little brothers

                I didn’t really know Moeketsi Tsepe. 

For starters, he was in the first grade, and my interactions with those kids are pretty limited to waves of “hi!” and “goodbye!” when I’m coming and going from school.  But Moeketsi’s older sister, Nthati, is one of my 7^th grade girls.  She and all of her friends used to drag him around the school grounds during lunchtime, showing him off to the teachers and making him do things that only 14-year old girls could think of doing.

                Nthati was a really proud big sister.  I could just tell.  The way she talked about him and forced him to play with her and her friends, smiling and teasing him the whole time, reminded me of my own brothers when we were little.

                Moeketsi passed away in the hospital last weekend.  Everyone said “he was sick, he was a quiet boy, he never ate, something was wrong with him…”

                We let school out today at 11am so the students could wait alongside the road for the hearse to pass and sing hymns for it.  Except that when it arrived it wasn’t really a hearse at all; his coffin was so small that it fit inside the back seat of an SUV.

                The car slowed and turned down the dirt road towards its destination, and we formed two solemn lines along both sides of the car.  We walked steadily through the village singing hymns as loudly as we could.  People came out of their houses and stood in their yards watching us pass. We walked all the way to the family’s house, where we surrounded the car as the back seat doors were opened.

                The coffin was small enough that it only took two men to lift it out.  When it emerged, one of my 6^th grade boys who was standing directly in front of me turned around to face away.  His eyes were filled with tears.  He looked at me until I told him it was OK to turn around again.  As the coffin was carried into a nearby hut, we stood around in a clump and continued on with our hymns.

                It must have been one of the family members who ushered us into the hut to pray around the coffin.  My students filed in one-by-one, and the teachers waited until all the kids were inside to enter. 

                I wasn’t ready for it.

                I wasn’t ready to see Lineo, my smartest 7^th grade girl, sobbing on her sister’s shoulder.  I wasn’t ready to see Kamohelo, a troublesome, talkative 5^th grader, wiping tears off of his cheeks.  Lehlohonolo, who never talks in class and hardly lifts his head up when he answers, looked over at me with big, watery eyes.  Nthati was crying and moaning out loud. 

My little, humble school was packed in this crumbling hut, praying over a tiny coffin, mourning the loss of one of us.  Suddenly, we weren’t teachers or students anymore.  We were a family, and we were all suffering the same.

The funeral is tomorrow.  But I think that today was almost more special, more private, more personal than the actual funeral will be.  On our way home, one of the villagers explained to me that since Moeketsi was so young, he wasn’t able to meet many people in his life.  Our school was his everything.  Apart from his sister and mother, we were his family.

Tlaleng

                The first time that I saw her, I thought she was a boy. 

Tlaleng was wearing gray trousers and a white shirt, which is the usual boys’ uniform at our school.  She had a high, wrinkled forehead that looked like she was always raising her eyebrows.  Her jawline was strong and defined, and her lips were always curled up in a wry smile.  Every time she talked to me, she tilted her head down and peered up at me through thin, shy eyelashes.  The way she was always stealing glances at me during morning assembly and class, I thought she was just a nervous 7^th grade boy.

                Within the first few weeks at school, I knew she’d be a special student.  One day, she came to me at lunch with a poem to read.  It was called “In My Life”.  The first few lines went something like this: “In my life, I have suffered/I have seen many things/Happening to me, in my life/But what could I do?  Nothing, because I was too young”. 

                I read it and didn’t know how to respond.  I didn’t know if she wanted my opinion on her grammar usage, or if this was a cry for help.  I told her that it was great work and that it takes a lot of courage for a poet to write about traumatic events in life.  She smiled and said “thank you madam” and walked out of the room.  Thereafter, I was the one caught stealing glances at her during class.  I was completely captivated by her.

                Tlaleng lost her mother some years back.  I don’t know when and I don’t know how.  She lives with her father now, in a village somewhere near our school.  To my knowledge, she doesn’t have any siblings.  I know she was very close to her mother.  She talks a lot about playing with her mother’s hair while she was still alive.

