let me get the ball rolling and tell you about grading papers

               When I was little, I used to play “school” with my babysitters.  I would make them sit on the couch as I strutted around the room, calling out spelling words and explaining new vocabulary in a prestigious, egotistical sort of way.  I would get angry and embarrassed when the babysitter would laugh at me or pretend like she knew more than I did.  I was the teacher, after all.

                Grading papers was the best.  I would collect the spelling test, or the pop quiz, or the essay, and mark all over the paper until it bled with red ink.  I loved making comments the most.  “Great job!”  “Amazing!!! J”  “Nice work!”  I don’t know why, but it somehow made me feel important.  I felt that I could really influence my student by what I wrote on her paper. 

                Now that I really am a teacher, things haven’t changed much.

                I will openly admit that I LOVE to grade papers, namely compositions.  Especially now that my students speak English as a second language.  They try to use fancy idioms and proverbs in their writing that usually don’t fit in with what they are trying to say.

                Last week, my 7^th graders wrote a composition about what they want to be when they grow up.  Most of their introductions began something like this:

•           “Let me get the ball rolling by telling you what I want to be when I grow up.”
•          “Let me take this moment to break the ice and tell you about what I want to be when I grow up.”
•          “In black and white, when I grow up I want to be a nurse.”
•      “I’ll blaze a trail by telling you about what I want to be when I grow up.”

The rest of the paragraphs were mostly jumbled and confusing.  All of the “nurses” said something along the lines of wanting to be a nurse to “wash her clothes” or to “give them medicine and injections”.  When I asked them if nurses in Lesotho wash their patients’ clothes, they laughed and walked away embarrassed.  I still don’t know whose clothes they were interested in washing.

I was impressed with some other students’ writing abilities.  One of my best students explained that she wanted to work for the Ministry of Education as a researcher in impoverished areas of the country.  As an orphan herself, she said that she wanted to bring school supplies and provide scholarships to orphans in rural areas who would otherwise be forgotten. 

For the better part of last week, we worked on perfecting our compositions about what we want to be when we grow up.  To my dissatisfaction, I used less and less red ink on their papers as the week went on.  Instead, I drew smiley faces and stars and “Well done!!!”s all over the page.  As I graded, I even exclaimed “WOW!!!!!!” out loud to the class.  They all simultaneously would look up from their desks and smile, only to bend down again and scribble away furiously on their papers.  By Friday, the students were thrilled with their final drafts.  I even read some of the better compositions out loud to the class, to the mixed embarrassment and pleasure of the authors. 

Their usual class teacher was absent for most of the week because her child was ill, so they were anxious to present to her what they had written. 

This week I’m on the rotation again, working at a different school.  Mahloenyeng 7^th graders learned a fun one this week: what sounds do animals make?  You can only imagine me in a classroom full of 13- and 14-year olds purring, roaring, and whinnying.  I’ll tell you, no two days in Lesotho are ever the same. 

lost in the woods

                One year ago today, I was wandering down the Las Vegas strip in the mid-morning sunlight with two of my best friends.  We were stumbling around in that confused, hazy limbo between hung over and still drunk from the night before.  We were armed with vodka-slushies and decked out head-to-toe in green for St. Patrick’s Day.  For some reason, we were becoming best friends with everyone on the strip that morning.   We took pictures with tiny men dressed up as leprechauns in the doorways of casinos; we overexcitedly screamed out the names of anyone we recognized on the street like it’d been years since we saw them, even though we hardly knew them back at university.  For some reason, everyone went to Vegas for our senior year spring break.  

                Today, I spent the day at a track field with my students, watching them race in the blazing sun from underneath the cool shade of my umbrella.  I came home alone, exhausted, and celebrated St. Patty’s Day by pouring myself a glass of wine—when I say glass, I mean a fancy Nalgene bottle.  I got a little crazy after that, so I washed the dishes while singing out loud to my iPod.  And now, I’m writing you this blog post by the twinkling light of my paraffin lamp, waiting for this bowl of beans next to me to cool down enough to start eating.   

                Holy shit, how life can change in a year. 

