being a superhero

Two nights ago, I had a dream.  I was back in Argentina on a bright, sunny winter day.  I was sitting in the Plaza de Mayo watching some sort of celebration for Bicentenario.  I remember seeing some beautiful Argentine women with long, tangled brown hair that fell down to their waists, and I was jealous. 

Then I stood up and started looking at everything around me.  I looked at the shiny metal skyscrapers surrounding the plaza, and the people smoking and speaking Spanish and rushing up and down the dirty sidewalks, and the loud traffic blocking the main avenue, and then up at the clear blue sky.  And I wondered what the sky was looking down on in Lesotho.  And suddenly, I really missed Lesotho and the peacefulness of it all.  I missed sitting outside my rondavel playing with puppies, and gossiping with my host sister late at night, and hanging my laundry outside on the line, and all of the little things that go unnoticed until you think about losing them. 

And then I woke up.  It was 5am, and there was a donkey outside my window.

As often as I complain about my life in Lesotho (which I admit, I do a lot), I would miss it here if I had to leave.  I guess I should say, when I have to leave.  Work is hard and frustrating, and being alone is… lonely.  I came to Peace Corps thinking that I could change the world.  But sometimes, I feel like my work here is useless.  I’m going to leave, and nothing will be changed. 

My students will still be denied their education because they don’t have the proper shoes.

 

But there are tiny changes.  So tiny that I hardly ever notice them.  And they are things that I never before would have thought “important” changes. 

For example, my host sister used to run with me every evening after school.  She was pretty bad, and she usually held me back on days when I wanted to push hard.  But we would sing together while we ran, and we would turn around and run backwards to encourage the other on a tough hill, and afterwards we’d collapse in a ditch and talk about how good it felt to be finished. 

Now I’m not running as much as I used to.  I don’t know why.  It’s cold, and I’m lazy.  But my host sister always pesters me in the afternoons when she knows we aren’t going to run.  She calls me lazy and tells me I will be fat, which is true.  At least she cares.  At least she knows how important exercise is to living healthy.  I’ve even seen a couple of girls her age in our village, running alone along the road in the evening, just like we used to. 

Also, as a primary school teacher, most of the kids I work with every day don’t speak English.  They know how to say “good morning!” which they will happily repeat to me at any time of the day.  Then they’ll usually spit something out in rapid-fire Sesotho, and I proceed to say “speak English”!  They of course can’t speak English, so they just repeat whatever I say.

 Now, anytime I see my small friends (they usually come over in the afternoons and sit outside my house with coloring books), they say “speak English!” when someone is speaking Sesotho, and then they’ll immediately look over at me  and smile, like it’s some sort of inside joke.

I had a good, long talk this morning with my counterpart teacher at Mahloenyeng.  He was watching me fill out a Peace Corps report that’s required every three months.  I was explaining to him how it worked, and he casually pointed out how it seemed that I’d done a lot more work at my other primary school.

He was right.  I’ve already conducted two workshops with my teachers at Theressa James.  We have a pen pal program between our seventh graders and my sister’s school in America.  The teachers all seem really enthusiastic that I’m there to work and excited about our prospects for the future. 

I apologized to my counterpart and explained that I thought each school had different things it needed to focus on for improvement.  At Mahloenyeng, we’re working on more “structural” improvements, like getting doors and windows for our classrooms.  It’s hard to start with materials production workshops when we can’t even use materials in our classrooms, because they’ll get stolen at night.

I must have clearly expressed that I was stressed about my role in development here.  I know that my counterpart is also frustrated with the circumstances (and the people) of our school.  He said that the hardest thing to change in the world is people.

But he also said that out of ten teachers, even if there is one, sole teacher who is on my side and rooting for me and our school and ready to bring changes, my service has been a success.  All it takes is one person. 

A lot of times, Peace Corps volunteers will leave their countries without having seen any tangible improvements in their communities or their schools or their projects.  But years from now, if you’ve changed at least one person , you’ve made a difference.  Maybe it’s giving a condom to that one high school girl and keeping her from getting pregnant, so she can actually graduate and have a chance at getting a job.  Maybe it’s showing that special education student how to write his own name.  Maybe it’s buying a tray of eggs once a month from that orphan, so she can provide for her siblings at home.

Of course, I have huge dreams of building this beautiful library at my school and getting thousands of books donated from America and teaching all of my students how to love reading.  I think that’s every volunteer’s dream.   Some people actually manage to pull it off within two years.

