so, i've been really busy the past couple weeks! shocking, but true. probably about 12 hour workdays for the past week, and an average of walking 6 miles a day. i've been trying to write a grant that is due at the end of the month, to get funding from the us embassy to build a preschool and community center in my community. the community was trying to help too, but the members have a lot of trouble thinking things through and thinking ahead. for example, there are people in my community that know how to build, so we had a 5 hour meeting last week to determine dimensions of the building, materials needed, etc. they listed cement, corrugated iron, and doors and windows, but they don't think of screws needed to connect the materials, or a frame for the door. so trying to get quotations was really difficult. i seriously have been running around talking with contractors, building supply stores, sand vendors, electricians, etc. i still have to determine the amount of things we need and write it up, so i'll probably be doing that tonight.
funny story, speaking of which. i was on the phone with an electrician and we were going to meet in five minutes to go over what i needed. he asked me what i looked like. this surprised me. i assume that people can tell by my voice that i'm not native, and that i will probably stand out. but this man asked. my response: ummmmm...i'm white?.
so, hopefully we'll get the money. i'll find out in september. apparently the embassy never gives the full amount asked for, so hopefully i'll also be able to convince the local community to help out. we'll see what happens with that.
i'm also trying to get jerseys for my school's football team. i actually am trying to get the National AIDS Commission to help fund us because i thought it would be cool if we could use their logo and be promoting HIV awareness while playing. i'm hopefully going to meet with them tomorrow.
so that's all my grant work of late. i've also been working at school. i'm having a lot of trouble with my form a students. they are lazy and do not want to work. it took me 3 weeks to get them to bring their books to school so we could read. During this time, they got to write 200 lines and a composition. but we've finally managed to get started. and the book's only 40 or so pages, so hopefully we'll get through it ok. my form b's had their first biology exam a couple weeks ago. actually, it took 2 weeks for them to write it and of the 80-something students, 5 got over a 50% and 6 got between a 40% and 50%. a 40% is a pass in Lesotho. it's sad. and it was so obvious that they don't study, because most of the exam was just memorization. so i think i will have to start giving weekly quizzes to motivate them to work harder. and rewarding them with prizes like pens and pencils works pretty well, too.
and then there's the primary school. 3 of the teachers in the school quit over the past month, so there are now only 3 teachers for 7 classes. the school is basically failing, and it's really sad because these students aren't going to be able to learn anything this year without a proper teacher. they just run around the school grounds all day instead of learning. i actually used this to my advantage this morning. i brought my dog to school and taught some of the kids about dogs, and how to let a dog get to know you, so that the kids might not be afraid of her. they are amazed that she sits and lies down when i ask her to. training a dog is a very foreign concept here. even the dogs that are supposedly herd dogs really aren't trained. and i'm trying to prevent any more rocks being thrown at my dog than necessary. when i finally got a kid to put his hand down so she could sniff him, she licked his hand. all the kids thought this was great, and suddenly they were all putting their hands down for her to sniff. i just had to make sure she didn't get over-excited. so hopefully the kids are learning something.
speaking of the dog, she's afraid of chickens. i have discovered, though, that calling someone who is afraid "chicken" is inaccurate. chickens can be mean! and they can peck pretty sharply. it's also really amusing to watch a chicken chasing my dog around the yard. serenity's hilarious. and a handfull. she's got tons of energy, and is smart. it's going to take a lot of work to train her, but it'll give me a project. she already knows a lot, and is happy to listen if she can get some peanuts out of the deal. peanuts are her treats, since dog treats are hard to come by. i'm just happy i can find dog food.
she and the cat have a weird relationship. they can be really cute together, but then the dog plays roughly with her sometimes. and the cat is actually often the instigator. she chases the dogs tail and jumped on her head once last week. and then she whines when the dogs chases after her. oh, another funny story. i was dressing a couple days ago, and was putting on a belt. i guess the cat was fascinated by the movement of the belt because suddenly i felt a few pounds of excess weight on my rear. the cat had jumped up and sunk her claws into the back of my jeans. she was just dangling as if she was a tail on my back. i kept turning to try to get her off, but she just hung on. i really wish someone had been around to take a picture. crazy animal!
