8/25/09

so, google just spazzed and lost a post i'd just written. that sucks. will write another later

8/9/09

so a couple frustrating/baffling occurences last week:
i saw a primary school kid (not one of mine) drop kick what looked to be an 8 week old puppy. seriously, he picked the terrified little puppy up, dropped it, and kicked it. i yelled at him and he ran off laughing. i will say that one of my girls actually went over, picked the puppy up, and tried to comfort him. this girl, mamello, really likes my puppies, and plays with them when she can. so maybe learning to play with them has helped her to be more sympathetic to dogs. maybe my having the dogs is a good learning experience for the kids, and a lesson on how to treat animals.
also, one of my girls here, who is around 12, got into a fight with another one of my girls, probably about the same age, and bit her in the back. why? i don't know. they are a little old to be doing that kind of thing, though.
i've started my after school study program, so now from 3 until 6 i help kids who have homework with their homework. i eventually want this to be something where all the kids come on time to study or read, even if they don't have homework, but we're taking baby steps. it has been interesting to see who comes, and to see some of the kids brighten up and make an extra effort as soon as someone shows an interest in them. i helped one little boy a couple days in a row and he came up to me on the third day at the beginning of study and gave me a huge hug. it was really sweet.

1/9/09

yesterday a couple of my older girls stayed home from school claiming to have swine flu. i can't believe the house mothers actually let them skip school. these girls were up and walking around like any other kid. i started talking with the house mothers and they explained that they have to be very careful with the children because they have all been through trama. i thought this was interesting, and explained a lot about why the children at the home are so undisciplined. yes, the kids here are all traumatized: they are orphans, many have been rejected by their families, some of our girls were abused before coming here. that doesn't mean that they don't need structure. so i talked with the house mothers about setting up after school study programmes. these don't exist here now. basically the children come home from school whenever they like, play around, and then suddenly realize at about 9 pm that they need to start doing homework. so they go to bed late and are tired the next day. and goodness knows what they do between the end of school and dinner. so now they have to come home after school and study. i'm trying to get at least the primary school students finished with homework before evening devotions and dinner (this is at 6 pm). we'll see how well this works. many ideas here are operative for a few days, and then the authority figures get lazy about enforcing the rules and everything reverts back to how it was. i'm hoping the house mothers will keep working with me on this. i can't watch all 54 kids study at once. i need their help
other than that i'm continuing with my library, with teaching kids to read, and i've been to a couple meetings. and i've met an amazing child. we have a little eleven year old girl here who was living with her aunt and uncle until the authorities found out that she was being molested and took her here. the uncle was taken to jail, which is not always done. many times the man will just get away with these things. anyways, this little girl actually went to court last week, stood up in front of everyone there, and told her story. she's an amazing child. i'm not sure how okay she is. she acts like a normal child, plays, interacts with the other kids here really well, so i hope she's ok emotionally. she's really smart, too. she's comes to me for extra maths work, and sometimes just sits on her own to read. most children here don't. anyways, it came out at court that the aunt knew what was happening to her and didn't do anything, so now this little girl has got to go back to court in a couple weeks to tell everything again. i hope she'll be ok.
oh, and we had an austrian guy here for a couple weeks. he was great with the kids and really handy. i hardly ever saw him because he was always off either playing with the kids or fixing something. he really bonded with our 12 year old here who can neither walk nor talk. the austrian guy actually made the kid a stationary bike to help strengthen his legs (we are trying to get him walking now). it's really sweet.

fun police stories

i've heard a couple great police stories in the past few days that warrant sharing. both are about the mohale's hoek police:

the first happened a while ago, before i came to lesotho. the police had made a big drug bust and had bags full of marajuana to use as evidence at the trial. after the trial though, they had to do something with all of the weed and decided that they should just destroy all the evidence. they piles all of the bags together just outside the police compound and proceeded to burn all of it. bill, my supervisor's husband, was telling me this. he said that the wind was blowing just right that day, so that most of the camptown could smell it and ended up just a wee bit happier and more relaxed that normal. way to go, police.

then yesterday, a police car was driving through the camptown with its siren blaring. unfortunately there are a lot of potholes in the camptown roads. everytime a pot hole was hit, the car would come to a screeching halt, the siren would go off, the driver would go through the pot hole, and then the siren would go back on. just imagine a siren blaring for two seconds, then a pot hole being hit, siren goes off, three seconds or so to get over the pot hole, siren back on. repeat down an entire road. absolutely ridiculous.

