Lesotho Infinity And Beyond: 26 November 2015: End of school/Workshop/Friendsgiving

Oh man I have so much stuff to talk about since I haven’t written in a lil while. Well, here goes. I guess I’ll start with school stuff. It was the final stretch, just a few weeks until the school year was over, so it was time to start prepping final exams. I planned to write two tests each for form A and B. This follows the format of the JC (Junior Certificate- exit exams that students take at form C). Paper 1 is more short-answer questions, and Paper 2 is more application, with fewer long-answer questions. My plan (and the same thing I did for June mid-terms) was to make one multiple choice test for Paper 1 and do some longer questions for Paper 2. I was all finished writing both Paper 1s and outlining Paper 2s when the other math teacher came up to me one day and asked me what topics I had and hadn’t covered from the syllabus, because the Lesotho Math and Science Teacher’s Association in Quthing district was going to make a common exam for the Form Bs. This is not uncommon, for teachers to use common exams for a cluster of schools or for a whole district even. I think it’s mostly because teachers are lazy to write their own exams. But I was immediately against the idea; I had skipped several of the more pointless topics of the syllabus and had gone farther into the syllabus for other topics, as well as doing important real-life teaching like trying to work with them on checking to see if their answers made sense, not to mention working hard on dissecting word problems, helping them understand the English before they could even start on the math. A common exam with many topics I didn’t cover would spell certain failure for most of them. So the other teacher was like ok, you don’t have to use it I guess. Especially since I was already in the middle of making and printing the exams I wrote.

In the midst of all this, having probably eaten one of those rotten eggs I flung all over the village fields, my dog fell horribly sick and wouldn’t eat. I took it to the vet here in the village, and he fed it three tablespoons of cooking oil in the hopes of breaking up whatever crud was in the stomach and forcing it out, either direction. I bought some lesheleshele (soft porridge) mix and peanut butter in the hopes that Bo might want to eat that, but it was a no go. I had to leave for about a week to go to help PC staff as a resource volunteer in the new training group’s workshop, so I gave the food to my ausi and asked her to try to get the dog to eat anything, hoping it would still be alive by the time I returned.

Being fed up with school and tests and students who are as restless as me for school to be over, I was so happy to leave to go to the workshop. Normally, during training, resource volunteers go to the training village where the new group is doing their thang. I lucked out in that I got to help out at a workshop that was held at the Mohale’s Hoek hotel, a place I regularly hang out anyway. I would not be forced to take bucket baths and eat Basotho food for a week like a normal resource volunteer. Instead, I had access to a pool, showers, a (crappy) gym, internet, pizza, and my usual group of friends in that town. I was about to experience Posh Corps life, if only for a week. This was the Supervisor/Introductory Liaison (a sort of counterpart who is supposed to show the new PCV around the village and help get them integrated) workshop where the trainees would meet their principals and counterparts for the first time, having been informed of their new sites just a few days earlier.

During their sessions, I was able to chip in about my experiences, like my role as a volunteer (math/life skills/computer teacher, writing a grant for my school, helping out at the orphanage, hanging out with village people), highlighting cross-cultural points (Basotho communicate indirectly/passive aggressively), pointing out good expectations the volunteers and principals made for each other (make sure you communicate with your volunteer very clearly and make sure that they know what’s going on in advance, not one minute beforehand or not at all), what I did during the first three months at site (tried not to go crazy with people constantly coming to my door, explored the natural features of the village, determined what organizations and businesses were in the village or nearby, set my boundaries, and established somewhat of a schedule with my school), during the security session talked about any situations I’ve experienced (being put on “standfast” status during the election and about how the group before me had to be evacuated during the attempted coup), and talking about the corporal punishment situation at my school (I’ll make this a post in itself later).

Other than the sessions, I was able to hang out with my peeps by the pool, actually jump in the pool (it looked like a green lake, but we swam anyway), work out every morning with actual weights, get to talk to the baby trainees and give them essential life advice, eating soooo much meat from the hotel meals, work on my grant, and ruin a board game (Ticket to Ride) by getting way too excited and slamming my fist on the table, sending all the pieces flying…oops.

