Small thoughts 24

Taxis: Atlantic Ocean, Eternity, Two Bop, Exclamation, Mose Ho Seaka, Central Park, Texas God, Easy Does It, Wrong Button, Two Minutes, Olah, Slowly But Sure, Just Imagen, Nothing Impossible, Always Good, Punishment, Surprise, Let Them Talk, Tears Of Joy, Blesser, One Time Two Time, Bleeser (front) Sugar Mummies (side), Salamina, Thanda Bandu, Imagination, Decision!!, I Care For You, Cheese Boy, Naledi (star), Function.com, Black Cat, Cobra, Tears Of Joy, Let Them Talk, Two For Joy

A little nugget just wandered into my house  eating a big hunk of styrofoam. I quickly told her to stop eating it or she would be sick. Even though it looks like a chunk of papa, that's not food. 

Yesterday one of my form Cs came over to my house just to visit, and we were talking for a long time when I realized that she was in this village instead of in her home village. This was strange, being a Sunday, and I know that she rents a house near school and lives with a family during the week, then walks the 3+ hours to her own village on weekends. She said that the Form Cs had been called to the church here that morning, along with the Grade 7s, so that during the church service, they could be prayed for to pass their exit exams in the coming weeks.

My dog, in my failed attempt to teach it to play fetch: "Stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen."

Taco trucks for prez 2016!

I think I've been in cars so infrequently lately, my body forgot how to compose itself adequately and I'm getting nauseated. It's like when the little kids who've never been in a taxi are throwing up because they're not used to it.

I just gave my host family an enormous box of clothes that I'm not taking back with me. My ausis are in present heaven!

I met a nice guy in the post office who offered to drive me with his daughter to Mohale's Hoek. He's belting out the bass part to blaring Sesotho gospel music. I'm not even mad because he is so happy just singing his heart out while his daughter sits there giggling. 

Overheard outside the bank:

"Lumela 'me. U phela joang?" Hello ma'am. How are you?

"Lumela Ntate. Ke phela hantle. U phela joang?" Hello sir. I'm fine. How are you?

"Kea phela. Kea leboha." I'm fine. Thanks. 

Brief pause, then another man (supposedly unknown by the first man) sitting next to the woman happily blurts out, "Le 'na kea phela!" I'm fine too!

Ah, the importance of greeting everyone and needing to be greeted by everyone. 

In the US, I rarely wonder if whatever mass societal service I'm about to use will actually function correctly: the bank, the post office, public transportation. But in Lesotho, trying to use any of these things often causes lots of stress. Is the power and/or cell network out?Are any ATMs in town actually functioning? Does the post office's scale work and is their one worker who handles packages working today? Is the taxi going to troll around town for an hour before it actually leaves? It's things like this that make me appreciate the American concepts of customer service and actually making sure that things are going to run correctly so that people can get stuff done and move on with their lives. 

"English is like a crazy person: you don't know what's going on inside; you just see the end result."

Hillary, regarding her war on ants in her house: "I'm sick of fighting with the ants trying to get rid of them. There are ants in my sugar. I just eat them now. There are ants in my water filter. I just drink them now."

In the lowlands, it's hot and dry. Up at the highest part of Lesotho, Sani Pass, it's snowing. 

I just climbed to to the highest point in Lesotho and Southern Africa, Thabana Ntlenyana. Ironically for its height, it means "beautiful little mountain."

Happy 2 years in Lesotho!

A heartfelt message from a fellow PCV:

This morning my principal came up to be and said, "Are you not afraid of how your students will perform today?" 

That got me thinking,  damn... I guess I kinda am afraid.  Math teaching is our main objective here and I've been teaching these students for almost 2 years now.  For the extended students, I have been their main math influence for the entirety of their high school career.  This is quite possibly one of the most important days of my service, and yet I sit here in my staff room playing tetris on my ti-89 not recognizing the culmination of efforts that have been put into place during my time here in Lesotho.  

