thoughts on a year

            It’s been exactly one year.  One year in Africa. 

A year of waking up to roosters in the morning and seeing the brightest stars at night.  A year of Black Labels and bad decisions and buckets for everything.  A year of hitch hiking and traveling from hostel to hostel, getting lost, seeing giraffes and the ocean and enjoying a margarita more than I ever have before in my life.  A year of being squished in the back row of stuffy, overcrowded taxis.  A year of getting sick and being homesick, meeting new friends and saying goodbye to old ones.  A year of frustration and tears.  A year of falling in love.  A year of books by candlelight and good conversations.  A year of being harassed by African children literally everywhere I go.  A year of teaching and learning, feeling hopeful and regretful, being alone and being surrounded by some of the best people I will ever know.

I’ve learned more about myself and about the world in this one year than I could’ve ever imagined.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve questioned my decision to come here.  Some days, I want to crawl into my bed and ignore the knocks on my door and not even open my windows until the sun goes down again.  I want to go home and take a hot shower and relax on the couch and watch cartoons.  I want to send unlimited text messages and drink Starbucks and go out to eat in a Mexican restaurant.  I want to throw my dishes in a dishwasher and curl up in a warm blanket after it comes out of the dryer.  And I want to smell pollution in downtown Denver and hear English all around me and walk outside at night.  I won’t lie to you.  I miss home, a lot. 

Peace Corps is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

But this is my home now.  And if I’m really honest with myself, I know I will miss it.  I’ll miss the alone time in my quiet house that I’ve learned to cherish.  After a year of being alone, I’ve become my own best friend—which I think is something everyone needs to learn how to do.  I’ll miss how long it takes to do laundry, because now I don’t focus on the task at hand but instead on the sun warming my back and my dogs playing next to me.  I’ll miss the sweet faces of my students when they greet me every morning at school.  I’ll miss my morning walks to school, when I wake up even before the sun.  I’ll miss those humbling moments when my first reaction to a stranger approaching me is defensive, when all they really want to do is tell me that I look beautiful.

Peace Corps is a lot like running.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been trying to run more often these days and I’ve got running on my mind, but I like to compare the two.  It hurts and it’s tough and a lot of people think you are absolutely crazy for doing it.  You’re alone for most of it.  It’s all mental—you can quit at any time, but you keep forcing yourself to go on because of some unexplainable internal drive to finish the race.  And at the end, you come out unbelievably stronger than how you began.

I’m tired.  But I’m only halfway finished with the marathon.

A thank you

               My friend Heather was in Peace Corps Niger before she came to Lesotho last year.   Volunteers in Niger were evacuated after an Al-Qaeda scare, and Heather took some time off at home in South Dakota before she re-enrolled in Peace Corps.

                Besides being one of my closest friends here, Heather has also been a great resource when it comes to all things Peace Corps.  She’s been there, done that.  And one thing Heather told me that has always stuck with me is that Peace Corps really shows you who your true friends are. 

As volunteers, we go through some pretty rough patches sometimes.  It’s hard to deal with environmental differences—not having water, for example—and emotional stress, like feeling homesick or lonely or useless.  These emotions are all compounded by the fact that we’re separated from friends and family by thousands of miles, and some volunteers don’t even have cell phone service at their sites to be able to keep in touch by phone or email.  In that sense, I really lucked out with my site—I can’t imagine being that cut off from the rest of the world.

What Heather said to me has been completely true.  There are friends from high school and college whom I thought I’d be in touch with forever, and I’ve barely spoken a word to them since being in Africa.  It’s no one’s fault.  I am just as able to reach out to these people as they are to me, but neither person does.  I guess that’s part of growing up; friends come and go as circumstances change. 

At the same time, I’ve had friends from my past (in some cases, friends from years ago) who have reached out to me.  Whether it’s a care package, a friendly email, a comment on one of my blog posts, or just chatting with me on Facebook, I’ve been utterly taken aback by the kindness I’ve been shown.  When I come home from school after a terrible day, you have no idea how touching it can be to read an email that simply says “I’m thinking about you…keep your chin up”.  It changes my day.  Sometimes, it changes my week.