                 Tlaleng’s English is excellent.  It’s nearly the best of all the students in my class.  She sits in the front row towards the left side of the room.  Even though she’s brilliant, she is very shy about answering out loud in class.  Only when I’ve asked a very difficult question with no response from the rest of the class will she raise her hand and self-consciously answer me correctly.  She shuffles her feet while she answers, and always says “I think that…” before explaining her reasoning.

                When I connected my 7^th grade class to my sister’s class in America last semester to be pen pals, I immediately decided that Tlaleng should write to my sister Lindsay.  I wanted Tlaleng to know that I had chosen her to be Lindsay’s pen pal and that she was special. 

I only came to find out after reading our first round of letters that Tlaleng is 19-years old.

                This morning, while I was walking to school with my principal, she told me that last Friday Tlaleng had decided to drop out of school.  I felt like my heart was breaking.  She told her classmates that she wanted to instead attend a traditional “initiation school” in the mountains.  She wanted a female circumcision and to learn how to become a real Mosotho woman.

                The other teachers at my school had obviously noticed how remarkably clever Tlaleng is, and they were infuriated with her.  Leaving early from classes on Friday, they marched over to Tlaleng’s house and demanded that her father take responsibility for her decision and force her to come back to school.  They even threatened to have him arrested by the police if he didn’t ensure that she was back in classes on Monday.

                Sure enough, Tlaleng was at school today before 8am.  Her father also came, accompanied by an uncle of hers, to discuss Tlaleng’s behavior.  I was called into the office to talk to Tlaleng and her father directly.  It was shocking to see Tlaleng’s family; she is so intelligent and well-spoken, and her father was dirty and wore an old farmer’s suit and had an unshaven, ratty beard.  It made me wonder what her mother was like.  Since he didn’t speak English, the principal translated what I said.

                While she peered up at me through those eyelashes, I told Tlaleng that she was one of the most intelligent girls I knew.  I told her that she would be ridiculous to throw away all of her talents by leaving school in the 7^th grade.  I told her that I knew she would go to high school—and even college—if she kept working hard in her classes, hard enough to earn scholarships.  I told her that, in a country like this, education is everything.  If she wanted to work for the Ministry of Education to help orphans like herself, as she had told me once in one of her compositions, then she needed to complete 7^th grade at the very least.

                She promised me she’d stay in school.

airplanes in the sky

                This morning as I was walking to school, I noticed something very strange.  It had been awhile since I’d seen one, and I could hardly believe that I knew exactly what it was.  It seemed like it came from a completely different lifetime. 

                It was an airplane.

                It’s hard to imagine that almost a year ago, I got on what would become one of the most important plane rides of my life.  I remember small, unimportant things about that trip… sitting on the ground at JFK at 4am with our overloaded bags…the mean waitress in Philadelphia at what would be my last breakfast in America…the “toiletry pack” that the stewardess gave me on the plane, with dark green socks and a tube of toothpaste…all of the African-looking souvenirs at the Jo’burg airport….wondering if I could fill my water bottle from the sink…

                I used to love riding in airplanes.  Absolutely loved it.  An airport meant adventure.  It meant that you were going somewhere new and exciting.  You were embarking on a journey so great that it took an entire airplane ride to get there!  The door closes in one place, and when it opens again upon arrival, you’re met with entirely different circumstances: sometimes a blast of heavy, damp humidity, sometimes snow flurries creeping through the cracks along the jet way.  Sometimes the airport has signs that are in a completely different language.

                And the entire experience of riding on an airplane is such a treat!  I love beverage service.  I really love when a meal is included.  I don’t love the food, but I love how neat and organized it all is.  Everything is packaged in its own little compartment, and the butter is in a little box on the side, and when you’re finished you wipe up with a little napkin from a wrapper.  There is nothing better than a clean airplane, a friendly and timely crew, and decent food and beverage service. 