These students made it worth it to be a volunteer.  Any chance that I had to cram math down their throats excited them, despite all (but one) failing the JC. When a teacher didn't show up to school,  I would take their lesson period to do more math.  Study sessions on Saturdays were more time for them to learn and engage.  The most dedicated students would even take the long journey to my house on weekends and breaks for extra help without knowing if I'd be there or not.  

These students are incredible and are some of my best friends in this country.  I just hope they can do well on this day that otherwise seemed very inconsequential until my principal asked me if I was nervous.  

If anyone else in this group has a similar situation going on right now with their students,  I wish you the best of luck and hope that this time can be used as a reflection of your many efforts during your stint in the Peace Corps.

Overheard in a 4+1 taxi:

"U tsohile joang, Ntate?" How did you wake, sir?

"Sharp, ho joang?" Cool, sup?

"Ahh, Seaotho se thata hoseng." Ahh, Sesotho is hard in the morning. 

Overheard on Whatsapp:

I recently saw a sprinter called "I'm sorry" parked on the side of the highway with the hood popped and Bo-ntate looking at the engine. 😂 

Welp, I just got my last papa and braai lunch in Lesotho and it was awesome. Peace out! See you again some day.

Jeff, Ben, and Sushi make a podcast

Once again, my friends and I take it way too far, and we explore the intricacies of Marvin Gaye's 1967 "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" with random musical interludes and snarky comments. Listen to it with the link below!
(warning: several F-bombs are dropped.)

https://soundcloud.com/user-202564299/aint-no-mountain

Extra: Students Say (and draw) the Darndest Things

My students are constantly make me wonder, make me think, and make me laugh. I've collected the questions asked in my question jar in my Life Skills classes. Some are funny, but some give you some insight into the minds of Basotho teens. Here they are, exactly as written:

1.   I have foreign currence so what can I do for it to be profitable for me

2.       Hullo teacher how do you feel when the students in the class make noise!!!!!! Especial in form c

3.       How to do abotion and how is it danger or important?

4.       What is masturbation?

5.       What causes if I bleed on January then I will bleed again after 3 month what causes that?

6.       How can one know if she/he is ready to have sex?

7.       Why am I growing taller not parrell. Please explain for me.

8.       What caused peer pressure

9.       Who stole my pen? What is sex

10.   What causes stress/anxiety

11.   Why is it important to have a save sex?

12.   Who is your friend

13.   Why person has female and male in the same time

14.   What do you like in this school?

15.   I have seen you have strong musles. So what you eat

16.   What cause high blood pressure

17.   Do you have brothers and sisters?

18.   I don’t want God to separate me with my mother. So can you explain how could I do?

19.   If I want to visit you can you go with me

20.   How can I study skill here in Lesotho?

21.   What should I do if my friend forced me to do what I don’t want?

22.   Who is your mother?

23.   Do you drink alcohol? Why?

24.   Who is your father?

25.   What can I do if I’m in stress What can I do if someone force me to smoke

26.   I have realised that in my country there is a high teenager pregnancy. And this badly horrifies me so I want to know what causes this teenager pregnancy and how can we avoid it as teenagers?

27.   The bacteria doesn’t die when it is in the air?

28.   If someone is attractive in America you say is fox?

29.   If I kiss her using intermecy kissing she will pass T.B to me? Remember he closed her mouth

30.   I want to know how did I do when I want to stole your dog?

31.   WHAT IS LOVE? A SEX? WHAT IS People? WHAT IS YOU MOTHER?

32.   What is abortion?

33.   If I use the expiry condom the diseases will pass.

34.   What is masturbation and how to can we be against it

35.   Who stool my pen last week?

36.   I want to know the name of your mother, father sister. Have you married?

37.   What causes a stress

38.   What if some months pass without being bleeding or menstrual

39.   What is important to google, internet, twitter, fb, whatA and how do they danger?

40.   Who is the director if internet?

41.   Did you know what about dog’s teeth did not wash

42.   What do you want to be when you are very old? What is sex? Why people have se? What is Khotsofalang [one of my student's names] in English? Do you like banana or cheese? What is your traditional launguege

They also draw some pretty cool things on the board/their exams

No!!! My heart hurts because school kids don't read.

