Sometimes I ramble!

It is 4PM on Monday and I walked into my house just as it started raining! Behind the mountain that I can see from my door, there is a small village. The government is building a road that snakes up the mountain and will eventually reach the village so public transportation can service them twice a day. They brought all of these huge machines and trucks to get the job done and about twice a week “explode” the mountain. I didn’t expect this the first time and was in a classroom observing a teacher when a bomb went off. I grabbed his arm and checked for damages. He, being fairly old, belly laughed because I was clearly not letting go of his arm for a few seconds. The point of telling you that long story is I got a hitchhike in one of the rock transporting trucks!! One of my principals and I put our fingers out, signaling that we wanted a free ride, and he stopped. I gave it a sideways look, rolled my eyes, and though “this is Africa.” Then I realized the door handle was over my head. When we opened the door I noticed that my seat was a good 6 feet above me! So I climbed in after Ntate Paul, the principal, and closed the door. I definitely smiled the whole ride home. Kids kept running to the road to see the truck, which drives up and down the road about 10 times a day, and I felt like a rock star! I know their gawking had nothing to do with me, but I waved as if I was Obama! In all of my excitement, I forgot how high up we were. When I went to get out, I backed down the first step and jumped. I hit the ground pretty hard a second or two later. Ntate Paul just looked down at me not really knowing if that was an accident. I took some IB Profen for the headache, but am still pretty psyched about it.

In other news…We had our camp a few week ago. It was part 2 of the Healthy Living Camp my friends Meg, Nicole, and I organized for 20 high school students. The camp was great! It was awesome to see the students again and catch up on the past few months. Some of the highlights of the camp were…Kick-4-Life, they teach about HIV through games, came and played games with the kids from 6AM-10. The guy who facilitated the session was amazing. He had way more energy than I had as the sun was coming up and the kids loved it. We had a guest speaker who is HIV positive come and speak about her life. She started by playing a game with the kids to help them understand how it might feel to learn your status. Then she talked to them about her life, how she found out that she was positive, and how she stays healthy. She also talked about her family, friends, job, things she does for fun, all of which the students thought wasn’t possible if someone had HIV. It was probably the best session of the day. We had our friend Alison come the first night to do a cooking demo. I loved it. I felt like I was watching the food network! She taught the kids how to cook a healthy or fortified version of the staple foods they eat. Everything she did was within a typical families budget and in some cases even cost less. Even the boys, who do not cook in Lesotho, asked questions! During lunch the receptionist told me that I had a guest. I gave it the usual “What could this possibly be” and walked to the lobby of the hotel we were at. It ended up being the parents of one of the campers who were in town; they live and work in South Africa while their children live in their home village. They gave me hugs and the mother told me that she had a picture of me with her son in her house! We had extra breakfast so they joined us for breakfast before leaving for South Africa. Our next camp is in August! We’re all looking forward to it!

So this next story is more of a high five for me than anything. I had this very specific idea of Peace Corps before arriving in Lesotho and a lot of it is exactly the same as I thought, but much of it is different. One thing that is different is that I thought I would be doing a lot of work with my hands. Digging and building things. Not exactly my style, but I thought I would give it a try. I finally, probably for the first time in Lesotho, picked up a shovel! I noticed that the water tap at one of my schools was not draining properly and, as a result, created a small swampy wetland all around it. One boy went to wash a peach and came back with wet shoes and ankles! So I went and checked it out, thought about what my dad would do and grabbed a shovel from the teacher’s room. After about 10 minutes of stomping on the shovel, pulling it back to make a loud suction noise, and throwing mud, I had a drainage pit! The kids were pretty confused for a few minutes, but when the water all started running away from the tap, they new exactly what was going on. I put in a good 3 hour nap after that hard work and was pretty pleased with myself.

