The above is the advertisement on some dolls’ boxes at Pep in Mohale’s Hoek. Pep is like a small version of Target. These dolls look like Bratz wanna-be’s. They’re pretty scary. I love thinking of the reaction the company would get in the States for trying to use that advertisement to sell the dolls. I can only imagine the lawsuits that would ensue… I thought the ad was kinda scary. I keep meaning to bring in my camera to take a picture of the box, and keep forgetting.
I also don’t remember how much I have written about the public transportation here. Mainly it’s mini-buses. If you’re really lucky you can get a Quantum or a Sprinter. Then you have air-conditioning and heating, and the seats are less likely to wobble back and forth as you move, as though they might come apart from the rest of the car. The mini-buses themselves are interesting. Most of them have doors that no longer have handles, and are therefore jerry-rigged to open. And you can actually see the road through the floors of many of the taxis. And then, Lesotho also has four + ones, know to us Americans as taxis. They mainly travel locally, and as far as I can tell are usually in at least somewhat better condition than the taxis. Regardless, most public transport owners (transportation is not government-owned here, though that is changing in at least somewhat in Maseru) like to decorate their vehicles. The primary form of decoration on the exterior is stickers that are words or short phrases. For example, in Mohale’s Hoek there is a mini-bus carrying a sticker on its hood stating, “Life is so Tricky.” Aaahhh, taxi philosophy. There is another that has a sticker reading “The Palace” on its side. Then there are the 4 + 1’s, “Two Bop” and “Five Bop.” I often wonder if the people have any idea what these stickers mean, or if they just buy the ones that match the color of their particular vehicle. My guess is the latter. Especially when min-buses have stickers reading things like “The Punisher”. I’ve heard, but not seen for myself, that there is a minibus in Maseru with a sticker reading “Taliban”. My favorite Mohale’s Hoek stickers are ones stating “Always Arrive” and “Arrive Alive”. Comforting. I even saw a private car with a sticker on the windshield reading “Tear Gas”. Really, do the owners understand what that is? I hope not.
And there are also proper buses that run between the camp towns. My favorite is the purple one that, in shiny letters written on both sides of the bus, reads “Ghetto Tours”. I’ve never had the pleasure of riding in that one, but someday maybe I will live the dream. I have ridden in a bus labeled “Lehooa Tours”. Lehooa (might be spelling that wrong – I forget how) means “white person”. Lesotho, how I love thee.
I can also now say that I have played soccer with a tennis ball. Soccer balls are expensive, especially nice ones, and between the barbed wire fences and the rocks they usually don’t last long. So a lot of kids use tennis balls. Those things are darned tricky to stop with your foot. Some of the kids are really good with them, though. Seriously, they have amazing ball control when playing soccer with a tennis ball. A boy who lives across the dirt path from me, Lefo, can do rainbows and everything. He comes home after school, borrows my tennis ball, and plays keep away from my dog. It’s pretty cute to watch. And it’s comforting to know that not all kids are afraid of my dog.
Actually, the kids are getting much better with her. Some of the ones who were most afraid have started to play with her, and they don’t even freak out when she jumps up on them, or barks. Not that I want her to be doing this, but she’s a puppy, so she’s learning. Anyways, these are big steps for the kids here, especially since many of them are not so much afraid of dogs as terrified. And the kids who are getting over their fears are helping the other kids to do so. Hooray for progress. This is not true of everyone, though. A couple days ago this woman who is probably about my age was walking down the path in front of my house. My dog was off sniffing something in a field on the other side of the path, not paying any attention to the woman. This woman however, saw the dog, started screaming, and ran towards the back door of my M’e and Ntate’s house. Of course, this attracts the dog’s attention and she thinks “Ooooooooo, something fun to chase.” Next thing I know, I hear a combination of this woman trying to beat down my M’e’s door and the dog barking. The kids around all started laughing at her, and honestly, I almost did too. It was so ridiculous. And I had a student of mine come to visit me who hid behind me when the dog came around, wrapped her hands around my waist, and started turning me to keep me between herself and my dog. Not even my dog. My puppy. Whew.
On a more depressing note, the volunteers have district meetings quarterly to discuss how projects are going, vent frustrations, etc. Mohale’s Hoek’s was last week. One of the volunteer’s who teaches at a small village secondary school was telling us that she had started a volleyball team at her school, and that they had had their first match the week before, against a school in a more urban area. Now, trash talking in America usually involves some insult to the person’s skills, intelligence, their mother, or to the person’s being overweight (at least as far as girls are concerned). Not here. The volunteers school, being new to the game, wasn’t a strong team, and they were not at all prepared for jeering student from the other school who apparently were yelling things like, “What do you eat? You eat nothing but papa. You so skinny, you don’t eat no protein.” Papa is the staple grain here. Basically refined cornmeal and water. The students from the other school were insulting these kids because they were from a poor village and didn’t have money to buy more expensive foods like meat for protein. If that wasn’t low enough, the students from the other school also yelled, “What’s your CD4 count?” That’s really low, especially in a country as decimated by AIDS as this one, and in which there is such a stigma against AIDS. And, of course, this is just another way of continuing the stigma.
Because sometimes you have to laugh to keep from getting too depressed, we started joking around about insults we could make up that would be pertinent to this country. Your mother jokes really aren’t understood here. People don’t get why you would be talking about their mother. So we thought, “What about ‘Your kobo’ jokes?” A kobo is a blanket, and blankets are very important here. People wear them throughout winter and even in summer, wrapped around their shoulders, or sometimes women wear them wrapped around their waists. Anyways, someone came up with, “Your blanket is so tattered, it looks like a dishrag,” and, “Your blanket is so ripped, I wouldn’t use it on my sheep.” Maybe you don’t get it back home, but I thought the jokes were pretty funny.
Well, I was going to talk a little bit about Basotho culture, but this is probably a long enough blog for now. Hope all is well.
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