Gender roles for females. Some kid came in later and added "they kill children."

Nothing of my students' doing, but look at this national exam perpetuating cultural vices

Kids getnpretty religious when it comes to passing exams

The layers of the earth...on a math exam

Little did I know that Nicki Minaj's lesser known brother, Nick Minaj, had been attending my classes all along.

Yup, that's what I keep telling them.

My best student!

When in doubt, draw a cat face.

A drawing of my dog and a student

"You make me mad." Is she talking to me or to the test?

5 August 2016: Come on, school. Get it together.

 This week confirmed, once again, that my school is completely laughable. Monday there was no school, which made lots of kids think that school starts next week. Tuesday, some kids and most teachers were there, but no actual classes went on. Lunch only. Then Wednesday and Thursday, there were fewer than 30 students total out of about 120, and maybe 4 out of 7 teachers. Determined to still have my classes even if other teacher weren’t having theirs, in Form B, I reviewed the June exam that the kids had taken right before the school break. In Form C, I had a life skills class about HIV transmission and prevention basics. While the Form Bs were just sitting in their classroom when they were supposed to have some other class that wasn’t going to happen, I gave them some Sudoku puzzles on the board to keep their brains doing something, at least. There are always so many empty time slots just wasted! I figured I’d take advantage of one to get them thinking about numbers in a different way. I was even surprised that the Form As, who legitimately had no classes all week because there were just 5 of them (out of about 60), still stuck around. If I were them, I’d be out of there so fast, but lunch is definitely a big draw for doming to school. And I guess sitting around with your friends at school is preferable to sitting around at home, having to herd or do chores. I passed three boy who chose the second option that week. “You are coming from school?” they asked. “Yes,” I said, “where were y’all?” “Rea lisa,” they replied. “We’re herding,” as they showed me their gum boots, the official footwear for all herdboys, and continued down the rock path whistling those herdboy whistles.

                Yesterday, the principal was concerned about the low attendance and the pointlessness of being at school with so few students. She said that she called the senior education officer for Quthing district to ask what to do. Should they close school on Friday for a long weekend? The officer said that she should make her own decisions. Here’s where that made me mad. Who else but the Ministry of Education is going to advocate that you actually hold school? And even they are listless and seemingly disinterested. God forbid that you actually advocate for kids going to school instead of letting the staff decide, who will obviously opt for the long weekend. There’s the broken system right there. Even the Ministry of Education is wrapped up in this seemingly corrupt scheme that is education, in which the teachers get away with laziness and continue to get paid the big bucks even when they’re absent (or present and not going to class) or straight up cancel school for no good reason. Then, as if some miracle would happen, the heavens opening up and a ray of sunlight striking the cheek of one of the teachers and giving them the inspiration to hold classes on Friday, as if someone would actually pipe up and say “No, don’t cancel school. I want to come to work tomorrow,” the principal held a meeting at lunch. In between looooong silent pauses, the only sounds being the scraping of spoons against ceramic plates, maybe they were trying to pretend that they were actually debating the pros and cons of cancelling school on Friday. Don’t kid yourselves. Of course you’re gonna cancel school so you can get out of, god forbid, doing any actual work. Not that half of them would actually come to school anyway had they decided to keep school open. All this pretend sincerity makes me sick.

                Another thing that continues to make me sick is the way that some of the teachers (especially one gargoyle-esque teacher) treat the students who are very nicely and obediently doing things for them. One of the students who helps in the kitchen brought pots of papa and moroho to the staff room. Then one teacher made her stay and make scrambled eggs in a pot on top of the paraffin heater. While the rest of the school was having the premade hard boiled eggs, this would not do for the Royal Teachers. Hard boiled eggs were only for the puny peasant students. And no word of thanks. No words at all, actually, as the student squatted there cracking 8 eggs (she had brought 4 eggs for 4 teachers, as normally each person gets one egg, but then she got scolded and went back to double up the serving) into a bowl, nervously spooning out the little egg boogers and miniscule shell pieces (lest she be scolded again) as the other teachers just silently watched her. The gargoyle teacher flatly said, “U ngoatele. Ke lapile.” “Please serve me. I’m hungry.” Wow. I just wanted to punch her in the throat. As she was plating up the eggs and handed them to each teacher, I made sure to thank her with a big smile. These teachers just treat kids like slaves sometimes, with no thanks, because kids are just expected to do things like this or else they get beaten.