                It blows my mind to think of what I used to consider “normal”.  Things like driving a car to go to the grocery store eight blocks away.  Taking a hot shower.  Eating cold foods—and drinking cold drinks.  Turning on a dishwasher.  Worrying about “repeating outfits” too many weekends in a row.  Walking to the mailbox at night.  Going to drive-thrus. 

                What blows my mind even more is what I consider normal now.  Going to bed at 8:30pm, and waking up at 5am.  Seeing a herd of cows walk past the window during class.  Peeing in a bucket.  Wondering when my unrefrigerated milk and cheese will go bad.  Rushing home at dusk so that wild dog won’t chase me again.  Fetching water in a bucket.

                They say that one thing all human beings crave is routine.  Something normal.  Even the most globetrotting of types have a general “routine”, whether they notice it or not.  The way you brush your teeth.  The direction in which you swirl soap in your palms to wash your hands.  The side of your head that you start brushing first.  The side of your mouth that you chew with first.  Anywhere in the world, and you will adhere to these tiny, insignificant personal routines.

                Getting over big changes in life is about finding your routine after it’s been unexpectedly taken away.  It’s like becoming lost while wandering down a path in the woods.  Your heart stops.  You panic.  You start to wonder where you went wrong, where you turned off the path and how you will get back.  Your mind races about what might happen if you’re lost forever—or maybe not forever, but for a while.  Do you have cell service?  Should you scream for help?  How much sunlight is left in the day until you’re stuck in the dark wilderness for the night?  What will you eat?  Where will you sleep?  Is there anyone out there to help you?

                Of course, you only know this feeling if you’ve ever had the misfortune of being lost in the woods.  Growing up in the piney forests of Colorado, it happened to me a couple of times.  Maybe for you, it was getting separated from your parents in the shopping mall when you were 7-years old.  Regardless, the feeling is the same.  It’s this primal fear of being completely and utterly lost.

                But then, suddenly, the rocky ground in front of you vanishes away into a trodden-down path.  You recognize that crooked tree on your right, and you know you’ve been here before.  Your heart slows down, and one foot automatically follows the other in a sense of recognition, and you’re once again enjoying that walk in the woods.  And strangely, an overwhelming sense of happiness takes over, because you know that you’re not alone and lost in the middle of nowhere.  

momma hen

                Ever since school started in January, my students have been practicing for the infamous Moshoeshoe’s Day.  From the beginning, I had a love/hate relationship with Moshoeshoe’s Day, because since January, our afternoons have been dedicated to practicing various extracurricular activities instead of attending regular classes.  It just seemed like a complete waste of time.

                Oh, by the way, it’s pronounced “Moh-shway-shway”.  I didn’t guess the first time I read it, either.

Moshoeshoe’s Day rolls around every March.  It’s a day to celebrate the founding father of Lesotho and (all three of) his subsequent ancestors.  For Moshoeshoe’s Day, schools across the country compete in traditional cultural activities, such as dancing and singing, and not-so-traditional activities, such as “athletics”—or what we would call track and field. 

I have to admit, the traditional dances are so cool.  We don’t have anything like a “traditional American dance” that we can proudly showcase on the 4^th of July.  The twist?  The hand jive?  Can you imagine schools training for months to have a national Hand Jive competition?   

The boys have a dance where they do high-kicks and stomp around with bells attached to their ankles, all while jabbing sticks in the air and acting threatening to anyone who happens to be nearby watching.  They wear colorful man-skirts and long, bright feathers attached at their shins.  Despite the costumes involved, it’s actually a pretty testosterone-filled dance.  My students are anywhere between 10 and 15-years old, but when they start doing this dance, all of the sudden they spontaneously grunt out loud in these deep, manly voices, and hold their little muscular arms outstretched like a rooster showing off by fluffing up his feathers. 