My friend Meg celebrated her birthday about 2 weeks ago. Last year she scheduled school visits in my village during her birthday, so she did the same thing this year. A few other people were in the area helping with a Life Skills workshop (teaching about HIV, goal setting, decision-making, self-esteem…) at the high school in my village. I decided the best gift I could get Meg would be 2 chickens to slaughter for the big day. I went around with my Ausie (host sister) and asked people to buy a chicken from them. It took us a while to find chickens fat enough, but we finally had 2 neighbors agree to sell us chickens. I told them that I would pay for them and pick them up in a few days. So the big day comes and we go to neighbor 1 to collect the chicken. He’s an older man who lives with his two primary age sons. He smiled when I walked through his gate with a few other white people. He told his sons to go get the chicken and we waited. We smiled as we hear these two boys running through a cornfield and chickens attempting to fly and run at the same time. The boys come out and tell us that it isn’t around today. So we told them to bring it to my house when it came home. You should know that this was all in Sesotho and we speak it, but not well enough for this conversation. So we go to house 2. I told a guy about my age why we were there and a woman goes to get the man I talked to earlier in the week. She stood at the edge of their property yelling for him and he comes out of the primary school with a huge smile on his face. We rediscuss that I wasn’t to buy a chicken and he takes off after one. He and his son had it cornered, but when they went for it, it ran the other way. After about 5-10 minutes of chasing, he comes over and holds the chicken out for me to take. Now I had thought most of this through, but not the transportation to my house. So he teaches me how to hold the chicken without getting pecked or clawed and we start the several minute journey to my house. When we arrive the two boys from house 1 were standing in my yard waiting with another chicken. So when I said I thought it through, I really meant I knew I wanted to put salt and pepper on it and roast it. So we all stood there with chickens making noises without a clue. I told someone to get rope from my house and my knife, but then we didn’t know how to tie them in a nice way that let them know that they weren’t going anywhere. So the youngest of the boys steps up and ties them up. He has to be about 6. He tied them and laid them on the ground for us. Fast-forward about 3 hours while we wait for everyone to arrive. It’s definitely getting dark and we have one headlamp and one flashlight for a pretty dark night. We had 2 experienced chicken slaughterers in the group who taught Meg and another friend how to cut the head off. Meg went at it and got the head off of chicken #1 in about 40 seconds. Without really knowing what to do next we used the rope that already had its legs tied and hung it from my clothesline. I’m sure my Ntate (host father) was not pleased. For chicken #2 I insisted that we untie it to see if a chicken can really run with its head cut off. Our friend went at it, cut it off, and then we all stepped back. The instant he let go of the chicken, it flew straight at Nicole, went off to the left and continued running about 40 feet into my families corn field, all while our friend had the chicken’s head in his hand!! It was crazy. The next hour was spent plucking, gutting, and cooking the chickens, which cost about $4 each!

Finally, I have been working on a project to order children’s books with and HIV message or lesson in them for primary schools in Lesotho. The books are being ordered and dates have been set. So the project is this… I am working with Peace Corps and the Ministry of Education to order about 75 HIV/Life Skill themed children’s books and teacher resources for 20 primary schools in the district that I live in. To make the books useful and the project sustainable, we are developing a workshop to teach 2 teachers from each school how to use these books in their schools. We are going to create lesson plans, try some games and activities in the books, and talk about how to have difficult discussions about sex, death, HIV, and everything else with students. From there, we are going to try to visit the schools to help the teachers to use the books well in their schools. I am also going to create a manual for other volunteers to use if they want to do this workshop in their villages. Hopefully other volunteers will be able to order books and recreate this workshop all over the country!

Well by the time I post this the African Library Project books will be in Lesotho! I will be heading down to organize the books by school and make sure my 3 libraries are well organized before the Easter break! My next blog will have lots of updates about that!

Hope everyone is doing well!

More Semongkong Pictures (blog below)

Great weekend in Semongkong!

Hellooo! I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but haven’t had a chance!

My friends and I took a trip to Semongkong in Lesotho and had a great time. We got in a little late on Friday night and played pool, ate a good dinner and relaxed. We got up Friday morning to learn how to abseil on a 100 foot cliff. Abseiling is repelling down something on a rope. So we went down this cliff three times and learned different ways to get down each time. It should have been pretty scary lowering yourself down a 100 foot drop on a rope, but it wasn’t too bad. One of my favorite parts of that morning was when my friend Kelly went down. She started a little late and was still trying to learn some of the things we were taught earlier in the morning. When she neared the bottom, we told her that she had to lie flat on her back. Without thinking about it she spread out her arms and lied as flat as she could. We all started laughing as the guy helping us tried to untie her ropes as she lay on the ground like a starfish.

After that, we went on a donkey pub crawl! We each got a donkey to ride around on as we went to about 5 different bars. It was a ton of fun. My donkey was named Maria! The people living in the village have seen people do these bar tours before, but they still shook their heads as a group of Americans rode by on their donkeys. Some of the donkeys had their own plans and would go left instead of right and were pretty stubborn. It made for a lot of laughs.