Other happenings in my life-

                Just to let you know that life isn’t all storm clouds and dragons, allow me to raise your spirits by saying that later that day at the orphanage, where I continue to tutor English. I’ve been working on writing letters with the 7^th graders, and they wrote some stellar letters, and as I finished up with them and waited for the younger kids to get back from the other primary school, I went outside and played a little soccer with some of my Form B boys who live at the orphanage. So yeah, there are highlights to any bad day.

                My principal just informed me that my replacement PCV (each site tends to get 3 PCVs back to back, for a total of 6 years) will not live in my same house, but in a different rondaval across the little valley closer to school. The reasoning is that my ‘me wants the school to fully wire the house to the grid (which costs several thousand rand) and also build her a “shack,” according to my principal, whatever that means. I guess with all my older siblings going to town for school next year (thank god), it’ll be a lot more boring over here. I think there are other kids with the new family and lots of secondary school students living nearby, so that’ll be good because, honestly, my host siblings and the students are one of the biggest factors of my sanity here. This means that in the next few months, I need to figure out how to move my furniture and household items over there so the new volunteer can have all of it.

                Back to kind of depressing news, I just learned that my second-oldest ausi, when she went away to school last year to start Form A, promptly became pregnant. She either had a miscarriage or the baby died right after it was born. Lord. Sure, losing a baby is sad (but somewhat normal here), but I was most concerned with her actually getting pregnant in form A. It would have been seen as a blessing, actually, for her to have a baby, and not necessarily the end of the world, but jeez. This is real life.

`               In food news (the best kind of news), I have been experimenting with butternut squash. I have several that are about to go bad, so I decided to have some fun cooking them. My latest creation is battered and fried butternut strips: thin pieces of butternut covered in flour/garlic salt/mint/cinnamon/egg batter (sounds weird, I know), and fried in a skillet. Omg. So, so good. Butternuts can go sweet or savory, and I love it.

 Kids at the orphanage showing off the rats they've caught. At R10 payout per rat, bribing seems to be the best way to curb a rat infestation.

Neighbor nugget strikes a pose

1 August 2016: No gas, no electricity, no school

                Yesterday, as I was cooking a well-thought-out brunch of potato and egg hash, my gas ran out. That and the electricity being our and the cell network being sporadic at best meant that I was 0 for 3 for a lazy Sunday. I started to take my empty gas cylinder up to the path with the wheelbarrow and my ‘me said I should take it to the shop down the hill by the road instead. My oldest ausi helped me carry it down on her way down to the orphanage for church (once a month, they have church services there), and my ‘me said she’d be back from church to help me carry up the new cylinder at 2pm. So I went back up to my house, took a nap, and at 2, I woke up and started down the hill. I got the new tank at the shop and put it out on the road, waiting for my ‘me. I sat there until 3pm, by which time I was sick of waiting. I heaved the 20kg cylinder up onto my shoulder, then found that the best way to carry it was across my upper back/shoulders. It was pretty tough to carry up my hill, which normally takes 15 minutes to go up if I’m not carrying anything, but not impossible. After taking a few breaks on the way up, I made it up to my house. Only then was I able to finish cooking my hash, which was the goal of this whole endeavor. That extra effort made it taste even more delicious. When my ‘me came to koko (knock knock) on my door to say sorry she hadn’t helped me because she had a meeting after church, I lied and said that I had found other people to help me take the cylinder up. I knew that if I told her I’d taken it by myself, she’d have felt really bad.

                It’s still freakishly cold, being the middle of winter, and I have a new anti-cold-coming-into-my-house method. I put two big safety pins on one side of my rug and I hang it over the door, which has lots of gaps and lets the cold air in. It seems to work really well.

