Lumela from Ha Sefako, Lesotho!

Tonight will be my second night staying in my new village! Each time I walk out the door, I am amazed at how beautiful it is here. Huge mountains surround my village. When I walk out my door, a Lesotho mountain range is on my left and to the right is South Africa! There is a river* about 10 minutes from myhouse that separates the two countries. I will be working with teachers in 4 schools and will have to walk along the river for about 1-2 hours to get to three of the schools. My house is amazing! I was worried that I wouldn't like it or feelcomfortable in it, but really enjoy it! I spent the entire day cleaning, unpacking, and rearranging the furniture. My friend Phil also lives in this village and he helped me to rearrange my furniture and kill spiders. I lost count, but I am pretty sure there were over 100 spiders in my house. I think I got most of them, but we'll see tomorrow. Last night I jumped up several times because I heard things moving around my hut. I am pretty sure I have a rat living in or around my house. I heard something really big last night and found alittle bit of rat poop in the bottom of my dresser. I also might have bed bugs. I was definitely bit, but I'm not sure when. They take afew days to show up, so I am going to attack my hut with 2 cans of bug spray before I leave tomorrow morning! My family is also incredible. Now that I am living here, I am a part of the family. So I have new parents and siblings. I think it might take me a while to feel comfortable calling other people my family. I am not completely sure what the situation is next door, but I know that I have 2 sisters, 2 brothers, and 3 other children. The ones that I am directly related to are my age, and the children are my nieces and nephews, I guess? My mother and one of my brothers just passed away, but I am not sure how recently. My water pump is about a 5-minute walk from my house. I have a 5 gallon (I think) bucket that I fill up and use sparingly. I went to fill it up today so I wouldn't have to walk to the pump at 5AM tomorrow and was encouraged to take the wheelbarrow so it wouldn't be as hard. Pushing that big piece of metal up a hill took everything out of me! I was exhausted by the time I got to the pump. The wheel on it points in every direction, so I zigzagged all the way up the hill. Once I got water, I figured it would be an easy walk down. I made it 5 feet before I hit a rock and flipped my bucket on the ground. There must have been 10 people standing around watching the show. I was so embarrassed that I started sweating. So I walked my bucket back to the pump, filled it up and went to try again. By this time a few more people came outside to see what was going on. I managed to avoid the rock that I hit the first time, made it an extra 15 feet and lost it again. Without even looking up, I took my remaining gallon of water and went home. I sent my brother to get the wheelbarrow! Great way to introduce myself to the village! Tomorrow Phil and I will be going to the town in our district to meetup with 3 other volunteers. We will be going back to the Peace CorpsTraining Center on Tuesday and thought we should break it into two days. We are about 2 hours from the town and are the second to last village in northern Lesotho! I thought that was pretty cool. I will be working in the two farthest north villages! My schools are all right on the border. Well I am going to cross my fingers that the bed bugs aren't in the bed that I will be sleeping in tonight. I sleep with a flashlight incase anything creepy decides to jump on my face. Hope everyone has a great new year! Wish I was there to celebrate with you!! Oh, I do not have cell phone service in my village. I am planning to buy a South African cell phone, which will be much less expensive to call! I will keep you up to date! I will be in Maseru, where I do have service, until January 10 and hope to get some calls or texts!

*The Orange River (Afrikaans/Dutch: Oranjerivier), Gariep River, Groote River or Senqu River is the longest river in South Africa. It rises in the Drakensberg mountains in Lesotho, flowing westwards through South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. The river forms part of the international borders between South Africa and Namibia and between South Africa and Lesotho, as well as several provincial borders within South Africa. Although the river does not pass through any major cities, it plays an important role in the South African economy by providing water for irrigation, as well as hydroelectric power.

More Pictures!!

Merry Almost Christmas!

**There are three new posts before this one!  Scroll down to read them!

We just got back to the training center and are getting food ready for tomorrow, we are cooking diner for ourselves, and are getting ready for our Christmas party tonight!

