21 September 2016: Cutting it shorter and shorter

          Let’s start off with something exciting, shall we? I’ve spent good chunks of my days planning my post-Lesotho travel. First of all, let me profess my love for all Google-produced things, in this case Google Flights. After some extensive searching, I’ve realized that almost all the countries outside of Southern Africa have expensive and intensive visa procedures, so after I’ve done South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, I’ll probably fly up to West Africa, then pop through Morocco again before getting a cheap flight across the ocean from Spain. All told it’ll take a few months. After I finish, I’ll have been to all the countries in Southern Africa. Woo!

                Well now let’s move into the BS du jour that seems to be so prevalent in these recent days. Today at school I tried to ask my principal about how the site visit went with the PC education director last week. She totally avoided my question like a politician and changed the subject, saying that PC has no authority over me anymore; the school board does, and I need to be out by the end of the month. Yes, I said, I am prepared to be out of my house by the end of the month like we agreed, but I have located housing at the orphanage for a few weeks because I’m not prepared to entirely leave the village in only one week. She just gave me a face that said, “Why?” I once again expressed my desire to stay and teach until exams. She explained that the Form Cs would start taking their exit exams as soon as they get back from the week-long Independence Day break at the start of October, so I wouldn’t be needed for them after the end of this month. What about the Form Bs, I asked, who I also teach? She “assured” me that the other math teacher would take over those classes for me. Just to confirm, I asked if she meant that I should not only stop living in my house but also stop teaching at the end of September. Yes. I didn’t want to show any negative reaction to this latest act to shorten my time here, so I simply said ok and just walked out, probably rolling my eyes in disbelief.

                What I still can’t understand is why she is insistent on booting me out earlier and earlier. First I had assumed that I would stay until the end of the school year at the end of November. Then we had agreed that I’d be out by mid-November, then it was mid-October, now the end of September being out of my house, and now the end of September also stopping teaching. Ever since February, at every step, I fought to stay, and I guess now I’m stopping this effort of trying to fight because it’s pointless to keep pushing when I’m up against so much resistance That and it’s impossible to have any kind of rational discussion.  Why boot me now, when you could have done so any time up to six months ago? Because of the house? I found new housing. Because of losing the grant I started to build new classroom? Why not boot me in February then? I’m starting to think that there’s either a personal problem that I don’t know about or that I’m acting as some kind of threat to them. At this point I want to try to demand some straight answers. I know it might be a futile effort, but viscerally, I just want to know why, and I can’t leave saying that I didn’t try to figure out why all of a sudden their attitude toward me just went south.

                Now, my tasks are to try to scope out some answers, talk to the other math teacher about taking over my classes, figure out how to move all my household items to the new house for the new volunteer, move my remaining stuff to the orphanage, buy another Basotho blanket, and ship stuff home.

                Oh, and to top it all off, today being Wednesday, it was supposed to be the best lunch of the week: cabbage and egg. Instead, it was the worst lunch: slimy samp. I took three bites and give the rest to my pet vacuum also known as the Bo dog, who enjoyed it way more than I would have. It’s a small thing, but it just felt like a kick while I was down.

                But it turns out that the day got much better, as when I graded the Form Cs practice exams, one of my best students wrote on his test (if they have extra time, for my entertainment and theirs, I suggest writing/drawing on the back of their test so they don’t get too bored) that maths was his favorite subject and it made him happy. That definitely made me smile. Then after lunch, the kid running the HIV/AIDS awareness club and a few other members of the club led a presentation in the Form B classroom for all the other students. From what I understood, it was informative for them all, except they had trouble controlling the noise level of the audience. Story of my life. Now you know how hard it is.

                Lastly, I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, which is a story about an American family from Georgia who move to Congo with the dad who is a missionary, and it talks about all the unique challenges that come with Americans living in Africa. Even though it’s about Congo, there are some things that are the same all over Africa, and I definitely felt like I could relate to a lot of it. I highly recommend it!

Members of the HIV/AIDS awareness club leading a discussion at school

Neighbor nuggets love to pose for my camera

17 September 2016: Starting the transition

Dear readers: please remember that I’m horribly late posting these blogs. Note the date in the title of each post. Even though my life seemed bleak when I first wrote these, just know that everything did indeed work out. Carry on!