                This morning, being Monday, was supposed to be the first day of school after winter break. I got up and went to school, only to be told by the groundskeeper that there’s no school because of the snow (which melted a week ago), and that school might open tomorrow. Or, according to my oldest ausi in Form B, who saw one of the other teachers yesterday, said it might even not open until next week. Soooo no one knows when school will actually start? Awesome. This allows no one to plan and make use of their time. But time isn’t valuable here, so no one but me seems to care. But I guess today wasn’t all a loss. Since I was already over by the big shop next to the school, I bought some flour and went home and made tortillas for egg and peri-peri sauce tacos. Those delicious little bundles made everything much better.

Tacooooo

Lesotho Food Price Subsidy- since the drought, the price of staples like papa flour have doubled, so the government is subsidizing. 

31 July 2016: GLOW camp

              

            Last week, two HY volunteers in Mohale’s Hoek held a GLOW camp. GLOW stands for Girls Leading Our World, and it’s a multi-day leadership and empowerment camp for high school girls. My main job at this camp would be to teach a self-defense session. I decided to bring two of my Form C girls to be my “counterparts” for the session, and they could also attend the rest of the camp. A few weeks earlier, I told them about it and they had agreed to come, but several days before I was going to leave my village and help set up, they were unreachable. Keep in mind that this camp was scheduled during the school break, and many of my students left the village to stay with other relatives during that time. One of my students I was able to contact, but she told me that the other one was in South Africa at the time, so her Lesotho phone number wouldn’t even work when I tried to call. Long story short, I was finally able to contact both of them, and one of them was in the village the morning I left, so I met her at the taxi stop to coordinate and tell her what needed to happen for the camp, and how to get there the next day.

                The morning of the first day of camp, a bunch of PCVs went to the host high school to set up in their big hall. I never realized how destitute and tiny my school was until I saw other schools like this in towns. That day turned out to be super cold, rainy, and slushy, and I learned that the taxis weren’t leaving out of my village because there was lots of snow in Quthing. This meant that I was lucky that I had left the day before, but that my 2 student counterparts would be one, if not two, days late to the camp. That afternoon, girls started showing up and we had introductory name games and activities. Our intrepid HYs had recruited 4 young women from the Mohale’s Hoek youth center to act as camp counsellors, and they were super awesome and enthusiastic. After dinner, the evening activity for the night was a dance party, which was really fun for all the girls and all of us volunteers too.

A team building exercise

The awesome counsellors 

                The next two days were full of sessions like sexual/reproductive anatomy and health, career planning and resume writing, contraceptives, healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, self-confidence and communication, knowing your rights and how to seek help with situations like rape and abuse, and HIV testing/counselling. Most were led by the counsellors and some were led by organizations like New Start (for the HIV stuff) or the police’s youth and gender protection unit. After getting stuck in some snow in Quthing, my two girls finally showed up. I was so happy they made it! 

Learning about healthy vs. unhealthy relationships

Learning to lean on each other, literally

Making popcorn for movie night

Superstar of the dance party

                My self-defense session was one of the last sessions. My girls were champs helping explain the concepts in Sesotho and helping to demonstrate the moves. I had the girls partner up and do activities like being assertive with their body language and with their voice, and then practicing each move (modified, so they didn’t actually hurt each other) with a partner. They were all super into it, and I thought it was a success. One of the other volunteers told me afterward that if nothing else, if they forgot the specific moves, they got one message: fight. 

Demonstrating the moves

With my awesome student counterparts!

                The goal of this GLOW camp was to have each group of 3 girls from each school go back to their schools and start a GLOW club. Each school group of 3 girls and one of the teachers they brought sat down and decided how they would start their new club at school. I sat down with my two girls, and we determined that mayyyybe the other life skills teacher would agree to lead a GLOW club, but probably not, because none of the teachers at my school really care that much about anything, it seems like. They’re constantly absent, after all, and they don’t seem like the types to spend extra time outside of their teaching hours to help the students with something else. All this made our little group conversation very depressing, knowing that the self-defense lessons I’d been giving my girls probably wouldn’t evolve into anything lasting. After these meetings, we held a “graduation” ceremony (with the background music being Beyonce’s “Who run the world? Girls,” fittingly) where we gave the girls certificates and took their photo with their counsellor. Throughout the camp, from their enthusiasm expressing their opinions and asking questions during sessions, to the awesome singing and acting displayed at the camp talent show, I was continuously impressed, and it gave me a lot of hope that great things are coming for Lesotho in the near future because of girls like them.

