Small Thoughts 16

Taxis: 2 Pac, The Luxury Saloon, All Eyes On Me, Why Not, Tears of Joy, Jupiter, Beauty Butter, Keep It Up, White Horse, Young Stars, Passions, Let's Do It, Two Boo, Deep and Silent, Mercury (front) Planet (back), First Come First Served, My Dreams, Baby Boy, Platinum, It's Me Again, Peace & Love, London Beat

5 months later and my dog finally plays fetch! With a groty old sheep jaw bone, but still. 

"Shout out to the people wondering what the opposite of in is."

Blocked out the sun from my windows with towels, lying on my concrete floor in my underwear, because it's too hot to do anything else. 

I just got back to my site from vacation a few days ago. Since for almost 3 weeks I hadn't slept alone in a room (I'd been camping in a tent, sharing rooms, sharing beds, being on adjacent couches), the past few nights in the middle of the night I'd half wake up absolutely convinced that there was someone next to me or on the floor or something. Like I got a little cold but didn't reach for the blanket because I thought some person sharing my bed was using it. Or I was sleeping practically naked because it was so hot, but I woke up and put more clothes on because I thought other people were there. It's so weird being disoriented at night. 

I just realized- as of mid-December (one year after swearing in), I have officially earned my 

R. That is, even if I go home early, I will have earned RPCV (returned peace corps volunteer) status. Yeyuh.  

I ate a pack of peanuts and raisins with chopsticks. It took a while, but honestly I've got nothin but time. 

The three-week-old piglets my family's pig just had are sprinting all over the yard. The cutest. 

@!$& yeah! Not my tap, but one within a ten minute walk, has gushing water! Yaaass! It's a bit far to haul a 20 liter bucket back, but I filled my backpack up with bottles and was able to get 8 or 9 liters. So happy. But now I have little excuse not to bathe and/or wash my clothes more often. Oh well. 

Update: it's raining (and hailing) for once! The world is my tap. 

I can't sit outside for five minutes without a herd of little girls coming up to me. Today their unwavering interest centered around playing with (aka petting) my hair. 

I just used about 2 liters of water to bathe, then wash my underwear, then mop my floor. Come at me, drought. 

I've been eating very little the last few days mostly because after Durban, none of the food I have or can buy here appeals to me.

Xhosa lesson with the neighbor kids. For once I'm learning a bit of the language spoken by just a few people in my village, but is the dominant language in the way southwest of Lesotho and in one part of South Africa. Fun fact: Mandela's native language was isiXhosa. 

I'm suffering from post vacation partum syndrome. 

Listening to a podcast about cheese and dying inside. Now I NEED a pizza. 

Lea, in response to the lack to cheese in this country, "Lesotho is a cheese wasteland. A cheese desert. A chesert, if you will."

Overheard on Whatsapp:

"My Sesotho name is Palesa Masiu. It seems like such a cult name 'hello, I'm sister flower night'"

"Living in Lesotho has truly confirmed the myth that all white people look alike."

I'm not such a fan of beets, I mean they're alright, but other than onions, they were the only produce option at my village shop when I went last week. I bought a bag of them and recently realized they're about to go bad. Since then, I've been eating beets on beets on beets. My hands probably lead one to suspect I've been murdering people for fun. 

For some beet-related humor, watch this 911 beet emergency skit from the show Portlandia: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw2WsXIgO6A

Once again, my abuti has managed to bust himself up and is crying. Every day. Phepi, Thabo [sorry, Thabo]. 

One little neighbor nugget asks me constantly, "Hakir 'si Senate, u ausi oa rona?" Right, sis Senate, you're our sister? "Ehlile," I respond. Of course. 

New (accidentally discovered) strategy for getting people to open taxi windows: let out a little smelly fart. Muahaha.

No longer weird: shaking hands with someone and holding on to their hand for the whole conversation.

I give my family a pot full of papa when I leave town so they can feed my dog. My 'me gave it back to me when I got back to the village and didn't believe that I knew how to wash pots because it's not always impeccably spotless when I give it to them. She had me wash it in front of her and (in Sesotho) she was like, "Oh, you DO know how to wash!" And I said, "Yeah, sometimes I'm just lazy." Then she jokingly goes, "I'll tell your mom that you are lazy." But I replied quite seriously with "Don't tell her. She already knows." 