This week I was not in the best mood, obviously. A few days ago, I went to school to teach, then decided to go right home afterward instead of waiting for lunch. I didn’t feel like hanging around for papa and cabbage. I walked up to the shop through a big crowd of old people waiting around, lining up to get their pensions. Along the way, I got called ntate once again, and I just went with it. Somehow I think I’m going to miss being called ntate, as annoying as it is, because it’s just so unique to Lesotho. Nowhere else that I’ve experienced has gender norms so established that the lack of me wearing a blanket skirt automatically gets me greeted as a man. At the shop, I asked the shop guy for some boxes so I could put my stuff in something while I cleaned out my furniture. He very happily showed me to the back room and told me to choose some. I got a couple big ones and walked back to my house with them. I had been told that my furniture would be picked up some time that day, so I hung around my house waiting. Then I messaged my principal asking when the truck would come. “Tomorrow morning, my dear,” she replied. Well ok then. For all the fuss about being ready for PC staff when they visit, we’re being very nonchalant about all this, aren’t we?

                The next morning, I explained to my host ‘me that I would be living in my house for about two more weeks until the end of the month, then I would probably move to the orphanage. She seemed pretty sad to hear that, which made me even sadder at the thought of having to leave earlier than I planned.

                The usual crew of neighbor girls came in to say hi, get homework help, buy Mpesa (money transferred via phone to buy things like airtime and electricity), etc. They saw my empty furniture all moved together against the wall and looked confused. It was impossible to try to explain my situation in English, much less in Lesotho why I’m moving the furniture out but staying there for a couple more weeks, how I’ll sleep without a bed, then when I’ll be leaving the village.

                ‘Tomorrow morning, my dear” rolled around where I, again, waited around my house for this mysterious truck to come get my furniture. I decided to go for a run with the dog to kill some time. My ausi asked me if I was afraid of dogs while I ran. I said no, because I had my dog with me. Honestly, having Bo probably causes more dogs to bark and snarl as I run by, but somehow I do feel better when it comes along with me.

                Soon enough, some dude came with his truck into my front yard. One of the other teachers and some older boys came along to load up and tie down my furniture, everything except my two school desks and chairs because the principal said that I “would need them.” What, and I wouldn’t need, say, my bed? Whatever. I was sick of trying to figure out the things that happen around here.  

                I swept and mopped my then quite empty house as a crew of three neighborhood toddlers wandered in to talk to me. Even though I can never understand 80% of what they say, they’re always very persistent in trying to keep communicating. That’s one difference between kids and adults: adults lose patience for these kinds of things where kids are more persistent. One of them came in with a big chunk of Styrofoam, which I didn’t really see as too weird because kids play with all kinds of weird trash items around here. So I’m mopping away and I glance over and notice that she’s eating the Styrofoam. “No, ausi, don’t eat that. It’s not food. You’ll be sick,” I explain in Sesotho. That may look like a nice hunk of papa, but really it’s not food.

                I finish mopping and sweeping up little Styrofoam crumbs and I see my middle ausi, nicely dressed, leaving to go to a celebration being held at the school and church for the different schools in the area to celebrate their achievements. Sadly, none of the students at my school were actually getting any awards, but the ceremony was still held at my school, with the other schools coming for the day. My task for the day, furniture moving supervision, being over, I got dressed and headed to school in the hopes that I would intercept PC staff on their way to visit the new house. I didn’t pass them on the road, so I thought they might be coming later.

At school, some boys and some other men were setting up a yellow and red tent on the netball ground. One of my Form C boys had caught a rabbit and put it in his school bag, which was providing additional entertainment for the kids, and, when it was released, for my dog. I swear, these kids always have some animal or other held captive. I was hanging out in one of the classrooms taking photos with the students waiting for the celebration to start. The tent wasn’t working at all because it was half a tornado outside, so everyone moved into the church. I caught up with my principal on the way and she said that PC had already come and gone. Dang, I missed them! I really wanted to talk to them. Oh well. I guess I’ll ask them later what they thought of the new house and, more interestingly, what they thought about my whole situation now that I left PC but was still staying in my village.

After stepping into the immensely sardine-packed church, my I-don’t-need-to-actually-sit-through-this-BS-ometer started going off, so I used that beautiful white lie, “I’ll be right back,” and escaped. I finally got home and was able to eat some of the fruit I bought from the shop in relative peace, with the nugget crew outside still trying to talk to me through my door after I’d already shooed them away. I finished that adventure by taking a long nap on my new bed: a yoga mat with a nest of blankets, sleeping bag, and pillows on top. It’s certainly not the most cushy thing in the world, but it’ll do.

                Here’s a little anecdote to lighten the mood: I’ve noticed that my dog and I have reversed roles compared to a normal American dog/owner relationship. I always get home while my dog is still busy wandering around the village, then instead of the stereotypical dog being super excited when the owner gets home, I’m always super excited when my dog finally gets home.