The girls have a couple of dances; one is Lesotho’s version of the Beyonce booty shake.  They wear short, thick grass skirts with loud bells attached underneath, so when they pop their butts in the air, the grass flies up just enough to see their tiny (and usually naked) butts underneath.  They pop their booties to the rhythm of a deep bass drum being pounded by one of their classmates.  The simultaneous clinging of the bells in their skirts makes the whole thing sound so… tribal.  Also, traditionally, most of the girls go topless during the dance.  Apparently this is all OK—the girls are still too young for it to be considered inappropriate.  To my surprise, my 7^th grade girls (who are not too young to still look like boys) were totally comfortable wandering around topless for a good part of the afternoon of Moshoeshoe’s Day.  A part of me was jealous; never in my dreams would I have been that confident at 13-years old. 

The second girls’ dance is more of a shoulder-pop move, where they kneel on the ground and move their shoulders back and forth in harsh rhythm to the deep bass of a drum while waving feathers or sticks in the air.  Their costume for this dance is much more conservative: a long, flowing skirt matched with a buttoned-up blouse. 

Maybe I should have mentioned this a few paragraphs up: today was Moshoeshoe’s Day.  Finally, after months of practicing choir songs in a stuffy, overcrowded classroom, and running sprints in the scorching afternoon heat, and monotonously clapping along to the rhythmic beat of an African drum (an overturned large plastic bucket), we were ready to compete.

We left school this morning around 9:00am—only an hour later than when we were actually supposed to leave.  Not bad for Basotho time.  We had arranged for three taxi-vans to pick us up from school.  When the taxis pulled up with electronic music playing at deafeningly full blast from the speakers, the kids were uncontrollable.  We finally got them all loaded in, and after a strict talk about not dangling their bodies out the window while we speeded down the highway, we were off.

We drove to a nearby elementary school, about 15 minutes northeast from our school.  We were the last of eight schools to arrive.  We quickly met with the other schools’ staff members for a coffee and bread in the teachers’ lounge before the day began. 

We started with athletics—100 meter, 200 meter, 500 meter, and relay race.  It took hours.  By the end of it all, I felt awful for my kids.  They were so exhausted, and water was extremely limited.  I spent most of the afternoon either screaming along the sidelines at my students during the races or herding the tired, hot kids underneath my umbrella and in the shadow of my skirt to rest in the shade.  I felt like a real Momma Hen. 

On the way back home, electro music blaring from the speakers and the bass so loud that my ponytail quivered with every beat, the kids still screamed and danced just as enthusiastically as they did at 9:00am on our way to the fields.  They were just totally overtaken with excitement and happiness from the day’s activities. 

I couldn’t help but think back to similar events during my middle school days—field trips, school carnivals, ice cream socials—they were the only thing you ever had to be preoccupied about for months.  Nothing else really mattered.  And the “day of” was so overwhelming, that I would think about it for weeks afterwards.

My kids are surely no different.  I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the ride home.  For some reason, I felt so proud and happy to be a part of such an important day for them this year.  I wanted to squeeze all of them and tell them individually how well they did in the day’s events and how proud I was of them.  I think that would have been a little creepy, so instead I showed them videos taken on my cell phone during their traditional dances.  Their faces lit up when they saw themselves on the screen.  They didn’t need me to tell them anything; they were proud for themselves.   

the toughest job you'll ever love

                I had chicken last night for dinner.  Eating chicken is really thrilling when you only get it every couple of weeks.  Even when it comes vacuum-sealed in a can with sea salt water. 

                I sautéed it with onions, garlic, a little bit of olive oil, and a handful of the first harvest of green beans from my garden.  Tossed it all together with brown rice and soy sauce.  I couldn’t have been happier.  Except, it’s not very exciting to have great meals when you are by yourself listening to the news on the radio and eating at a primary school desk.  So I celebrated by popping a Tylenol PM and reading in my bed, falling asleep by 9:30pm (It was a late night. Really.).    

                When you are applying for the Peace Corps, they say that it’s the “toughest job you’ll ever love”.  And they aren’t lying.  They say you’ll have “your highest highs, and your lowest lows”. 

                Today was a low.

                Not that I am not happy here, or that I am wishing I were somewhere else.  Hours or days will pass where I am on the brink of packing up my suitcase and saying, “F@#! it, I am out of here!!!”  But usually, if I wait it out, the feeling passes. 