in other news, we had electricity shortages a couple weeks ago. lesotho gets electricity from south africa, and apparently south africa is not generating enough electricity to meet it's needs. so its randomly cutting power in certain areas for hours at a time. usually this wouldn't matter to me, as i don't have electricity at my house, but i went in to town to type up some work and had to wait to use the computer for a while.
even more importantly, there's a coke light shortage! noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. south africa has a carbonation shortage, so it's cut back on coke light.
and in other big news, a shop in mohale's hoek, rooster's, might start to sell pizza! this is what my life has become, getting really excited over pizza.
and i've learned some fun new phrases for the next kids who ask for candy/money or the next ntate who profeses love:
tlola ka donga (jump in a donga)
ema ka hlooho (stand on your head)
ha ke tsotelle (i don't care)
so, life's going ok. it's getting cold here, and the daylight is cut down to about 12 hours now. not looking forward to winter.
hope everyone is well. keep in touch
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Moving and Easter
So, I’ve gotten my flash drive and hopefully will be able to keep up with my blogging a little better now. Basically I’ll be able to write every week in mohale’s hoek, and when I get to maseru I will be able to take all of my blogs with me and load them all at once. I’ve actually been busy with a lot of random nonsense and other things over the past month. Tuesday, March 11 was Moshoeshoe Day, a national holiday. It is the birthday of Moshoeshoe I, founder of Lesotho. And it’s an excuse for primary schools to stop teaching for a couple weeks leading to the holiday so that kids can practice singing and dancing on the holiday, and then most of the week of the holiday no school work is done as well. I don’t exactly understand all that, but I guess the national pride is good. I went with my secondary school to a celebration on Moshoeshoe Day in Thaba Tsoeu (white mountain), another village in Mohale’s Hoek. There were some police marches for the day, and then the kids got to perform traditional dances and songs. I have some pics on flickr for those interested. So that was Tuesday. Then on Wednesday my primary school was holding a big event that included dancing, singing, and races. A few different schools were invited to the celebration. And of course this meant that the secondary school couldn’t have class. I didn’t go to this celebration because I had some work I needed to take care of, but I did see some of the other school arrive. I love how the kids travel in this country. The road to my school is unpaved, rocky, and very uneven, and one school had hired a flatbed truck to transport the kids. There were children literally hanging off of the back of the truck. I managed to get one picture, though it was pretty far away.
I was supposed to be moving at the end of that week, but it didn’t happen. It turned out that the man commissioned to do repairs and put in a ceiling in my new place was a drunk. My ‘M’e (who is also my supervisor), and my Ntate arrived home to find him completely intoxicated with some friends who weren’t supposed to be there. He’d ruined part of the ceiling, and damaged my supervisor’s side board. So he was fired and another guy was hired to repair the ceiling and finish everything else. Long and short of the matter was that I had to wait to move until the Monday and Tuesday of the next week, so I missed another week of school. The week I moved was holy week, so we only had class Monday through Wednesday, and I left for Cape Town at the end of the week.
Getting to Cape Town was a pain. Taking a bus from Bloemfontein was the most economical route, so that’s what I did. I left my house at 8 am, and rode public transport to the Van Rooyen border post in Mafeteng. I then went to Wepner, where I spent a couple hours waiting for the taxi to fill up so we could leave (taxis are minibuses that hold 15 people, and the taxi drivers won’t go until the bus is full). An hour after the bus leaves Webner, we get to Bloemfontein. I spent the entire afternoon at the mall there, doing some needed shopping and relaxing and enjoying the food variety. I then went to the bus terminal to catch my 9 pm greyhound to Cape Town. It didn’t arrive until midnight. So I made it into Cape Town 5 hours late, exhausted and feeling gross.
