Thursday, April 23, 2015

19 March 2015: My mokete

                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. 

I also killed time by taking photos of my students, which they enthusiastically posed for. 


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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