October!

Greetings and Happy October!
So, as is par for my course, it’s been about a month since my last update. Apologies.
First: the volunteers in Mafeteng have a new mailbox in town. My address is at left, but its box 482. Now, the updates…

After Tom was shot, we all gathered in Maseru to be with other volunteers and there was a very nice memorial for him. A few days after, I returned to site, and I will say it was difficult. It was not only hard to be away from my (huge) support network, but it was scary because everyone was so worn down emotionally. The only thing to do is to take the time necessary to heal, but sometimes time can take too long.

The next weekend, I was back in Maseru to go to Ladybrand for my friends birthday. There is a restaurant there called Living Life and it is one of the most amazing places I’ve been during my stay here. Their prices are pretty reasonable and their food is beyond good, but the atmosphere there is truly one of a kind. You walk from town out down a road, past a little train station and down a little path to arrive at the front door. You then walk through the front of their kitchen and can see all of the beautiful fresh food and bakery products waiting for customer consumption. In the next room, you can look at the menus of the day (breakfast and lunch) on a giant chalkboard, and just beyond, is the porch and the outdoor seating. In the back yard, they have a massive swing – you have to climb up a big platform and take the rope, then jump off and you feel like you’re flying. There is also a trampoline and swing-set, plus lawn games like bocce ball. The food was fantastic and the whole day was wonderfully relaxing; we all ate ourselves full and headed back to Lesotho happy.

The rest of this blog post is just going to be random stories from between then and now, but definitely the highlights of the past month or so.
My school took a trip to Muela Hydroelectric Power Station and Liphofung in the north of Lesotho. This was like no field trip I’ve ever been on… The plan was for the bus to leave around 2:30am from Sekameng, to get there by a reasonable time in the morning so we could have the tour of Muela and then go to the cave paintings and cultural center at Liphofung before lunch, get lunch in town (or students were to eat the lunch they brought) and then get home by a reasonable time (actually, one teacher quoted 7pm to me). Now, if there is one thing I’ve learned during my almost 11 months here (WHOA!), it’s that time doesn’t run at the same speed as it does in America. I tried to sleep the night before we went, but of course it was difficult. Anytime you know you need to sleep, its always hard to calm down enough to sleep, in this case especially because students had arrived at school around dark and were just waiting around, singing and laughing, until 2:30 when we were supposed to leave.
I had a strong feeling the bus wouldn’t leave on time, so I set my alarm for 2:15 to allow for maximum sleep time before a crazy busy day. I finally rolled out of bed around 2:45am after an embarrassing number of times hitting the snooze button, got dressed, gathered a few things, and passed out on my couch in the main room of my house. I figured that ‘M’e Puleng, the one organizing the whole thing and one of my good friends, would not let the bus leave without me. Thankfully, my assumption was correct, and sure enough, about 3:45am, I heard her very loud, very excited “’M’E KATIE! PLEASE, LET’S GO TO MUELA!” Groggy would be one of the biggest understatements of my life, but I made it outside, wrapped (in true Basotho style) in a blanket (that I was later told only herd-boys used… my reply was that I am, in fact, a Shepard, so it didn’t bother me). By the time all the students boarded the buses and everything was in place, it was 4:30am. I put my earplugs in, wrapped up in my blanket, and tried to sleep… which was clearly not the intention of anyone else on the bus. The music was blaring, the bass bumping, and everyone on the bus was dancing. It was too loud to relax and too entertaining to actually close my eyes, so I sort of half-watched, half-rested most of the way. At one point, a teacher changed the music to watch the movie The Transporter (which was actually really enjoyable), but then the other bus got a flat tire and students wanted music again.
We finally reached Muela around 9:30, paid for students’ entry, and made it inside the “museum” around 10:30. It was a really interesting room, lots of models of the piping that brings water all over the country, and plenty of posterboards with lots of information about the past, present and future of the water project in Lesotho. The woman giving the tour spoke in English primarily, which was a blessing for me, even if the students didn’t understand much. It was really great to hear the students asking questions, especially since most of the questions were in English. To me, this shows that they have enough comprehension to understand not only what she was telling us, but to think critically about it, and then ask about that information, in English as well. Hooray.
After the museum, they took us down into the tunnel where the actual turbines and generators are. The teachers got a sneak peek at said turbines and generators – they are huge, but I guess they sort of have to be in order to supply the country with so much electricity and even export some to South Africa.
Next stop: Liphofung. At this point, it was about 1pm… we were all pretty hungry. We disembarked and again, had to wait a while to sort out all the entry fees. The main attraction at Liphofung is the cave paintings, which have apparently been there 5000 years. (I heard 6000, but my students say it was only 5000, and the tour guide was speaking in Sesotho only, so I might have misheard.) They were pretty cool to see, but as I said, I didn’t catch much of the information he was giving us, so for me it was mostly visual. Then we headed back up to the ground level and in several traditional huts, there was a lot of information about the various chiefs who lived in and around the area, as well as traditional clothes and instruments and clay pots… I’ll admit, by this time, I wasn’t retaining much; I was beyond hungry and getting a little tired too (anyone who knows me knows full well how much sleep I need to function). We took a few pictures of the group and headed to Butha-Buthe to get our “lunch” … it was around 4pm. Teachers pooled money and got KFC; students ran around and got junk food and whatever they wanted for dinner; I scrounged for vegetarian food; we all went home.
I was a bit more awake on the ride home and even managed to rock out with the teachers a bit in the front of the bus. Some of their dance moves were pretty funny, but nobody really cared how bad anyone else’s dance moves were, so it didn’t matter.
We reached home around 9pm, later than I’d been told but still earlier than I’d expected. I went home, ate a bit and crashed until my alarm went off (way too early) the next morning. All in all, it was a great trip, and I really enjoyed seeing my students out of the Sekameng High School context. I think they liked dancing on the bus more than either of the two places, but I do think they learned a little, which is, after all, the purpose of an “educational” fieldtrip.