I spent most of my time in Cape Town relaxing, enjoying food and bars that served mixed drinks, not just shots with cans of coke or juice as a mixer. I have food memories more than anything else of the town. Indian food, Thai food, Sushi, Mexican food (and good, strong margaritas – yes in Cape Town they even have blenders!), smoothies, real ice cream. I even got excited over the food selection at a gas station. And protein. I think I’ve hit the point in my service where I’m beginning to notice protein deficiencies. I’ve begun to have red meat cravings. Anyone who knows me knows how odd that is. There were also coffee shops in Cape Town, so I spent a couple hours on Easter reading at a coffee shop, and then again on Easter Monday. I also got to watch some Premier League Soccer. I went on a Township tour as well. That was the one touristy thing I did. I was curious to see how life there compared with Lesotho. I have a couple pics from this on flickr. It was just amazing to know that the poverty there was racially-induced. The shanty towns built on the side of the road had buildings that would be used in Lesotho for shops, but never as actual houses. And this in a country much wealthier than Lesotho. But there are renovations occurring, slowly. You can see in the pictures on flickr the difference between the old hostels of the townships where workers used to stay and the new hostels that are being renovated. The tour was supposed to cover the District 6 museum as well, but since I was going on Good Friday the museum was closed. District 6 was an area in which all black Africans were removed to make way for white Africans before apartheid ended.
That was about all I did in Cape Town. I was thinking of running a half marathon there, but it didn’t happen. I had a much less eventful return to Lesotho. I think I want to return to Cape Town again sometime to do more touristy stuff: hike up table mountain, go down to the cape, see robben island. Maybe next year.
I think this blog is already long enough, so I’ll start another one to include my life for the past week.
ann
I was supposed to be moving at the end of that week, but it didn’t happen. It turned out that the man commissioned to do repairs and put in a ceiling in my new place was a drunk. My ‘M’e (who is also my supervisor), and my Ntate arrived home to find him completely intoxicated with some friends who weren’t supposed to be there. He’d ruined part of the ceiling, and damaged my supervisor’s side board. So he was fired and another guy was hired to repair the ceiling and finish everything else. Long and short of the matter was that I had to wait to move until the Monday and Tuesday of the next week, so I missed another week of school. The week I moved was holy week, so we only had class Monday through Wednesday, and I left for Cape Town at the end of the week.
Getting to Cape Town was a pain. Taking a bus from Bloemfontein was the most economical route, so that’s what I did. I left my house at 8 am, and rode public transport to the Van Rooyen border post in Mafeteng. I then went to Wepner, where I spent a couple hours waiting for the taxi to fill up so we could leave (taxis are minibuses that hold 15 people, and the taxi drivers won’t go until the bus is full). An hour after the bus leaves Webner, we get to Bloemfontein. I spent the entire afternoon at the mall there, doing some needed shopping and relaxing and enjoying the food variety. I then went to the bus terminal to catch my 9 pm greyhound to Cape Town. It didn’t arrive until midnight. So I made it into Cape Town 5 hours late, exhausted and feeling gross.
I spent most of my time in Cape Town relaxing, enjoying food and bars that served mixed drinks, not just shots with cans of coke or juice as a mixer. I have food memories more than anything else of the town. Indian food, Thai food, Sushi, Mexican food (and good, strong margaritas – yes in Cape Town they even have blenders!), smoothies, real ice cream. I even got excited over the food selection at a gas station. And protein. I think I’ve hit the point in my service where I’m beginning to notice protein deficiencies. I’ve begun to have red meat cravings. Anyone who knows me knows how odd that is. There were also coffee shops in Cape Town, so I spent a couple hours on Easter reading at a coffee shop, and then again on Easter Monday. I also got to watch some Premier League Soccer. I went on a Township tour as well. That was the one touristy thing I did. I was curious to see how life there compared with Lesotho. I have a couple pics from this on flickr. It was just amazing to know that the poverty there was racially-induced. The shanty towns built on the side of the road had buildings that would be used in Lesotho for shops, but never as actual houses. And this in a country much wealthier than Lesotho. But there are renovations occurring, slowly. You can see in the pictures on flickr the difference between the old hostels of the townships where workers used to stay and the new hostels that are being renovated. The tour was supposed to cover the District 6 museum as well, but since I was going on Good Friday the museum was closed. District 6 was an area in which all black Africans were removed to make way for white Africans before apartheid ended.
