Sometimes I work for lions

During consolidation, volunteers had the opportunity to volunteer (do those guys ever turn it off?) at a local tourist attraction, Cheetah Experience. I was on the crew that put tires in front of the fence surrounding one of the lion enclosures and then put dirt in the tires. Here are some pictures with me and the boys.

This will be the album art for my next hip-hop single.

Stamping dirt into tires. The lions are bored.

A lost month

On the last Saturday in August, all volunteers in Lesotho received a message from the office in Maseru that there’d been some fighting in the capital, and that the army had surrounded police stations in Maseru and disarmed the police officers inside. This was called a “coup attempt” in the media, which was then changed to an “alleged coup attempt” after the man who attempted the coup, army commander Gen. Kamoli, said that this was all a misunderstanding, and that what had seemed like a coup attempt was actually a preemptive move against factions within the police who were planning on arming participants in Monday’s protest (Did you not hear about Monday’s protest? I believe it was against Prime Minister Thomas Thabane, who had closed down Parliament in June in order to avoid a vote of no confidence, acting in accordance with the principle that no one can really lose a game of Monopoly if all of the little houses and iron figures are scattered over the floor of the den). Whatever happened, it was not a good thing.

So within a few days (and I’m going to keep the details purposefully hazy here because the details of Peace Corps emergency processes probably do not need to be on the internet), all volunteers were whisked out of the country to a number of secure, secret locations (The secure, secret location I was personally whisked to was close to a place that sold great milkshakes). We waited at this location for a period of time, and then, after no good news from the Mountain Kingdom, all volunteers were moved to a single secure, secret location, which happened to be a very nice hotel.

The days that followed were strange and long. On the one hand, it was nice to be in a place with five meals a day, a bar, a pool, a movie theater, and a machine that, at the touch of a button, would give you coffee, café au lait, espresso, or cappuccino. On the other hand, there was a pervasive purgatorial feel to the whole thing, compounded by the fact that we would only find out what was happening a few days at a time, usually receiving an update like “no news good or bad from Lesotho, and we will be making a decision on X.” And then X would come and the update would be repeated.

So it was very exciting when we finally got word that we would be coming back to Lesotho. It was a very big adjustment to come back to Matholeng after three-ish weeks away, but I am getting back into the swing of things. It’s nice to be back, but I also feel as if I’ve suddenly lost a month from my Peace Corps service. It seems like everything has settled down here (not that there were any troubles outside of Maseru, really), and I’m hoping there are no further disruptions.

Working in the yard

Since arriving in Matholeng, I have periodically asked my host father if I could help him out in the yard. I often feel pretty soft as a PCV, as everyone else in my village seems to have something to do all of the time, and I, once I've finished the school day, basically lounge around reading and feeding myself. This is not, by itself, a bad thing, but when you are the only person lounging, you start to feel like maybe you could be doing something useful. So I was very excited a few weekends back when my host father finally asked me to come help him.

He was cutting grass in the yard to sell for roof-thatching, and he invited my to come tie the grass into bundles. He even suggested that I take some pictures.

Not catching fish

On Sunday, I finally got to go on a hike down to the river with Tumane, Likhetho, and Kamohelo. They told me that we probably wouldn't see any fish, it being winter and all, so we left the spears at home. It was about two hour's vigorous walk from Matholeng to the riverbed, and the boys were happy to point out sites that they considered photo-worthy. I'm putting up a small sampling of the photos:

At one point as we were walking down the valley, the boys pointed to a cave where, they said, lipila (dee-peel-uh) probably lived. I do not know what lipila are, but the boys told me they are small creatures who, if they see your exposed ears, will bite them and never let go. Tumane pinched his ear between his knuckles and said, "like a padlock." They suggested that I put my hat back on to protect my ears. I did so, and gave them a solemn nod to show them I understood the seriousness of the situation. We never did see any lipila, but we did see some of their tracks.

Cover those ears!

And here's a picture of your correspondent standing on a rock:

Our next adventure, the boys tell me, will be to a site where we can see cave paintings from the Khoi-San people who lived here before I did (I understand there have also been some other people in between us). Can't wait!

Lilotho

The other day, I was walking with a friend from my village, Kapari, and he told me that one thing that could help me in my Sesotho studies would be to learn some lilotho, which are riddles. I asked my students to write some down, and they came up with this list.

I even understand two of them!

My favorite one is number 13: "Litsoene tse peli li hloa thaba empa li sa fihlelle ka'holmo." This translates to: two monkeys are climbing a mountain, but they do not arrive to the top.