                Yesterday, I got home from spending the entire weekend with American friends.  My friend Heather spent the night on Friday; we watched “The Holiday” and ate bean soup and chocolate cake and drank red wine.  For breakfast the next morning, we polished off the chocolate cake (this time, topping it with peanut butter) and sat around reading People magazine.  Saturday, we went to a “camping event” with two other volunteers.  We played Frisbee in a park and walked around collecting firewood to cook an early dinner.  We spent the night drinking quarts of beer and watching reruns of cartoons from the ‘90s. 

                Needless to say, I was a bit disappointed returning to my site Sunday morning, slightly hung over, and immediately bombarded by my students as soon as I stepped off the taxi.  I decided that I was going to shut myself inside my house all day and relax.  It sounds antisocial, but believe me, sometimes you just need those kind of days.

                Of course, it was the one day where absolutely everyone in the village decided they wanted to come and visit me.  A couple of times after hearing knocking at the door and turning my visitors away (“I am sick today my friend, so sorry!”) I decided just to ignore the knocking and lay down for a nap.  Twenty minutes after closing my eyes, I heard knocking again and the voices of girls whispering excitedly outside.  I didn’t move.  I figured that if I didn’t make any noise, they would think that I wasn’t home and turn away.  

                Nope!   They walked right into my house.  What the hell??  Not okay.  They were all smiles seeing me curled up on my bed, but their eyes got wide when I quickly hopped up and scolded them for barging into my house without knocking.  Looking back on it now, maybe I was a bit harsh…but, I didn’t even know these girls.  They weren’t my students; they were high schoolers who were probably just coming over out of curiosity.  I think I gave them a pretty good scare as I ushered them out and slammed the door behind them; one of them managed to squeak out a “I am so sorry, madam!” before she scampered away.

                I started off this morning with a steaming mug of Starbucks Mocha (courtesy of my latest package from Grandma!) and BBC World News on the radio.  I was at school on time, as were (most) of the other teachers.  Actually, all of the teachers except the one who really matters—the one I teach with.  Great.  The principal suggested that I wait around to see if my teacher would show up in time for class.  She didn’t. 

  

                An hour after school began, the principal announced that she needed to leave to go to the bank in town.  Cool.  I was left in the teacher’s lounge alone for the rest of the morning.  Luckily, I brought my computer and let it charge while I typed up a copy of a teacher’s guide I am writing for a novel in grade seven. 

                Lunchtime rolled around, and all of the other teachers filtered into the office.  For the entire hour and a half of lunch, they sat around and spoke rapid-fire Sesotho.  I sat in silence.  I understand that English is not their first language, but do you know what it feels like to be sitting in a room full of people and feeling completely invisible?

                 We practiced choir in the afternoon which lifted my spirits a bit.  I stood in the back row with my 7^th grade boys.  They were so funny trying to sing bass with cracking voices and dance to the rhythm of the song with awkward long legs.  They remind me of my brothers when they were 13- and 14-years old.  I pretended to tap some of them on their opposite shoulder while they were standing next to me, and they got a kick out of me trying to sing Sesotho songs in a deep voice. 

Suddenly behind us, two younger boys got into a fist fight, punching each other in the face and eventually rolling around on the ground.  The other teachers just stood by and watched until some students pulled them apart.  I was confused as to why the teachers didn’t jump in—but I wasn’t about to step in and separate the boys by myself.

                After choir, the boys were called into the office.  I was finishing up working on our new library when one of the teachers asked me to leave the room so he could “deal with these boys”.  I stepped outside, and a few seconds after they shut the door behind me, I understood why.  One of the boys started screaming as he got his punishment.  The other female teachers standing outside with me laughed it off, but I tried to distract myself by checking my Facebook on my phone and wandering a bit further away from the building.  I understand that corporal punishment is an inevitable part of schooling in Lesotho, but that doesn’t make it any easier to witness.

                Getting home this afternoon, I poured myself a vodka lemonade and popped in my iPod to some country music. 