That Friday, as I was teaching in the morning, a girl pulled her arm out of her sweater sleeve and was looking at something near her shoulder. I figured she’d given herself a tattoo, or a friend had written something on her arm, so I walked over and jokingly asked her what was going on with her arm. She removed her hand, and I saw what she had been covering: two huge bruises that were dark blue, purple and brown beyond belief. My stomach turned and my heart sank. Visibly upset, I asked what on earth had happened… “A teacher was squeezing me.” (I’ve omitted the name for obvious reasons; the internet is a big place.) Oh. My. Gosh. As it turns out, this particular teacher had also “squeezed” other students, and they too pulled their arms out of their sweaters to show me their bruises. I almost cried. The rest of the lesson was difficult to get through, and afterwards, I went straight to the principal. Now, I don’t want to seen insensitive, but I feel as though I’ve gotten rather used to the teachers beating students on the hand with a stick. I’ve even invited teachers hit me so I can see how exactly these students are being punished for things like showing up a minute late, not knowing the answer, or taking too long in the toilet. It hurts. A lot. Especially the heavy tubing they’ve started using (the tube normally connects the gas tank to our stoves). I had no idea teachers were using other forms of punishment, especially squeezing so hard to leave marks like that. That said, it is illegal to corporally punish students, unless you are the principal. This is part of the reason I went to my principal; the other part is that he is incredibly reasonable and very comforting when it comes to stuff like this. Plus, I’ve never seen him beat a student, and he too claims not to use CP.
I had every intention to hold myself together, but basically immediately broke down sobbing when I had to tell him what I’d seen. He promised to do something about it. I wasn’t sure what exactly this meant, whether he would talk to the teacher individually or address it at the next staff meeting, or maybe completely forget about it, but I was pretty relieved and calmed down enough to teach before my next class. I didn’t bother him about it again, and he didn’t bring it up, so I just assumed he’d dealt with it.
This particular story to be continued…

Last week on Wednesday, I’d finished my classes and discovered that my principal was planning on going to town for some shopping. I knew I had a package waiting for me at the post office, so I asked if I could join. After all, it’s a free (fast) ride to (and from) town. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the package that day because by the time I got the package slip, the actual office itself was closed. We then did errands for the school, which ended up being a lot of fun. He let me go to the copy store to have them make copies for the mock exams some of the students were taking, and then we did the food and other shopping. At this massive warehouse, we got something around 50 or 60kg of beans, maize meal, soup mix and fixins, and other stuff for lunches. Then we came to the list for the school’s shop. Apparently, they were running low on feminine products, so we had to buy pads for the school. When he said “Ok, next we need the pads,” I couldn’t contain my laughter. He seemed a bit confused, so I explained that I just had never pictured myself helping him shop for pads. We both had a good laugh. It was a great afternoon; I have so much respect for my principal and all the work he does for the school.