Just wanted to say hi and that I miss everyone!  I'll try to type more tomorrow!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

P.S.  I'm sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt writing this...that's crazy!  Christmas is supposed to be freezing!  I'll have my phone with me all night and day!  

011 266 59166881  reference maria's post below because I keep messing the number up!  Look forward to hearing from you!!!!  I also get texts and can usually respond!

Hiiii

What a day!  I just got back from Tsehlanyane, a really nice lodge that is on the Botha Bothe/Liebre border (I am still not sure if I am spelling some of these Sesotho words right!).   Side Note:  a huge spider just fell on my laptop.  I am very much over living with spiders.  I have a feeling they will only get worse when I move into my thatched roof hut, but still.  It was really big and moved faster than I did.  Where did it even come from???  And where is it now?  I can’t find it anywhere.  When it hit my keyboard, it sounded like someone dropped a marble on it.

Anyway.  It was so nice to see everyone from my group.  We are split into three villages, so we don’t get to be together as a group very often.  While we were at the lodge/park, we had the chance to hike to a natural swimming pool.  There is a really cool river that runs through the country and at one point a natural damn created a small swimming pool.  It even had a natural rock slide!  Men here do not wear shorts, so it was so nice to wear shorts.  We also had a cookout.  I don’t really cook meat on my own, so it was nice to have some meat.  I think once I have my own place I will start cooking meat more.  For now, it is just too hard to keep it from spoiling.  I am also so lazy!  There have been a few nights where I have skipped dinner or eaten a piece of fruit because I had a big lunch.

Well I am going work on book number 3 since getting here!  I borrowed The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch.  It’s a great book!  Hopefully I will be reading without my new spider friend.  I have this product called DOOM.  It says to spray and then leave the room for 30 minutes.  On more than one occasion, I have blasted the life out of a spider from my bed.  The lavender scent just doesn’t seem as toxic?  Merry almost Christmas!!  I have really cool pictures from our trip and am hoping to get many more pictures up in the next week or 2!!!!

Phone Number

Hi everyone! This is Maria, Mike's sister...he asked me to re-post his number because the other one is wrong!

011-266-591-66881

Don't forget he's 7 hours ahead of us!
I talked to him today and he says hi to everyone, he really misses you guys and wants you to call him!!

Hello!

Lumela!  I just got back from my friend Meg’s house.  Seven of us are living in Mokema and have been taking turns cooking dinner for the group.  Tonight, Meg, Nicole, and Janice made hamburgers.  I brought a pineapple!  Eating together is a nice way for us to spend our nights.  We are usually free from 4 until we go to bed.  It gets dark around 7, so the fact that I am up at 8 is a little bit late! 

When I got back to my house, I spent a little time with my family.  I got to hold baby Mike, who is about 24 days old!  The family I am staying with decided to name him after me because we arrived at the house on the same day.  Apparently it is a huge honor to have a child named after you because names are chosen based on characteristics the parents would like to see in the child.  Who knew I had such great characteristics!!  Right now, my room is a mess and I have dishes that I really should do.  One of the 5 gallon basins that I wash my dishes in broke, so I have to figure something out.  I have a desk/table that I have all of my stuff on.  It looks like someone just dumped a box of stuff on a table and put a lantern in the middle. 

We went food shopping today and I bought a ton of fresh fruits.  I am kind of boycotting the vegetables because one day last week my peppers were fine, the next they had maggots and were just a ball of funky mush.  My onions smelled like BO and my tomatoes had layer of fuzzy mold around them.  I guess my large pot that doubles as a refrigerator when I place it on the floor in the shade doesn’t work so well!  I went through 4 years of college without eating Ramen Noodles.  It took me 1 week in my village to cave and buy 6 packs with my friend John to make a few times a week.  I am going to have to figure something else out very soon! 

So my site in Ha Sefako…I found out last week that I will be living in Botha-Bothe, one of Lesotho’s 10 districts.  It is a northern district and I am as far north as you can get.  I am very close to the South African border, which is awesome because they have great grocery stores!  I love the fact that I will be able to buy almost anything I would need to make almost any dish.  Now, I am not so sure that I will be making a wide variety, but it’s great to know that I can! 

