me on
the last stretch to my front yard.
So then
yesterday, I get to school around 8 for the mokete that supposedly starts at
10. The other teachers had planned on getting there at like 6 or 7. One of the
teachers was even like “oh, you woke up late, huh?” and I was thinking nope, I
know this thing isn’t going to start for another several hours, so I’m fine.
And I was. There were lots of people preparing food outside and in the staff
room. They gave me a big plate of sheep intestine (not bad) and stomach (green,
had the texture of a hardened fuzzy sweatshirt on the inside, gross). To kill
time until people actually started to arrive, the boys were having a house
music dance party in the computer lab and the girls were watching them through
the windows. Some of those kids can really dance! I was impressed.
At about
1pm, the thing starts. There were rows of school chairs set up on the netball
ground behind one of the classrooms for parents/guests to sit in, and then a
line of desks and chairs were set up facing the mass of chairs where I, the
teachers, and other “honored guests” would sit. There were speeches on
speeches, songs by the school choir, and dances. One was a traditional dance
called the Litolobonya with three girls in grass skirts with bottlecaps
underneath to make noise as they popped their hips. To counter the girls’
dance, some of the boys hilariously dressed up in gumboots, balaclavas, and
blue jump suits with cushions stuffed in the butt or the stomach to make them
look like fat, old bontate. They did one of the men’s dances where they kind of
do a step team routine, slapping their gumboots and legs with their hands to
the rhythm. But, it already being funny with exaggerated butts and bellies,
they made sure to ham it up even more so that the entire audience was laughing
so hard. They’re such goofballs, especially the form C boys. Then one of the
teachers took me up to the office to put on one of their presents to me, a new
red seshoeshoe skirt. It was a bit too big for me, since the lady measured me
with a few extra cm, saying “u tla nona” [”you’ll get fat.” Thanks, ‘me...]. I
was then outfitted with a matching bandana thing tied around my head and a
straw hat. I walked back to the ground in my new outfit, and as I was about to
make my speech, some of the bo’me in the audience draped me in a maroon/mustard
colored blanket.
I couldn’t have been dressed in more traditional Basotho
clothing if I tried, and the blanket just topped it all off. (I mentioned later
that this would be nice to sleep under as the weather turned colder, and my
principal was aghast that I would even suggest doing anything other than
keeping it in my wardrobe and taking it out only to wear on special occasions.
She seems to be aghast at a lot of things that aren’t the “proper thing to
do.”) I finally made my speech (in Sesotho, with lots of help from another
teacher to make it sound grammatically coherent) and then it was time to eat.
Finally.
Some of the primary teachers from
the next village stuck around for an after party of sorts.
One of them was trying to
tell me that Lesotho’s life expectancy was higher than that of the US (oh,
really?) because they drink untreated water and eat dirty produce but they
still live a long time because they’re blessed by god, or some such drunken
logic along those lines. Then another teacher told me that the country is going
to go down the tubes with the new government. She just went on and on and on
about the horrors of our future political situation. After quite enough of
feigning interest, I put on my jacket to go home, but my principal and Ms.
Politics weren’t having it, saying that it was dangerous for me to go home at
night (only halfway correct), even though I had a light and a pocket knife and
a mean jab-cross. I was escorted by the groundskeeper to my principal’s house
to sleep. At like 4:30am, after pretending for too long to be asleep, I started
to leave, trying to scoot out the door before my principal could say anything
to stop me. It was dark and lightly raining, but I really didn’t care; I just
wanted to go back to my house and put some clean clothes on and brush my teeth
before I had to go back to school in a few hours. Now I’m at school about to
fall asleep in the staff room because I only got a few blinks last night. I’m
gonna crash so hard tonight.
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