14 September 2016: A turn for the worse

            [I originally wrote this in my notebook with a red pen]. I’m using red because at the moment I’m invigilating (proctoring) my Form Cs’ practice exam and I just used it to fill in the answers to the answer key. And I’ll keep using red because I’m mad and the color fits my mood. Here’s the sitch:

                My principal called me into her office where some members of the school board were sitting in there and having a meeting. She said that a few minutes ago, the PC education director had called her to say that he would be coming to the village to look at the new house on Friday. This was Tuesday. She then said that he would need to see everything, (meaning, to her, all the furniture), in the new house. Having sent him an email a few weeks prior and getting a response saying that he could just come to my current house to look at the furniture, I was skeptical that he had actually said this to my principal. I asked her if he specifically mentioned the furniture and she said that he did not. After mentioning said previous emails with the PC education director, she went on a tangent about how I shouldn’t have asked him about this. I replied saying that, well, I did ask because there was no harm in doing that, and that, no, he doesn’t get the impression that you’re unprepared or anything. I said that we should call him back and ask specifically about the furniture so that we might be able to avoid all the problems of me living a furnitureless life. She said ok, and that he should be on speakerphone. I quickly bought some calling minutes and called him in front of everyone. No answer. I said I would try to call him later.

                Then, playing into the still hypothetical, yet very likely, situation that I would need to move my furniture into the new house, I asked how we might go about dealing with moving it. She said that someone would come and take it on Thursday (two days from then), with no intention of moving it back into my house after the education director came to visit. Fine. Whatever. This being established, I asked if she assumed that I’d be ready to be totally moved out of my house when the furniture was taken. She was basically like, “Uh, yeah.” I told her that this was very sudden. Move out of my house in two days? I asked her where else I was supposed to stay. What did she suggest? She looked at me with a half-smiling face and a shrug that seemed to say, “I don’t know or care. Not my problem.” She halfheartedly suggested that I could stay at her room that she rented in the village for a few days, but there was no guarantee that her landlord would allow that. And somehow I knew she would come back to me with a story, true or not, about how the landlord wouldn’t allow it. In any case, I definitely didn’t want to stay with her in her tiny room. I told her that I’d much rather stay in my host family’s house or that I’d look for another place to stay, like one of the guest houses at the orphanage.

                Then, still thinking that she might have to ask her landlord to let me stay with her, she asked me how long I would need to prepare myself to leave. Woah, woah, woah. We had recently agreed that, instead of staying until the end of November at the end of the school year, I would only stay until mid-November when my replacement volunteer came for site visit. This was still mid-September. I reiterated my desire to stay and fulfill my commitment to the students to get them through the year, and not just abandon them like they’d been abandoned so many times before. She said that, no, I wouldn’t be abandoning them because [Ntate Other Math Teacher] will take over my classes. Oh, I said, this same [Ntate Other Math Teacher] who goes missing or weeks on end and we can’t contact him? Or the other teachers who are absent all the time, leaving on Thursday afternoon and coming back Tuesday morning? Clearly, I was quite upset at that point to be so direct with my boss in a culture that respects deference and tends toward passivity. She replied telling me to let the administration take care of the absenteeism; that was not my problem to worry about. Oh, the administration, huh? The administration being you, the principal, the biggest offender of this absenteeism?

                Knowing that continuing this conversation wouldn’t end in anything but actual shouting, I dropped that subject and asked her why she wanted me gone so quickly. Was there something you’re not telling me? Why are you trying to get rid of me? No, she said, they’re not trying to get rid of me. It was just that PC has a certain protocol whereby (Basotho love the word “whereby”) the old volunteer should be gone before the replacement one comes. Yes, I said, I know PC protocol. In fact, I thought, I know it much, much better than you do because, guess what, I actually worked for them for over a year and experienced their protocol first hand. This made up excuse of “PC protocol” was absolutely false. My school was so afraid of being perfect for PC that they thought that my being in the village at all (not even as a PCV, but as an independent expat at this point) will cause PC not to put a new volunteer in my village. Normally, I explained, the old PCV is at their site until December right before the new one comes to move in, and that the replacement volunteer stays with the old volunteer during the November site visit. We agreed earlier that I would be here until this site visit, which is way sooner than I would normally have to leave. Add that to the fact that I’m not even affiliated with PC anymore and that you’re not even using my same house made my principal’s argument even more ridiculous and just plain wrong. I’m no different from any old member of the village at this point. Stop trying to shove me out of my home! Ugh.

                I left the meeting saying that I was already late to go tutor at the orphanage, and that since my furniture was being taken from me in two days, I’d have to go empty out my wardrobe and cabinet and stuff. On my walk up the hill after tutoring, I thought about what my principal had said about the only compromise being my ability to stay in my house (furnitureless) until the end of September, because that’s the last month my school would pay for my rent, since they would start paying for the new house after that. Fine, I thought. But I retorted by asking what if I paid my own rent? What if I found somewhere else to live? After proposing this, I was just met by “Achh” and shaking heads from all the meeting participants. No answers, just looks saying “Why in the world would you ever want to do that?”