Quick note, I just took a bathroom break.  I don’t think that people will ever think that it is normal to see me walk around with a light strapped to my head and a roll of toilet paper in my hand.  I am hoping that I do, however, get used to the latrine.  I have a feeling that sitting in a little out house that leans to the left and has a solid 15-20 foot drop will always be uncomfortable.  Being able to wave to other people from the inside always helps to break the ice though! 

Anyway, I will be living in the north and I have a neighbor!  Phil, whose blog is listed on the left, will be staying in my village.  I call it “my” village because I hope to be the king J  I am really excited to have a neighbor.  I am starting to get the idea that my village is pretty remote.  I asked someone how far we were from the camp town, which is the capitol of the district and usually has a place to buy food and stuff like that.  They told me that it was about 2-3 hours away from me.  Many people hitch hike here, which is very safe and free!  When I asked about that, my friend laughed and said that not many people travel to that village and that it is the end of the road.  Things could be very different when I get there, so I am trying not to make any assumptions.  Whatever it is, I’ll make the best of it!

By the time I post this, it will be Christmas Eve!  I can’t believe the year is almost over!  It is soooooo hot here that even listening to Christmas music doesn’t help it to feel like Christmas.  Tomorrow we are hiking a mountain, having a barbecue, and swimming in a lake!  I’ll tell you all about it later!

Miss everyone!  Love the comments! 

Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone!!! I only have a few minutes, and didn't have time to write a post on my laptop. Hopefully, I will be able to write a few and post them on Christmas Eve. I just want to say that I LOVE reading everyone's comments!!! Maria tried calling me today and couldn't get through. I am not sure what the problem is. Texts worked though! So if you want, we can try texting? We are in town today to shop for food and get any supplies we need. I need to buy a new dish washing bowl because I snapped mine in half.

So on Christmas Eve, all 19 of us will be back in the training center. We are in charge of cooking for ourselves on Christmas! We have a great spread planned. I'll type a more detailed list this week in my hut.

Hope everything is going well! I miss everyone! I'll make sure I have a few fun posts by Wednesday! Merry Christmas!!!

I would like to introduce you to my friend Mr. Pee Bucket

What a week! Although some of this blog post is embarrassing, I am keeping our motto T.I.A. (This Is Africa) in mind. We refer to it when anything goes wrong or when really embarrassing things happen!
This was the first week that I was responsible for cooking for myself and many of my vegetables went bad because I didn’t use them! I can’t blame it solely on poor planning, though. On Tuesday morning, I didn’t feel great when I woke up, but figured I would feel better when I got to school. I only had a little bit of oatmeal for breakfast and had planned on having a big lunch. By 10:00, I had a very upset stomach and decided to go home to sleep. Four days later, I am finally feeling better and am not going to the bathroom almost every hour. When we first got to Lesotho, the Peace Corps told us about all of the things we would need to survive during our two years here. I couldn’t understand why they insisted on us having a “pee bucket.” Now, however, I completely understand and can’t live without it! I think I’ve said before that we really aren’t supposed to go outside at night, even to use the latrine. I didn’t think it was a big deal and wasn’t worried about it. On Tuesday night, I found myself laying in bed at 2AM thinking, do I use my bucket, knowing that everyone in my house will know exactly what is going on, or do I sprint out to the latrine and get in trouble for leaving. I am so happy that I made the decision to use the bucket on that first night, because it was the first of many times in only 3 nights! I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about it the next day, so when I retold the story, I was welcomed into the Peace Corps by several of the current volunteers!

With all of that said everyone else in my group has been really helpful. I helped out as much as I could during the workshop that we had planned, but my friends really covered for me. During most of the first day, I only spent about 20 minutes at a time in our workshop. Most of the teachers there noticed me racing to the latrine and realized that I wasn’t feeling well. Every time I saw them they rubbed their stomach and said something in Sesotho!