The answer is: "litsebe," which means "ears." Ha!

The other one I understand is number 5: "'M'e o sekoti, ntate o khopo, bana bese ba bararo." This means: "The mother is the basin, the father is the lid, and their children are three."

The answer is: "sekoaelo, pitsa, maoto a mararo," which is a kind of three-legged pot that people use to cook over open fires.

The cutting edge

Prospective volunteers can sometimes be a little anxious about how well they will be taken care of once they arrive to their country of service. I cannot speak of other countries, but I can tell you that the technophiles of Peace Corps/Lesotho deploy an impressive suite of modern technology to help facilitate volunteer care, as evidenced by this quotation from an actual email I received today from the medical office: "In the effort of serving you better we made some modifications sometime back about how you could contact us at the Medical Unit.  This scenario was tried and tested, and it was felt that we needed one more thing to make it easier and accessible for all- an answering machine."

Honest Abe and climate change

Well, I told you that I’d have some more quotations from Abraham Lincoln for you, and I don’t intend to disappoint. This one is from the same speech to a Springfield, Illinois temperance society. “Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity, and none will do it enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.”

One of the observations you will often see in discussions about climate change is the disproportionate burden borne by developing countries, that often the countries least responsible for contributing to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are most affected by the unpredictable weather patterns those increases create.

In the United States, many of the things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint (driving less, eating responsibly-produced food, etc.) are not immediately beneficial to us and so must fall under the category of “labor exclusively for posterity.” Even things that might benefit us directly (lower electric bills if you have a solar set-up) still have steep up-front costs (the thousands and thousands of dollars you need to spend to get a solar set-up). So, as Pres. Lincoln notes, few have been induced.

But in Lesotho, two factors combine to make any labor done to adapt to climate change (and note that the option in regions with already minimal footprints is simply to adapt) not labor for posterity but labor for self.

One: the effects have already been noticed. Whether or not these specific weather patterns can be causally linked to rising carbon dioxide levels, most people here note that something abnormal is going on. I arrived on the heels of a six-month drought, and Shakhane (my counterpart/the Grade 5 teacher) told me that planting had been delayed two months from its normal time. Adapting to the changing climate is not something you should do for your children, it is something you must do for yourself.

Two: the strategies for adapting to climate change (at least that I’ve seen) have the additional benefit of making one’s daily life easier. I use a propane-powered stove, but many people in Matholeng burn wood. My propane tank, full, weighs 11.3 kg, or just under 25 lbs. I grunt and sweat and complain every time I have to lug a new one from the road up the mountain to my house. But one tank—which must provide fuel to cook all my food, boil all my drinking water, and heat the water for my bucket baths—lasts about 40 days. I don’t have to carry that propane tank very often.

I am not sure how long it takes to burn through 25 lbs of wood, but I imagine it’s a great deal shorter than 40 days. My host father, ntate Matlere Thamae, works at the local NGO as its Climate Change Resource Officer. One of his newest initiatives is to sell wood-burning stoves to people in the surrounding villages. These stoves come in three different sizes and, he has told me, are about 80% more efficient than putting your wood fire out in the open. This would be a very small step to mitigate the effects of climate change, but more importantly, the purchaser would now have to carry 80% less wood. Their labor benefits posterity, but they are, in a very real, palpable way, “at the same time doing something for [them]selves.”

 

Ntate Matlere with some of the new stoves.

80 per cent. We're talking about per cent here.

And reducing the use of wood would have a tremendous ripple effect. Trees are naturally very important because of their ability to eat carbon dioxide and poop oxygen (you may be wondering how I got so smart at science, and let me tell you that I have quite the background; I once took a class called “Chemistry for Citizens”). More oxygen and less carbon dioxide is a good thing for us humans. But let’s take it local.

In Lesotho, one of the greatest environmental concerns is the pervasive soil erosion. The entire country is a high mountain plateau, and most of our rain finds its way into the Senqu River and then out into South Africa. Large ditches called dongas scar the countryside where the water streams down from the mountains. There are very few trees to keep the soil in place, so much of the fertile topsoil gets carried away. Plenty of people and organizations have tried to remedy this by planting trees, but it is difficult to convince those who live in nearby villages to let those trees be. When confronted with the immediate need of fuel to cook food with, the slightly longer-term need of fertile topsoil gets swept aside. If 80% more trees are left where they stand, more soil will be left in place.