But if I’ve learned anything from Peace Corps, it’s to think small.  And don’t be upset about failing.  I’ve already failed at projects so many times, and I’ve hardly been here.  I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t change the world like I wanted to.  It would take a lot more than two years of Peace Corps service to change anything around here. 

But I know I’ve changed my host sister’s life.  And that girl I gave the condom to.  And my 5^th grade special education student who writes his first name all over his papers now.  And that orphan in high school who is the head of her household.  And those little kids who play for hours outside my house every day.  

For now, that’s good enough for me.  

the kill

            I have a bucket list for things I want to do during my Peace Corps service.   A few days after New Year’s, I spent one boring, hot afternoon sitting around my hut and dreaming up ideas of everything I wanted my service to be.  I came up with this list; I’ve since decided that I can accomplish most of these during the year 2012.  I’ll probably need to kill a few hours one afternoon next year and make a new list anyways.

                So, here’s my to-do list: 

·         Trip to Cape Town

·         Get published

·         Start correspondence with classroom in USA

·         Start a library

·         Kill a chicken

·         Live for a month at $1 per day

·         Trip to Mozambique

·         Start a Life Skills class at high school

Awhile back, I shared my list with ‘M’e Mamosa, the principal from one of my schools.  This woman is a neighbor of mine and probably the closest thing to a mother that I have in Lesotho.  She also happens to be a chicken farmer.  She raises chickens year-round and sells them for 55 rand (about $7).  The cost includes slaughtering, de-feathering and cleaning the chickens to be cooked, all of which she does at home with the help of a few local ladies.

Last Wednesday, ‘M’e Mamosa showed up at school and mentioned that her “people” were slaughtering chickens that day.  They had a total of ten chickens to slaughter, plus one extra that they were saving especially for me.  ‘M’e Mamosa even decided that we needed to leave school a bit early in order to get home and finish the slaughtering.

I was shocked that she had remembered my bucket list, and a bit nervous that I was actually going to check this item off.  If you know me at all, you’ll know that I’m absolutely terrified of blood and guts.  Anytime I see something particularly bloody (or even talking in detail about blood, blood vessels, bloody cuts, spurting blood, etc.), I get this odd feeling that someone is about to jump out from nowhere and slice my neck open.  I’m not really sure why, but it’s a frightening thought, and it makes me do a double-chin to keep my neck protected.  So as you can imagine, cutting through the neck of a chicken was going to be a big step.

We left school a little after lunchtime and arrived at ‘M’e Mamosa’s house shortly after.  Thankfully I had decided to throw my camera in my bag that morning, so I was ready to document the entire experience.  I recruited ‘M’e Mamosa’s eldest daughter, Mosa, to be the cameraman.  Mosa is the same age as me and a total “girlie-girl”.  She’s the only Mosotho I know that owns a hair straightener and six pairs of heels.  Needless to say, she was not going to participate in the slaughter.

‘M’e Mamosa sent one of her helpers to the hen house to fetch the victim.  Walking together towards the scene of the crime, with the squawking chicken in our arms, I had this awful feeling that the chicken knew what was coming.  I wanted to say a little memorial or something before the kill, but there was hardly a second to think.

‘M’e Mamosa had a huge knife in her hand and had just finished “sharpening” it (she rubbed it against a rock in her driveway for a few seconds).  She explained that she was going to knock the chicken over the head with the knife handle in order to make it dizzy, and then I was to make my move. 

It all happened in a flash.  ‘M’e Mamosa lurched forward and clocked this poor chicken on the top of the head with the back of the knife and quickly handed the knife over to me.  The chicken squawked and kind of bobbed its head around, like in a cartoon when someone gets hit with an anvil and sees stars, but it was clearly still alive and aware of its surroundings.  I hesitated, but ‘M’e Mamosa urged me towards the neck.

She and another local woman were holding the chicken down on the ground.  ‘M’e Mamosa grabbed the beak and head of the chicken and thrust it into my left hand.  Holding the head on the ground, I used my right hand to literally saw away at the chicken’s neck.

For a horrifying three seconds, the chicken was screeching and I thought that I wouldn’t be able to finish.  I almost stopped then and there to hand the knife back to ‘M’e Mamosa to finish it off.  But I knew that it would be even worse to stop halfway, so I pushed through—screaming the entire time and looking in the opposite direction.  Mosa stood in front and snapped picture after picture.

