It’s been a while since I’ve done a legitimate post.  I know, I seem to throw that line down in the beginning of every post, but the good news is that means I’m staying busy (guilty: I always say that, too).  I get home from school and am usually too exhausted/hungry/cold to put my thoughts into words…kind of a fail on my part.  For today, though, here’s a little attempt to fill you(and myself) in on such goings-on in my life!  Enjoy.

PIZZA!!!

Two weekends ago one of my friends’ school had a sports competition with the village next to mine.  Since he was staying with me, I invited a few other volunteers from the area to visit and make pizza.  There were 6 of us staying in my tiny little rondavel, a pretty awesome experience indeed.  We made 4 amazing pizzas, hung out with some Basotho, and had generally awesome adventures.  We made WAY too much pizza dough, so Khotso has some of it in his freezer.  That means I can make bread without sticky flour fingers.  NICE.

SCHOOL SPORTS EVENT!

Just kidding.  On the day before the event, after we had cut classes and valuable study time to have the kids clean the grounds and the latrines and the lab and the classrooms.  After we took time to mark the boundaries of the volleyball, football, and netball courts with ash…after we prepared to have kids from 3 different schools stay the night at our school…each school was contacted and informed us that they would not be arriving to play.  As lowlands schools, they said it would cost too much to come visit our school.  Ouch.  It was their idea in the first place to have us host the event, as they wanted their students to “see what it’s like in the highlands”.  Weak.  Which brings us to another…happier topic!

Visiting Katse!

One of my PCV friends lives about an hour and a half south of me at the site of what was until recently, Africa’s largest dam, the Katse Dam.  He had invited me to his site earlier in the week, but I declined as I was going to have the sports event over the week-end.  After the event was canceled Friday, I decided on a whim to go visit.

Katse is a very, very strange place.  The company that built and runs the dam has a huge influence in the village.  On one side is the normal, third world Basotho village, complete with mud shacks and people struggling to live.   On the other side is a strange, semi-abandoned, post-apocalyptic American suburb, complete with Lesotho’s number one white-people tourist destination, the Katse Lodge, an incredible botanical garden, a beautiful school, an abandoned shopping strip, indoor squash courts, a swimming pool, and a number of other strange amenities you would not expect to find in a rural highlands village in Lesotho.  Weird.

The strangest part is the sense of abandonment for all this.  The swimming pool is there, but no one used it until the volunteer there now started treating it with chemicals.  You get the sense that the squash courts are never used.  The suburb, while partially populated, is mostly beautiful but abandoned homes.  The roads (with sidewalks) are dusted with fine gravel as they have not been used in so long, but there is no trash to be seen, as apparently there is a garbage man.  It’s like a piece of the first world was transported through some crazy dimensional warp and just dropped off in the middle of third-world Lesotho.  Weird.

The dam is amazing.  I’ve never been to the hoover dam but it’s hard to imagine it being much bigger than this.  It’s amazing how deep the water goes between the mountains.  They say that water is Lesotho’s number one legal export, and seeing the magnitude of water this dam holds makes it seem likely.

I also got to have real, incredibly delicious coffee at the Katse Lodge.  It. Was. Amazing.  The view there is spectacular, and the combination of perfect coffee, great weather and awesome conversation made one of those moments that I hope never to forget.

The weather sucks!

No joke.  The cold itself isn’t bad, it’s the rain.  I’ve been a soggy bag of bones this week, trudging through the mud, muttering curses to myself under my breath on my way to classes, struggling to get through the days.  The worst is my feet. They’re a stinky, soggy mess, and I can hold them under a blanket for as long as I please and they never seem to warm.

Yesterday I got home, looking forward to using my propane heater for the first time.  I bought a new regulator for it at the Chinese shop and hooked that sucker up!  That little box of joy was cranking out some serious BTUs, which resulted in a warmth and happiness I hadn’t experienced in a while.  Problem being, I got too warm, too happy.  My head started feeling light and I was laughing at how funny it was that I couldn’t make out the letters in my book.  When the carbon monoxide detector finally went off (thank god) I had sense enough to step outside.  I came back in and the smell of gas was overpowering.  In my bliss, I had no idea what was happening.  Anyways, props to Peace Corps for giving us a CO detector.  I was definitely too stupid in my happiness to really comprehend what was going on (could be a pessimist’s perspective of happiness in general).