Wow my oldest ausi just pulled the meanest prank and told me that she would be going to the high school in town instead of the village school she went to last year/the school I teach at. I got really sad, then she was like JUST KIDDING, I'M LYING. Little brat. 

Something you, dear reader, should implement immediately: like Gretchen in Mean Girls, I'm trying to make "thatch" happen. This stems from the fact that thatch roof houses are IMMENSELY superior to tin roof houses at temperature control, eg not being ovens in the summer and ice boxes in the winter. So any place you would use "great" or "awesome," use "thatch" instead. 

This shirt is so thatch. 

When I played piano, I used to play one particular bang-out-the-chords song all the time, which would cause the side of my right pinky to be repeatedly slammed against the keys. Sometimes I would need to kind of pop the last knuckle sideways so the finger would fully straighten out afterward. I just now had to do that side pop again for some reason. My fingers remind me that they still want to play. 

Opening my email app every few minutes looking for something new when I know no one is sending me emails is analogous to opening the fridge every few minutes looking for something new when you know no one has gone grocery shopping. You're not too badly disappointed, but you're still bored. 

How much popcorn can I eat in one day? Nonexistent challenge accepted. 

I'm innocently reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in my house when I hear some loud Sesotho music outside. I go out and look up the hill to my nkhono's house (where last week she was blasting Beyoncé on her huge stereo which I found both awesome and hilarious), but no, the sound wasn't coming from there. After a bit more scanning, I realize the music is coming from the soccer field TWO VALLEYS AWAY. It's loud and clear in my yard, so it must be blasting at a zillion decibels way over there (in true Basotho fashion). There's a line of dots swaying in unison across the field, which I gather must be people dancing. Idk what the heck they're doing over there, and perhaps earlier in my service I may have gone to investigate, eager at the opportunity to have a "cultural experience". Now I just close my window, jadedly knowing that it's not worth it, pop in my headphones, and try to get back to my Kindle. 

I was in my house writing or doing something requiring concentration when I heard the sounds of tiny voices and banging metal. I went outside to tell these three nuggets to stop playing on my burglar bars. After I do this, one of them, a boy maybe 4 or 5 years old, I kid you not, ignores my request and simply says, "U tsoa kae?" Where are you coming from? Umm, are you kidding me? I've been in my house for several hours with the music on- you know I was in there. Normally this is the Basotho's favorite question to ask me while I'm walking around, but you literally just watched me open the door and step outside. I don't get it. I confirmed, "Ke tsoa kae?" Where am I coming from? And he nodded. I just rolled my eyes and went back inside. From whence I came. 

The prolonged squeal of a baby pig is strangely reminiscent of an especially high-pitch circular saw. 

The Bo Bo follows me absolutely everywhere now. He used to have to be carried down this one hill at the start of our trek to school because he just refused to go, but now he'll bound along behind me, no leash required. I even went on a run this morning and a few minutes in, was surprised to hear the jingling of a collar behind me. He happily ran with me the entire way. 

It's been raining this past week which means my water tap is flowing. That also means sticking my entire head under the faucet after a run. Aahhh. 

There is one advantage of being thin in a country that admires fatness. There were two women on the side of the road, but the taxi could only fit one more person who could squish into one of the rows. He took the skinny woman and said something along the lines of the fat one wouldn't fit. 

For life skills, I made the form Cs write questions for the jar. Some were serious ("what is masturbation?") but others included such gems as, "who stole my pen last week?" "what did you eat on Monday?" and in all caps, "WHAT IS YOU MOTHER??"

In these hot days of summer, the bo'me in the taxi rank go around with buckets of water and a cup. They'll give you a (communal) cup full of water for one Rand. 

No longer weird: When people talk about someone (or me) being a woman (probably in the context that they want to marry me off to their cousin), they'll bring the fingers of one hand together and touch their (or my) chest on each side, indicating boobs. 

For most Basotho, it's unfathomable that I would eat a meal without some kind of carb accompaniment. Insanity. 

My dog is now learning how to lift its leg to pee. This means stopping at every bush and tuft of tall grass and letting a few drops out. Sometimes it's just the leg lift and no pee at all, just to tell the plant who's boss. 

Some bontate always have to have something in their mouths, whether it's a toothpick, a piece of grass/straw, or a match. 

15 months in and I've got 15cm of hair. So many people are suddenly commenting on how long it's gotten. I can almost do a shampoo commercial hair flip.