Sunday morning we got up early to abseil the worlds longest single drop (or something like that). It was 204 meters AND made the Guinness Book of World Records! It was probably one of the most amazing and scary things I’ve ever done. There were 9 people in our group and I went around 7. It took us on average 15 minutes to get down, so we had a lot of waiting time at the top. I started sweating even more when it was my turn. I got all strapped in by one of the guys organizing the abseil and then he hooked me to my rope. I was amazed by how heavy the rope was! It took a lot of effort to back myself to the ledge. I had to pull the rope through the little metal thing attached to me. The next thing I know I’m over the edge and made the mistake of looking down. Something about the look on my face made the guys start laughing. After about 5 feet of “walking” down the wall, the wall disappeared! I was just floating 200 meters above rocks. I did something to my rope and started slowly spinning, which forced me to look down and all around me. I’m pretty pleased with myself for not achieving the world’s highest projectile vomit. I got instantly light headed as I dangled in the air and looked to my right at a huge waterfall and then just openness. It was beautiful. Once I got my act together, I started to lower myself down. I got a little more comfortable as I got closer to the bottom. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.

Once we got to the bottom we had to wait for everyone else. It was really cool to see my other friends repel down the fall. After the last person got to the bottom we had to walk back. This was definitely more nerve wrecking than going down the fall. We had to keep our helmets on and walk along a path made by goats. Because we were so close to the falls, the path was soaked and slippery. Just to our left was a decent drop, which would not have felt good. We continued along the terrifying path for about 20 minutes and then had a 45 minute hike in front of us. Half way up my arm and legs started burning. I had brushed against some crazy plant and got itchy, burning hives on exposed skin. It went away after about 10 minutes, but it was intense!

Then we skip ahead a little…So on our way home we get on a pretty big bus…probably seats about 75? Then we crammed as many people as we could in the isle. They stood for the whole 5 hour drive up and down mountains on a dirt road. I should mention that my friends and I were stuck in the isle on the way up. It’s awful. We stood chest to back with the person in front of us on a rollercoaster ride for 5 hours!! On the way home, we got lucky and got seats. I was pretty excited about my window seat. We waited for the bus to leave for a good 1-2 hours. Right before we left, some men loaded 10 sheep on the top of the bus with people’s luggage. They tied their legs together and got them on the roof. One must have been right above my window because every time it went to the bathroom it ran right down my window and onto my right shoulder. The bus was so full that there was nothing I could do about it. Right when I started to really get miserable, it started raining, which meant the pee mixed with rain water and just flooded the right side of my body! Definitely an experience I won’t forget!

Hope everyone is doing well!! I’ll post again soon!

Toothbrushing Pictures!!

I wrote about this a few weeks ago and here are some of the pictures!!

Projects I'm working on!

Hello everyone! I haven't written in a very long time!!!




The pictures are of me doing my laundry. I waited too long to do it and it took a few hours! Some kids reading books from a small library in my house. Some houses in my village.

I put some pictures on facebook...there are many duplicates and they are in no order, but you should check them out! (If the link is in 2 lines, copy and paste all of it into the www part up top!)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2965394&id=9320551&l=5c32b9cfe6

Things here are going really well. School started a few weeks ago and I've been so busy! I spent a few weeks in my village working with the schools and relaxing. I think I just finished my 40th book in Lesotho! My friend Nicole came up and we taught kids in a local preschool and 1st grade how to brush their teeth. A good friend of mine from home sent me toothbrushes and toothpaste for little kids. They loved learning how to brush and promised to brush twice a day! I'll post pictures of that later this week!!

I also met with each of my schools and gave them a box of 80 books, half in Sesotho and half in English. They are going to try using these books before the rest of their library arrives in March! The teachers are so excited to have books to use!! And the kids are excited, too! The teachers have been trying to use the books as often as possible and are teaching their students how to treat the books. It is a great way to prepare them for about 1000 more books to arrive in a month!!

I have been working with the African Library Team here in Lesotho, which is made up of about 6 volunteers. We are working with the Ministry of Education in Botha-Bothe, my district, to develop 25 new libraries in schools that Peace Corps Volunteers do not work. Things are going really well with that! When the books arrive, we will visit each school and provide the teachers and students with a workshop to help them develop their library. We talk about the rules, organization, how to read to the students, and everything else that makes a library successful. I really enjoy working with this project!

