Permanent site visit

This past week I was visiting my permanent site for the first time. They sent us out to get a lay of the land, meet people, see the school, and figure out what stuff we need to get for moving into our houses. I will be living in the Mokhotlong district. I will be staying in my own rondavol with the chief's family. My new name is Tsepo Sekonyela(Tsepo means hope, but I don't know if Sekonyela means anything). The place is very remote, but beautiful. Huge rolling hills and massive mountains form the horizon. Winding around through the valleys is a nice little river which I will definitely have to investigate. The school itself is quite nice as it was built in 2007. It was the first government school in this district of Lesotho. It looks new and the massive staff room has electricity and seven or eight desktop computers. The teachers are all rather young and seem nice enough. It was difficult to get a good grasp on how the school normally operates as is was exam time. This meant that each day there were only two exams, each around an hour and a half long. The rest of the time the students studied and the teachers hung out in the staff room grading exams or watching movies. Not having any exams to grade, I spent much of my time doing the latter. The only thing that really threw me though was the weather. People warned me that it would be cold, but this was a bit much. It's getting close to mid-summer and today it rained 3 times, hailed 5, was sunny and warm for a few fleeting moments, and was windy and cold the rest of the time. I was hoping that I would escape the cold by going to Africa, but it seems my fate to dwell in the cold places of the world. Hopefully the constant changing of weather will at least be a change from the cold gray doldrums of Wisconsin winters! I guess we will see.

P.S. I later learned that some anomalous weather swept into Lesotho that week and even the lowlands received a few doses of hail. Thanks climate change!

Half-way through training

Well, today is the half-way point in training. We've been here 4 weeks, but already America seems like a lifetime ago. However, today we also got our schedules for the next 4 weeks and they are jam-packed with teaching and field trips, so I think these next 4 weeks will fly by. Today we also got the list of potential permanent sites, so that's pretty exciting.

I've had weird week. Monday we played sports all day at our training center, but I believe I drank some of the wrong water there! I was sick as hell and running to the latrine all night. The next day I felt terrible, but had to sit through a bunch of classroom observations. Afterwards I skipped language class to sleep all afternoon. That seemed to do the trick and I started to feel a lot better afterwards. The next day we all got water filters (I suspect I had a small part in that) so at least some good came out of it. Also, I took some extra Sesotho lessons to catch up on what I missed, but I think I actually got a lot more done in those 1-on-1 lessons than I was otherwise, so that was good too. I think I really learned a bunch of Sesotho this week and various parts of it all seemed to fall into place. However, tomorrow we have our mock language test, so we'll see if any of that is true. After the language test tomorrow morning, we are going back to TY to buy foodstuffs as we finally get to start cooking for ourselves. So that's pretty exciting. Today I saw my host dad for the first time since the first couple days in village. He works construction, and so has to go live wherever there is work. For the past few weeks he was at a job up in Leribe. So now he's home for a couple days to see the family and drop off some money, then he's off to live at some other job for a while. My little brother Kananelo got to go on a field trip to Maseru today as well, so everyone was very excited about that. In all it was a very good day in the Kose household!

Wandering the streets of Teya-teyaneng

I think today was the best day I've had in Lesotho thus far. It was a Saturday, so we had the day off of training to travel to a nearby town called Teya-teyaneng (TY) for shopping. It turns out that TY is all of 2 streets, so our shopping only took a couple of hours. It is a nice camp town though with lots of food and necessities. After we bought our stuff, we all went and spent the afternoon at the Blue Mountain Inn. This place is a nice little tourist hotel with a pool, bar, and a restaurant. Needless to say, we spent most of the day and most of our money there eating good food and drinking together in the shade by the pool. While there, I saw the first ice cubes I've found in this country. However, they were only to be found in the urinals and not in our glasses. Go figure... Afterwards, Ed and I went searching for the infamous 'pork place' of TY. It is a well known PC hangout where you buy a bunch of raw pork and they grill it up real nice for you. Well, after a bit of looking and a chance meeting with a current volunteer, we found ourselves eating some of the best pork I've had in a long time. I think we'll definitely end up back there a few times. After we got back to Berea, we went on a nice long hike with tons of gorgeous views. And now I am writing this by candlelight with a brandy and warm water by my side. The perfect end to such an awesome day!

