Today is my double golden birthday. What is a double golden birthday, you ask? Well, a golden birthday is (apparently- I just learned this recently) when your age matches the date, for example if you turn 15 on the 15th of the month. Today I am 24 on the 12th, hence double golden birthday. I got here to the Catholic Training Center/hotel in Mafeteng two days ago for a meeting for resource volunteers. Resource volunteers go for a few days to the training villages to help the staff train the newly-arrived trainees. They chose me to be at training for two different weeks- for the Supervisor/IL (IL = introductory liaison, meaning a co-worker who’s supposed to help you get oriented in the village and in your school) workshop, then a few weeks later for practice teaching, where the trainees get two weeks to practice teaching in schools near the training village. I got lucky to be helping out at the Supervisor/IL workshop because that’s held at the hotel in Mohale’s Hoek, which is where I go normally to hang out when I’m in town to use the internet, steal a shower, sometimes use their pitiful excuse for a gym, or go swimming. Plus they're gonna feed me so much. Meat, here I come. Then for practice teaching, I’ll be staying in their training village, which is the same one I did my own training in, so it’ll be nice to go back and visit. I get to skip a lot of the PC “Global Core” BS sessions, which were utterly useless. I’ll actually be helping them with practical skills while they teach. I’m excited for the new trainees to come. There are 37 (!!) of them so far, but I think a few more will probably drop before they actually arrive. My group started with 33 and they thought that was big.
This week, since it was my birthday week and all, I’ve been a bottomless pit eating all the junk food I could get my hands on. To top it all off, I bought two big tubs of ice cream at Shoprite and all the people staying for the meeting ate it with spoons we borrowed from the dining room here at the hotel. Today, I’m gonna see who shows up to have lunch at a kick-butt braai restaurant in Mohale’s Hoek, the next town south from here. Good thing I’m getting into working out more now that it’s warmer outside. Otherwise I'd be as big as a bo'me by now.
I distinctly remember last year on my birthday. I was prepping to come to Lesotho, spending all my money at REI and on Amazon buying lots of stuff. It was great.
In village news, my tap has been disconnected from the water supply, who knows why, so I have been either walking to the disconnected pipe (which only sometimes leaks out water) or to the tap way on the other side of the small valley with two 2L bottles. I have to go every day to get water this way because I can’t really get so much at a time, but I do enjoy doing curls and other little exercises with the full bottles on my way back to my house. Sometimes, people look at me weird, but I’ve really stopped caring at all about what other people think about me here. Kinda took long enough, but it’s very liberating. I was thinking about how people are not robots, but unique individuals with quirks and different personalities and habits and preferences. Why not just embrace mine and do overhead presses with my water as I walk?
In dog news, little Bo Jangles was sick last week- he was lethargic and not eating, so I took him to Ntate Thembiselli, the agriculture/animal guy who lives just above the clinic. Nice guy. He told me to feed the dog 3 spoons of oil, then he gave him 2 shots- one for stomach issues and one for skin parasites, since I had found some ticks and stuff. I had to carry the little squirt there and back in my arms because he would not walk anywhere without literally being dragged. Pro tip: if you want to integrate fast, get a pet that you take with you everywhere. I’ve had to talk to a lot more people than normal borrowing and scavenging for things, getting medicine and other supplies, etc. “Mphe eona,” people say. Please give it to me. I just laugh and keep walking.
In school news, I’m starting a PC grant for a secondary project to finish a half-built block of classrooms. They’re having trouble getting villagers or parents or whoever to help build it. The community is totally not behind it. We’ve had two pitsos (community meetings) where like five people showed up, and the new chief (the oldest son of the recently-deceased old chief) said he would try to convince people that this was a worthy cause to contribute to. I don’t think it’s gonna be so easy. If I were a villager here, I wouldn’t want to help build a classroom for this school because it really wouldn’t do me any good. My principal’s argument is that it will save them money because the school will have more room to hold students, and parents won’t have to pay to transport and board their kids to the other high schools, which are at least 30km away. She can barely get enough kids as it is for the school now. The village sees through all her futile attempts to convince them. But I’m still helping write this grant. I’m making other people do all the work- I’m just typing it into the system. I’m really not supposed to help at all except for typing the actual thing and giving general advice. It’s up to them if it follows through.
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