WHERE’S MY MONEY!!!

Life’s been pretty slow the past couple of weeks. Just been going to school, reading, working on a couple of other small projects. I’ve been converting toilet paper rolls into shakers that can be used by the eccd (preschool) students for games. I’ve made one set for numbers 1 – 10, one set for colors, and will soon be making a set for shapes. Basically I just put some small pebbles into the toilet paper rolls, tape them at both ends, and have the color/number/symbol/whatever written in English and Sesotho. Then ‘m’e matukiso can use the shakers with books from the library or just as a game in her class. Hopefully they’ll come in handy.
I have also recently gained an appreciation for city workers. All those people with the thankless jobs of picking up trash and keeping the city/town/village clean. Yeah, we don’t have those here. All trash gets burned or dumped down the pit latrine (pit latrines can be very handy actually. I’ve become fond of mine). This is all ok. The problem is road kill. It gets cleaned up pretty quickly in the states by some poor person. Here, no one is paid to do those things, so if something gets hit goodness knows how long it will be before it’s picked up. Well, I guess a cow would be pretty quick because it’s worth something and it’s pretty big. Dogs however are smaller and don’t matter. So I had a dog carcass sitting about a quarter mile from my house for a little under 2 weeks before it finally disappeared. And, of course it’s in the middle of the road. Drivers do try to avoid the body, but sometimes run over it anyway. So after about 2 weeks, besides the smell, the site was incredibly gruesome. It was on the route I use to walk my dog, so I had to walk by it every day and it gave me chills. You could tell by the face that the poor thing died in pain. It was just really sad.
And another sad story (sorry): I was talking with my principal on the way to school on Monday. He’d heard on the radio that there was a village in Lesotho in which people were intentionally infecting each other with HIV so that they could receive food aid. I can’t verify this, but I have talked with another volunteer who said it was done in south Africa, so it might be true. Geez.
And I went to another funeral last Saturday. It was for a teacher at st. patrick’s high school near mohale’s hoek camp town, who died of kidney failure. I didn’t know him, but my host sister had gone to st. patrick’s back in the day and he had been her teacher, so she wanted to go but didn’t want to go alone. She’s still trying to get over tsotlo’s death and didn’t know how it would affect her. So I went. Ntate putsoa, the deceased, was catholic, so there was a mass said at the beginning of the funeral. Strangest catholic service I’ve ever been to. Catholic masses are generally pretty formatted, so you can follow where you are in the service even if you don’t know the language. Nope. I could tell when the gospel was read because the priest read it, and communion was pretty obvious, but that’s about it. And most of the congregation went up to communion which surprised me. I wonder if they were really catholic. Anyways, after the mass, which lasted about 1 hour 15 minutes, 19 people stood up to speak about this man. Seriously. All in all the funeral lasted 4 hours and 45 minutes. And of course I’m sitting there not understanding much and the funeral is outside at the school and it’s windy and threatening to rain (it didn’t, thank goodness). Then we had to walk across the street to the graveyard to bury him. There are lots of graveyards in this country, so everyone lives within walking distance of one. So he was buried and then everyone went back to his house to eat, as is customary here. My host sister was totally fine throughout the service, so that was good. I’m glad I could be there for her but durn, that was a long funeral even by basotho standards. Interesting point: because ntate putsoa was a teacher, everyone who had graduated university or college was asked to wear their graduation gowns to the ceremony.
On Sunday morning someone came by my family’s home to tell my family that a relative had died. He was the father of one of my students who I think is a cousin or something. The father died of T.B. the oldest son is arriving tomorrow and they will determine the date of the funeral then. I went to see the family on Monday and got to speak with my student’s (his name is kopano) mother. I don’t think she lives with the family anymore, but had come back for her husband’s death. She was blind. And kopano had gone to school. He had gone to the funeral home in the morning and then went to school. I guess he figured he had nothing else to do. I hope he’s ok. There’ve just been a lot of deaths in the past month.
And I’m getting over a nasty cold now. I’ve actually been laid up in bed the past couple days with a sore throat, runny nose, cough, all that good stuff. I’m still a little stuff but feeling a thousand times better than I was.
On a happier note, one of my students likes writing plays, and has written me a play about hiv/aids and making good choices. It’s in Sesotho, but my host sister lerato wants to help me so we’re getting together hopefully next week to translate it, review it, make sure all info is accurate, etc. I wanted to put on the show in October, over independence week when the kids are out of school, but I don’t think there’s time and so this might wait until after final exams in December. I’m pretty excited about it, though. I want to have a whole day of hiv/aids stuff. So there’s the play, and lerato has suggested getting a choir together to sing, which is great, and then I want to get some organizations in who can teach about hiv and do testing. But I think it’s going to be kind of a big project, so we’ll see how it works out. I have to find a venue and notify the chief, get permission and all that. But it’ll give me something to work on and look forward to.
Speaking of looking forward to things, my mother is coming in less than a month! I’m really excited. I don’t think I’ve ever been away from my family this long before, and it’ll be nice to see her. We’re going to spend a few days in cape town, and then she’s going to come back and stay in Lesotho with me for about a week. My host family here is actually really excited as well. It’s cute.
This just in: We in peace corps get paid quarterly, so we’re supposed to be getting paid now. Everyone was talking about how they had been paid, but my account was still basically empty so I called peace corps. They told me they dropped my account because I was going to be leaving next month. I told them no, I expected to be here a while yet. But there is a girl leaving in a couple weeks whose name is really similar to mine and apparently the administration confused the two of us and dropped me instead of her. Lovely. This isn’t actually the first time we’ve been confused. Last year during training people kept trying to give me her mail. I’d get all excited because I thought someone had written me, but no, the letters were for her. And medical has almost pulled her file for me before. And now I don’t have money. This is supposed to be rectified by the end of the day, though. Here’s hoping. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh.
Hope all is well back home. Crazy to think, I’m one year down and one to go! This time next year I’ll probably be home!