First Snow

View of mountains from the Quthing camp town after the first snow.

My Room

Just to give you all an idea of what my living conditions look like. My bathtub is on top of my wardrobe. The wine bottles function as candle holders, and I have to dry my underwear inside because it is considered inappropriate to hang them outside on the line.

This is my kitchen. My water is underneath the table on the right, my sink consists of the two blue basins on top of the table, and my stove is attached to a gas tank hidden in the corner.

Twists

 

To avoid having to wash my hair so much I decided to have my hair twisted. There is fake hair twisted in with my real hair. And it did the job!

Reason #3 why you don't linger in the latrine

           It has been some time since I last posted but I wanted to make sure I had something good to report this time instead of the same ol’ teaching is difficult blah blah (by the way, I have a newfound respect for my teachers growing up—they definitely do not get paid enough to deal with moody adolescents all day, everyday). Needless to say, I now have something interesting to say—at least I think!

           

            Fro the past couple months Lesotho has been gearing up for their national elections which they have every five years for the role of Prime Minister. Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy set up much the same as England, and has been governed by the same Prime Minister for 15 years, Masisili (Ma-see-see-dee). Before I go any further you have to keep in mind that I have learned most of the following information by word of mouth and often my sources are politically biased. Also keep in mind that I am not allowed to take sides or make any kind of politically charged statement as a volunteer.

            I haven’t written about the political situation until now because things were fairly tense leading up to the final election and I wasn’t sure if I would be seeing many of you sooner than I had previously expected. But here goes: Many people in Lesotho are ready for change, they believe the government, especially Mosisili, is corrupt (go figure). About two, maybe three, months ago Mosisili split from his political party to form his own party due to rising tensions between his old political party, parliament, and him. This meant there were now three major political parties vying for control. This really isn’t all that exciting until you understand that there was rioting during the 1998 elections due to similar circumstances that ended up burning the capital city, Maseru, practically to the ground and leaving the country in a state of unrest. So the Peace Corps headquarters in Lesotho has been extremely on edge throughout this whole process, preparing all of us volunteers for the worst.

            During the last week in May (the week before elections) I was confined to my site, forbidden to travel around Lesotho, especially not to Maseru. You should be happy to know PC was on top of the situation taking all the necessary precautions. And you can rest assured I kept mother abreast of the situation (possibly leaving out a few details here and there).

            Well, that week, two of the member on the Tiping School Board decided to expel one of the teachers at my school for allegedly telling the students who to vote for (brainwashing). The voting age is 18 and I teach the equivalent of 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grades yet many of my students are of voting age. The teacher is not on contract with the ministry of education, which means the school was paying him out of pocket (not a lot) to teach, so he could technically be considered a volunteer teacher. The two members of the school board not only failed to follow correct protocol for expelling a teacher, but they also brought the matter directly to the ministry of education without informing my principal beforehand. It was also made known to me that the two school board members were supporters of the current PM and their jobs were at stake if he was not re-elected (remember, I was only getting one side of this story). The teachers at my school were all in a huff about the incident and my principal refused to allow me to remain at Tiping during the weekend of elections, thus, I spent the weekend in town waiting out the election results with Tishina and another volunteer in Quthing who had gun shots in her village leading up to election weekend.

           

            As I am still in Lesotho, still doing my job you should have been able to figure out that nothing serous happened in Lesotho to merit the PC pulling volunteers out of country. The Prime Minister was defeated and the new Prime Minister was sworn in only a week ago. All that fuss for nothing! As for the teacher who was expelled at my school, I will keep you updated as soon as I am aware of what is going on. We are now on winter break (yay!) so I am not sure what is being done.

            On to more exciting news—I have a two month break! I am to spend the break thinking and planning and beginning to implement ‘secondary projects’ or projects that help the community I am serving, not just the school I teach at. Considering I have no central community/village this is somewhat of a challenge for me. I am sure I will come up with something though. Anyone know anything about making goat cheese?! You think I’m joking but I’m not.

            Even more exciting, we had our firs snow of the season the day we closed for winter break. All I can say is a small block room with corrugated metal roofing and winter are not a good combination. I’ve been sleeping with a hat and gloves on for the past month and I can see my breath almost all the time (in my room). I do have a gas heater but that is really only good for heating my roof. To be perfectly honest, it only gets really cold during the night—if the sun is shining during the day it is rather nice, but if there are clouds in the sky I’m screwed. All I want to do is crawl under my covers and stay there for the rest of my life. I am going through tea and hot cocoa (and coffee on a good day) like crazy just trying to stay warm. Which brings me to reason #3 of why you don’t linger in the latrine; you quite literally freeze your butt off. J Thank you for the warning Grandpa John A, but I just had to experience this one for myself for some reason…

            Finally, what I know you have all been waiting for, the bathing situation: I do, in fact, still bathe everyday. Of course bathing is a loose term and can apply to the kind of sponge bathing I have to do in the winter instead of the traditional, sitting in a tub of hot (and sometimes murky) water that we are all familiar with, but it counts! I have not washed my hair in three weeks though due to my new hairstyle; I got it twisted by one of the teachers at my school. It has made my life so much easier and it is a great topic with the local people. They LOVE that I styled my hair like they do.

            I also have to mention that I have successfully made Grandma Rosie’s cinnamon rolls and I think this is a particular accomplishment because I have to bake on a gas stove. They were delicious and almost as good as grandma’s (I couldn’t find powdered sugar to make the icing). My teachers were all amazed and thrilled with the new treat I’ve introduced to them. Cross-cultural learning and connections--check.

            Anyway, as always, I love and miss you all so much (but not as much as I miss central heating). I hope to hear from you, because your letters honestly make my day-to-day living more enjoyable. I also hope that everyone is enjoying the warm summer weather and if you could send some of it my way I would be grateful!

XOXO

Sadie

P.S. In case you were wondering what reasons 1 and 2 are for not lingering in the latrine they are as follows; the smell (obviously), and the bugs that wait to ambush you while you are trying to take a moment for yourself, specifically the spiders. My overactive imagination could have something to do with the second reason, but I can’t shake the feeling that as soon as I sit down to do my business something big, with lots of legs is going to come out from it’s hiding place and crawl where it shouldn’t. MMM!