My family has been so diligent about calling me every Sunday afternoon since I’ve been in Lesotho.  It’s something I look forward to as soon as the weekend begins, and I plan my Sundays around being somewhere where I can talk privately to them.  I know it must cost a fortune for them, but when they run out of Skype credit, even if it’s at the end of our conversation, they’ll call back to say “I love you” and wish me a good start to the week.

My boyfriend, who was also a volunteer in Lesotho, is the only person I know who I can complain to about all of the inconveniences of living here and he won’t say “well I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think”.  Yes, it is and I like to bitch about it sometimes.  And he puts up with me when I get in those grumpy moods.  I’m sure it’s stressful for him, but he takes time out of his busy school schedule to Skype with me for an hour or so every week.  It puts a smile on my face and allows me to put things in perspective when sometimes I can’t see the bigger picture.

My PCV friends in Lesotho are my family.  They are my rock.  When I have a bad week, they meet me in town for a cold beer and greasy food.  When I need a girls’ weekend, they are the gracious hosts.  For every holiday and birthday that I miss in America, they make it full of joy in Lesotho.  They are what keep me going.  They are what give me things to look forward to.  I could never in a million years take this journey without them walking it alongside me.  They are my role models, my therapists, my coworkers and my drinking buddies.  They are some of the strongest people I will ever know.

And I'm amazed at everyone who has reached out to me and sent me packages and letters of encouragement.  New shoes and a coat for my birthday.  Sauce packets from Taco Bell.  Family-size macaroni and cheese and tequila shooters.  Crafts for my kids and powdered soup during the winter and a box full of Ramen noodles.  The biggest solar charger I’ve ever seen.  Chocolate and cheese and Christmas decorations.  Spices and shirts and socks.  Girly soaps and perfumes that make me feel pretty.  Pictures and magazines.  So much tea and Crystal Light that I don’t know what to do with it all.  These packages are not cheap; I can see the postage prices on the box.  But you send them anyways.  I’ve been blown away by your kindness.  I’m speechless.  I am a lucky girl to have so many people who care about me.

So I wanted to say thank you, to all of you.  Your support means the world to me.  One of my biggest fears is being forgotten while I disappear into the mountains of Africa for two years.  I worry about coming home and losing touch with everyone I was so close with.  Your thoughtful words mean so much more than you will ever know.  Your care packages make it feel like Christmas year-round.  It’s nice to know that you remember me and think about me from time to time.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I feel truly blessed to have so many fans cheering me on.

invisible

                Some days, I wish I were invisible.

                I just want to be able to walk the half hour journey down my dirt road to the shop, without being pestered by shouts of “give me money!” and “where is my candy!?” and “hey, white person!”  I’ve been here for a year already; why are you still saying these things to me?

                I want to go on my runs without having to plan them during the least busy hours of the day.  I like lying in bed and enjoying the soft gray dawn as it comes up over the mountains and leaks through my lacy curtains.  I don’t want to rush out of bed just because on my morning runs, less people will be up to stare at me.

                If I were invisible, my teachers wouldn’t make comments about the “strange” food I bring to school for lunch or stick out their hands to taste it, leaving me with only a quarter of what I began with.  I wouldn’t have to explain to them why I’m trying to lose weight or why it’s important to eat healthy.  I wouldn’t have to listen to them tell me I’m fat when I eat more than usual.

                I wish I could stay in my house for an entire weekend and watch Parks and Recreation in bed and bake cookies and not feel guilty about later having to answer to my family’s inquiries about why I was “hiding myself”.  I wouldn’t have to put in that obligatory “face time” with my host family or my community, because if I’m a volunteer, I have to always be around doing things for other people, right?

                Being invisible would mean that I could also ignore the knocks on my door when I’m in the middle of writing a blog post, like I’m trying to do right now. 