                So in any case, while I figure stuff out, from Thursday onward I’ll have no furniture. I’ll sleep on the floor and have all my stuff in boxes until the end of September, then try to move into the orphanage’s guest house. And no, the irony has not escaped me that I’ll be living in an orphanage after I’ve been abandoned by my two guardians, PC and my school.

                At least the good thing is that every time I get kicked in the face by my school, my village always comes around and shows its love. After that meeting, I was happily received at the orphanage by the staff and the kids as usual. Then on my way home, I ran into several bo’me who were so nice, one happily commenting that I’d gotten so fat (even though I answered that I hadn’t gained any weight, I still took it as a complement, as it is meant to be.), another asking when I’ll visit her across the river at her village, and a third telling me very excitedly to please say hello to my host ‘me for her. Village bo’me are the best. They always come in at the right time to make my day.

                Today, I was not nearly as upset as I was in February when, after I disaffiliated with PC, they also suggested that I might want to leave. My principal said that she appreciates my dedication to the students (but since no one else gives two shakes about them, clearly this dedication was just a nuisance to her and the school instead of something to convince her that I should stay). I don’t know how much longer this dedication will continue to outweigh the sh*t storm I’ve been forced to slog through. I’m just going to keep doing the best I can for however long I’ll still be here, while at the same time accepting the things I cannot change for as long as I can stand it. 

13 September 2016: Corny dog party!

                

H2O transporter extraordinaire

          First, one cool thing that happened in my village was that Jill the orphanage director was having a retirement party. After my classes were over at school, I went over there and found all the orphanage staff and every important village person eating lunch in their multipurpose room. I met the new director and his wife and super chubby-cheeked toddler. After we were done eating, some of the kids came in to sing, a few boys did a gumboot dance, and then others did this awesome and hilarious skit about a poor girl with 4 different sugar daddies: her uncle, her teacher, the sangoma (witch doctor), and the bishop. In the skit, the girl ended up getting HIV while her sister, who was faithful to one man, didn’t get it. I've seen several of these skits that Jill puts on with the kids, and I think they're great. Not only do the kids get to practice their English, but there's always some kind of moral attached. 

The choir singing

Skit

Jill and me

                Then it was time to start what I had been envisioning for months: a combination birthday and corny dog-making party. I skipped out of the orphanage and collected Jen, Tyler, Emily, and Jeff who had arrived to my village on the taxi. We walked up my hill to my house and I just basked in the glory of all the food they brought, and we immediately made some mac and cheese. The next day, we woke up with the cold wind blowing and started off for the little waterfall near my house. The Bo Bo was quite happy to hike up there with us and, once again, piss off a herd boy by scattering his sheep. Then Tyler and I went down to the orphanage to collect British Andrew to join in the food festivities and introduce him to the wonders of American fried food and Mexican food. Jen and Jeff were already in the middle of breakfast burritos, and we all clumsily ate them while the dog scarfed many dropped bits off the floor. Having a dog makes cleaning so much easier sometimes.

"Family portrait," complete with the dog

View from the top

Jen and the doge and me

They also helped me re-attach my latrine door with wire and zip ties, which had completely blown off in the wind the previous night

                Then we made the glorious corny dogs, skewering hot dogs, covering them with batter and cheese, and frying them in my cast iron skillet, topping them with peri peri (hot sauce), ranch (made from a packet of ranch mix- ranch dressing doesn’t exist here), and ketchup (which, for some reason, is called tomato sauce here). My heart was so happy. It grew three sizes that day, both due to said happiness and because of all the new layers of crap clogging my arteries. We had more batter, so we decided to fry other things: pickles, green beans, and knockoff Oreos. Murica.

Per peri addiction

Chef Jeff

They are glorious, aren't they?

                Side note: Some people, my mother in particular, thinks that I have become a bit food-obsessive. It’s absolutely true. When you live in a village that only has tomatoes and onions alongside dry goods, you do get food-obsessive.

                After everyone left, I was alerted that in the Quthing taxi rank, they overheard other people talking about all the makhooa (white people) in my village. My party was clearly the hot gossip right then. Between all the food, the people actually coming all that way to visit me in my village, and the various card and board games we’ve all become so adept at, it was a great way to celebrate my quarter-century.

4 September 2016: Antsy / waterfall

                I’ve been very antsy lately. I keep looking at my calendar, seeing how many days and weeks are left for me to be here, the few events I have lined up between now and when I leave, anxious for the next month, the next milestone to roll around. Maybe it’s because I ran out of data so I can’t entertain myself with the internet…

                The other math teacher finally came back to school after being gone for 2 weeks. My principal thinks he’s running from debts or financial obligations, but when I asked him where he was, he just said he “wasn’t feeling well.” Right. And unreachable by phone too? I’m really disappointed in how people can just abandon their students like that. It seems to be a common theme with a lot of teachers in this country, not caring about actually teaching.