Recently, I decided to shave my legs (a big accomplishment with no running water) and wear a skirt to work. All my teachers complimented me, “You look so beautiful” … “You should wear a dress all the time,” etc. My favorite line though, was “’M’e Katie, I like you so much better in a dress.”

This past week, we only had three days of school, and, as it was the end of the month, students were writing my September exams. Unfortunately, the generator was broken and so there was no way to copy the exams. I had to write the questions on the chalkboard and pray students wouldn’t copy. My arms got pretty tired, and I felt bad because most students needed longer than the 20 minutes that were remaining (after I had finished writing on the board) to complete their exam. In any case, my A1’s had finished both math and physics exams and I still had a class with them on Wednesday morning. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do; I didn’t really want to start a new topic with them because we have next week completely off school, so I figured they’d not really be able to focus and then forget everything. I opted for a “fun” day… we talked about codes. At first, they didn’t really get it, but I showed them how to encode a message with a simple cipher, and they loved it. I wrote the cipher on the board and then gave them some messages to decode, but they liked it so much, they all wrote me their own message. Some were simple like “Hello, my name is Tsoarelo,” “Good morning, madam,” “Have a nice day,” but others were pretty funny, like “Kamohelo is dangerous.” My favorite by far came from one of the top students in Form A, one of the students I was able to get scholarship money for, who wrote “I love you.” It was truly one of the sweetest things and really made my day, especially because he’s not a very verbal kid, very respectful, but sort of awkward in front of large groups. He’s clearly very bright and works very hard, and I always joke with him when he freaks out about getting a practice problem wrong, so that message just seemed so out of the blue, but it made me smile.

The next day, Thursday, was the school’s farewell party. This was to celebrate the external classes (Forms C and E), who will start writing their big exams next week after the independence break. This means the teachers were up most of the night on Wednesday, cooking and preparing everything for the big ceremony and feast afterwards. During this Farewell Ceremony, students recited poems, sang songs, and danced. There were also visitors who had previously graduated from Sekameng and were pursuing various degrees at the National University or another school called Limkokwing. The chief and head of the school board were also there, and many people gave speeches. Students who had performed particularly well on their mock exams were awarded prizes, and several teachers who had found other jobs this year came back to give speeches about how truly special Sekameng is. I hope it lights a fire under some of the students’ rear ends, because they’re all bright enough to go on to University, they just might not know it, or know how to work for it. In any case, at the end of the ceremony, the principal got up to wrap up and urge the students to continue their hard work. He also made another announcement, one about corporal punishment. He acknowledged that many teachers use it very freely (too freely in some cases), and, in front of the whole school, teachers, guests and students, said very sternly that it is illegal for teachers to use corporal punishment. He asked students not to take advantage of that, and urged all of us to work together to find alternatives. I was absolutely floored – this was an outcome better than I could have imagined. The whole school! I guess the true test will come after break; we’ll have to see how many teachers actually take it to heart, but I was so happy and so proud of him for taking such a brave step. Cross your fingers that it actually starts a behavior change for these teachers; some of them are so rooted in their ways that they seem too lazy or unwilling to change. Others just lack creativity to come up with any other form of punishment, so I need to come up with good alternatives they can try.

The farewell ceremony itself was really nice, a good way to honor the students’ hard work, to encourage them to continue this hard work, and to show them how far it can take them. After the lunch, the students tried to get the speaker system working (by Thursday, the generator was fixed, go figure), and the teachers all hung around and partied together. We cooked meat to accompany the lunch leftovers for dinner, and had a really fun time dancing outside by the fire they were using to cook. I brought my computer and the school’s small speakers out and we partied until close to midnight, at which point everyone was too tired to continue (especially after little sleep on Wednesday night). Ultimately, it made me realize how special Sekameng is. Most teachers are wonderful, the students mostly work hard, and I feel as though I belong.

I can’t really think of too much else to write. I’m now onto my fifth page in a word document… I think 3000 words is a pretty good update for now. I hope everything is good back at home (or wherever you are), and that the colors of fall are as beautiful as I remember. Sending all my love from Africa,
-Katie