Let's be honest, three weeks in Lesotho would have been longer than most of my relationships.
Where to begin?? Sooo much has happened in the past two months. Two months!?! I honestly hadn’t realized it had been two months since I had posted until I pulled up my last entry; time flies when you don’t have access to internet (sarcasm).
The agenda: Teaching, Phase III Training, Easter vacation and much more. I apologize in advance for the length of this post. Interesting fact, I just realized thanks to auto-correct that my spelling is quickly deteriorating (as if it wasn’t bad enough to begin with).
Teaching:
Ugh. I love it and I hate it. I wonder (a lot of the time) how much good I am actually doing for these children. They may be improving their English skills because of my presence, but I can’t shake the feeling that they are missing so many basic concepts in class just because they cannot understand me.
I have recently been working on directed numbers and solving equations with my Form B Math class (I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but the Basotho call it Maths because it is really mathematics not mathematic). I think I have spent over a month on those two topics alone. I gave them a test a few weeks ago in which they absolutely bombed. I had three students do better than 50%...
So, I decided to change my teaching tactics; I asked the other Math teacher, ‘M’e Lepelesana, to come in and re-teach the information. What I learned: I may talk too fast (still), I may cover content too quickly (still), and I use different methods for long division and multiplication-who knew? Anyway, my teachers like to call this Team Teaching. ‘M’e Lepelesana has since asked me to come to her Form C Math class and Team Teach. She likes my methods of problem solving and is able to clarify to the students the difference between the way I do things and the way they have previously been taught. It works well (I think). The students like it and I had 16 people pass my quarter exam, up from the 3 who passed the last test. One student even got a 90%! Success!
It’s not all work though, there is a little play. I should start by explaining that there is a hierarchy in the school just like any in the U.S. The Form C students have seniority and the Form A students are the freshmen. Traditionally, the Form A students are called dogs until they have been officially welcomed by the school. The school holds a Welcoming Ceremony, usually in March, to welcome all the Form A students and any new Form B or C students. I would liken it to Homecoming in many ways; they have a silly dress day, an official ceremony, a nice meal, and finally, what everyone has been waiting for, a dance.
Thursday of that week students came to school in absurd costumes. I was able to share a cultural note with them, explaining Homecoming and how we did the same thing, dressing up all week long and preparing for the Friday night events. I was able to show them pictures of Joy and me dressed up Senior year in togas and 80’s clothing. Thank you Joy! I owe you for the pics. They came in handy as more than just good memories. The students enjoyed it immensely, commenting on how beautiful Joy was and how fat I had been. Yup!
Friday morning rolled around; thankfully I was up and had bathed early because at 5 am ‘M’e Lepelesana came to my door to tell me we were going to start cooking. The teachers were responsible for cooking because there is only one cook and the students were to eat something more than just papa and moroho for lunch that day (keep in mind nobody told me any of this). We set the kitchen up in one of the classrooms and spent the morning peeling pumpkins and carrots, chopping onions, boiling chicken and rice, and packaging sweets for the students. Needless to say the students didn’t have school that day but they were still expected to be at school at 9 am. I’m not exactly sure why.
The actual welcome event didn’t actually start until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It was supposed to start at 11 so the students could eat soon after. There are many reasons it kept getting pushed back, such as no petrol for the generator, no speakers for music, it was raining, and finally, because the other teachers had to go get cleaned up after a long morning of cooking, which of course means they needed to iron their clothing still. Africa time.
Anyway, the welcome event finally started and took a little over an hour. As far as I could tell it was just a talent show with traditional dances, poems, karaoke and modeling, but at the end a Form A student was selected from the group and taken outside the classroom. A couple Form C students unrolled a large paper with a long tailed dog drawn on it. The Form A student was blindfolded and brought back in. The goal was for him to take a pen and ‘cut the tail’ off the dog. Don’t worry; I captured this all on video. The room erupted in cheers and screams, with students trying to tell him where to draw the pen in order to cut the tail. This is how the Form A students rise from being ‘dogs’ to being an accepted part of the school.
