HI! WELCOME TO MY BLOG!
I waited a long time to start this only because when I was in Italy, I simply sent emails home to update friends. I think this time I like this way better, I hope you do too! Please feel free to contact me (kashepard7@gmail.com), but know that it may be a week or more before I can get back to you!
(This post is technically from quite a while ago -- December 27th?)
It is only fair to warn you that Lesotho is full of contradictions. With that in mind, I will describe (to the best of my ability) my life in Lesotho.
Up until this point, all twenty-nine of the trainees have been primarily living in the Peace Corps Training Center located in Maseru, the capital city. A tall brick wall topped with barbed wire surrounds the compound, and it is patrolled 24 hours a day by a guard who makes rounds approximately every fifteen minutes. It has running water and electricity as well as a washer and dryer.
There is a wonderful kitchen staff that cooks three meals a day for us and bakes delicious corn muffins for our two tea breaks everyday. They’ve been pretty good about accommodating the vegetarians in the group (E for effort, at least) with various tuna dishes (I’m not a fan of tuna), breaded-and-deep-fried-veggie-burger-things, and the occasional lentil dishes (my favorite, by far).
Otherwise, meals typically consist of some type of starch, usually papa (ground meal that is cooked to the consistency of thick mashed potatoes) or rice or pasta; moroho (the blanket term for vegetables that have been cooked with way too much salt and exorbitant amounts of oil), nama (some sort of interesting meat, I don’t eat it but I’m told it’s commonly mutton or chicken), and occasionally some type of coleslaw or fruit (from a can) in jello/pudding/custard… mishmash… thing. I’ve been eating fine, usually way too much in fact. Once I move to my site and am able to cook for myself, eggs and lentils will be staple protein sources in my diet. Vegetables may not be fresh, but there are options. Fruits so far have been mostly apples (yellow delicious, granny smith on a good day, red delicious on a bad day), some bananas, an occasional apricot, as well as more exotic fruits, depending on how much one is willing to spend at the grocery store. Though peach trees abound, children are generally so hungry that they pick them long before they are ripe, so any peaches are shipped in from South Africa.
Water has not been an issue since they have provided for us very well, but the village in which we lived for Community Based Training had to have water specially pumped in because we were to be staying there. Village pumps do sometimes run dry, which is a concept both very foreign and absolutely terrifying to me. To run out of something so basic and elemental for life makes me beyond thankful for all I have at home, and disgusted because in the simple flush of a toilet in America wastes up to five gallons of water, an amount that would give me more than enough bath water for a week at site (depending on how dirty I get and how frequently I choose to bucket-bathe).
Before we drink any water, we are (very strongly) encouraged to boil it for three minutes and let it pass through the filter that the Peace Corps Medical Office provides. If all goes correctly, we won’t have any floaties – after all, nobody likes chunky water.
We’ve gotten numerous immunizations from the Medical office (they take pretty good care of us) including Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, two (if not all three) of the Hepatitis strains, and probably some others that I’m forgetting. Malaria is not a problem here since Lesotho is both so far south and so high in elevation that it would take too much time for any malaria-bearing mosquitoes to get here from the more northern parts. Though we’re safe in Lesotho, if we go on vacation, even to South Africa, we do need to take anti-malarial medicine.
For the first few weeks of our training, we attended four sessions a day about every aspect of life here including technical training, medical information, Sesotho language, culture, safety and security, and simple practical, logistical things. For example, one time we took a transportation fieldtrip, which involved partnering up with a fellow trainee and one of the trainers, walking into town, taking a taxi from the ShopRite to the taxi rank, walking around the (unbelievably intimidating) taxi rank, taking a taxi back to the ShopRite, and walking home. Simple enough, right? For how acclimated we were to the culture at that point in training, it was actually a pretty big and very scary step.
Our language classes were divided based on ability and learning style and consisted of two or three students, which was a great way to learn. It was very different from any other formal language training I’ve received, since most of it was verbal only, rather than written.