I have a meeting with Peace Corps tomorrow to review about 100 children's books that have an HIV focus. I am working with peace corps to buy these books for schools across the country using PEPFAR money. PEPFAR is the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. I may have that wrong...but it's the right idea! I am really excited about this project. Teachers feel uncomfortable teaching about HIV, so I will be creating a workshop for the schools that have applied for the books to teach the teachers how to discuss HIV in their classrooms. Lesotho has the 3rd highest prevalence of HIV in the world.

Finally, my friends Meg, Nicole, and I have the 2nd of three Healthy Living Camps for our 20 high school students. We have tons of activities, guest speakers, and games planned for them. The kids had such a great time last time and we are hoping to make this camp even better. We have Kick-4-Life coming. They teach kids about HIV through fun games and activities. They are an amazing organization. Lesotho Planned Parenthood Association - will be preforming skits for the kids and helping the kids develop their own skits to take back to their schools. Four great dentists and doctors from the local hospital are coming to discuss oral hygiene, mental health, goal setting, career planning, drug abuse, and a few other things. Another PCV, Alison, is coming to cook dinner with the kids one night. She is a nutrition expert and will be teaching the kids how to make healthy papa (the staple food here. It is ground then boiled maize meal... similar to mashed potatoes i guess!). She is also going to teach them how to make healthy veggies. We will be making a stir fry! Everything she cooks with will be items the kids can get in their village. The final part of the camp will be our other partner, Thabo, will be teaching the students how to do workshops in their village. He attended a One Love conference and learned great activities to promote one sexual partner. He will also be teaching them gender equality and HIV activities for the students to take back to their schools.

Well I'm off to another meeting! Hope things are going well at home and everyone had a nice holiday! I have full weekends from now until October so I will try to keep you updated!

Library Summit

Hello! I spent the week at an African Library Summit. We had librarians from Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, and Botswana attend. The other countries do not work with Peace Corps volunteers; instead they work with the Ministry of Education or NGO’s in the area. It was amazing to hear about how they get the schools excited and help them to organize their libraries. In Lesotho, we are working towards getting the Ministry of Education more involved to make the libraries less of a Peace Corps project. To do this, we are going to work with the Ministry to develop 26 libraries in the Botha-Bothe district (similar to a state). The books will be arriving in March and we will have one or two small workshops to teach the teachers how to organize their libraries and how to use them in their classrooms. Once the books arrive, some Peace Corps volunteers and Ministry workers will visit the schools and train the teachers so they know how to use the books as teaching aids, discuss how to use the library properly, and how to take care of the library. I have helped with several workshops and feel like the teachers really enjoy them.

When the books arrive for the 26 libraries in the pilot program in Botha-Bothe, books for 33 other libraries in the country will arrive. Books for three of my schools will be in that shipment! My teachers and students are so excited to have libraries in their schools. In January I will be bringing about 100 books to each school so the teachers can start using books in their classroom. I think that slowly introducing them to the books will help the 1,000 books that will soon be arriving feel less intimidating.

In other newwwwss….

The new volunteers arrived safely yesterday! Their training started today and I will be going on Tuesday to work with the resource teachers to discuss their job and responsibilities for the next two years!

I’m off to the grocery store and to the pool at a hotel down the road!! I’ll be in town for a while so write me an e-mail and I will probably get right back to you!!!

Ntate Matobacco's Funeral

Lumela! So last time I wrote on here, I told you that my friend had passed away. He passed away about a month ago and his funeral was this past weekend. This is the second funeral I’ve attended in Lesotho and am still trying to figure out exactly how they work. I’ll start with Friday.

The principal of Sefako Primary School, my closest school, lives in two places. Her husband’s house is my “families” house. No one lives there for most of the year, but it was pretty full this weekend. ‘M’e Mapamolo, the principal, told me that the corps, as the deceased are referred to here, would be arriving around 10AM. Most of the kids from the primary school sat outside of my house to wait as I read a book inside. A little past 10 I heard sirens and thought nothing of it…then I realized that I haven’t heard sirens in one year and ran outside. The Hurst had arrived and was letting everyone know that it was time to go to Ntate Matobacco’s house to welcome him home. I walked with the students to his house and found a male teacher to stand with (male because there are such different roles for men and women here). I told him that I had no clue what to do and asked him not to leave my side. We stood there and watched the older men in the community take the casket out of the Hurst and set it on a table. Then a man walked past me leading a goat by the horns to the casket. Matobacco passed away in a hospital, so a goat was killed to welcome him home. After that, the casket was carried into the house and a prayer was said. People started leaving and my teacher friend told me that it was time to wash our hands. We wash our hands so we don’t bring death back into our homes.

