The
past few weeks have been rather eventful for me. After returning from Easter
vacation the school has been involved in a couple weekend activities; a concert
at another school and a sports tournament. I also had the opportunity to judge
a high school beauty pageant. When they schedule activities on the weekends it
makes finding time to be able to write difficult.
The Concert:
Let
me start with the school concert. My school sent a letter to this other school,
Moorosi High School, to partake in ‘activities’ a few weeks prior to the event.
They declined and asked to postpone to an unmentioned date. One day (if I
remember correctly it was a Thursday), around 9 am, we received a taxi note (this
is a note, letter, etc. sent by taxi--by taxi I mean a small van that crams
15-20 passengers on at a time--or other possible vehicle passing by the site of
destination) asking if we wanted to continue with the aforementioned
activities. You would think they meant for the following week, but no! We
informed the children about the invitation and the following morning I was
hiking the mountain between my school and the Quthing camp town with a group of
students.
Fun!
Right? We arrive at Moorosi High School around 10 am (we left my site at 8 or
8:30), and proceeded to sit around for 2 hours. You would think that someone
would have had a detailed plan for how the day was supposed to proceed, but no!
The staff of Moorosi HS and Tiping sat down to construct a general plan after
we arrived that day. And we came up with this; trivia was scheduled for the
morning, sports in the afternoon, and the concert that night. Keep in mind this
was a rough plan, times were flexible.
I
wish I had been more interested in other school activities like Debate and Quiz
Bowl when I was in High School. If I had known a little more about general
procedure of those kind of events I could have probably helped make the trivia
section of the day run a little more smoothly. Then again, I’m not entirely
sure they would have listened to my suggestions if I had had any. Anyway, it
was a muddled mess-the teachers didn’t know what was going on, and neither did
the students. I think instructions were changed on the students three or four times
and they only completed two of the five subjects scheduled.
The
sport activities were much more organized. They were supposed to start at 3 pm
but didn’t end up starting until 4. Not too bad on the timeline. The boys
played soccer and the girls played netball. Netball is a combination of
basketball and something else (maybe rugby). It’s hard to explain. There are a
lot of rules and the hoop (like a basketball hoop) doesn’t have a backboard. It
is very popular as a girl’s sport. I would prefer to play soccer, but I’ll get
into that topic later.
The
students then had an all night concert to attend. Before the concert started
though, the students from Tiping had to wait for ‘M’e Mathabo, the principal of
the school, to bring food for the Tiping students. She was supposed to arrive
at 7 pm with beans and bread. She didn’t actually arrive until 10 pm. Yup. Like
I said, times were flexible. So the concert commenced around 11 pm. Did I
mention this was another all night event? The concert consisted of the choirs
from both schools taking turns singing songs all night. I should also mention
that the concert is a fundraising event. The students in the audience are able
to purchase songs, make a student go up to sing with the choir or other
requests. If the choir does not want to sing the song or the student does not
want to do whatever they have been asked to do, they have to pay a higher
price. It goes back and forth, like an auction, until someone gives in.
The Tournament:
There
actually isn’t much to say about the tournament. It was fairly well organized
and extremely enjoyable. All the Quthing regional schools participate if they
want the opportunity to take their teams to Maseru for a national tournament.
All schools have soccer teams and most schools, if not all, have a netball team
(we selected our netball players the day before the concert in Moorosi so our
netball team had only had two weeks of practice before the tournament). A few
of the bigger schools have ladies soccer teams as well as volleyball teams
(usually played by men). All of these sports were involved in the tournament.
Ideally,
I would like to start a ladies soccer team at my school but the problem is that
I’m not sure if the school has enough girls to support both a netball team and
a ladies soccer team. Now, normally this problem is avoided in the U.S. by
creating specific seasons for different sports. That concept doesn’t exist in
Lesotho. Anytime is tea time. I miss organization.
Miss Quthing High School:
On
to my next all night event, Miss Quthing High School (what is with these all
night events?? I’m not as young as I used to be, my body can’t handle it
anymore!). Tishina, the volunteer in the Quthing camp town organized a beauty
pageant for the girls at her school as a fundraiser for the OVCs at her school
(Orphaned and Vulnerable Children) more than a month ago. Her objective was to
boost the girls’ confidence and give them an opportunity for attention (good
attention). Somehow Tishina managed to get in contact with a couple women who
have competed in beauty pageants in Lesotho who were willing to judge her
competition. These women turned around and decided to put on a Miss Quthing
High School pageant, inviting all the high schools in the Quthing camp town to
participate. They then asked Tishina and me to be judges (me?? at least Tishina
has experience modeling, but me??).
The
pageant was supposed to be on a Friday night but earlier that day they changed
it to the following night due to problems with the original venue. Saturday
morning Tishina and I were asked to meet for a last minute judges meeting. We
were told the pageant was schedule to begin at 6 pm but that it was okay if we
showed up around 8:30. It didn’t actually start until 10.
The
audience was very small and the hall we were in was extremely cold. Keep in
mind we are heading into the winter season and there is no such thing as
central heating in Lesotho. Around 2 am the audience began to grow due to
drunken bo-ntate (men) who probably heard the music and decided to check out
what was happening. This happened to coincide with the swimsuit portion of the
beauty pageant (first of all, these were young girls, there should have been no
swimsuit portion; second, it was freezing! I don’t know how they didn’t end up
getting sick). You can imagine the reaction from the drunken men. I was
thoroughly disgusted.
The
event finally ended around 4 am. We went home after doing the math and
selecting the winner. The girls had to stay at the hall until morning light
because it wasn’t safe to walk home at that time. Although, it couldn’t have
been any less safe than leaving them at the hall where the event had been
turned into a massive party. Not only was I completely disappointed with the
women who organized the event for allowing the party to develop; but, I later
found out that they had been drinking during the event in front of the girls.
Great role models.
A final note:
Overall,
life has been hectic ever since Easter vacation ended. I have three weeks left
of teaching for this quarter and I am more than ready to have some time to slow
down. If you are looking for ways to help me with my job, I desperately need
better teaching materials and references. Even if I could get a compilation of
notes on basic science and math topics, I would be better off than I am
now.
I
have also decided to start training for my first marathon. Lesotho has an
annual high altitude marathon in the mountains of Mokhotlong in December and I
thought it would be a good experience that I could introduce to a couple of my
students. I would appreciate any tips any of my marathoner friends could give
me!
I
love and miss everyone so very much! Congrats to Joy and Beth for graduating
from Truman State University last weekend. I’m so proud of you both. Keep up
the hard work (by hard work I mean make some money) because I expect you to
come visit me very soon.
XOXOXO
Sadie