Back from the first site visit

Got back from the site visit the other day. We went to see a volunteer named Rory, who lived in the Leribe district. A bus took us to the town, but it was actually faster to hike the same distance on the way back out. The time there was a blast. I got to help some kids on classwork and teach my first lesson here. I think my biggest fear was not being able to handle the teaching, but once I got up there it felt right. So I think I'll be okay. My biggest worry now is living up to the legacy that some of the volunteers have left here. So many have come up with and completed tons of successful community projects. I hope I can be brave and smart enough to do the same. 

Today was the first time we a got a taste of Lesotho's rains. It has been gloomy and pouring on and off for around 12 hours, though they say that usually this happens for days on end. That may be the toughest to overcome mentally, such long periods of isolation surrounded by gloom with little to do. Oh well, I'll figure something out. But that's all for now. I've got a hot bath and a book waiting for me!

Out to see the world

It's 6am and today we leave Berea for a week. We are all visiting current volunteers at their sites to see what this job is actually like. I'm pretty excited. We get to travel(a little, since the district I'm visiting is just to the north of this one), see a new place, and meet real volunteers. I'm anxious to learn what their accommodations are like, how they cook for themselves, and what classrooms are like on a daily basis. We also get to choose what we eat (for a couple days) for the fist time since leaving the States!

One week in

This is our one week mark in Lesotho! It seems like it has been much longer though. It is surprising how easy I have been able to adapt to this new lifestyle without electricity of running water. We are all very happy with the country and especially with the people. Everyone is incredibly friendly so long as you say 'Dumela' (hello) and 'u phela joang?' (how are you) We are now learning more about the school system and technical things about teaching our particular topics. Tomorrow we go to the capital city, Maseru, for the first time. We have heard time and time again about how dangerous a place it is. Today a good 2 hours were spent briefing us on the city and it's dangers. This should be interesting.

It seems I have made a pair of Basotho buddies; John and Clark. I forget their Sesotho names, but they like to gy be these 'Christian names' anyway. John is a junior in high school. He seems to be a pretty bright kid. He's top of his class here and leads the school choir. He wants to go to university and become a civil engineer. I don't know much about Clark, but he seems pretty nice and to be a smart guy. The 2 of them pal around. I have been helping them with their math and science homework and they've been helping me with my Sesotho homework. Not a bad arrangement! We talk about life here and in America and I teach them things about the stars. They seem like good kids but I'm apprehensive to get too close. I don't yet know this job of culture well enough to understand how close I should let myself get knowing I will leave them and this village in a couple months.

Training Begins

Today we had our first full day of training. It was a lot of sitting and being talked at (~7 hours worth) but it wasn't too bad. It was lots of health and food safety stuff like ho to rinse and peel fruit and the ways to sanitize water. In language we worked on greetings a little bit more. They are somewhat scripted, but a very important sign of respect to those whom one meets. Tomorrow we will visit schools for most of the day. It will be very interesting to see the type of places we will be working in for the next 2 years. I wonder what the teachers and students will think of us.

New houses and sheep killin

I have just completed my second bucket bath!  It's starting to be less difficult now.  I've also just swept the floor much to the joy of my host mother, Mme Mpho, and grandmother, Mme Makeisara.  Apparently, if yo don't sweep every day, people start to worry about you here. Yesterday we had our first official Sesotho lessons and made a tour of the village to see everyone's homes.  Some volunteers have small places (~80 sq ft), and others are a bit larger (~150 sq ft).  Mine's above average and plenty big for me plus I have easily the best view of the mountains.  We then went to another village, where we will receive all our technical training, to get shots and make a call home.  Yesterday I  went to see a sleep get slaughtered before breakfast.  It was only a little more gruesome than deer hunting since you were right there, holding the animal down as it expired.  It was very interesting though.  After training I had an hour or so before dark, so spent an hour or so BS'n with the guys that had slaughtered the sheep.  I tried some of their traditional Basotho beer.  It was warm and alittle thicker than one would expect beer to be. However it wasn't terrible and I think it has an alcohol content approaching that of wine.  I took my dinner with my grandmother (nkhono) Makeisara.  Then, walking back into my little house, I saw the stars, the Milky Way, and a shooting star!  I think it will be okay here!