At that point, many of the students had left and I started the exhausting process of making friends with some of the friends and family that had travelled from all over the country to attend the funeral. I can get by in Sesotho, but it is really hard for me to understand some people speak. They speak very fast and run their words together, which is probably very similar to my English. When I am listening to them talk, it probably looks like I have a horrible headache. It takes every ounce of concentration to understand! As we were talking, the process of killing and taking apart 2 goats and a massive cow began. I have seen this before and have even helped, but for some reason this time really got to me. Without going into too much detail, I think it was because they used very dull knives. I started feeling like I was going to hit the floor hard, so I sat down and tried to wait out the cold sweats and dizzy feeling. Once I decided I could walk, I went home and relaxed for an hour. I came back with my Leatherman, which has a really sharp knife. Bringing the knife was one of the best moves I have made in the past year. Men were coming up to me telling me how great it was…and that was before I showed them the other 20 something tools hidden inside! They were amazed.

After getting a little light headed over the cow, I decided that I needed to be a little more adventurous. I decided that I would try some of the parts that I am not used to eating. I learned to take every piece of meat off of a chicken, so why not a cow?? Well. Later in the night a bowl full of the cow’s boiled head and feet came over to where I was sitting with a few of the men. They all got so excited for me to try, but I couldn’t do it. The head started out bigger than a soccer ball and ended up much smaller than my head after they boiled it. I sat there and watch the men eat the skin, cheeks, eyes, brain, and then the bones. There were only teeth and a few other strong bones left after they were finished.

Men and women spent the whole day divided. A few of the men worked on taking apart the cow, while the women cut and peeled and cooked everything. A lot of the men drank a homemade beer most of the day. I was amazed at how well everyone worked together. Because we live so far away, new people were constantly arriving. As soon as they got to the house, they would put down their bags and start working. I’ve never seen a community come together like that. Every person, especially the girls and women, knew exactly what they needed to do. As a guest and a man, I wasn’t expected to do much, so I made my rounds and talked to as many people as possible. It was a great way to get to know more people in the community.

Around 8 a lot of people left to take naps and freshen up. The funeral goes from Friday morning until Saturday evening. Close friends and family spend the whole night Friday singing and speaking about the deceased. I made it until about midnight until I decided to head home. Matobacco was my closest neighbor, so I could hear the singing all night. It made me feel like I was still there even if I was in a semi-coma in my bed.

The second day of the funeral was more formal and a lot more people came. Everyone wore their best outfits, which ranged from sweat pants mixed with lab coats to suits. In Lesotho, Saturdays are reserved for funerals and many people attend two or three funerals each month. The funeral was similar to a funeral in the states. The service was held outside under a tent and I was asked to sit in the only chair in the whole area. Everyone else sat on a backless bench or in the grass. The whole service lasted about 4 hours while friends, family, and colleagues spoke. That was followed by all of his students, friends, and family walking about 10 minutes to the cemetery to bury him. The priest said a few words and then he was lowered into the grave that was dug by some of the men earlier in the day. I’m not exactly sure how it worked, but male relatives threw a few shovels of dirt on the casket in a very specific order. There were a few verbal arguments about the order and I noticed a few people cut in line to throw dirt while others were arguing. After about 10-15 family members, all male, shoveled dirt into the grave, the rest of the men in the community were allowed to shovel dirt. Grown men and his 4-6 grade students literally pulled shovels out of each others hands after each person got their two scoops. It one of the saddest, most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time. Once he was buried, everyone walked back to his house and ate an amazing meal.

Other interesting things that happened during the funeral…
At one point during the cow butchering, all of the insides were taken out, which were HUGE. I was amazed at how big all of the insides were! I knew that everything, and I mean everything, was eaten, so I wasn’t surprised to see the women carefully cleaning out the stomach and intestines. But then. The men started washing their hand and cleaning their rain boots with the cow poop and the contents of the stomach! At first I thought I was missing something and they were playing a joke, but more people started doing it. Eventually, I think my Leatherman was “cleaned” in cow poop. They were all psyched about it.