Alas, it was time to get back to school after the workshop was over. Sad day. But the good thing was that my dog was alive and kicking! On top of that, my family had helped get the dog used to hanging around the house and not running all over the village, so now it doesn’t have to be chained up anymore. Woo! Anyway, my school was in the middle of final exams, and I was scheduled to give my exams the day after I got back. I gave the paper 1s that next day. Then my principal and the math teacher called me into the office and basically went back on what they said about me being able to write my own exams. They made me basically modify the common exam to replace non-covered questions with other topics I had taught. It was so much work to (literally) cut and paste questions on top of each other, photocopy the pages, and print them in like half a day. Agh. If they only told me that it was not ok to write my own exams a few weeks ago when they originally agreed to it, this would not be an issue. Whatever. I’m over it. I just feel really bad for the students because I had told them exactly what the exam would cover and the format of the questions, and here I was betraying my word and giving them a suuuuper long and much different test. I want my students to succeed, but sometimes I feel like the other teachers just want to go by what’s been done for zillions of years, even if it makes the students’ grades, not to mention confidence, plummet to the ground. During the exams, the form As and Bs were mixed up in two different classrooms in the hopes that they wouldn’t be close enough to another one in their grade to cheat. I sat in one of the classrooms invigilating (proctoring) the exam while Bo followed my every move, walking around with me while I passed out the exams, and lying at my feet as I sat there and made sure the students didn’t cheat. He got so lazy, though, and he was just lying sprawled out in the doorway in a patch of sunlight. The students carefully stepped over him as they exited the classroom.

After giving my last exam, it was time for me to leave my village for the third weekend in a row to celebrate early Thanksgiving with my friends in Mohale’s Hoek, my camptown away from camptown. We called it Friendsgiving. There were about 10 of us that got together at Aline’s house. Aline just moved smack in the middle of town, so her location is super convenient. The food was awesome: carrots, cabbage, mashed potatoes with LOTS of (real!) butter, pan-fried chicken, homemade bread with garlic spread, guacamole with Doritos, and butternut squash cake. Nommmmm. The next day, the ones who didn’t go home yet hung out at the hotel to swim and I led an impromptu Sandal Camp workout session in the grass. Afterward, we got some meat at the braai place, then we attempted another round of Ticket to Ride when suddenly the game just stopped dead in its tracks. Nameless PVC #1 realized that she didn’t have her passport. She could see it in her mind right there on the table in her house. She and Nameless PCV #2 (she requested that her alias be Princess Consuela Banana Hammock) were planning to go to Bloemfontein the next day to go shopping and see the new Hunger Games movie. No passport = no Bloem. She sat there, eyes wide, thinking of what to do. It was Sunday, and on Sundays no taxis run to her village for some reason. She decided the only thing to do was to walk the three hours back to her village to get it. Lee decided to go with her so she wouldn’t be alone walking in the dark. It was 6pm at this point, so if they didn’t catch a hitch, they wouldn’t make it back to town until midnight. Not ideal, but there was no other choice. I stayed the night at Aline’s house that night, and in the morning I was informed that they made it back ok, but that Nameless #1 had been throwing up all night, so she wouldn’t make it to Bloemfontein after all. What a sucky situation.

After last week having to wait 3 (count em 3) hours for a taxi to leave from the Mohale’s Hoek taxi rank to Quthing, I decided that the rank is for suckers. I caught a small taxi to the edge of town with the intention of getting a passing taxi or a hitch. I easily got a very new and comfy taxi within five minutes. Score. On the taxi, I graded the rest of my tests that I hadn’t finished. In town, I bought 2 more big buckets to store water in. Apparently, there is a big drought coming up, so I thought I should get some more buckets to prepare for when there is no water. The week earlier, I had put my bathtub under my host family’s roof during a long rain storm, so I had collected a good amount of water. I got home, gave my ‘me the sewing machine part I ran all over town to find, dumped the water in my new buckets, and just crashed. I hadn’t really slept the night before, so I was exhausted.

Right now, it’s actual Thanksgiving. I’m not doing anything in particular for it. I’m just celebrating the fact that school closed yesterday and that I actually survived! Wow, I can’t believe I actually taught for an entire year. One down, one to go. This morning, out of boredom, I decided to climb the mountain behind my house with my newly-turned-16-year-old ausi, which was super fun. The lower part of the hill is a pine forest, and we absolutely flew down that hill on the way back. The piles pine needles on the steep slope made running down the only option, and we were both laughing the entire way down. Woo!

Some photos as of late: