Site placement: Qachas Nek

The Thursday before last, we trainees learned where we will be living for the next two years, and I had the incredible good fortune to be placed with Matholeng Primary School in Qachas Nek. Qachas Nek is in the far south of Lesotho, and the Drakensberg Mountains and Senqu River pass through it. I got to visit Matholeng last week, and could not be more excited to begin working there. The teachers, principal, and community were extremely welcoming, and we spent most of Wednesday in a welcoming ceremony, where different community leaders gave speeches, the students put on different skits and dances, and we closed with a feast of rice, chicken, cow innards, and ginger beer. During the ceremony, I was also given my new name for the vilalge: Rethabile Thamae. Rethabile, in Sesotho, means "we are happy." I will teach English to Standards 4, 5, and 6 and Life Skills beginning in January, and will get to work with some really excellent teachers.

My Rondavel is spacious with salmon pink walls. The view from my front door spans across the Senqu River valley to three massive, imposing mountains.

I live with my Ntate, Matlere Thamae, who is an artist and architect for a local NGO. He showed me some of his drawings and pictures, and even gave me a painting of his to put up on my wall. He speaks English very well, and apart from Sesotho knows isiXhosa, Zulu, and Swahili (isiXhosa and Zulu are spoken around and near Lesotho, and he lived for three years in Tanzania).

I will get my groceries and use the internet about an hour's walk away in the town of Ha Sekake (so I will hopefully maintain a better posting schedule than I have during training), and will sometimes take a taxi to Qachas Nek camptown, the district capital.

A word on pronunciation: I didn't want to tell you all earlier and intimidate you, but the letter Q is pronounced with a click in Sesotho. You'll get it. Practice in front of a mirror. 

Welcome to the SEC

Last year, my Mom and Dad, along with his college roommate Bill and Bill's wife Rhona, went on a trip to Yellowstone National Park. Dad and Bill went to college in Arkansas and are ardent Razorbacks fans, and Bill and Rhona came with plenty of Hogs apparel. My dad noticed that there were plenty of other tourists were representing their SEC schools, and that this was a common bonding point for those southerners up in the cold wild North.

Before I left, my Dad and I went to a Rutgers-Arkansas game that, had play finished when we left the stadium, would have been won by the Razorbacks (Hold 'em, Hogs!). I got the chance to appreciate firsthand the SEC camaraderie, sitting in the away section next to a former sportswriter who told Dad and me all about the team and its history in between his shouts of "Welcome to the SEC, baby!" whenever the Razorbacks played well.

And now, here in Lesotho, the SEC is once again well-represented. My fellow trainee and friend Tumisang is a University of Alabama grad and supporter of the Crimson Tide. 'M'e Maqanahelo frequently wears the Crimson Tide shirts he brought for the family and, occasionally, he will ask our LCFs to translate various bits of 'Bama related slang ("Ke eng 'Roll Tide' ka Sesotho?" or "Ke eng '15 championships' ka Sesotho?"). No matter where I go, I can't escape the SEC.

Straight from the cow's mouth

The other day, our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) 'M'e Mabatloung pulled aside my fellow trainee Tumisang, who lives in the extended Kose family, and asked what happened to his pants.

"They look," she explained, "as if they have been inside of a cow's mouth."

He told me this on our walk back up to the Kose houses, and when we got back his 'M'e, 'M'e Maqanahelo, looked at us accusingly. "Tumisang! Bokang! I have talked with 'M'e Mabatloung. She tells me you need to iron your clothes or you will look like a careless man!"

So it seems that wherever I go, I cannot escape the cosmic necessity that clothes be pressed and neat, and that I will have to iron my clothes or else be thought of as a careless man. My mother is, once again, right.

On a tangent, I had never before heard, and really appreciated, the phrase "careless man," but it seems to be a common one here among the English-speaking Basotho. It has the feel of a phrase that Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men might use:

Chigurh entered the store.
Can I help you? asked the clerk.
Yes.
What would you like?
I am not here to buy anything.
Well what can I help you with?
I have come to find if you are a careless man.
I'm afraid I don't understand.
It's a simple question. Are you a careless man?

An apology and learning English

Readers, I owe you an apology. You likely know what I'm talking about if you've read my earlier posts, but let me be explicit. My blog post titled "Lumela, metsoalle" contains a GLARING ERROR. Metsoalle is very clearly the plural form of friends, yet I somehow thought it appropriate to use the singular form of the word lumela. The correct phrase would be: Lumelang, Metsoalle. I'm sorry.

But it's a been a great while since I last posted, and you are no doubt wondering what I am up to other than embarrassing my family, friends, and the United States of America with my baby talk Sesotho.