Once I could feel the knife scratching bare dirt, I lifted my left hand and looked at the limp, bloody chicken head that was still moving.  Yes indeed, a chicken can run around with its head cut off.  The two ladies helping me had to hold down the twitching body so it wouldn’t go running off into the garden.  The blood seeping from the neck had splattered all over my forearms, and I couldn’t stop screaming while I was holding this dead chicken head.  I couldn’t let go of it, either.  I would have rather gripped the head until it stopped moving than see it writhing around on the ground near my feet.

The worst was over, but we still weren’t finished.  We took the corpse back to the garage and immediately dipped it in a bucket of boiling water to loosen the feathers and pluck them out.  That part was strangely satisfying.  The feathers came out quite easily, without any blood.  But the smell in the garage was downright foul.  It was a combination of the steaming hot chicken water, the irony smell of blood, and damp, dirty feathers.  I think one of the women noticed that I was struggling a bit with all of these dead, bloody chickens lying around, and she pulled up a chair so I could sit down and put my head between my knees.

Gutting the chicken was absolutely disgusting.  I couldn’t do it.  ‘M’e Mamosa told me to observe carefully as she pulled out the intestines in a greasy, steaming heap.  She made me separate the gallbladder from the rest of the organs; apparently, the gallbladder is literally the only part of the chicken which isn’t eaten.  I pretended that I was highly interested in watching what she was doing, but instead I was staring at a spot on the floor next to her foot.  I thought that if I focused any longer, I would faint. 

We ended by chopping off the head and the feet, which are usually later deep fried and eaten as a delicacy.  When she asked if I wanted the head and the “wise fives”, I politely declined.  She laughed.  She did give me the entire chicken for free.  When I tried to pay, she declined and insisted that I could pay “next time”. 

                Thursday night, I feasted on roasted lemon chicken and instant cheese and broccoli rice (thanks Grandma J!).  ‘M’e Mamosa suggested that I eat my chicken on Thursday and not Wednesday—I think she knew that I might have a difficult time enjoying a drumstick while reflecting upon my chicken murder.  

sharing is caring

                I like to eat my lunch alone in the staff room. 

Sometimes, I’ll even eat up to an hour early, just so I can sit in the cold, dark silence in the concrete solitude, peacefully reading my magazine and digging into my pasta salad.  Just so I can be completely alone.

                I’m not an antisocial person by any means.  I especially love dinner parties, cooking for a large group of people and enjoying a family-style meal around a loud, busy, crowded table.  I usually hate cooking by myself, because I always end up preparing too much.  The longer I’ve been in Lesotho, the less exciting my meals have gotten.  For example, I’m boiling some water right now to mix together one of those 100-calorie Knorr soup packets.  It’s not much fun when you whip together an extravagant, delicious meal and have no one to share it with.  I’ve literally talked out loud complimenting myself on a fantastic enchilada dinner because no one was in the room to share in my delight.

                But school lunches are an entirely different story.  I love to eat alone for that magical lunch hour.  I used to wonder why I craved that escape at 11am from the rest of the school.  I almost felt guilty, because most of the teachers convene in the first grade classroom around lunchtime to eat together.  But now and then, some teachers strayed behind in their classrooms to mark papers, which persuaded me that it was acceptable to run away and hide for an hour.

                After some lunchtime soul-searching, I realized why I like to be alone so much for my meal.  When I started at this particular school, the principal insisted on my packing my own lunches everyday (which I thought was strange, since all primary schools are served free lunches, including the teachers, and at my other school I am usually served just like everyone else).  When I asked why, she acted embarrassed and basically said that the food was crappy.  I didn’t ask any more questions.

                But when I started showing up to school with my usual favorites—pasta, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, rice and vegetables with soy sauce, mixed green salads—I was immediately the center of attention as soon as I pulled out my Tupperware container.  Everyone leaned in to see what the American white girl had brought to school that day.  They stared.  They smelled.  They touched (so gross).  And they always wanted a taste.  After my lunchbox made its usual rounds around the room, I had a quarter-sized amount left of what I had packed.  And yeah, I’ll go ahead and say it—when lunchtime rolls around, I’m hungry!  I’m ready to eat!  And I’m not ready to give away the majority of what I had looked forward to for that particular lunchtime!

                Basotho culture is super into sharing.  If you have something, you give it away.  Or as much as you can without going hungry/going broke yourself.  My supervisor warned me of this immediately on the day I moved into my village.  I’ll never forget her saying, “now don’t be surprised if people come over and ask you for things!  They’ll see all of your boxes of stuff.  We Basotho, we share!”