Which brings us to food security. Shakhane recently attended a government workshop for 5^th-grade teachers and high school agriculture teachers about a new method of farming called “Conservation agriculture.” This is another approach that, while it will certainly be beneficial to posterity, it is also immediately, tangibly beneficial to people living in Lesotho today (even shorter term than just the better crop yields they might see). I am thinking specifically of the 1^st Principle of Conservation Agriculture: minimum soil disturbance. This helps to protect the soil from erosion and conserves soil moisture, but what it practically means is that you no longer have to hoe the fields to break up the soil before planting. (I have heard that) hoeing is very difficult work, and the other teachers readily approved of the new approach.

This is a very high-quality pamphlet.

Spend less time disturbing the soil and more time with your kids. Win win.

One of the main points of Peace Corps service is to build capacity, which entails the transfer of any skills the volunteer might have to members of the local population, so that the locals may use those skills long after the volunteer has left. So I would have been remiss in my duty if I had not suggested an approach to dealing with climate change that has been useful in America. “Have you tried,” I asked, “denying it?”

“Denying what?”

“Climate change. You know, you could just say that it’s not happening.”

“But it is happening.”

“Yes, but… what if it weren’t?”

“But it is.”

“Look, I believe that you believe that. But, and bear with me here: what if it weren’t?”

(looking around at others) “Does anyone know what he’s talking about?”

Khosi, artist

The other day, I was at SMARTD (the place I am now, where there is internet), and I met a fellow named Khosi. We started talking, and he told me how he draws, and he showed me pictures of some of his work. He is from Berea, which is the district I trained in, but currently lives in Ha Sekake and works at the local court. He invited me over to where he stays to show me his current project. It is going to be a display putting Mother Teresa in counterpoint to 'M'e Mantsebo (Queen of Basutoland pre-Independence) with a poem in between.

Khosi at work

Mother Teresa

'M'e Mantsebo

Food thoughts II: lijo li monate!

Due to the United States Embassy’s continual and, in my view, unreasonable refusals to let me use the diplomatic pouch for ordering pizza, I have been forced to learn how to make my own food while living here.

One of the first things I learned how to make was bread. Now, one day during training my friend and fellow member of the Kose family, Tumisang, told our family that I bought bread. This was of course a character assassination of the basest sort and could not be abided. I don’t think I have to tell you that a man who can make bread with his own two hands but instead chooses to buy it cannot really be considered a man at all. I make the bread with a pretty simple recipe (wheat flour, salt, sugar, yeast, water, margarine) and cook it in a Dutch oven made from a large pot and a small tuna can.

Letlotlo means "glory," which is something men
who buy bread will never achieve.

One of the staple foods of the Basotho is papa, which is a mixture of maize meal and water. This food is important enough to merit its own vocabulary: instead of the standard verb ho fuluha for “to stir,” you must use ho soka, which means specifically “to stir papa.” I am not very good at making it, but am improving. One of our days off from school, ‘M’e Makoae, the 4^th grade teacher, invited me to come to her field to collect pone (maize [corn]). We spent the morning gathering, and when we came back to her house, we ate lunch with her family. I told her that her papa was far better than mine. We talked a little shop about how to make the best papa, and in the course of our conversation I revealed that I was stirring my papa with a spoon like some kind of ignoramus. In fact, you are supposed to stir your papa with a lesokoana, a wooden stick. A few days later, she gave me a lesokoana of my very own and that, combined with letting the mixture simmer much longer than I had been( 20 or so minutes, until it is about the consistency of mashed potatoes), has yielded some great results.

A near empty bag of maize meal under my new lesokoana.

Because this is my first time cooking for myself (excepting the few months I spent in New Zealand during which I ate only cereal and fried rice), I have been going through a prolonged trial and error approach to figuring out things that I like and am capable of cooking. After several weeks of what might generously be termed “soups” made of a chicken stock cube and any available vegetables, I have finally nailed down a few delicious items. Here are some of my greatest victories.

Look at this pizza.

A pulled pork sandwich made from the successor pig to
the one referenced in my "Some pig" post.

My 4th of July veggie burger on freshly-baked bread.

One of the benefits of Lesotho's location is the number of food products available from South Africa. I can always get peanut butter and other important necessities. However, it is sometimes very apparent that these products are marketed to South Africans, and to one group of South Africans in particular.

Probably not what the typical Basotho aunt looks like.

Two comments about domestic helpers

Comment one: I have a large curriculum that details the topics for each subject for Standards 6 and 7. For each topic, it has a few suggested activities and examples to aid the teacher with lesson planning. Here is a picture of Topic 11: Express emotions.