Technical training sessions included scheming, lesson planning and practice teaching. We also learned about the history of the educational system in Lesotho, as well as a brief historical overview (but brief and pretty broad because as volunteers, we are prohibited from involving ourselves in any way, shape or form with the political system here).
One of the sessions that stands out most was one in which we learned about the corporal punishment here. It was a panel of teachers (several Basotho and one PCV) and the president of the board of principals in Lesotho. All of the teachers (who were female) said how wrong it was to corporally punish a child and how Lesotho is trying to make steps away from using CP in schools. As many of us were about to doze off, it came time for the principal to speak. He was very much in favor of using CP and was doing all he could to convince us it was the only way to discipline students who may be misbehaving. The atmosphere in the room was absolutely electric, and many of us became very uncomfortable. It was absolutely chilling to hear someone speak of beating children like it was as natural as breathing, and what made it worse was the way that the women in the panel (and our trainers) dealt with it. As far as I could tell, their way of coping with being uncomfortable is laughing, whether or not it is actually funny. There was obviously nothing amusing in this instance, which did not ease the tension at all. We had a sort of debriefing session later in the evening to voice our concerns and learn what to actually expect from the current volunteers – CP is very much a reality in Lesotho, but we are not allowed to use it (no surprise there, only relief), something our principals will definitely also know, a huge relief.
Maseru is about the size of Des Moines, IA in terms of population, but it is definitely more sprawled out.
Transportation:
Though Lesotho is roughly the size of Maryland (?) in the States, it can take over ten hours to travel from Maseru (on the far western corner of the country) to some places in Mokhotlong (the eastern-most district). This is largely due to the incredibly mountainous geography, but there is only one main freeway road in the entire country (which might contribute as well). It runs in the shape of a C and most other roads are very rocky or gravelly and difficult to travel. Further, if one is taking public transportation, a 30-kilometer taxi ride can last several hours, depending on the driver. A “taxi” can entail anything from a standard taxi in the states (referred to here as a four-plus-one – four passengers and one driver) to a fifteen-passenger van (usually full to somewhere closer to twenty people plus luggage plus children) up to a much larger van. Waiting for a taxi is always quite the experience. If one is leaving from a town, one must go to the taxi rank, which is basically the biggest mess of confusing taxis departing for various destinations, peddlers selling fruits, Simbas (think nasty, mostly broken, strangely-flavored cheetos), air-time for cell phones, crushed rocks to treat acid indigestion, shoes, belts, haircuts, chicken feet and a million other really random objects. The taxi rank in Maseru has at least three main areas – one for local four-plus-ones, one for regional shuttles, and one for further journeys. As soon as a taxi arrives, it jumps in the back of the line for the taxis departing to the town it just came from and everyone jumps out. If a taxi is first in line, it will wait until it is completely full before it will pull away, and I mean completely. This is mostly a matter of luck: if you arrive to an empty taxi, it could take hours before it is full, but if you’re one of the later ones aboard, you definitely timed it right. Then the driver and conductor have to chat with people they pass on the road on the way out of town… sometimes they know a lot of people, sometimes only a few. Eventually, you will be on your way to wherever it is you’re going… and then you must be prepared to be uncomfortable and to be in that position for a while. You may be asked to hold onto luggage, groceries, and sometimes even small children. One of my favorite taxi rides involved an older lady absolutely pounding a very large plastic water bottle that did absolutely not contain water… and dancing a lot. Oh yeah, the music… can be anything from trashy pop from the States (think the newest Akon CD) to singing in Sesotho accompanied by accordion, tambourine and drums (which sound like buckets). The volume is most likely turned up to eleven. Basotho do not like the windows rolled down (or over, I guess, since technically they’re usually sliding windows) at anything above a crawl since they believe evil things will come in through the windows (one misconception is that you can catch HIV from the air that comes in through an open taxi window). Passengers will get on and off the taxi as you drive and sometimes the driver just feels like pausing for an unbelievably long amount of time by the side of the road for seemingly no reason.