                I don’t think I’m bad at sharing.  I’m the oldest child, so it might have been harder for me to learn to share at first.  But I can share.  I like to share… usually.  I’m working on it.  On occasion, I’ll bake brownies, or tortilla chips, or cookies, and bring them to school to share with my teachers.  It’s a good cross-cultural kind of thing; I explain to them what it is I’ve cooked, they usually don’t like it, but will compliment me on my cooking abilities and then make a suggestion for the next time (“Ausi, there is too much sugar in these cookies!”). 

                But for now, I’m still eating lunch alone in the teacher’s lounge.  I thoroughly enjoyed my egg salad sandwich today while reading People magazine.  I’m not sure how well egg salad would have gone down with my Basotho counterparts.  But I enjoyed it, and I didn’t have to share one bit.  J

Lessons learned

                It’s been nearly seven months since my arrival in Lesotho.  Looking ahead to the rest of my service, I don’t know how I’m going to make it.  Ack.  Two years?!  What was I thinking??

                But every Friday after school, I can hardly believe that a week flies by so quickly.  I can hardly believe that it’s already May.  I still remember getting off the plane last October.  I still remember my last sushi dinner at Hapa before I left home.

                Compared to the older, wiser, more experienced volunteers that are getting ready to leave Lesotho in July, seven months is nothing.  Sometimes I feel like a wimp swapping “war stories” with this older group. 

“Oh, you got pick pocketed?  I know a guy from the ’09 group who got robbed twice in 15 minutes.” 

“Giardia?  I’m sorry.  Yeah, I had that for two months last year.”

“Oh yeah, I hate getting rats in my house.  One girl I know had a rat crawl into her bed with her.  Good luck!”

                You really can’t win when you’re talking to these veteran volunteers.  None of my stories can top the ones I’ve heard from them.  I’m sure I’ll eventually secure that expert status after a few horrifying experiences.  Somehow, it’s almost a measure of pride in the volunteer world to suffer through odd things that happen in developing countries.

                Regardless, I think seven months is a suitable amount of time to pass a few judgments on the things that I’ve noticed in Lesotho.  Perhaps judgment isn’t the right word.  Observations.  I don’t have any really horrifying stories to tell of yet, but I have observations.

                After seven months, here are some of my general observations.

• Picking your nose in public is absolutely acceptable.  On the bus, during a meal, in the middle of a conversation, at a work meeting… anytime.  Also, you can keep eye contact with someone if they are talking to you and you need to pick your nose.  Just casually flick it to the side when you’re finished.
• When you greet someone, feel free to ask them any number of intrusive questions.  Where are you going?  Where are you coming from?  Can you lend me money?  I’m hungry; where is the food?  Where are your candies?
• Always greet people when you walk past them along the road.  Especially if they are your elders.  But if you are standing along the road and someone passes you, it’s their responsibility to greet you.  It’s usually a game of chicken, where you stare at each other until one or the other says the obligatory greeting.
• For the ladies, any blanket-like material lying around the house can be a fashionable accessory.  When you’re finished using your towel, just wrap it around your waist.  Wrap your comforter around your waist when it’s extra cold.  If you have a baby, wrap it in a blanket and carry it on your back.  If it’s sunny, just plop a blanket on the top of your head for a little shade. 
• If you’re into someone, just tell them that you love them.  If you really love them, give them a marriage proposal.  Getting to know someone comes later; marriage comes first.  
• Don’t roll the window down in a taxi.  Even if there are five times more people shoved inside the car than physically possible, and the man sitting next to you smells like cheese, don’t roll the window down.  You will inevitably catch some airborne disease.   
• Holding hands for an uncomfortably long time is OK.  Even upon first meeting someone, you don’t have to let go of the handshake… you can keep it for a good minute or so.  Even man-on-man handholding while casually walking down the street is fine.
• If they say the funeral/wedding/lunch/dinner/meeting starts at 9:00, show up at 10:30. 
• Don’t fetch water at night.  Don’t hang your laundry at night.  Don’t hang your white laundry during the day between noon and 2:00pm.  It causes witchcraft activities and terrible hail during harvesting season.

I think I could go on, but these are a few observations that come to mind for now.  Most of these social norms are slowly becoming second nature.  For instance, I tried to hide a quick nosepick on the taxi today, but then just thought, to hell with it! and went for it all the way.  No one looked twice at what I was doing.  I don’t really think anyone looked at all.  It was actually pretty exhilarating.

Part of the mission of Peace Corps is to promote cross-cultural understanding between populations of other countries and Americans.  I’m trying to decide which of these cultural norms would be most likely to be accepted stateside.  I think I could really bring nosepicking out of the closet.