As you can see, one suggested example is “Yesterday I was angry with my domestic helper, she had scorched my shirt with a hot iron.” Now, I’m not one of these Thomas Piketty types who believes that there’s some kind of “problem” with “global inequality” of “wealth.” Really, no one gets angrier at his domestic helpers than I do. But I question the relevance of this example to my students’ daily lives.

Comment two: There are two longer works in English that every Basotho schoolchild reads (though I understand they are being fazed out with the arrival of the new integrated curriculum). One is a play called My Uncle Grey Bhonzo. It’s always tough to tell whether students really comprehend the English they read (even though they are happy to respond “yes” when I ask “Do you understand?”). So I was really happy when they began referencing the book to make jokes with each other. One of the characters is Bhadenga, a hapless, ridiculous domestic servant who is constantly being called back and forth by his master, Grey Bhonzo. Anytime someone knocks on the classroom door, one of the students runs to go unlock it (we latch the doors to keep them from blowing open with the wind), and if no student volunteers to open the door, one of the students will shout “Bhadenga! Open!”

What should you bring to Lesotho?

I intended to write this post and put it up on June 3^rd, which was the one-year anniversary of my receiving an invitation to serve in Lesotho. However, I have been alternatively busy and lazy (though more lazy than busy), and did not get around to it until just now. Sorry.

I assume that a big batch of invitations has gone out to the next crop of Education volunteers and that some of those, after a frenzied few minutes on Wikipedia finding out what, exactly, Lesotho is, have been accepted. Congratulations! Please bring me cheese.

As you might expect, I have a fair amount of advice for the incoming volunteers. I have trimmed it down from its original 50,000 words into what I hope is a useful, manageable post.

One of the biggest sources of anxiety during the lead-up to Peace Corps service is packing. What should you bring? What should you leave at home? Do they have toothpaste in Lesotho?

An important disclaimer: you are not going on a two-year camping trip. If someone had told me this one year ago, I would have responded haughtily that I already knew that, and probably would have even prefaced it with a duh. Yet a cursory look at what I brought, with particular respect to the large amount of quick-dry clothing, would show that this thought was lurking somewhere beneath the surface.

What I am trying to tell you is that not everything you bring needs to be a burly, durable item. Bring things that you like. Yes, some of the things you bring will break, or get worn down, or you will iron a giant hole in them because you are not very smart. That’s fine. You will then do what people in Lesotho do when they need new pants, or shoes, or a hooded sweatshirt that says “AUSPICIOUS TIMES FOR D-LOAD” on it: you will go to the store and buy the needed item.

Q. Do you have any recommendations for specific things I should bring?

A. Yes. One specific thing you should bring is a small memento that you can use/look at every day, such as your coffee mug depicting the noble River Otter that you bought at a gift shop in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, because this will remind you of the spring break trip you took there with your good friend Alec. I would caution you to not actually bring your good friend Alec; you may think now that you will have time to feed him and take him for walks, but things will get very busy during training and the responsibility will fall to your host family, and they will not be happy with you young man, not one bit.

The noble River Otter.

Another specific thing you should bring is a portable speaker. I bought a small Philips one at Wal-Mart for about 20 dollars, and it has been positively terrific for listening to audio-book versions of Jane Austen novels, though I understand some people also use their speakers for listening to music, and they have been similarly pleased. Mine can be charged via USB and usually lasts a week or two.

When you get tired of Jane Austen, try E-40's "Tell Me When To Go"

Yet another specific thing you should bring is a pack of wool socks. I highly recommend Smart Wool. I bought my first three pairs of Smart Wool socks for a trek in Philmont, New Mexico with the Boy Scouts about seven years ago, and those same three pairs, having been in fairly constant use this whole time, are still going strong. I also picked up a fourth pair in the laundry room of my sophomore-year dorm after they’d been on the floor for a few months. If the owner of those socks is reading this, I want to tell you sincerely that you will never see those socks again.

That's right, I posted a picture of a dirty, mismatched pair of socks
before I posted a picture of the outside of my house. That is
just the way my mind works.

If you are a coffee drinker, bring a French press. I understand that these are sold in the Pioneer Mall in Maseru, but I do not know anyone who has bought one there and cannot assure you of the quality. You can purchase ground coffee in Maseru, and while it’s not economical to drink it every day, you will really appreciate it when you do make it. Ground coffee is also easy to stuff into a care package (my Dad, after years of training methodically packing luggage into our car for long trips, could now probably put 40 pounds of ground coffee into an Altoids tin if he needed to).

