Small thoughts 17

Taxis: Queen Latifah, Cheetah (big bus), Crocodile, True Love, Back Home, My Previous Witness, Big Mama, So What...?, Two Bop, Twister, Down Town, Cool Down, Techno, So Glamorous Yet So Naughty, Life Saver, Success, The Big G, Taxi Queen, Greenhouse 

You can't beat coming home from school and watching 10 episodes of Modern Family. What is my life?

Examples of very specific Sesotho words vs. one word that captures almost all senses:

-"Lerala" = noun, traces of feet in the dew, path slightly marked by the feet of people beginning it

-"Seloa" = verb, to be caught by sunrise when traveling 

Vs. 

-"Utloa" = verb, to hear, to feel, to taste, to understand, to obey 

Hello, my name is Julie, and I'm addicted to Peri-Peri sauce. 

Life skills question- "who is the director of the Internet?"

I have created (and am the sole participant of) Casual Friday. I taught C math first thing, then changed into leggings, went running, and plan to stay in these clothes, barefoot, for the rest of the day including when I teach B math right before lunch. I can get away with this because my principal is never here on Fridays, and even if she were, she probably wouldn't care. 

Waiting for the taxi to go to Quthing town this morning, I am asked by a guy to please buy him a new charger to replace his dead one. I'm like uhhh sure...and he shoves his phone and 100 Maluti in my hands as the taxi approaches. I don't even know this guy, but in the spirit of the village, I'm gonna do my best. 

Things I hear outside my hotel room: some little boys yelling, "English lady! Come out! We are the FBI!" Really annoying, but I'm kinda impresses that little Basotho kids know what the FBI is. 

At a little restaurant place, I asked for a Russian (kielbasa sausage) and some bread. 5 rand or 10 rand of bread? they asked. 5, I said. The piece they gave me was almost as big as my head. I'm scared to see what 10 rand would have gotten me. 

On my walk up my hill from the road, I'm carrying my huge backpack filled with, in addition to clothes, a computer, and some food, with a 7kg bag of dog food. Then I get hit with a sudden, yet short burst of sideways, stinging rain followed by hail. I don't think my walk home could have been much more difficult. 

It's officially peach season! That and the fact that my Swiss chard is finally growing means that I don't have to go all the way to town for produce. 

Conspiracy theory: what if PC chooses these few months to do site visits because they're secretly a peach appreciation club and they just want to have an excuse to go all over the country and taste all the different peaches? 

Peach Corps.

On a very rainy day: "They normally call this weather BMW. Baby making weather. 🎶It's BMW tiiiiime!" -one of my teachers

The bo'me always flatter me and say that I speak Sesotho well. In reality, I have the vocabulary of a baby. But it's sweet nonetheless.  

Erosion is a big problem here in Lesotho. Every time it rains, the paths change, the river beds change, and a good chunk of land mass is literally washed away into South Africa. 

I finally got "peach belly" and got sick from eating so many peaches. Last year I was warned, but it never came. It came today.

I got bored teaching in form C, so I made the kids write with their left hand when they came to the board. Instant entertainment for everyone. 

"Don't count all your makoenyas [fried dough balls] before they hatch." -Jen

Jen, on Whatsapp:

I just had a dream that Danny mcbride (actor) came to hang out with us in Lesotho and you had a pet penguin. I think this means things are gonna start looking up

Me, in response:

I had a dream that I was hugging Lea and Kristin and we were all in a heap watching TV or something. Then we were on vaca and went to Woolworth foods where they had double cream yogurt. Then we went to some high school (on the island we were touring/vacationing) where Ariana Grande was a junior and she got the award for most community service hours. As she skipped off in a pink dress, the principal (Hilary Clinton) was yelling through a megaphone, "Can I get some commission on those hours!?"

Who you?

Inspired by a comedy bit- Why do you introduce yourself in person as "I am," but on the phone as, "This is" ? Imagine coming up to someone at a party and being like, "Hi, this is Julie. Who is this?"

And at the door, you ask, "Who is it?"

English is weird. 

Secondary projects: making faces at babies 

I'm starting my own NGO. It's called Peach Corpse. 

Sunday morning garden maintenance: my Swiss chard is covered in aphids (gross), so I looked in my handy gardening book for a natural pesticide. Such options include chili, garlic and onion, marigolds, tobacco, wood ash, flour, and something called compost tea. But I'm going with the aloe method. I got my serrated knife and cut a leaf off of a giant aloe plant. I'm now supposed to chop/crush it up into a 5:1 dilution and spray it on my plants. Let's see if I have any luck! Aphids, you're going down. 

Colleen, on Whatsapp;

Strange Basotho tradition I learned today: if a twin dies there cannot be a funeral until the second twin "dies." The living twin wears the clothes that the dead one will be buried in, gets in the coffin and goes down into the ground before the dead one is buried. All because twins are considered to be one person. The twin who dies first is buried without a funeral or any praying, singing, eating, crying at 2/3am. Even fraternal twins

Martha adds,

My counterpart said that if it's a boy and girl twin and the boy goes to initiation school the girl must meet him when they are coming down the mountain and participate in all the village ceremonies with the boys and put the red paint stuff on her face and wear the blanket. But this can all be avoided if they are officially separated by the elders by touching either side of a cow while the elders say some special words and then slaughter the cow (this is apparently frowned upon but allowable).

I'm listening to some traffic cops give a talk to my students, and one of them (from what I understand) is asking them to please not throw trash out the window of cars. Thank god someone in this country realizes how awful a habit this is. 

I got a ride with a dude in a covered pickup delivering eggs. In front are 3 people, in back are a zillion eggs. I start to tell them that they can move along since there's obviously no room for me. But they insist. They put me in the front and the guy previously sitting there is hanging off the back, standing on the bumper and grabbing onto the top, until they unload enough eggs to fit him back there among the remaining eggs. People are awesome and life is weird when you reject the taxi life. 

Jen's teachers, ladies and gents:

Best lazy excuse yet..."we drank on Friday, we need to go home early today" it was Monday. 

I'm teaching about negative numbers in form B using a number line. The students can remember that you go from low to high numbers by following the same direction you read- left to right. It occurred to me, in places with Semitic languages where they read right to left, do their number lines also go low to high going right to left?

This morning, two different teachers came in to my math class first period (15 minutes into it, may I add) and claimed that this period was their class. I've been teaching first period math on Fridays every week since about the 2nd or 3rd week of school. This proves that not only do they both have old time tables, but that they haven't been here on any Friday since this schedule was finalized. Ach. Incompetence at its finest.