My computer is almost dead and a really loud thunder storm just came rolling in, soooo… Tomorrow we are hiking Thaba-Bosiu. I am not really sure what we are doing, but I heard it was a great time! After that, I will find out my site for the next two years! We will get to see video of our hut and will find out more about it. I can’t wait to see which volunteers, if any, are close to me! By the time I post this, I should be able to write about that!

UPDATE! Obviously I figured out my USB drive! I am still working on pictures though! my phone number is.... 001 266 59166881. I am not so positive about the first 2 area codes. the 001 is to get out of the US and 266 is to get into Lesotho...dad, if this is wrong, can you post the real number? CALL ME!! We are 7 hours ahead of Pittsburgh.
Next, I found out my site! I will be living in a village called Ha Sefako. It is in Botha Bothe. I am very excited! I have a very small house, but that is Ok. Some people have really amazing places with hot water and electricity, butttttt whatever. There are 5 people in my district and it is about a 2 hour bus ride from Maseru.

Hope everyone is doing well!!!! Miss you all so much! I can't believe it is snowing where you are and I am sweating my face off here! I should be back on here next Saturday and will be back together as a group at our training place on Christmas Eve. OH! I posted i think 2 more posts below this, so check them out! Hopefully pictures and a wish list of things that would be great to have here will be posted next week!!!!

Hello from Mokema!

Good Morning! It is 8:10 here and I just got up! Sleeping until 8 is such a nice change from 5:45. Yesterday, we went food shopping and are going to start cooking for ourselves. I already got lazy and didn’t cook dinner last night! I was exhausted from the week and decided to call it a night around 8:00. This morning, I made oatmeal with cinnamon, raisons, and brown sugar. It turned out really good! In about an hour, I am meeting a few friends to hike Mt. Thaba. I am going to try for a second time to put pictures and my blogs on my flash drive and just put them in my blog. I had some technical difficulties yesterday. Sitting on the top of the mountain is really cool. I can see for miles and I think I can see the villages where the other volunteers are staying. After our hike, we are meeting at the school to plan for the workshops that we are having for the local teachers. 60 teachers signed up, so we think about 30 will really show up. As of now, our workshop is going to have about 5 stations and will teach teachers how to make their lessons more creative and learner-centered. Many of the teachers simply write things on the board and expect the students to memorize the information. Some subjects, like science, are not taught because the teachers do not really understand the content. We are planning on getting the teachers in small groups and modeling creative teaching while teaching them the content. They have access to amazing science kits, but do not know how to use them. I think my station will focus on using the science kits. My other station is going to be an independent station and will require the teachers to create a book. On one day they will create the story and the other, they will create the pictures. I made a book for a lesson I taught last week and used a book to help the students to understand the seasons. I am hoping that this station will encourage the students to make visual aids and also to have their students create books.
**Any PDS friends reading this, I am so happy that I did PDS before I came here! There are 7 of us working as resource teachers, and most of us have just graduated from college. All of the workshops that we had and the work that we did last year has given me so many ideas as I work with the teachers here!!

To quickly jump back to yesterday, we went food shopping in town and I got so much food! I am guessing that I spent a little under $100 and was able to buy a $10 phone card, lunch, plates, knives, utensils, a 5 pack of cooking spoons, and food that will last a few weeks. Some of the more exciting food times were a pineapple, apples, something similar to ramen noodles, beef and chicken base, soup mix, whole-wheat pasta and rice, and many other fresh vegetables and fruits! I am so excited to cook for myself!! I have a 2 burner gas stove and 5 pots that vary in size. My largest pot will double as a Dutch oven. My ‘M’e (mother) has taught me how to make bread in the Dutch oven, but I am going to try to roast vegetables and eventually make an apple pie! Volunteers are encouraged to stay inside at night, so we have lots of time, especially during the winter when it gets dark around 5, to cook.
Well I hope everyone is doing well! By the time I post this, I should know where my permanent site will be!! I am really excited to find out!