I had tried eating the insides of a few animals and decided that it wasn’t for me. I was talking to a few people after dark on Friday night and someone walked by with a plate of food and asked me to take some. I was positive I was eating cow meat. It looked like a good piece, too. It was the heart. All I could do was smile and choke it down. Then I had to eat the other two bites…

So the boiled cow head ended up being a goat or sheep. I’m not sure if I just misunderstood the Sesotho or if they were joking with me. The real cow head made an appearance on Wednesday. I left school after lunch with two of the teachers to help soften the cowhide. When I got there a few men had already started scraping the rancid meat and fat from the hide. They used sticks with razors placed in the end to scrape off all of the nasty stuff. It smelled awful and more flies than you could possibly imagine covered the hide. Just when I thought I was comfortable with the situation, an old man came out with the real boiled cow head and other parts. THEN!! They dumped it right on the skin that had sitting out in the sun since Saturday. They smiled at me and I thought that maybe they wouldn’t eat it…I was wrong. Not only did they eat it, they put a pile of salt on the hide and rubbed each piece of meat on the hide and the salt…I didn’t eat it and they got a huge kick out of that.

In other news…
I cut my hand on a tin can the other day. Really not a big deal, but it was long and deep and started to bleed. For some reason I started to freak out. I started sweating and thought I was going to die. My “mom” was around that day and I ran in and showed her. I just stood there like it didn’t need an explanation and hoped that she would fix it. Like any mother, she looked at me and told me to go put a bandage on it. She looked at me like I was crazy and started laughing. It stopped bleeding in about 5 minutes and is almost healed now. Later that day I told her that I thought I was dying and she laughed even harder…I was a little embarrassed. If my family didn’t think I was a little crazy before, they definitely do now.

On Monday I visited a school and spent the entire day in the 6th grade classroom. I started by just hanging out with a teacher while the students were working on some math problems. We had been talking about different ways to manage his classroom that didn’t involve a stick, which is very popular in Lesotho. As we were talking, I tried to figure out how he was solving long division problems and realized that he wasn’t teaching it correctly. He’s an amazing teacher and is very open to suggestions, so I knew he wouldn’t be upset by me correcting him. I ended up teaching about long division for 2 hours, while modeling good classroom management. I taught it in a few different ways for the students to really understand and for him to learn a few new teaching methods. I checked the students work to see who understood, grouped a few students together and had them peer teach, and had students solve the problems on the chalkboard while explaining their work. It was nice to show him ways to teach that specific class. At the end of the lesson I asked one of his students for the stick that he used to discipline his students and threw it out the window. Without my prompting, he promised his students not to bring the stick back in the classroom for the remaining 3 weeks of the school year! All of his students smiled and a few of them clapped! Their enthusiasm proved that I wasn’t lying about the students not liking corporal punishment.

After that, he asked me if I could teach about HIV/AIDS for a little. We have talked about HIV before and he knew that I was comfortable talking about HIV, which many people are not. We discussed HIV, what it is, how it is transmitted, how students can protect themselves, and other diseases that are transmitted sexually. They were surprised to learn that Lesotho has the 3rd highest rate of HIV in the world. The kids were very knowledgeable, but believed in a lot of myths. When we were finished, I asked the students to write any questions that they were too embarrassed to ask in front of the class and I would answer them after lunch. The questions they had were great! Some of the students were not exactly sure how babies came into this world and why a woman’s stomach grew so much in 9 months, while others asked questions that made it clear that they were sexually active. It was a great mix of questions. Sex and puberty are not thoroughly covered in school and is not talked about at home, so I think it is really important to talk about it in school. I was so proud of the teacher I worked with for openly talking with the students and for being such a good role model for them. After the students left for the day, the teacher told me how excited he was. He told me that each student would go home and talk about what they learned. He had put a lot of thought into how far the information would go and was excited about it. All in all, it was a good day!

In one of the other schools, I am working with the grades 1-3 teachers to differentiate instruction. Some of the teachers are doing an amazing job and are not sure where to go next. Today we started giving students problems that varied in difficulty. I felt like the teacher wanted to give different problems to different groups of students, but wasn’t sure how. She is very excited to continue with this when school begins again in January. The teachers at this school also want help teaching kids how to read. I’m very excited about this!!

Sorry for writing a book! I spent a few minutes here and there typing this, so I hope it makes sense and isn’t too scattered! I won’t be at my schools again until the new school year starts in January. I will be attending a African Library Conference next week, which I’m pretty excited about. After that I will be in Maseru helping to train the new volunteers that are arriving soon!

Also, my mom will be shipping 2,000 books to Lesotho in the beginning of December. If you are interested in donating any books or helping with the cost of the shipping, which is $1,000, please e-mail her!! There is more info about the book drive on the right side of the blog. Thanks a lot!!

Shari Dissen - Dissen1@comcast.net