                How superfluous it all seems when I look up at this airplane in the sky while I wander down my rocky dirt road on the way to school.  I can’t believe I was ever so lucky as to be able to ride in an airplane.  I can’t believe I ever complained about slow service or unpleasant food.  When I tell my students and colleagues that I arrived in Lesotho on an airplane, they are awestruck.  They just assume that you travel everywhere in a car.  (When I tell them that an ocean separates Africa and America, they respond with “well why not use a boat?”) 

                Every day I am here, I am reminded of the things we take for granted in America.  Things you wouldn’t even notice you have until one day, they are gone.  Hot water from a faucet.  Water, period.  A flushing toilet.  A light bulb.  An unlimited supply of electricity.  Cold food and drinks.  Ice cubes. 

                I might complain about how “rough” it is here sometimes, but I’m so thankful for the humbleness it’s taught me.  Lots of people here are suffering, but they’re not complaining.  They’re usually singing (or getting drunk). 

Being unhappy or happy in a tough situation is a choice.  If you’ve exhausted all other alternatives, why not just settle for contentment…at least for the time being?  It’s a lot easier to live with than being frustrated all of the time.  I’ve dealt with plenty of frustrations—slow, crowded taxis, people making fun of me in a foreign language, awkward and rude cultural clashes—but getting upset over them only ruins my day and gives me high blood pressure.  I’m slowly learning to settle down and let things happen as they may.  And for the time being, I might even start to sing a little tune.  (Or get drunk). 

Snapshots

My house -- the kitchen

One of my dogs, Stinky, whom I've recently renamed "Frank" so it fits better with the other dog's name, Beans

Traditional Basotho clothes

My sisters!

My kids during choir practice

I guess Blogspot deemed this photo inappropriate and didn't upload the bottom half of it. Otherwise, you'd see me chopping a chicken's head off.

One of my teachers and I at sport's day

Drinking quarts on the ground with my favorite

A day in the life

                So I got to thinking.  I was thinking about this blog, and about everything I tell you, and about what you might like to read about. 

                And the thought came to me:  do you know what I do every day?  Sure, I am a teacher…I go to school…I have little kids running around after me all the time like you see in those Peace Corps “Life is Calling” advertisements… the usual. 

But you don’t know the little things.  The things that have become so average that I forget to tell you about them.

                So here goes.

                During the week, I wake up at around 5:45 a.m., which gives me an hour to get ready before I need to leave for school.  I’m usually too lazy (or too cold) to go outside, so I pee in a bucket.  Then I heat up some water on the stove for coffee and a bath (the baths have been happening less frequently…it’s winter.  No heater.  Three times a week is enough!).  I have to boil my water for three minutes and put it through a water filter before it’s safe to drink.

                So I get ready as usual.  I dump the bath water outside.  I schlep out to the latrine and empty the pee bucket.  I usually have toast and eggs or oatmeal for breakfast.  And then I leave.  I walk to my principal’s house which is in a neighboring village, about a 30 minute walk.  And from there, we either catch a taxi to school or get a ride from her husband.  School is only about a three-minute drive from her house.

                We have morning assembly, which is where the entire school lines up by class outside and sings, prays, and hears announcements from the teachers.  Assembly starts at 7:45 and class starts at 8 a.m.  I teach English to my 7^th graders first.  They are my favorite class.  There are 23 of them and I know and love each and every one of them as if they were my own kids.  My heart is swelling up just thinking about them.  When I walk in the room, they all stand customarily and greet me (“Good morning madam! How are you madam!”).  They have been working so hard to pass their primary school exit exam this October, and secretly I wish that they could stay with me just one more year.  I am so proud of them.

