I love pork

            Life in Lesotho is literally a comedy of errors most of the time, at least whenever the pigs on my school compound are present. There is so much to say in such a limited amount of space. Chronologically, there have been several PC trainings, a vacation to Mozambique, the start of the second semester, more run-ins with the pigs (which, in one case, ended in a very tasty meal) and a successful (and stressful) HIV/AIDS life-skills workshop for the Form C students at my school. As always, I am learning ngata (lots) and constantly being challenged to keep my mind open. I often find myself wondering what the hell I’m really doing here and then I experience something new that reaffirms my initial desire to… wait, why am I here again? But really, the little things truly make my day-to-day life worthwhile.

            The winter months have been rather hectic. I have been busier than I initially thought I would be during the school break. Much of that is due to the PC workshops and training sessions my education group has had to attend. The trainings are helpful but they take up so much time!

           

            July 17^th was spent in Mohale’s Hoek, the district to the north of Quthing, celebrating the King’s birthday. Every year there is a celebration in one of the districts and the districts rotate the responsibility. I was able to see the King of Lesotho! But from really far away so I’m not sure if it really counts. At one point a plane flew over the crowd and parachuters came tumbling down from the sky trailing signs that read happy birthday in both English and Sesotho.

           

            The day following the King’s birthday I started off at 7:30 am for a vacation in Mozambique with two other volunteers, Tishina and Aparna. We spent a total of 36 hours trying to get to our destination on the beach by traveling on public transport. We took a combie to Maseru early that first morning, crossed the boarder, spent 5 hours on another combie that took us into the sketchy taxi rank of Johannesburg just as it was beginning to get dark. After hearing all sorts of stories from PC staff about muggings and theft we were weary of the area but as always we managed to avoid any danger. From there we boarded an overnight bus that took us directly into Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. When we got into Maputo we had to find another combie that would take us up the coast to a backpackers in Tofu. What we thought would be a 5-hour combie ride (because that’s how long we were told it would take from other volunteers) turned into 9 hours cramped and tucked away in the stifling 90-degree weather- here I am complaining about the heat when I just got out of the snow. At this point, my ankles were swollen like those of a late term pregnant woman’s.

           

            We spent 3 beautiful days at the beach, soaking up the sun (in my case burning because apparently the anti-malarial meds I had to take make people more sensitive to the sun). After 3 months of frigid temperatures, the 36-hour trip to Tofu was more than worth it. In so many ways Mozambique looked like what I thought Lesotho was going to look like. I’m not sure how to best explain that, but there were palm trees everywhere as was the sand. The infrastructure was different in many ways to Lesotho. In many ways Mozambique seemed more developed, such as the road conditions and the capital city of Maputo. But once we were outside of the capital city it turned into grass huts and farmland, children without shoes (as is also common in Lesotho) and few conveniences. The local people spoke a mix of Portuguese and various native tongues but very little English. It was a more difficult way of traveling given our limited language abilities, but it all worked out in the end! It was a nice break from the cold weather and stress of trying to make a difference in our communities. Perfect vacation, and cheap! We were happy to get back to Lesotho where we knew at least the general idea of what people were saying in Sesotho though.

              

            By the time we came back from Mozambique, school was just around the corner. Back to the grind! I am happy to say that I have received support from a couple of my high school science teachers, Dr. Berrey and Mrs. Nothdurft! They took time out of their lives to compile notes, assignments and tests they had used for my science courses in school, put all the information on a flash drive and sent it to me. I now have additional materials to be able to enhance my teaching. So far it has been a blessing and I am sharing the wealth with a couple of my fellow science teachers. We are extremely grateful for the additional information.

            Last weekend I organized an HIV/AIDS workshop for my Form C students. I worked with a Christian non-government organization called World Vision. They were extremely helpful in organizing food for the students; the students received fully catered meals the entire weekend (breakfast, lunch and dinner), more than making up for the fact that they had to go to school on a weekend. The workshop focused on HIV prevention strategies and given one in four people in Lesotho are known to be infected with HIV we decided to also focus on how people could live longer, healthy lives even thought they are infected with HIV. There are many misconceptions when it comes to HIV in the rural areas and it was a good opportunity to spread more knowledge about HIV to the upcoming generation. I was very happy with how everything went and the questions my students had about the subject. I feel like I have finally done something worthwhile for my community. This coming weekend I am taking the HIV/AIDS training a step further and have organized for another non-government organization to come out to counsel and HIV test the students and anyone else in the surrounding community interested. I pray the testing event is as successful as the workshop turned out to be. Planning is difficult due to my lack of cell phone coverage so if I want to go to town and work with these organizations I usually have to miss a day of school. I feel like it is counter-productive but what can I do? It usually works out in the end so I’m not terribly concerned.

            New bits: The pigs on the school compound are the bane of my existence. I spent a weekend early in May trying to get a garden planted with peas (they are winter hearty) and they were doing well until the pigs at the school got out of their pens and destroyed it about a month ago. I was NOT happy. I had been looking forward to fresh peas this spring! We had one pig butchered about two weeks ago so I have exacted part of my revenge. The others need to be looking over their shoulders…

            I recently tried chicken feet. The Basotho eat chicken feet as snacks and so one of the teachers I work with asked me if I had ever eaten them (no), and proceeded to cook a batch for me. They were chewy… but not bad! Next on my list—chicken heads; I hear the brains are tasty.

            I have been training for the Makhotlong Marathon with a group of students after school for the past two weeks. I’m excited to say I think I have a couple students who could go somewhere with running. The purpose of taking them to the marathon is to expose them to something new and teach them dedication to something that is not always fun or easy. So far they are doing wonderfully! The only problem is that they currently run in their school shoes, which are not running shoes. Thus, I am currently trying to figure out a way I could get them shoes to run in.

            Finally, just for the farmers in the family, you have been asking mom and dad what the temperatures are like in Lesotho during the winter; when it snows the temperatures are typically around 10 or 15 degrees F. I think it probably reached negative temps only once since I’ve been here. During the day, if it hasn’t been snowing it reaches 40 or 45 degrees F. Recently it has been getting up into the mid 60s. It makes me so happy!! Warmth at last!

            I apologize for the length of this post. I have not written in so very long that I actually have much more to say. However, I am tire of typing. J I hope everyone is doing well! As always, I love and miss you so much! Stay well and enjoy the fall football season.

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!

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

6 MONTHS! That's longer than most of my relationships...

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