                Two melancholic days alone is two too many.  I decided to walk over to my (other) principal’s house to talk about work stuff.  This principal is also my “introductory liaison”, or my go-to person for cultural questions in my village, since she lives about a half hour walk from my house.  I didn’t really need to talk about anything; I just wanted to hang out at her house.  She makes me feel like I am a part of her family.  Her daughter is my age and likes to talk about shoes and hair and boyfriends.  Her husband reminds me of my own Dad.  He is serious and stern, but occasionally, he shows his sensitive side—like when he gave me a tour of his chicken coop and explained in broken English how to raise a proper rooster.

                I found my principal sitting on the side of the road, jolly as usual, and eating a peach.  She immediately called over her gardener and ordered him to fill a bag of peaches from her orchard for me.

                I can honestly say that it’s been a long time since I’ve been happier to see someone.

                She explained that she’d been flopped on the side of the road for a half hour or so waiting for a taxi so she could go and visit her friend.  Obviously, she insisted that I come along.  I was hesitant at first; I didn’t want to get home very late, and I didn’t want to sit around in a room with more people speaking a language that I don’t understand. 

                But I couldn’t say no.

                Soon enough, a taxi pulled up, completely full, and as a last-minute attempt to escape to the safety and loneliness of my hut, I told her to squeeze into the taxi alone and that I would catch up with her later.

                “No!  We are going together!”

                The best thing that you can do for yourself when you are feeling lonesome is to get out.  Get out and talk, to anyone, or anything… luckily, here in Lesotho, that’s not too hard being a girl and the only white person within five villages of my house. 

                I’m so happy that I shoved myself in this taxi with my cheerful principal.  Once inside the taxi, I even met up with the lady who fed me a chicken foot the other day.  I didn’t understand what everyone was laughing about, but I’m pretty sure she was explaining to the entire taxi what my face must’ve looked like as I ate the foot toe by toe.   

                I’m home now with a giant bag full of peaches, BBC World News on the radio (again), and Ramen soup on the stove.  Except now, I’m alright with it.  I’ll eat dinner alone, again, at my desk.  I’ll be asleep by 9pm tonight (earlier—I’m tired from my late bedtime last night! Ha).  Maybe I’ll even finish the novel that I’m reading.  Now that would be really exciting.

                Even though I have my good days and my bad days, I know that the good days are going to fulfill above and beyond the dreams that I had of what my Peace Corps service would be like.  The bad days will help me appreciate that much more all that I have been blessed with back at home.  Speaking of which, I can’t wait to get home to a fat, juicy chicken from the grill on the back porch.  It’s just not the same when it comes from a can.  

celebrate the small stuff

They say that in the Peace Corps, you learn to celebrate the small victories.  They say that you will affect people in ways that you might not see, maybe not until twenty years from now.  Indeed, our Education Director was taught by a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago in high school, which inspired him to eventually work for Peace Corps Lesotho.  

They also say that you will fail.  Many times.  Unfortunately, I think I’ve already failed quite a bit.  It’s hard not to get upset, because I had this spectacular idea about all the things I would accomplish in Lesotho before I arrived.  I planned on changing the world.  I’ve come to realize, slowly and depressingly, that I won’t do that.   

But I am celebrating the small stuff.  In particular, three great things have happened to me this week.  And it’s only Tuesday.

I guess I’ll start with the first and the biggest.  One of my schools had several boxes of children’s books donated to them several years ago.  The boxes had been sitting in the principal’s office collecting dust, because no one had bothered to take the time to even tear off the packaging tape and peek inside.  When one of the teachers mentioned that the boxes were filled with donated American books, I was shocked to imagine that someone from my home country had taken the time and effort to organize and package these books, and they were sitting around useless in a dirty office corner.  The teachers didn’t even know what kind of books they were. 

I knew that unpacking these six-foot tall boxes would take at least three weeks, but I had to do it.  No one else would.  So two weeks ago, I opened three boxes and organized the books on a dusty locker shelf.  That Friday, I was spending my last day at that particular school and wouldn’t be returning for another week.  One of the teachers unpromisingly mentioned that he would try to help out with arranging the books.  I thanked him, but was severely doubtful that anyone would even glance in the direction of the book corner while I was gone. 