That was about all I did in Cape Town. I was thinking of running a half marathon there, but it didn’t happen. I had a much less eventful return to Lesotho. I think I want to return to Cape Town again sometime to do more touristy stuff: hike up table mountain, go down to the cape, see robben island. Maybe next year.
I think this blog is already long enough, so I’ll start another one to include my life for the past week.
ann
March 8, 2008
It’s been a little while, so I figured I’d write again. I’m actually writing in Mohale’s Hoek, in the hopes that I’ll be getting a flash drive soon and will be able to upload all of this next time I’m in Maseru. We’ll see how that works out. My life of late…I got a dog, and a cat, on the same day. This was not intentional. I was supposed to be getting both animals sometime, but when I was coming back from Maseru in February, I was supposed to pick up the dog. On the way into Mohale’s Hoek I ran into some other volunteers, one of whom had my cat with her. So I got both animals at once. They’re growing like weeds. The dog is Serenity and the cat is Gizmo. The cat is still under 2 months old, and I’m awaiting the day that she builds up enough confidence to pop the dog when she being annoying. Both animals are female, by the way. At least, I think they are. The cat is kinda difficult to tell. Anyways, vet care here is minimal, as you can imagine. Basically the only shot I can get is a rabies vaccine. The cat needs to be a little older before I can get her one, but the dog is old enough. I get to buy the shot, take it home, and administer it myself, which should be fun. I was actually going to get the shot yesterday, but I dropped my wallet on a taxi, which was not fun. I spent all day yesterday trying to cancel bank cards, and replace ID cards I’d lost. Not to mention the amount of money I had in the wallet was kind of substantial since I was going to do some grocery shopping and get the rabies vaccine. All in all not one of my better days, but the women helping me at the bank were amazing. I couldn’t get a new bank card without my passport, which was at home, and since in lost my wallet I had no money to get home, so one of the women gave me my taxi fare, or I wouldn’t have been able to get any money yesterday. I have no hope of getting the wallet back, which is sad. I liked that wallet. Poop.
The weekend after I last went to Maseru, I went to Mekaling, another village in Mohale’s Hoek, to help with a Sport’s Camp there. It was another volunteer’s site. This is something that’s done annually basically, from a PEPFAR grant. Around 175 kids between the ages of 13-25 show up and get to play games and learn about HIV/AIDS. This year we had the kids playing volleyball and soccer, along with a couple games about HIV/AIDS and making choices. One game was the String Game. It starts with a story about a man working in the mines in South Africa who gets infected with HIV when he hires a prostitute (this is not uncommon here). Then he infects his wife, who infects someone else, etc. So it shows how HIV can spread. Along with all of that, the kids had the option of testing. I think around 87 of them did, which is pretty good for here. And we had a puppet show about making choices, that people from the village came to see as well. It was popular. The weekend was run mostly by Basotho organizations like LPPA, and the Peace Corps Volunteers were just there to do administrative stuff. We’ll probably have another Sport’s Day next year, maybe at my site. It’s a good way to teach about HIV and AIDS in the rural areas.
The Mohale’s Hoek volunteers have also started getting together once a month to hang out. We spend the night at a volunteer’s site, Nicole’s site. She has 5 rooms in her house! A bedroom, main room, kitchen, toilet room, and bathroom. She has electricity and yes, even a shower!!!!! It’s nice to see everyone. And Kyla, a Mohale’s Hoek volunteer, is a good cook. She made tacos for dinner and pancakes for breakfast. Mmmmmm.