                Today that Form B student who wanted to start an HIV awareness club put together their first meeting. Today there were 7 students who were supposed to get together to just plan club logistics, but it turned into me giving a crash course on HIV while they furiously took notes. I was fielding all kinds of ridiculous questions. Can it be spread by pimple to pimple contact? What if you have a cut on your finger and you touch HIV-infected blood, then cut off your finger really fast- will you still get infected? What if you’re on one side of a stream, and your HIV-positive friend is on the other side and gets cut under water and is bleeding, and you happen to have a cut on your leg- will you get infected then? These kids have an endless supply of “what if” questions. After the crash course, I helped them come up with some activities they could do as a club, and reiterated the need for a non-me teacher to be able to explain in Sesotho and bring this club into the future without dying when I leave.

                In my usual weekend adventure, after going to the orphanage to teach and have lunch, Andrew and I went to this enormous waterfall about a 2 hour walk away. It’s so awesome! I wish I knew about it a long time ago. As we got up higher on the path, there were a hawk and ibis hovering on the winds, basically at eye level, with the backdrop of a cattle post on a mountain across the valley. The waterfall was the victim of pre-storm winds, and most of the water was actually flying up and making it rain above the level of the river before the drop. It was so cool!

28 August 2016: Another day another wander

          Now that it’s finally FINALLY warmish (70s during the day), I’ve taken to sitting outside my house to read/write/give my ausi my kindle to practice reading Dr. Dolittle. Now my oldest ausi is alternately cutting my neighbor’s hair with a razor/scissors and sawing wood to for cauldron-pot cooking in the yard.

                I’m a bit calmer now after thinking that my principal is starting to not want me around. I had a quiet day at home, away from my senioritis-fueled students, where the biggest thing I did was go to the tap and do some laundry. Yesterday I went to the orphanage for English lessons and I went through a reading comprehension section in an old exam for the grade 7 girls to practice with. Phew, they need a lot more work. With the younger ones, they’re showing actual improvement with reading, so that’s more encouraging to see. 

                After that, I had lunch at the director’s house, then on the way back I was somehow surrounded by a crowd of kids as I was having a conversation in Sesotho with one of the house fathers. Apparently the kids didn’t have any idea that I could speak Sesotho as well as I could. They were grilling me with questions, and they even made me write Sesotho words in the dirt with a stick to prove that I could write it as well. I had to pat myself on the back, because they told me I was very good at Sesotho. Woo!

                Then my new British friend Andrew and I walked to a neighboring village called Ha Masiu, where for a good bit of the trek we walked beside my old student Tsepang, who’s not at school this year, but hopes to go back next year with an Econet (cell phone company) scholarship. He says that this year they’re sponsoring about 20 kids at my school. Now he’s a herdboy, with 60 something sheep and 8 dogs, who stay up at the cattle post in the mountains for 6 months before they come down to shear the sheep. Then they wait around 2 months for the wool to grow back enough to combat the cold, then go back up into the mountains again.

                When we finally got to Ha Masiu, we came across a joala (homemade sorghum beer) shack with some pretty drunk women inside. Andrew wanted to taste the beer, so for 2 Rand, they handed us a pitcher with a few swigs of joala in it. I’ve had it several times, so I’m used to the taste/texture, but Andrew said it was like drinking salad dressing. After asking several people for directions, we found a cool little cave with a herdboy hut just outside. My dog was having a field day chasing all the baby goats (whose butts were painted red to distinguish them from other herds) around, which the herdboy was not so happy about. As we walked back, we had an offer from a guy to drive us back to the orphanage  “in a few minutes.” We told the guy we would walk because a) “a few minutes” usually means “a few hours,” and b) the guy looked kinda drunk.

                I made it back just before sunset (I wouldn’t dare stay out after dark. My ‘me would be too worried about me.), watched a few episodes of Fargo, and crashed Then I woke up around midnight because of some thumping famu bass from my across-the-trash-valley neighbors. I went to investigate and saw a bunch of strange dogs outside, so I decided not to koko (knock knock) and tell them to keep it down because I didn’t want to barge in on what was probably just a bunch of drunk herdboys. Earplugs once again save the day.