Yesterday, I came back to this same school.  I walked into the office to find dingy, dented locker shelves neatly piled one on top of the other, completely filled with books.  The cardboard boxes were nowhere to be seen.  I couldn’t believe it.  I don’t think I’ve smiled that big for awhile.  The teachers said that they wanted to have it finished by the time I came back to visit their school.  They were so proud to have assisted in something that was so important to me.  Now, I’m organizing the books according to reading level (easy, medium, hard) and color-coding them, which seems to ring more clearly with the Basotho people than a Dewey Decimal system. 

Accomplishment number two: I grew a pea!!!  My first ever pea.  I was just out at the garden this afternoon, pulling weeds and flicking grasshoppers off the beanstalks, when I reached over to pluck away a wilted pea plant.  I have to admit, I’ve been neglecting my peas.  I’ve got some troublesome bugs that keep gnawing away at the stems of the plants, so I had all but given up on any peas for this season.  BUT!  I noticed one decently-sized pea just dangling from the end of the plant.  I hesitated to eat it; I wasn’t sure if it would get any bigger or not.  But I figured, better me than the grasshoppers.  It was so sweet and crunchy.  I didn’t even wash the dirt off.  I just ate it there right next to the garden. 

Accomplishment number three: my cat jumped on the bed.  Did I mention that we celebrate the small stuff in the Peace Corps? ;)  I’ve befriended my host family’s cat, Pumpkin, in hopes that he’ll eat any rats that manage to creep into my hut this winter.  I’ve also heard that just having the scent of a cat around your home will deter rats. 

So every morning before school, I let Pumpkin into the house and give him a little bit of condensed milk from an old tuna can.  After he’s finished eating, he’ll usually hang around and let me pet him, or just follow me around the house while I’m getting ready, trying to rub himself against my shins.  I guess I tried too hard to domesticate him once, because when I picked him up and plopped him on the bed, he freaked out and ran outside.

But today after school, Pumpkin and I were just hanging out… I was reading on my bed, and he was walking around and rubbing his head over anything that would give him a good scratch.  He walked over to my bed, hesitated for a second, and then jumped up.  He even made himself comfortable in the crook of my legs and took a nap!  These are the kinds of things that make me happy these days. 

taxi rides

                My house is about a three-minute walk from the main road, down a steep, rocky path.  At the road, I can catch a taxi north towards the capital or south towards the King’s home.  The taxi stop is a little dirt clearing right next to the high school volleyball court.  There isn’t a designated sign that says taxi stop; you just have to know to wait there.

                Because there are no true taxi stop signs, I figured that you could ask the driver to pull over whenever you needed to get out.  I found out the hard way last weekend that this is not so. 

Going into Maseru, I’m never quite sure where exactly the taxi is going to end up.  Sometimes they drive right down the main road in town; in which case, I hop off whenever I feel like I’m close enough to the Peace Corps office (which is usually my first stop when I’m in town).  Sometimes they drive straight into the taxi rank and stop the car.  Last weekend, we were driving down the main road headed straight towards where I needed to be.  Suddenly, the driver took a sharp left, and we were on a totally unfamiliar back road.  I immediately tapped the conductor on the shoulder and told him I needed to get off, and he laughed and said that there wasn’t a stop.  I didn’t know what to do; I was going to be completely lost.  I think he noted the panic in my voice, because he said something to the driver in Sesotho, and they eventually pulled over.  He asked if I needed to go to the police for some reason.  I smiled and said no, and found my way back to the office.  

A “taxi” in Lesotho is not at all like the yellow cabs we have back at home.  It is an unmarked, usually broken-down, old white van.  The kind of unmarked white van that your mother told you not to crawl into when you were a kid.    

When you’re walking towards the road, if you’re lucky, a taxi will be coming along headed in the direction that you want to go.  The “conductor”—a guy who sits in the passenger area of the van and collects the money—will hang half of his body out the window and shout at you, asking if you’re getting on.  I still don’t understand how they can tell if a person is getting on or not.  The potential passenger usually stares at the van for a minute or so, slowly walking toward the road, while the conductor keeps shouting at them.  Eventually, the taxi will either pull over and wait or keep driving.