                The 5^th and 6^th graders are next.  There aren’t many of them (and we don’t have enough buildings at school), so their classes are combined.  It’s a difficult class to teach because of the difference in English levels between the two classes.  It seems as if my lessons are always either too easy for some or too hard for others.  I have mostly boys in the 6^th grade class, and they crack me up.  They aren’t as shy as the girls, so when they come up to my desk to get their homework marked, they like to reach out and touch my “slick” hair.  Since they’re so outgoing, we have a lot of dancing in our class.  They all know dance moves to identify whether a verb is in the present, past, or future tense.

                Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons, I teach Life Skills at the high school next to my house.  I teach Form A and B, which is more or less the equivalent of freshmen and sophomores.  They are absolutely naughty.  They think it’s funny to push my limits, to ask silly questions and to talk out loud without being called on. There are so many of them that it’s hard to control the classroom when they get excited (the first time I said “sex” in class caused a complete uproar).  My smallest class has around 60 and the largest class has a little over 100.  The desks are literally crammed wall-to-wall, and I have only a few feet to move around in front of the chalkboard.  It feels like being on stage.

                I get home from school anytime between three and four.  My house is usually a wreck, so I do chores:  sweeping, washing dishes (in buckets), fetching water from the tap (only about 15 yards from my house!) and watering my garden.  The neighborhood gang from the primary school likes to come over and play, so I keep them entertained with coloring books (thanks Grant!) and crafts (thanks Grandma!). 

                Sometime later on, I usually wander over to my host family’s house and visit with my host sisters and mom.  They have a TV and couches (!!), so if I make it in time after school, I watch Oprah re-runs with them.  When I go to leave and meander back to my house, Maphoka comes along and we sit outside on my doorstep and chat until it’s time for her to go back inside and cook dinner.

                Back in May, my boyfriend somehow got power installed in my house (some girls are courted with jewelry… I get electricity J) so when it’s dark, I don’t need to use a paraffin lamp anymore—I have one small bulb above my desk that is enough to light most of my hut.  I work on lesson plans for the next day, listen to BBC on the radio, and cook dinner over my gas stove.  I try to cook enough for two so I can put half in a lunch box for the following day.

                By 8:30 or 9 p.m., I’m tired enough to crawl into bed.  My bed is awful.  It’s been voted the Worst Bed in Peace Corps on several occasions.  If I’m lying down and cough, all of the coils inside the mattress vibrate.  I think that the mattress is only coils—no fluff. 

                Then I either read for a while or watch a TV show on my computer.  And I go to bed.  And I wake up the next day and do it all over again. 

hitching

                Before I continue any further than this first line…Mom, Dad, Grandma?  Don’t read this one.

                Hitch hikers in America are notorious for being murderers, crazy alcoholics, car thieves, and stinky bums.  If you let them in your car, they’ll probably reach around your neck from behind and hold you at knife-point, leading you to some hidden wooded area where they cut you up and later drive your car into a lake.

                Or so I’ve heard.

                Hitch hikers in Africa, on the other hand, are just people who are too broke to afford public transportation.  It happens all of the time.  It sounds racist of sorts, but white people are a scarcity here in Lesotho.  If you saw some white dude on the side of the road, carrying a huge backpack and looking for a ride, of course you’d pick him up!  You’d want to know what the hell he was doing here in the first place!

Do you know where I’m going with this already?  That white guy on the side of the road is probably a Peace Corps Volunteer.

                Yes, we hitchhike all the time.  Yes, I was just as thoroughly terrified of the thought of hitchhiking here as you probably are while you’re reading this.  When I arrived in Lesotho and volunteers were talking about “hitching” places, I thought to myself, “No fucking way; these guys are nuts.”  A week later, I was hitching back from visiting another volunteer a few districts away. 

Indeed, even Peace Corps staff doesn’t discourage hitching.  They don’t encourage it, but they say that “sometimes, there’s just no other way to get somewhere.”

Hitchhiking is also a great way to meet the locals.  I’ve had all kinds of hitches: silent awkward ones (especially if the driver doesn’t know English), really comfortable ones (Mercedes two-door with air conditioning), overwhelming ones (five unbuckled kids in the backseat crawling all over), exciting ones (cop car driving 100kph with a gun on the dashboard), and just… weird ones (in a semi-truck).