Beyond that, I’m still teaching and trying to get my support group off the ground. That’s a little frustrating because they don’t meet regularly. They supposedly meet every Thursday, but they only met once in February and haven’t met the last two weeks. In there defense, it was raining this past Thursday and we meet outside, but I don’t know why they didn’t show the week before. School’s going OK. My students are lazy and refusing to do assignments, so I have an entire class that’s failing, but that’s not uncommon here. And in the end, it’s the exam grades that will matter, not the assignment grades. But I’m trying to start cracking down on them, and taking their lunch period if they don’t do their work. If you don’t do homework at home, you do it over lunch. I think part of the problem for me is that I’m not at school every day because I work in the community, and so the students don’t respect me as much. I get the impression that they think I’m slacking off instead of coming to school, even though I’ve tried to explain to them that I work with the support group, and with kids in the village after school. And they have no concept of the fact that just my being here, a foreigner in the village, makes my job almost a 24-hour one. So I’m trying to get them to realize that I am working, and that I’m happy to work with them after school as well. Maybe I’ll start going to the homes of the kids in my village to encourage them to do their work…
My last note: I’m hopefully going to move in the next week to my new house. All of the improvements are almost done. I have a pit latrine there. I think I’ll be a bit happier once I’m out of the middle of the village, and don’t have to deal so much with people coming over literally any time of the day, be it 5 in the morning or 9 at night (yes, both have happened). So, that’s it for now. The animals are fat and happy (well, not by American standards, but the dog is called fat by Basotho kids – and I can still easily see her ribs). Working on training the dog without a collar or leash, which is challenging at times. I’ll have pics up next time I’m in Maseru. Hope all is well back home.
ann
The weekend after I last went to Maseru, I went to Mekaling, another village in Mohale’s Hoek, to help with a Sport’s Camp there. It was another volunteer’s site. This is something that’s done annually basically, from a PEPFAR grant. Around 175 kids between the ages of 13-25 show up and get to play games and learn about HIV/AIDS. This year we had the kids playing volleyball and soccer, along with a couple games about HIV/AIDS and making choices. One game was the String Game. It starts with a story about a man working in the mines in South Africa who gets infected with HIV when he hires a prostitute (this is not uncommon here). Then he infects his wife, who infects someone else, etc. So it shows how HIV can spread. Along with all of that, the kids had the option of testing. I think around 87 of them did, which is pretty good for here. And we had a puppet show about making choices, that people from the village came to see as well. It was popular. The weekend was run mostly by Basotho organizations like LPPA, and the Peace Corps Volunteers were just there to do administrative stuff. We’ll probably have another Sport’s Day next year, maybe at my site. It’s a good way to teach about HIV and AIDS in the rural areas.
The Mohale’s Hoek volunteers have also started getting together once a month to hang out. We spend the night at a volunteer’s site, Nicole’s site. She has 5 rooms in her house! A bedroom, main room, kitchen, toilet room, and bathroom. She has electricity and yes, even a shower!!!!! It’s nice to see everyone. And Kyla, a Mohale’s Hoek volunteer, is a good cook. She made tacos for dinner and pancakes for breakfast. Mmmmmm.
Beyond that, I’m still teaching and trying to get my support group off the ground. That’s a little frustrating because they don’t meet regularly. They supposedly meet every Thursday, but they only met once in February and haven’t met the last two weeks. In there defense, it was raining this past Thursday and we meet outside, but I don’t know why they didn’t show the week before. School’s going OK. My students are lazy and refusing to do assignments, so I have an entire class that’s failing, but that’s not uncommon here. And in the end, it’s the exam grades that will matter, not the assignment grades. But I’m trying to start cracking down on them, and taking their lunch period if they don’t do their work. If you don’t do homework at home, you do it over lunch. I think part of the problem for me is that I’m not at school every day because I work in the community, and so the students don’t respect me as much. I get the impression that they think I’m slacking off instead of coming to school, even though I’ve tried to explain to them that I work with the support group, and with kids in the village after school. And they have no concept of the fact that just my being here, a foreigner in the village, makes my job almost a 24-hour one. So I’m trying to get them to realize that I am working, and that I’m happy to work with them after school as well. Maybe I’ll start going to the homes of the kids in my village to encourage them to do their work…
My last note: I’m hopefully going to move in the next week to my new house. All of the improvements are almost done. I have a pit latrine there. I think I’ll be a bit happier once I’m out of the middle of the village, and don’t have to deal so much with people coming over literally any time of the day, be it 5 in the morning or 9 at night (yes, both have happened). So, that’s it for now. The animals are fat and happy (well, not by American standards, but the dog is called fat by Basotho kids – and I can still easily see her ribs). Working on training the dog without a collar or leash, which is challenging at times. I’ll have pics up next time I’m in Maseru. Hope all is well back home.
ann
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