The main thing to understand about transportation here is that it depends on a lot and you really have to just let go and accept that you have little control. You will get wherever it is you’re going, but it will most likely not be when you wish to get there. Oh, and they drive on the wrong side of the road; the driver is on the wrong side of the car, and nobody is afraid to pass anybody else, no matter how fast the oncoming traffic is driving. (Barb – you would be so anxious riding in any sort of vehicle here; I frequently find myself thinking of you as I tense up as our vehicle passes another car but only barely before the oncoming traffic comes)
Basotho Time (BT):
Another recurring theme that you should probably understand about life here is that the vast majority of Basotho operate on Basotho time (what I will commonly abbreviate as BT). This is basically the general understanding that there is no such thing as “on time,” and consequently no such thing as “late.” This means that if you are holding a workshop that is scheduled to start at 9, chances are that maybe a third of the attendees will arrive around 9:20, but you should probably just be thankful if they’re all there by noon. People do not arrive on time, nor do they apologize for being late, and that is just a fact of life. They operate on BT, and they’re perfectly content with that.
Along with BT comes the promise of “I will” which actually means something along the lines of “Maybe later, if I feel like it…” For example, when my principal’s secretary told me she would come by my new house to check on me and show me around, it meant she dropped by as she was on her way out of the school compound for the day only to pick up the pots that the previous volunteer had left (to put it into better perspective, I had been waiting for her all day and getting sort of depressed for the lack of things to do; I was less than thrilled).
Community Based Training (CBT):
Part of our training involved living in a village with a Basotho family. We were split up into several villages based on what our formal assignment area is, so science teachers were in Berea, primary resource teachers were in Ha Mabekenyane, and early childhood care/development, English and math teachers were all in Maqhaka (it should be noted here that the “q” represents a click, so we all had extra work in simply learning the correct pronunciation of our village, especially since if you just said Ma-ka-ka, it means something along the lines of poop, in a worse form). We were all paired with a family who had expressed interest in hosting someone, and had the means to do so. Peace Corps also paid them a small amount for the use of their house and for them to fetch us water and cook for us for a week, but I am sure they did it mostly out of the goodness of their hearts. It was interesting to be separate from everyone after having been in such close quarters for such a long time… nice to be on our own and unpack all of our things and make a space our own (instead of a bunk room with six girls and all their luggage), but at the same time, it could be incredibly lonely. The Peace Corps had set up a program for the family to take us through which included such things as sweeping (it really is an art here), bread-baking, washing clothes, making papa (aka stirring really thick goopy white stuff), making lesheleshele (a very interesting-consistency flavorless porridge they eat for breakfast), chopping and grating vegetables, and adding copious amounts of oil and salt to things in order to make them taste… like oil and salt (I say some of this with a hint of sarcasm only because I do know how to cook and clean and do laundry, something that surprised many of the Basotho, especially my host mother).
My family consisted of ‘M’e Nthabiseng (mother), Nkhono Manthanbiseng (grandmother), and three bo-ausi: Rorisang, Tsepiso and Alina (sisters). I felt right at home with three younger sisters, though that’s really the end of the familial comparisons I’m going to draw. For example, my host ‘M’e was very short and squat (her biceps were about the size of my thighs, and I have put on weight), about the furthest thing from my own mother at home. Both she and my nkhono were very loving and generous; they were proud of just about everything I did, whether or not it merited it. I was Sesotho-named “Seithati,” which they frequently reminded me. If there was a moment too much of silence, there was no doubt a very high and nasally “Ausi Seithatiiiii!” on the way (cute at first, almost endearing, but by the end of the day, I would’ve killed to hear my real name).
We left CBT just before Christmas, went back to the Training Center to celebrate together (we cooked a TON of food), since most of Lesotho is completely drunk (and dangerous) around the Christmas holidays. On December 27th, we will leave with all of our belongings from the training center to our new homes! (More to come on that later…)