After the welcome event was over the students were finally able to eat (lunch turned into dinner). Now, the fun part begins. There is a dance that accompanies the welcome event. Typically, in the states, dances end at 11 or 11:30 pm. That doesn’t happen here (or at least not at my site). Since it is too dangerous for students to walk home in the dark at night, they are confined to the school all night long. The dance continued until daylight. So, one would think that there were chaperones supervising the dance but what ended up happening was all the older teachers decided to go to bed around 10 and it was left up to us younger teachers, Ntate Motaung, ‘M’e Lepelesana and me to stay up and supervise. I have choice word for how I felt about that but I won’t share them here. Additionally, in the U.S. only students are allowed into school dances, right? Not here. Anyone and their brother were allowed inside the school grounds, not to mention, they were all three sheets to the wind. And that was okay.
It gets better. I had planned on going into town (Quthing) that weekend so once the dance ended at 5:30 am my supervisor wanted to leave. We got our luggage loaded into the pickup along with a piglet that was to be delivered to a police officer in town (the pig is relevant, I promise) and were ready to leave by 6. We made it about ¾ of a mile down the road before my supervisor realized she had forgotten her wallet with her license in it, so we had to go back. We reversed almost all the way back down the road before the pig in the back decided he wasn’t happy and decided to jump out. Thankfully, I was wearing my nice, warm leather boots because the next 1½ hours were spent chasing this @%$& pig through a cornfield. Remember, I had just spent all night supervising a school dance. T.I.A.
Phase III Training:
Peace Corps works in Phases. The first two months, Phase I, was Pre-Site Training, PST—lots of acronyms, it’s a government organization. The first three months at site was considered Phase II. They give us assignments to work on in order to help us get out into our communities and integrate. We were also confined to our districts, forbidden to travel extensively. Finally, Phase III is a completion of training. We were all reunited in our training villages for a week of general training where we were able to discuss problems we were encountering at our sites and get different perspectives on how to deal with them along with new teaching tips. Some of us also had to be re-tested in language capability (that would include me, even though my region speaks Sexhosa not Sesotho- however, I passed with flying colors!).
Being back in our training villages was bittersweet. It was good to see the people who took us in during the hardest transitioning time, but it was a little more of a challenge for some. Bed bugs were a major issue for more than one volunteer, as was the food considering the number of people with bowel issues. Thankfully, it was only a week.
Seeing everyone again was wonderful. Though our training villages had been fairly clearly separated during PST the gaps seemed to narrow during Phase III training. This could be due to the fact that we have lost 4 volunteers already or just our realization of how much we really need each other for support. Whatever its cause, I am happy about the change.
To celebrate the end of all our training, Peace Corps staff took us into South Africa to a town called Ladybrand where we had lunch at a place called Living Life. The food was absolutely amazing. Considering the food we’ve been eating for the past 6 months I think anything would have been welcomed, but really, the food was amazing! After lunch, vacation commenced!
Easter vacation:
Easter vacation started with all of us volunteers from the training village of Berea, Tishina, Teresa, Janelle, Aparna, Nick and me, went to Teresa’s in Leribe to stay the night. From there we met up with all the other volunteers going to Durban in Maputsoe, crossed the border of SA and started our journey to Durban. We took public transport all the way to Durban in a combie, 12 people plus luggage completely filled the combie. Usually they pack the combie past the point of comfort but thanks to James and his ability to sweet talk the local people into amazing deals, it was a pleasant trip.
The next 6 days were spent beside the warm Indian Ocean, enjoying the sun, eating to our hearts content and relaxing with no connection to the outside world. Literally. It took us 5 days to be able to get SA sim cards for our phones so we were off the grid completely.
I also made it to Easter Sunday mass at a local Durban Catholic Church. The mass lasted 21/2 hours and we got to see 15+ people baptized. Mom would be proud. I successfully completed lent; I attended the first week of lent mass and Easter Sunday mass, gave up electricity, running water, cell service, and McDonalds. Impressive. I think I’ll do it for lent again next year.
I have more to say about my Durban vacation but I feel this post has reached its limit. I hope everyone is doing well and I have to say I MISS YOU ALL SO MUCH! Seeing volunteers here in country after only 3 months apart was incredible. I didn’t realize how much I had missed them, so I can only imagine how it will be to reunite with so many people that I love in two years.
Again, if you have anything in particular that you would like to know about my experience in Lesotho just send me an e-mail. I’ll try my best to fill you in as soon as I can! Hopefully it won’t be another 2 months before I post!
Enjoy the summer months for me because I am about to endure a long winter with no central heating.
With Love!
Sadie