All 50+ girls and counsellors 

Colleen with her students

Our lovely camp directors

Small Thoughts 21: Vaca edition

Now that I've published all the winter vacation posts, this will finally make sense. Enjoy!

Mozambique:

Taxis (called chapas): porfavor, KGB

The women here in Moz wear and use capulanas (a big piece of colorful/patterned cloth) like women in Lesotho use blankets. To wear, to carry babies, to keep warm, etc. etc. Same idea, just a different thickness for a different climate. 

"I'm here to drink. Not to teach you."

-Guy at the hostel bar, when our vacation friend was asking him how to say things in Portuguese 

"I've had phantom hair for almost two years now."

-Jen, on the phenomenon that results when you lose your ponytail, similar to having a phantom limb

There are cashews everywhere here! Just littering the ground. And I have to pay out the wazoo for cashews in SA or Lesotho. 

If a flight takes off and you didn't take a selfie, were you really on the plane?

So many people are trying to tell me, excuse me, but you have a laundry peg on you jacket collar. Yeah, I know. My friend put it there a week ago and I just didn't take it off. But thanks anyway. 

I thought taxis in Lesotho really packed em in. But this chapa (minibus taxi name in Moz) has 21 full size people in it and is waiting for more.

Final count: 26 souls on the taxi. Driver, conductor, kid, baby, and 22 adults. They use the place where they normally put bags as another row, with 4 people facing backward behind the front seats. And bags are on the roof. 

Whoop, and now the sliding door's falling off as the conductor straps a table and a stack of plastic chairs to the roof. 

Latest development: it's raining corn because a bag of corn fell off the top and the driver is trying to sweep the extra kernels off the roof. 

We've taken a detour from the paved road through some village. The people are like what's going on? I think they've determined that the driver is trying to avoid a police traffic stop. 

At least there's no famu. No throughout-the-vehicle speakers at all, actually. Oh wait- they just put on some Indian/Baliwood music. Interesting choice. 

The landscape around Nampula is relatively flat except for little lopsided mountains that suddenly jump out of the ground. 

I keep seeing these tricycle wheelchairs with a lever thing connected to a gear for simple self propulsion. 

In Lesotho, only women carry things on their heads, but here, men do it too. Carrying all the things on all the heads. 

I just saw a guy on a motorbike driving with a bunch of thin tires around his torso like many small pool innertubes. Come to think of it, that's probably the best way to transport tires via motorcycle. 

The houses out in the rural areas are rectangular and smade either of stone, bricks, or cinder blocks, or a lattice of wooden sticks smeared with mud. Finish it off with a thatched roof that sticks out for shade and some wooden window shutters. 

With the same company (Vodacom), data is 4 times more expensive in Lesotho than it is here in Moz. (2gb is 250 Meticais in Moz and 220 Rand in Lesotho. One Rand is about 4 Mets. Hence, about 4x more.) Though everything else, like food, seems to be more expensive. 

There's an overland travel ban through the middle of the country, and I just met a PC Moz girl whose site is there in the middle. She says the airport nearest to her only goes to Maputo, so to get here to northern Moz for a conference, she had to backtrack and fly south to Maputo just to go back north. Yeesh. 

I catch myself box-talking to anyone who doesn't natively speak English. I'm so used to doing it with Basotho that now I just do it with everyone. Here I'm not so sure if it helps their understanding or hinders it. Hmm. 

(Box talking is what we call slowing down and over-enunciating when speaking English to help others understand. Basically, how we talk to our students.)

A guy at my hostel just silently came into the kitchen as I was making dinner, turned a whole pineapple into a beautifully designed cylinder, chopped it up and put it in a Tupperware, then silently left. 