If the taxi is nearly empty, it will crawl along at literally 5mph, hoping to pick up more passengers along the way.  It’s very frustrating, especially if you are in a hurry.  The conductor and driver are constantly scanning the stretches of field along the road with their eagle eyes, looking for people hobbling towards the road.   Sometimes, they will pull over and five minutes will pass before I can even see the passenger walking along. 

Under these circumstances, you develop a sort of camaraderie with the other passengers in the taxi.  You are all hoping to jam in as many people into the van as quickly as possible, just to get going to where you need to be.  Even though I don’t speak Sesotho, I can usually understand what people are talking about inside the taxi.  Everyone participates in this game of trying to pick up more passengers along the way.  People will shout out “Someone over there, to the left!”  or mumble “Oh no, she’s not getting on.  Definitely not getting on.”   

I stick out like a sore thumb on the local taxis, being white.  Sometimes, I don’t mind.  If I’m sitting next to someone who speaks decent English and can carry on an interesting conversation, I’ll chat them up for the entire 45 minutes from town back to my house.  I’ve met some interesting people; last week, I met a teacher from a nearby high school who was also my host mother’s sister.  The week before, I coincidentally met a teacher from a fellow volunteer’s school.  I’ve met people coming home for the first time in years to see their families.  I meet lots of people who dream of someday coming to New York. 

Sometimes, though, I’ll get stuck next to a creepy old man who asks for my phone number or to marry me.  I usually say that I don’t have a phone, or that I’m already married.  Even worse, sometimes I’ll get stuck next to an enormous woman who takes up two and a half seats, though she insists on squeezing in and sweating all over me.  And speaking of sweating, apparently no one likes to ride in the car with a window cracked.  It doesn’t matter if the taxi is overflowing with fat ladies and kids and smelly men, no one will open a window.  It smells disgusting and I always arrive at my destination dripping wet with sweat. 

This weekend, I’m going to visit my dear friend Heather who lives about an hour and a half from me.  I’m already prepping myself for the taxi ride.  It’s always an interesting experience riding in a Lesotho taxi.   

Thankful

Last Saturday, I decided to go to Maseru for shopping, lunch, and cold beers with my friend Heather.  Meeting up with Heather every weekend is my guilty pleasure here in Lesotho.  We are lucky to live close enough to town that going shopping is like a getaway into a completely different world from the small villages where we live.  We even found a restaurant that looks like an Applebees on the inside and serves draft beer and burritos (on a side note, I haven’t tried the burritos yet.  The last time we went, I was worried that they would turn out awful and ruin my cloud nine feeling).

We began last Saturday just like any other weekend in town.  We met at a small café inside the mall and sipped on mugs of dark roast drip coffee, bitching about problems with our houses, problems with school, problems with our friends.  We charged up our iPods and read the local newspaper.  Heather ordered yogurt with granola.  We planned out everything that we would do in town: first the post office before it closed at 11am, then shopping at Fruit ‘n Veg for bulk oatmeal, then schwarmas for lunch, then Pick ‘n Pay for grocery shopping… then, finally, our long-awaited beers at Spurs. 

It was a great day.  I send two letters home, bought mango and green peppers at the store, ate an incredible beef schwarma, ran into a few friends in the mall, and ended the day with two frosty, cold Castles.  By late afternoon, I was ready to get home and catch the tail end of the local soccer game that was being played next to my house.

Heather and I shared a cab to the taxi rank.  I got off before her.  I quickly made my way through the lines of dirty white taxi vans.  I was carrying my backpack filled with food, my clutch wrapped around my wrist, and a grocery bag in my hand.  I pushed my way through the crowds of people and found the taxi labeled “Morija/Matsieng” and crawled in.  Once I had settled into my seat, I reached down to pull out the 15 rand it costs to get home, and realized my clutch was gone.  My heart dropped.  I had it wrapped around my wrist only seconds before, and now it was nowhere to be found.  I started frantically looking under my butt, under the seat, inside my backpack, around the floor… it was nowhere. 