Some of my most interesting conversations with Basotho are in hitches.  During the elections last fall, I heard all kinds of political opinions.  One government worker offered to collaborate with the police “under the table” to find my stolen phone.  I met a guy once who spoke Spanish.  One lady drove my friend and I, quite literally, to the doorstep of our destination.  She said, “you are giving up so much to help my country; the least I can do is give you a ride.”

Once, I got a hitch with a family who was on a long road trip.  I think they ended up “adopting” me for the two hours I was in the car with them.  Every time they stopped at a gas station for snacks, they’d get me something.  We visited a family member’s new house along the way, and they brought me inside and introduced me as one of them.  I was almost sad when they finally dropped me off.  

Of course, I am always wary of what kind of cars I get into.  I prefer hitching with friends, although I’ve been lucky when I’m hitching alone and I’m usually picked up by a single woman or a family.

I’m really grateful for the perspective of Lesotho that I’ve gotten through hitchhiking.  Not many people here can afford cars, so it’s an entirely different culture from what I’m used to in my village.  I’ve been able to meet all different kinds of people and see so much of this country (and for free!) because of hitchhiking. 

After being on the “other side” of hitching, it makes me wonder about all of those guys in America, standing on the side of the road with their thumbs out.  If they’re all really stinky murdering ski bums, or if they’re just broke and looking for a lift and a good conversation. 

if you're moving to Lesotho...

So I think that by now, or close to now, all of the invitations for the 2013 Education volunteers have been issued. 

Yay!

If you are one of these oh-so-lucky invitees, congratulations.  I still remember the very moment when I opened my invitation packet.  I think the first thing I said was “where the @!#% is Lesotho?”

And then I think I started wondering what the hell to pack for the next two years of my life.  It’s not an easy question to answer.  I searched through countless blogs of current volunteers, even emailing a few of them (which was really no help at all), and I looked over and over the Peace Corps Lesotho “suggested packing list”.

Two suitcases for two years.  Shit.

Looking back now, I wish I wouldn’t have stressed out so much about this predicament.  You really don’t need as much as you think you do.  If I’ve learned anything while being in Peace Corps, it’s how to pack light.  And this is coming from Miss Can’t Wear A Going-Out Outfit Two Weekends In A Row.

But if I could give you any specific advice for what to pack, here’s what I’d recommend: 

·         Dark clothes.  All of my white and off-white shirts are now being used as kitchen rags.  After two or three hand-washes, they were trashed.

·         Electronics.  Specifically an iPod and a computer.  I don’t know why anyone would even consider leaving behind a computer.  Also, if you don’t have one already, an external hard drive with movies and TV shows.  I didn’t bring one, but I ended up having one send.  You’ll also make friends with in-country volunteers a lot quicker (if you bring me any Sex and the City, I’ll make you my new BFF).

·         Chacos or Tevas.  Again, I didn’t bring any but ended up having them sent.  Yes, you may look and feel like a woodsy lesbian while you wear them, but Peace Corps considers them appropriate work shoe attire (and these ones are actually pretty cute!)

·         A solar charger, if you’re willing to dish out the money.  One big enough to charge your phone and iPod is all you need.

·         A good set of knives, if you like to cook.  These are amazing and they never need to be sharpened.

·         A radio to keep you company.  I bought this one, and I really like it.  It’s kind of annoying to wind-up on cloudy days, but I never have to worry about batteries.

I hope this alleviates some packing anxiety.  Don’t be shy to email me (or any other volunteers) with questions you might have about packing.  We’ve all been there.  Try not to stress out much about it.  If you forget something, or regret something, you can probably find it here or have it shipped.  People love to ship things to you; it’s great.  It’s like Christmas repeats itself all over again with every package you’ll receive.

Happy packing!