On the train, one of the fluorescent-vested staff people is pacing up and down my car, doing what I think is explaining the train rules and consequences with the fervor and authoritative hand gestures of an empassioned political candidate making a speech. Something about smoking, alcohol, and something else about bathrooms, which I wish I had actually understood.

I've never seen anyone willingly eat anything with such fury as these dudes stripping and gnashing pieces of sugar cane outside as the train waits at a stop. 

Almost without exception, every woman on this train car has a baby strapped to her. 

Nothing like a dinner of pao (bread) and maheo (like motoho- some kind of sour porridge) acquired by leaning from the waist out a train window. 14 hours in this train and I still have about 3 to go. 

Between Moz and Malawi there's a stretch of about 2km between the border posts. And there are a ton of people who live there, in no man's land. What nationality are they??

Malawi:

Taxis (called mini busses): Time Of Favour, Tarzan, New Dawn, Psalm, Maverick 1, New Force, Allah Is Good, Faith, Not Me But Allah, Friday, No Limit, Good Morning

This beer advertises as "probably the best beer in the world." So you're not sure? Way to be confident in your own product. 

We just passed a building housing a company called "Difficult to Understand Investments."

Katie knows she's living the PC life when everyone in the US is playing Pokemon Go and the only thing she can think is, "Wow, playing that must take a lot of data."

All the street food comes in these blue plastic bags. As such, everywhere you look, on the ground there is a sea of little blue bags. 

One thing that I just ate that came in said little blue bags: fries and shredded cabbage and a few tomato slices, cooked in what looks like a big metal sink over a fire. 

I'm operating in so many currencies right now. Exchanging Rand to Kwacha, converting to prices listed in dollars, careful not to try to use the Meticais also in my wallet, paying people back in Maluti. My brain hurts. 

Joburg:

In the airport after arriving, we were in a long line for the passport control. This European couple was in front of me, and as they got to the booth, they said something like, "Phew, we finally made it," and the passport officer goes, "Yes, it's a long wait to freedom." and chuckled. This went way over the couple's heads, but I appreciated the joke. 

[hint: Nelson Mandela's autobiography is entitled "Long Walk To Freedom"]

Lesotho:

I walked into my house and almost didn't recognize it as my own, as I'd been gone for over a month. It was a really weird feeling. 

20 July 2016: Back at home

            It’s that kind of weather where it’s colder in my house than it is outside in the sun, but outside it’s windy so it doesn’t feel warm. So the thing to do is just bundle up and be outside, which is where I am now, sitting on half a cinderblock outside my house in the afternoon sun. My ‘me just walked past and asked me what I’m writing. “Ke ngola ka…ha ke tsebe.” “I’m writing about…I don’t know.” Then she asked me if I had forgotten my Sesotho. I assured her that no, I didn’t forget. But perhaps it’s true. Over a month without using it did leave me at a loss for simple conversation. The most I could muster up this morning was “Ho moea,” “It’s windy,” when talking to one of the nugget neighbors buzzing around while I was hanging up my sheets to dry. They were blowing around like crazy on the line. The front pieces of my hair, now long enough to be securely snug in my ponytail, are whipping around freely.

                Yesterday, the day after I got back to my village, I was super bummed not to be on vacation anymore. I feel like I could have stayed out for another few months. I got the feeling that if I wasn’t working on my two priorities (traveling and planning for my post-Lesotho life), that I was wasting my time here. I was reminded that my time is valuable to my students, and that’s what I should be focusing on right now. It’s true. I’m starting to mentally prepare myself to leave in a few months, and I can’t stay in the present. My mind is always wandering to what I’ll do once I leave, what I need to do logistically to get ready to leave, things I need to wrap up here, what I’ll tell my replacement volunteer, etc. It's weird to think that it won't be long at all until I'm gone!

Carrying Slothie bo'me style on my back

Celebrating a Mohale's Hoek birthday with decorating Jen's kiwi and with knuckle tattoo roulette

The walk down my hill from my house to the road

One of my Form Bs

The bridge to the orphanage

The elusive spiral aloe

On the taxi to Quthing, with snow on the mountains near my village