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