On new ground

Wow, I'm not sure how to begin.  The last 12 hours have been easily the most eventful of my life.  After a year of applications, months of waiting, a day of orientation and 15 hours on a transatlantic flight, we hopped into a 40 passenger plane into Maseru, Lesotho.  Our arrival in the Mountain Kingdom couldn't have been staged any better; after a descent through thick cloud cover, we burst forth to be greeted with some of the most spectacular and varied mountains I have ever seen.  Following that was a drive to our training village that was a sober reminder of why we were coming here.  Lesotho has large challenges in joblessness and infrastructure.  This hour long drive made most of us take a very hard look at the reasons we think we are doing this.  Though it was punctuated with excited children waving at our “motorcade” of sorts.  Also, when we arrived in the village, everyone (~30-40 people) was on hand, singing and yelling and hugging every one of us.  That was so completely unexpected and greatly needed after out humbling trip in.  I would write more, but I have only slept 4 of the last 50 hours and I'm writing this by the light of a paraffin lamp as thunder rolls across the mountains and pours occasional bursts of rain upon my tin roof.  So, “robala hantle!”  (Sleep well)

36 hours of Philly

So it's begun.  I got into Philadelphia late last night.  Today we start orientation around noon, so I will try and run around to a couple historical places beforehand.  Luckily our hotel is in the historic district, so there are a bunch of important places around: liberty bell, constitution center,independence hall, etc.  We'll see how much I can comfortably get in before lunch.
Tomorrow we check out of the hotel and catch our flight out of JFK at 11am, putting us in Lesotho sometime Friday.  This whole thing still feels pretty surreal, but its starting to come together and I suspect it will really hit home when I see the continent of Africa out my plane window!

The time draws near and Wisconsin grows chilly

So my countdown to departure is at 2 weeks...
I've been able to find a couple current PC volunteers in Lesotho via good 'ole facebookery.  The one's I've heard from seem to love the place and especially the people.  They are also excited for us to arrive.  Hopefully that's because they really like the place, and not just because we are coming to replace them!

I've also learned that most of those rugged 'good for africa' clothes I've bought in preparation should be left here!  Turns out that most teachers in Africa dress nicer than I ever have!  So it looks like it's off to the polo shirt and slacks store with me!  Horray, that means a trip up to the big city of Duluth!

In the meantime I'm whiling away my remaining time in the states in Hayward.  I've been able to keep busy reading up on Lesotho history, learning their language, Sesotho, teaching myself guitar, and the occasional conter-strike or minecraft binge!  Outside, the weather is steadily turning into that of Wisconsin's autumn.  The ferns and birch have long since turned their yellows and reds, maple and popple (poplar if you must) are on their way.  The all enclosing cocoon of winter clouds is beginning to form, but there are still plenty of my favorite type of fall days with crisp, blue skies and flocks of geese on their way out.  This all constitutes a pretty sweet existence, but I think I'll be ready for something new by the time October 12th comes around. 

So, it looks like I started a blog.

     Alright, this is my first post on my first blog, so bear with me.  It's all still pretty novel.  Looks like I'm all set (on paper) to leave for Lesotho come October 12.  I've still got some gear to buy (sorta fun), a new language, Sesotho, to learn (also fun, but a little frustrating), and legal matters, e.g. power of attorney, student loans, to get settled (not fun at all).
     This adventure has been a long time coming.  I've been mentioning Peace Corps to friends and family for a couple years and especially for the past year as my application pieces slowly fell in to place.  For the most part the experience has been one of emails, faxes, medical checkups, and pictures of faraway places.  Now September will be my last full month Stateside and I'm beginning to get things like detailed itineraries for the first week in-country.  So far I've found myself more excited then apprehensive, even as the reality of this comes into focus.  I have no regrets so far, and plan to have none in the next 27 months!
     I'm sure I'll have much more interesting stuff to relate here as it get closer to my beginning of service and especially during.  For now, stay tuned!