So now my box of warmth has a leak(another life metaphor?).  I had my host father take a look at it today and he doesn’t know what to do to fix it.  So now, to cope, I’m eating dinner loaded with all of the hottest Indian spices I have (taking small bites), the oven is running with the door open with my feet stretched over the door(somehow they are still freezing) and I’m savoring every fraction of a degree the computer conducts to my lap.  Honestly, it’s not so bad.  The oven is hardly an economical choice, but it’s warm enough.

Volleyball Coach?

So, I know nothing about the sport, but somehow, because no one else is ever there to do it, I’ve taken over the role of quasi-instructional-coach-dude for the volleyball team.  Our court rests on a bunch of rocks, on un-level ground, right next to a garden we just built in the school court-yard.  We built the court there, as there was literally no place else to put the net.  I’m a miserable coach, but I figure i’m better than nothing, and we play around and do what few drills I can think of for an hour or two after school, weather permitting.

This means some days I don’t get home from school until 6:00 or later, not to mention the random person that needs help typing a paper or fixing their computer, in which case I may get home at 7:30.  After i’m done cooking i have to lesson plan.  After lesson planning I have to sleep(with a 9:30 bed-time, i’m kind of a party-animal).  At 5:30, it’s time to wake up.  Then I have school.  Wash, rinse, and repeat.  That’s my life in a nutshell.

Peace Corps makes me feel guilty at times for not having a secondary project or doing more with my village, which is ridiculous.  I am here as a teacher.  I live my life as a teacher, which is a tough position in itself when working with kids that don’t know what you’re saying 90% of the time.  When the weekends come, I’m not productive…I truly have to find some way to unwind.  Guilt or no guilt, I’m going to have a hard time finding time for secondary projects.  Which brings us to our next topic…

SECONDARY PROJECTS!

A few weeks ago i sent two of the form E students to Diversity Camp in Maseru, a peace corps volunteer project.  Since sending them, I’ve been extremely impressed with the motivation and energy of one of the students, so I offered her and the other student that went a chance to speak with my Life Skills class about what they learned.  The first class was a bit of a blunder, as they tried speaking only in English.  We decided to try it again, this time in Sesotho, and it was a huge success.  The kids were asking great questions and were really into the whole talk, to the point they even asked to have them come in and talk again!

Now the mission is to use study periods every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday to have these two students go around from class to class as Peer Ambassadors for life skills.  They are speaking in Sesotho so the material is truly being understood and discussed.  It is such a great thing to see, and I’m so glad it’s worked so well.  The best thing about it is seeing this particular student take such a strong and motivated position in this project.  I don’t come to her…she comes to me with ideas!

Other projects that have been floating through my head include:

1. Water.  The village has no source of clean, running water, which is strange even in Lesotho for a village with electricity.  My supervisor and I are going to see what we can do to help this happen in the village.  They have already taken initiative and researched some options.
2. Computer Lab.  The school is having 11 computers donated by the company that works with the Katse Dam.  This will bring our total to 17, which is enough to teach a class.  The problem is space. Which brings us to #3.
3. Building.  My school NEEDS more building space.  Our staff room is horrible, we have no where to put the computers except in the science lab, which is detrimental to the sustainable use of the science lab.  A library(see 5) is a stretch, but if it happens they will need space for that.
4. Beautification Project.  The school needs some work, but not too much.  A little love would go a long way.
5. Library.  Unfortunately, the African Library Project has run into some problems and will not be an option for me as a volunteer.  That doesn’t mean that I can’t get some things under way for future volunteers.  I also would like to have a small shipment of books for Middle-High schoolers sent so that they are available even now.
6. Map Mosaic.  It is a simple project that many volunteers do to have a map painted on a wall.  The Geography teachers at my school would love it.
7. Water Storage.  My school has 2 water storage tanks, but it is not enough.  It would be nice to have these connected to the science lab, as well, but I want to see what happens with the water project before committing to this.
8. Gas Hoses.  My school still needs gas hoses for the science lab.

So that’s where my thoughts are at now…they will undoubtedly float in other directions as they already have so much.  I worry at times about how much I’ll actually do in these 2 years, but i can take plenty of pride in knowing I was a positive teacher and role model to my students, regardless.

This is a pretty long post, so I’d better stop here before you fall asleep.  Have a great day, I’m off to stick my toes back in the oven!

Tagged as: cold, katse, pizza, projects, sports, weather