The cave/hut

View of the valley

24 August 2016: School struggles, and one success

                Even though I’ve been teaching for a year and a half, I had one of the worst days I’ve had in a while with my Form Cs. I just could not handle their antics today. During life skills class, some of the girls were apparently “quenching” (aka farting), and some of the boys would interrupt me every 5 seconds to let me know. I told them that I don’t care who is quenching, and that you don’t have to alert the media every time someone may or may not be quenching, and can I please finish one sentence about gender roles. They were being so disrespectful and disruptive that I just walked out of the class, telling them at the door to let me know when they were ready to listen. Another teacher was also outside and I told him about the Form Cs and why I had temporarily left their classroom. He said that for his classes, he now just gives them group work, leaves, and comes back later, because I guess he often has the same problem of them not wanting to listen. Some of my loyal girls were sticking up for me, telling others to “listen to ‘Me Senate!” so I poked my head back in and said that those who actually wanted to learn about gender could come into the computer lab, and the others could just stay behind. All of them ended up coming in there, and we all just stood at the chalk board as we made lists of typical gender roles and how they are becoming more fluid and changing in the modern era. They actually wanted to listen and participate, so that was much better. I guess just a change of scenery was all they needed.

                Later, when some boys came up to tell me that the girls only quench in class (and don’t do it in other teachers’ classes) because I tell them that it doesn’t matter or that I don’t care or don’t want to hear about it when the two students in the back constantly complain about each other quenching. I told the boys that these students do this only to get attention. They get a reaction out of other students telling them to stop quenching, which in turn gets a reaction out of me when I have to tell them to be quiet. I said that if they just ignored it and didn’t make comments, the quenchers would stop. They seemed to understand, but it obviously didn’t fully sink in because they kept complaining.

                Other than the quenching incident, earlier that day in math class, two of my boys were fighting over a pen or some nonsense and wouldn’t sit down. I was in the middle of trying to explain something at the board, and soon they were just up there at the front grabbing each other as they argued and wouldn’t sit down. I finally got them to stop and told them that they needed to talk to me after class. Outside of class, I explained to them how rude they were being to me and the rest of the students trying to learn, and they said they wouldn’t be disruptive again and apologized. But not 40 minutes later in Life Skills they wouldn’t let me say 3 consecutive words. I’ve been told that students try to get away with more in my classes because they know I won’t get a stick and beat them like some of the other teachers do.

                But I guess the one redeeming thing about today was that one of my Form B boys told me about his idea to start an HIV/AIDS awareness club. Awesome idea, I said. But he and I both knew that without a (permanent) teacher to help run it, it wouldn’t last. That’s gonna be his biggest hurdle: trying to make one of these apathetic, perpetually absent teachers actually care enough to stay and help him with this club. But as my mom keeps telling me, as much as PC has pushed sustainability on me, I can still try to do as much good and affect as many students as I can with the time I have left here, even if it won’t last. So I agreed to help him out for the time being. Kids like him really inspire me, and let me know that not everything to come out of a deadbeat school is so bad after all. 

Siblings/neighbors/dog photo shoot!

22 August 2016: I finally go to church / Beginning of the slow demise

          Let’s start with Saturday at the orphanage. After the usual English lessons, I met Annette, and older British woman who lives in the Netherlands but comes to Lesotho every year and a half, accompanied by someone. This time she brought her great nephew Andrew. I found them outside after tutoring and we all went up to the director Jill’s house for lunch. I can always count on Jill for a really nice lunch, and today it included a salad that I commented was “so pretty.” They laughed when I said that, but I was really marveling at it because I’m so salad deprived here. After eating, we had our usual visitors of boys bearing dead rats to be flushed down Jill’s toilet. Then one of the bo-ntate house fathers came over and I helped him make a list of kids Andrew should give extra lessons to. I think he was a little bit overwhelmed by our conversation about all the kids and who should be put into what group and who needs help with what. Jill’s conversations already need a lot of subtext (and for me, translating between British and American English), and since Andrew had just gotten thrown into Lesotho the day before, he was looking a little glazed over.

                As usual, Jill asked me to come to church the next day, and, as usual, I told her let’s not pretend like I’m gonna come to church, because as she knows, I’m quite averse to organized religion. To that, she replied that it’s hardly organized. I said, “I’ll think about it,” as my usual avoidance tactic, but this time I actually thought about it. I figured that I needed to go to church in my village at least once, right? Plus, I’d be able to hang out with and have fluent English conversations with my two new acquaintances. You don’t realize how far you’ll go (all the way to, gulp, church) for the chance to have an actual conversation that goes beyond greetings and the weather. This is real life, people.

                So Sunday rolls around and, after a little morning workout, I got dressed and walked down to the orphanage for church in their big multipurpose room. All the kids were there plus lots of other people from the village. There were two blue beret-wearing women up front giving a talk (from what I understood) about water, how it’s represented in the bible, etc., and probably relating it to our drought situation in Lesotho. Then, after a song, other people from other churches would come up to comment on the sermon. Jill’s 4 dogs also attended church, but I chained up Bo outside so that it wouldn’t pee everywhere and jump on everyone, a recent behavioral theme for the dog. After the service, I went and had tea and stroopwaffles (Dutch caramel waffle cookies) with Annette and Andrew.

