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)