Craziness in Lesotho

            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