Well, it so happens that not only do I not know Sesotho very well, I also am not all that good at English. I discovered this on our visit to one of Lesotho's flagship private schools a few weeks ago. I briefly sat in on a Standard 6 (standard = grade) English lesson and found myself sitting in the back of the class, trying to figure out what was going on. The day's lesson was on occupations. On the board was written:

• Caddie: a golfer's helper
• Fishmonger: one who sells fish
• Fruiterer: one who sells fruit
• Milliner: maker and seller of woman's hats

I was familiar with the first three, had never heard of the fourth, and was hunched over my notebook, praying that I would not be asked to define for the class the word "stevedore." I imagined the teacher calling on me: "Yes, our visitor, perhaps you can tell us what this one means." I would shake my head, and the teacher would, incredulously, ask: "A stevedore? You know, one who loads and unloads ships? Where did you say you got your English degree again?"

All things considered, it was a nice reminder that while I am here to teach English and learn Sesotho, we all have a bit more we can learn.

Host volunteer visit

This week brought a change of pace from the more seminar-oriented week before. We had a standard day of classes on Monday, but on Tuesday we left to do our Host Volunteer Visit (HVV). The HVV is a three day trip out to the site of a current volunteer. I went with another trainee to a small town about 60 or 70 km away. We first went to the Camptown of Mafeteng and met up with a few current volunteers for lunch.

The main purpose of this visit was to see a current volunteer in action. This was somewhat hindered by the face that the visit occurred during Primary School Leaving Exams, which Standard 7 students take at the end of their Primary School education. The entire school focuses on these tests, and all the other Standards are told to stay home. So, rather than go to the school and observe some Primary English teaching, I instead conducted what amounted to a survey of the school's physical plant. But I did get to talk to some of the teachers at the school, who helped talk through a few research topics about Basotho culture with me. I also got to spend some time reading one of the texts I will be teaching, A Crooked Path.

It was enjoyable and eye-opening to see how a current volunteer lives, and I can see myself making the transition in a few months.

Lumela, metsoalle! (Hello, friends!)

I've now been in Lesotho for just over a week.

We (my fellow volunteers and I) landed in Maseru on Friday, October 11th, and have been keeping very busy since then. My training village is in a district (a district is similar to a U.S. state) called Berea, and I lived with a wonderful host family. We met our host families on Friday at Morenang (the place of the Chief), and they greeted us and gave us our Sesotho names. Around these parts, I am known as Bokang Kose, Bokang meaning "Be thankful" and Kose being my surname. My host 'm'e (mother) likes me to call her "Mama K," and other members of the Kose family live close by, so there is always a large cast of people coming in and out of the house: ausi (sister) Shudy, and bo-abuti (brothers) Paballo, Kananelo, and Tlotliso. Another volunteer lives close by with another branch of the Kose family, and sometimes his 'm'e will come by with her two daughters, including a baby whose nickname is, I believe, "Numpy Numpy." Numpy Numpy and I are in a similar place in our Sesotho language education, so I will sometimes see Mama K feeding her potatoes and saying "litapole," while my ausi Shudy will point out the potatoes on my plate and say "litapole." It's nice to have someone learning with me.

My village is located on the slope of a plateau, with a large concentration by the base on a flat. The Kose house is way up on the slope on the far end of the village, and we have a terrific view of the mountain. At night, the light of the moon is enough to see around. In the house, I have my own square room with windows on two sides, a table with two chairs, a table with my water buckets and water filter, a bed, and a two-burner propane stove for boiling water and (soon!) cooking my own food. I usually study Sesotho for a little bit after dinner by the light of a paraffin lamp, but really I don't spend too much time in my room.

Each morning our Sesotho language training begins at 7:30 in a room in the local high school, and continues for about twohours. My Sesotho is developing pretty well, and we have plenty of opportunities to utilize it, as the Basotho place a lot of value in greetings. It's not uncommon to talk with five or ten people on the walk back home each afternoon. After language training each morning, we go by bus to a central hub (the training cohort, 26 volunteers, is divided across three villages), where we have technical training.These sessions focus on things like health, HIV/AIDS information, lesson planning, and cultural training. This lasts until about 5:00 in the afternoon.

The days have been very packed, and all of us volunteers seem still to be caught up in the initial high of living in a new country. Really, everything's been ideal so far, and I hope I can figure out soon how to get some pictures posted.

I'm typing this now from the Vodacom store in the Pioneer Mall in Maseru, where we are today on a field trip (the stated purpose is to get us acquainted with public transportation). I picked up a Blackberry phone from the Vodacom store, so I should always be in email contact. I hope everyone is well back in the States, and I look forward to keeping you updated.

One week away

Welcome. One week from today, I will head to Philadelphia for staging, and the day after that, I will fly from JFK to Johannesburg to Maseru. Not much to report at this point, but I wanted to get the blog set up before I left so that I don't have to fuss with it too much once I'm in Lesotho. I will not have access to the internet on a regular basis, both during training and during service, so it will take me some time to establish a proper blogging routine. Perhaps I will try to post once a week, or once a month. Perhaps this will be the only post. We'll see.