The audience

Jill speaking and one of the house fathers translating into Sesotho

Beret ladies at offering time

Jill with Sam the dog

                Then, Andrew, Bo and I headed out for a hike up one of the mountains behind the orphanage. This crazy dog wouldn’t stop jumping all over the place and getting mud on our clothes and scattering sheep and generally being a nutcase. I’ve never apologized for something in my care so much in my life. We got up to the top of the ridge and found a “molisana oa rona,” or “our little herdboy” which is a human-sized pile of rocks, which looks like a herdboy standing at the top of the mountain if you’re looking at it from below.

The Bo Bo

The me me

                [And here, dear readers, is the beginning of the series of unfortunate events that (spoiler alert) leads to my early Lesotho demise. Pay attention.]

The next day, at school, my principal pulled me into her office to talk about the PC education director’s site visit next week to look at the new house for the replacement volunteer. He has to see it all furnished. Since the school bought the furniture in my house for their PCVs, that same furniture needs to now be in the new house. So what should we do about that? she asked. I gave her several options: 1) put my furniture in there for one day and then bring it back, 2) have the host family or neighbors put some furniture in there for once day just for the visit, or 3) leave my furniture in my current house and he can come look at it, trusting that it will be moved into the new house by the time the new volunteer needs it for site visit in November. My principal’s reply was no, no, and no. Cool. She literally had no other ideas or alternatives. I suggested asking the education director what to do, as he probably has had to deal with this same situation with other volunteers who aren’t being replaced in the same house. She said not to do that, because it would make the school look “unprepared.” Well, yeah, because you are unprepared. I was getting the feeling that she might just want me to leave the village ASAP so I would stop being such a “burden” to their effort to get a new volunteer, just get out of her hair. As such, I suggested me leaving the village in the beginning of November before the new trainees visit their sites so that they could have all the furniture there and be ready to roll. She immediately agreed, saying something typically passive like, “Yes, it might be best if you didn’t remain for that time.” I just want her to spit out what she is thinking, just tell me to leave, but this culture doesn’t allow for that kind of direct communication. So now, instead of leaving after the end of the school year in early December, I’m cutting my stay a month shorter. I really want to show Volunteer Jr. the ropes, though, so maybe I can find somewhere else to stay after I move out of my house, and still be in the village by the time they get here. 

17 August 2016: Games, crazy dog, and condom demos

This past weekend, I escaped to Mohale’s Hoek via a hitch out of Quthing, and who should be driving right behind me but  my principal’s husband. I swear, that man is everywhere. After the truck I was in stopped, he pulled over and immediately picked me up. I sat in the back with two very colorful bo’me. Jen and I decided that, in the wake of the insanely popular game Pokémon Go, we should start our own game, Bo’me-mon go, in which we “catch” (photograph) especially colorful bo’me, and Jen will “arbitrarily assign points” to you. I assume more blankets = more points. Bonus points for baby blankets, blanket skirt and blanket cape combos, and outrageous blanket color combinations. I got into Mohale’s Hoek where we celebrated a fellow Hoeker’s birthday with games like Cards Against Humanity and, my new favorite game in the world, knuckle roulette, in which, without seeing the other hand, the person on your right gives you a knuckle pen-tattoo on your right hand and the person on your left does your left hand. The 8-lettered combination you get is inevitably hilarious. Mine came out to be “Fish Spit.” Well, you can’t win ‘em all.

                It was also at this time that the Olympics were on TV at the hotel, but the only things on at the time we were watching were marathon running (boring), and trampoline (a bit less boring, but they were only doing the compulsory routines, so still kinda boring).

                A Mohale’s Hoek friend also gave me a new dog collar for the Bo Bo, as her mom sent one for a different friend’s puppy who, sadly, died, and so never got to grow into this collar. It’s pretty cute, with little whales on it. I have the preppiest dog in Lesotho. I got back (via the rare unicorn that is the free taxi hitch) to my village and put the new collar on the dog, who turned into a TOTAL SPAZ MACHINE, jumping all over me, running in circles, almost bowling over little kids, chasing sheep way more than normal, etc. Guess that’s what you get with a non-neutered dog: too much doggie testosterone making it go absolutely crazy.