The woman seated beside me noticed that I was looking for something, and she asked for my phone number so that she could start calling my phone to see if we could hear the ringing and track down the clutch.  She said that it was turned off.  Strange, because only minutes before, I knew that it was “on” inside my purse.  I just knew that someone had to have cut the clutch off my wrist and turned off the phone, hoping to steal everything.

The worst part of it all was that I had made a trip to the ATM just that morning.  I wasn’t entirely sure of my PIN number, so I had written it down on a small slip of paper inside my clutch, tucked in nicely right next to the ATM card.  Surely by now, someone must have bolted to the ATM and taken all of my money.  I started to cry.

                By the time I got off the taxi at my stop, my eyes were red and watery, and all I wanted to do was to get home.  The soccer game was still going, and as I rushed past, I heard people calling out my name.  I didn’t want to talk to anyone, let alone allow them to see me crying.  My host sister came running over and I told her what happened, and she quickly ushered me home to call the Peace Corps.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much that they could do at 6pm on a Saturday.  They said that early Monday morning, they would call the bank and cancel my card, and I was to come back to Maseru to report the incident to the police station.

                I got drunk alone on Saturday night and went to sleep, hoping to forget about everything.

                Sunday morning, I woke up to my sister knocking on my door and the sound of a man’s voice outside.  I peeped outside to see Maphoka’s smiling face telling me that they had found my phone.  One of the teachers from my school was standing next to her.  I thought it was a joke.  The teacher, Thabo, told me that I should get dressed and come with him.

                Walking to a nearby village, he explained to me that he had seen me exiting the taxi the night before, visibly upset, and tried calling to see what had happened.  My phone was still off.  He tried calling again on Sunday morning, and a woman answered my phone, asking him if he knew the owner of the phone.  He said he did, and she said to meet her in a nearby village.

                We waited along the side of the road, seated in the shade next to a shop.  I think Thabo knew that I was nervous, because he tried to distract me by chatting casually about American basketball.  All I could think about was how careless and stupid I had been in the taxi rank.  About a half an hour later, the woman pulled up in a taxi.  She got out and slowly made her way over to us.  She was a big lady wearing a floppy white hat.  She addressed Thabo, not me.  They spoke for a few minutes in Sesotho, and then she asked me what I had lost.  I tried my best to answer her in Sesotho, waving my hands in the air to tell her that everything was gone.  She reached down, unzipped her purse, and pulled out my clutch, smiling.

                I jumped forward and started hugging her, and she was laughing.  She told me to look inside and make sure that everything was there.  She confessed that she had taken 10 rand to cover the taxi fare to come meet me.  I took out a 100 rand note and gave it to her.  At that point, I would have given her everything.  It was hard to express how thankful I was in Sesotho; I just started babbling in English to her about how she had saved me.  All she replied with was: “you are my friend!”    

                We walked back along the road together, and she and Thabo talked.  Later, he explained to me that she had seen someone pick up the clutch from the ground in the taxi rank.  She approached them and saw the contents of the purse, and told them that she knew the owner of the purse.  Apparently, she lives in a nearby village where I teach, and she had seen me walking around last week.  She took the purse and got in a taxi headed towards Morija.  When she got there, she pulled out my photo I.D. and started showing it to random people along the road, asking if they knew who I was.  They told her that I lived in Matsieng.  So she went to Matsieng and did the same thing.  It wasn’t until Thabo called that she headed in the right direction towards my village.

                I know that I am very lucky.  Everyone that I have talked to says that these kinds of things never happened.  The woman could have easily made off with my phone, cash, and access to my entire savings account in Lesotho.  Instead, she skipped work for an entire day to look for me.  She didn’t make any phone calls with my phone.  She took a little bit of cash for transport, and she was honest about it.

                The worst part of the entire situation is that I didn’t even ask for her name.  This angel just appeared out of nowhere, and I have no idea who she is.  I’m determined to find her again, just like she found me.