A few minutes to kill before dark

The silence here is different from that I have known elsewhere. The only thing I can compare it to is that great quiet found deep in the woods, early in the morning. But even that is something different. On a perfectly still day, when the birds are silent and those rowdy chipmunks are absent, the woods are silent, but it is somehow a closed silence. You are in the middle of something, you are surrounded by trees and plants that help to muffle any small sounds there are. In Mokhotlong there is an open silence. It is the quiet of empty space, cold air, and hard stone. It isn't quiet because the sounds can't be heard, it is silent because the sounds aren't there! However, that absence of sound doesn't quite give the feeling of lack that is does other places. It's not that sounds are missing, it's sort of like the quiet in a great cathedral: that silence has a sort of fullness and richness all it's own.

It is that great time between late afternoon and early evening, it is not bright out anymore, but it still a half hour before twilight. My most vivid memories of childhood summers are at this time. Running around and playing with friends during those final minutes of the day when you can feel and see the world around you changing. After a whole day in which each minute seems the same as the next, being outside during this time brings me back into meaningful contact with this slowly turning pile of rock. It is that slow and perpetual motion manifest; when you can watch that orange globe climb down behind the horizon. You know it was moving just like that all day, but somehow those last minutes seem more important. On a bad day it comes with a sigh of relief and a sense of closure. All that nastiness that was this day, you are reassured, is almost out of the way and there's really no more time to fit anything else bad in. On a good day it can be that sigh of satisfaction like after a good meal. That time where you sit at the table, unconcerned with the dirty dishes, the chores to attend to to clean up after today and get ready for tomorrow. When you just sit there content and look over the results of your good fortune and hard work and are happy simply appreciating how good all that was!

The little peaceful world outside my door grows dim, and my face is lit by the glow of this computer screen. Somehow my perceptions have begun to shift, and nowadays this polarized electric glow now seems more eerie and out-of-place than candlelight. The silence is not complete, the great thing about this kind of quiet is that you can hear for farther than one ever thought possible. I can hear the chatter and murmur of kids playing, somewhere. They could be talking and laughing anywhere within a half-mile of me, and I can hear them. It makes it a little magical, disembodied voices and sounds of play. You know the voices have owners, but it makes it much easier to reminisce, half imagining those as the sounds of you and your own playmates, just now floating down to murmur over you from over the mountains and across twenty years, like a little stream, washing and rippling past your bare feet, full of water that made it's slow journey through river and cloud and mountain only to be there just when you need it, to rinse the dirt from between your toes.

Up to the Top

The other day we had to wait 2 hours for our 12 seater taxi to fill with 15 people before we would leave. Half-way through this, a grandmother from church got out to bust a move to the famu music blasting from the taxi. She wanted to show the teenage girls she could still out-dance them! This is Lesotho.

It's been some time since I last posted here. School has remained about the same, and much of it has become routine. For example, I don't find it odd to walk to school through cornfields, herds of cows and goats, and through dongas. Getting up at 5:30 to boil my bath water and bathe by lamp-light seems totally reasonable (though still not fun).

I just gave my first physics test and second math test. I am still trying to get used to the idea of having 40% as the pass mark and still failing about half the class. I'm lucky enough to have a few really bright kids who usually grasp the topics and come to me with questions they have, but for every one of those, there are 4 more who don't understand what I say, don't get the material, and won't dare tell me so. This makes teaching a little frustrating: I think everyone is with me and getting everything, then I grade the tests and find out the reality of the situation once it's too late.

Apparently knowing how to create a gmail account makes me some sort of technology god here, so now anyone within 50 miles with computer trouble will show up at my door or ask me in a bar in town for help. I am also waging a battle with the 3 computers my school has. I am still confounded as to how a computer with NO INTERNET ACCESS can get more viruses than I've ever seen on one machine!

We Mokhotlong PCV's (i.e. Katie, Caitlin, and myself) took a trip up to Sani Pass and the purported 'Highest Pub in Africa' this past weekend. This is a mountain pass on Lesotho's eastern border with South Africa. As our luck goes, we arrived at the taxi rank at 7am only to find the first taxi full and heading out. At first we thought a taxi filling that quickly meant the second one would be full and leaving soon. 3 hours later we knew better. After we were packed in the taxi with two babies and the token loud, drunk Ntate, we began the somewhat perilous 2 ½ hour journey to the pass. Naturally, the road was not paved and pretty treacherous for walking on, let alone driving a mini-bus full of people over.

The experience of a ride like this is difficult to describe, but it was something like squeezing into a Rubbermaid bin that is on the slowest, jerkiest roller coaster ever, which is aboard an 8 passenger plane flying through a storm. Also there is accordian/rap (Famu music) blasting so you have to yell to the person next to you, and drunk men are arguing with screechy voiced ladies. The babies alternately howl and wave to you, so they at least balance out. At first you try and stay upbeat, that will get you through an hour or so. Then you attempt to turn off your sensory organs, try to ignore the pulsing beat of a song you've already heard twice on the trip, try to dismiss the pain in your knees crammed into the seat in front of you, quit wondering where the padding on both your seat and your butt have gone, stop thinking about the eggs you ate that morning sloshing around your stomach with two cups of instant coffee. Maybe you delude yourself and think you can just pass out from exhaustion, but thats pretty much impossible unless you've put down a fifth of booze or a fistful of sleeping pills. The final stage is acceptance. You realize you are not getting of this thing anytime soon. You will probably not die or even throw up, but when you get out, you won't be able to walk properly, sit comfortably, or have a conversation without complaining for a few hours.

That's the border crossing in the background.  No one sneaks across!

After overcoming the psychological and physical challenges of Lesotho transportation, we arrived at the Sani Top Chalet. There's not a lot to the place, just a little, cozy bar and a few tables to eat at, but it was totally worth the trip. They had great food and fancy drinks and, although my text describing the trip is much lengthier, this little enclave of familiar comforts justified the whole thing. The chalet and border post (a metal gate nest to the small customs office) are pretty much the only things in the town besides a dozen crumbling rondavols and a pool hall. I won't describe the harrowing journey back down the mountain, but suffice to say it was nearly foiled by packed trucks, absent taxis, and a corpse wrapped in a tarp!

We did all manage to make it back home. Although I loved the chalet and, now that it's over, I have some good stories to tell about the journey, I was glad to finally stagger back to my rondavol, laden with a week's worth of groceries, to see my host parents sitting on the stoop, enjoying the last rays of late-summer sun.

I probably give the impression that things here are pretty crappy with all the complaining I do. In truth the good and the bad pretty much even out. I think it's just easier and more therapeutic to rant about the bad stuff! The lows can be many, subtle, and pervasive, but the heights you reach are spectacular!

A couple final thoughts:

It is normal here for two men, who are good friends, to hold hands when walking or talking, yet homosexuality is taboo and almost unheard of where I live.

You will spend 3 hours waiting for the 15^th person to be crammed into your 12 seater taxi, sit there with the engine idling and everyone inside while the driver chats with someone for 10 minutes, and leave the taxi rank, only to stop for gas a block later.

A package will get from the capitol city to Mokhotlong in 2 days while a letter takes 2 weeks.

You will talk to university educated science teachers who are totally on board with evolution and global climate change, but swear that witches cause lightning.

And finally, the beer comes in quarts, but it only costs R10 ($1.25)!