                Yesterday, the safety and security officer at PC came to inspect the new house that my replacement volunteer will live in. He stopped at the school and we talked a bit. He asked me how it was being here without PC, with “no restrictions.” Answer: absolutely great. Better than ever. The driver, the guy we call Ntate Fingers, completely destroyed a little grass/compost pile by gunning through it on the way up to the office. That should be PC’s new motto: drive everywhere at all costs. Even though it seems like PC staff only talks to me in the way of pleasantries and not logistics (they don’t even tell me now when they’re coming to my school), it is always still nice to see them, and the teachers got a “special lunch” out of the visit, which means we make rice, have grated beets and carrots, beans, and chicken for lunch when important guests come to the school.

                I’m trying to restrain myself on my new season of Modern Family, only watching one episode per day. Popcorn restraint is more difficult, however. I have absolutely mastered the perfect popcorn batch. The secret is to heat up the oil with two kernels in there. When they pop, put the rest of the kernels in there and take the pot off the heat for 30 seconds, then put the pot back on and keep shaking it around. This way, the kernels all pop at about the same time, and none of them get burnt. Bam.

                Last week I did a male condom demo in my life skills class with the Form Cs. I got a box of expired condoms from PC a while ago for this very purpose, and I gave exactly one to each of my 16 students so they could each try it. Given that there are no bananas or carrots or otherwise easily-accessible penis-shaped objects around my village, I had them use their first 2 fingers. Even though I explained that it was dangerous to use an expired condom, as the risk of breakage is greater, I knew that some of the boys especially would just try to keep them, so I made sure not to let anyone leave the class until I had collected 16 opened wrappers. This week, I demonstrated use of the female condom, which was met with much more confusion and skepticism, as they are not widely used or distributed as male condoms are. As always, I learn from my students as I teach, so I was informed (and showed) that lubricated condoms can also be used to shine shoes. Who knew? 

8 August 2016: Too many partners

This post is probably not appropriate for those younger readers I hear read my blog. But I don't really believe in censorship, so feel free to read on anyway.

           This past Saturday, I went to tutor English at the orphanage and then go to the director Jill’s house for lunch and conversation, as per usual. The current village news is that there is a house somewhere in the village where two women are basically prostituting themselves out to the truck drivers and road workers who come through the village as they dynamite and smooth out the road. One of these women is known to have HIV, and the other might. They both have husbands with jobs, so it’s not like they desperately need the money. Uhhhh, is this for real? I thought. Unfortunarely, yes.

Jill then told me about how last year when an American nurse came to visit, she went to talk to a group of women, I think in some kind of support group, to explain how HIV testing worked. Not wanting to waste test kits, she wanted to demonstrate on a woman who was more likely to have HIV. She asked people to stand up who currently have three or more sexual partners. Almost all the women stood up. No, no, she said to the woman translating. You must have translated wrong. Not anyone who has had three or more partners in her lifetime; anyone who currently has three or more partners. Nope, no translation error. Almost all the women in the room did, in fact, admit to currently have three or more sexual partners. No wonder HIV continues to spread like wildfire. In an old Basotho saying, men are like pumpkins, spreading their vines all over, and women are like cabbages, just sitting in place. But it looks like in reality, both men and women are being quite pumpkin-like.

To give another example of the problems of MCP (multiple concurrent partners), sometimes when I’m in a hitch with a man, he will ask me if I have a boyfriend or husband. Even if I say yes, in a vain attempt to stop them hitting on me by pretending I’m already “claimed” (which I also hate because it dismisses a woman’s authority to say no without excuses), they tell me that they want to be my second boyfriend. If I say that my pretend husband is American, they say I need a Mosotho boyfriend as well. Everyone seems to have a few people on the side, as “snacks” they say, to go alongside the main course. Since jobs are so scarce, oftentimes people have to move away from their families when they get a job, and that’s a lot of the reason why people have multiple partners. It’s just so normalized at this point.

During training and from talking to people since then, I have also learned that alternatives to actual intercourse (I’ll let you use your imagination here) are not really a thing here. Other than rumors of herd boys having sex with their sheep, watermelons, and holes in the ground, there’s not really a popular alternative in this culture. This could also be why the incidence of rape is also so high here.

At almost every public place, there are free condoms up for grabs to help curb the spread of HIV, but obviously just throwing condoms at people isn’t stopping all the unsafe sex and having tons of partners. They’re there, but it’s still somewhat weird to use them, and not everyone knows how. This is why I’m doing a condom demonstration for my Form Cs this week. An old campaign to help stop HIV goes off the easy-to-remember acronym ABC: Abstain, Be faithful, and Condomize to prevent the spread of STIs and HIV. Probably every kid in my Form C life skills class already knew what ABC stands for, but in practice these are not being practiced by the majority of adults here (and teens, if my Form A ausi’s pregnancy is any indication). It’s just going to take some time to change the perceptions about casual, unprotected sex and multiple concurrent partners before we see the HIV rate decrease in this region.