                Peace Corps talks a lot about the fishbowl effect before you’re sent off for your service.  Everyone will be staring at you wherever you go…everyone will know your business…everyone will bother you and pester you and try to be with you at all times of the day.  I guess I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know just how intense it would be.  I thought, after two years, I’d slowly become part of my community.

                In a way, I have.  But in many ways, I haven’t and won’t ever.

                To put it bluntly, I’m white.  I stick out like a sore thumb.  I’ll never be the same color as the people in my village.  My hair will always be different than theirs.  And subsequently, everything I wear and everything I eat and everything I do is, as they think, different.  It’s interesting.  And I don’t blame them for being interested, but being different is really exhausting.

                Sometimes, being invisible would be much easier.

I wanna hold your hand

                Do you remember in middle school the first time you held someone’s hand?

                I remember it being absolutely terrifying.  I remember the thoughts running through my mind: “what if my hand is too sweaty?  Am I squeezing his hand too hard?  Everyone is staring at us.  Does he want to let go?  Is he uncomfortable?  Oh my gosh, my fingers are totally sweating.”

                Hand holding was a big step back then.  Maybe it still is.  I sure do enjoy it a lot more now than I did when I was in 7^th grade.  I myself am partial to fingers laced, with my thumb on the inside of his.  I like holding hands all over the place—walking, driving, watching a movie—it makes everything seem like you’re together, and like you’re a couple, and like you’re in love.

                Everyone holds hands in Lesotho.  

                When you shake hands with someone, often times they’ll hold your hand for an uncomfortably long time while they continue chatting with you.  I remember the first time this happened to me.  It was with one of my teachers after we had just met.  It was an awkward moment when I tried to pull away too soon.  The next few times it happened, I’d pretend to motion to something with my hand while I was talking in order to break free from the embrace.

                A few other times, I’ll be walking to class or to the toilet with one of my teachers and she’ll catch hold of one of my fingers and won’t let go.  I can only hold on for so long, and then I get that creeping feeling that my fingers are sweating or that it’s been an oddly long time that our fingers are laced.

                I’m trying to get used to the hand-holding.  I’m not yet to the point where I’ll initiate it, but I can hold on for quite some time before the grasp is released.  Of course, I’m still always consciously aware of the seconds ticking by while I hold this persons hot, sweaty hand.  But I can hang in there.

                Basotho don’t seem to mind.  Boys and boys, girls and girls, boys and girls, friends, colleagues, family…they all hold hands.

                I was watching my kids’ choir practice last week.  They’re getting ready for a district competition on Friday.  The girls stand in the front of the choir and the boys stand in the back, naturally.  The shorter boys pull up stools to stand on in order to be seen above their towering classmates’ heads.

                Hand holding is big during choir.  My students must feel their knuckles grazing those of the person next to them and instinctively intertwine their fingers.  It’s actually kind of cute seeing them clasp and unclasp their hands while they’re singing, especially the little boys.  They don’t even seem to notice that they are holding hands, and just as suddenly as it started, they break free from each other once the song is over.

                Why is it that in American culture, we have this “personal space bubble” that can’t be invaded?  This isn’t the first time living abroad that I’ve noticed that we Americans don’t like being touched.  While I was in Argentina, I remember several male classmates being disgusted by giving the customary one-cheek beso to other males.  More than once, I was referred to as la Americana fría—the cold American.

                Although I’m still not totally into it, I’m growing used to holding hands.  I actually think it’s kind of sweet.  When Maphoka and I hold hands on the way to the shop, I feel a really close bond between us as sisters.  When my teacher grabs onto me while we’re at a cultural competition, I feel like she’s doing it to be protective of me in a crowd.  And when a stranger won’t let go during that first conversation we’re having, I see it as them being genuinely interested and engaged in meeting me.

                What I wouldn’t give to see my conservative Dad sweating and uncomfortably holding hands with my male principal for a full five-minute conversation.  J

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).