12/8/09 a thief in the night

so we have thieves at mants'ase. some of the villagers are coming in the night. and what are they stealing, you ask? clothes? no. food? no. chicken poo. we have villagers coming into the orphanage at night to steal chicken poo. and what are they doing with their chicken poo? fertilizer? no. they are feeding it to the cows. there is a small amount of grain in the chicken poo. there are also worms in the chicken poo. no wonder all the cows end up diseased!
hmm. what else is going on in my life? my dogs are growing. some of the kids are becoming less afraid of them. i had a major breakthrough with one of the 6 year olds, moeketsi. he not only comes near the dogs willingly now, he will pet them with a big grin on his face. other than that, i've started tutoring one kid in maths. and i'm doing some intensive english reading practice. i had a 15 year old reading a book made for a 1st grade reading level here. it took a few hours to get through sentences like "some sharks are big", but she did it, and i think she felt a sense of accomplishment. i'm realizing that the kids are never taught the sounds of letters, so many of them will look at a word like "big" and say "table" or something, just as a guess. so i'm going to start going back to the basics with most of the kids, to teach them the sounds of letters and letter combinations.

2/8/2009 i really am going to be better about this. promise

i will start writing in my blog again. i will, gosh darn it!
so, i got back in to lesotho on thursday. the flight was pretty good, other than a screaming baby sitting near me. the people sitting to my right and left were normal-sized, the food was palatable (for the most part), etc.
i spent friday in maseru, hung out with some of the new volunteers (at least one is a total nerd - hooray!), played on the interwebbies. for with whom i've discussed pride and prejudice and zombies, i watched the trailer for the sequel book sense and sensibility and sea monsters. you know, i'm a little skeptical, and it's written by a different author than p&p&z, but we'll see...
i left for mohale's hoek on saturday. popped by the airport to see off an american girl named dominique. she came to visit mants'ase and liked it so much that she's going back to the states for a month and then returning to work at the orphanage for a year. i think this will be part of her university program. so, there will be another american there, and she seems to have some cool ideas. i'm excited to be working with her.
got back to mohale's hoek. stayed in town at barbara and bill's. they decided, saturday afternoon, that we should take a drive around the maphutseng valley because it's right behind mohale's hoek camp town, it's really pretty, and we can see the last of the snow. unfortunately, the last of the snow makes the mud road slippery. we hit a pretty sketchy patch going down hill. the car slid most of the way down sideways. this is probably not a safe way to drive. but after that, everthing was cool.
my dogs have grown an enormous amount. one of them (my former ewok) is no longer recognizable as his former self. i think he will actually end up being a pretty dog. it looks like maybe he has some spaniel or golden retriever in his history somewhere. the other is starting to form a ridge down his neck. hints of a rodesian ridgeback, perhaps?
i made it back out to the orphanage today, and hit the ground running. i had to catch up with all the kids, then i read the wizard of oz to some children while others were bathing. then i had to unpack, after which i had to sit down and have a chat with a kid who'd stabbed another kid in the butt last night. apparently they'd just been playing. so i got to talk about the dangers of playing with knives to a 15-year old boy.
oh, and we got a new girl at the orphanage, making our numbers now 54, or 4 over capacity. she's 11, and an abuse victim. so i met her, too.
and now i'm about to refresh my physics skills so i can help one of the girls here actually pass science this year. wish me luck.