It was a dark Vienna roast.

There are a few other things that you should bring, such as a good, sharp kitchen knife, photos of loved ones or loved things, and, I don’t know, a hat or something. But these are well-documented in other people’s packing lists and I feel no need to cover them in detail here.

A final important note: while it is true that your Peace Corps experience will change you, these changes will probably not occur all at once. I say this recalling that during my packing process, my mom would suggest that I should bring, for example, some tea bags. And I would think to myself, “Yes, I suppose I do like tea… But does Peace Corps Michael like to drink tea? He’ll probably be too busy inspiring children to reach their full potential. Better skip it.” But (as so often happens), my mom was right, and I do like tea here as much as I liked it when I lived in the U.S.A.

So: pack some things you like, don’t worry about forgetting anything because you can find most things you need here, and when it comes time to decide whether to bring a microfiber, quick-dry towel or a full-size, fluffy one, choose the fluffy one.

F.A.Q.'s about my R.E.I. Adventure Pants

Q. Michael, I understand that before coming to Lesotho, you purchased a pair of pants from R.E.I., and that these pants were marketed as "Adventure Pants." Would you care to discuss some of the harrowing adventures you have had, along with some photographic evidence?

A. I would.

Q. Carry on.

A. Very well. I have had two harrowing adventures wearing those pants. My first harrowing adventure occurred one day when I was walking back from school and did not open the gate to my yard wide enough, and a loose wire scraped across the pants.

Perilous!

 Q. Wow. Well we're all just glad you're ok. And the other adventure?

A. The second adventure happened one morning when I was getting ready and thought that I could iron pants made chiefly of nylon.

Hair-raising!

Q. It's stories like that that make you realize just how far away you are. What's next for you? Kilimanjaro? The Matterhorn?

A. I think I'll go read a book.

A few scattered observations on Sesotho

As you know, the Basotho of Lesotho speak Sesotho. I think that’s pretty obvious. However, occasionally the Basotho will host a moeti (visitor) who is a lekhooa (white person), and they (the Basotho) will have to teach him (the white person) how to speak Sesotho.

I have had a wonderful time learning Sesotho. I can’t say I am very good at speaking or understanding it in my actual day-to-day activities, but I sure enjoy studying it. Here are a few things I have learned and observed.

Demonstrative pronouns

As you know, we English-speakers have two demonstrative pronouns: this and that. As in “This? This here? This avocado is my avocado. If you would like an avocado of your own, you are just going to have to march yourself over there and get that avocado.”

In Sesotho, there are three demonstrative pronouns. They’ve got two that mean much the same as our this and that, but then they’ve also got a third demonstrative pronoun which means not here, not there, but even farther over there. I thought that this was an extremely silly notion (and was, incidentally, a little embarrassed and defensive that English has only two pronouns for demonstrating while Sesotho has three). But then I came across this passage in Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue, a book about the English language: “Today we have two demonstrative pronouns, this and that, but in Shakespeare’s day there was a third, yon, which denoted a further distance than that. You could talk about this hat, that hat, and yon hat.” So I am glad that we do, in fact, have Demonstrative Pronoun Parity (DPP).

Noun classes

And yet, we don’t. Sorry. Sesotho nouns are grouped into fourteen noun classes: seven singular classes along with their respective plural ones. For example, for people, you have the singular mo- group paired with the plural ba- group: a single person is motho, while multiple people are batho. This is a nifty system for organizing, but also means that each noun class has its own accompanying suite of grammatical features. So when I say that there are three demonstrative pronouns in Sesotho, I mean that there are three for each noun class. But it gets better. This does not necessarily mean that there are 42 distinct demonstrative pronouns. Some noun classes, following no discernible pattern, share demonstrative pronouns with each other. For example, looking at the rough this equivalent, we have the plural noun class me- sharing the demonstrative pronoun ena with the singular noun class “junk” (more on this below). So I could have meroho ena (these vegetables) and nku ena (this sheep), but moroho ona (this vegetable) and linku tsena (these sheep). Here are some pictures for your further enrichment.

The “Junk” class

Bound up in the structure and vocabulary of any language is its history. With Sesotho, the most obvious example comes with the “junk” class. As you can see in the above diagrams, you can sort most of the other noun classes by their prefixes. A chair, setulo, goes in the se- group while bread, bohobe, goes in the bo- group. But the “junk” class is a free for all. While it no doubt contains words that have been in the Sesotho lexicon as long as bread and chairs, it is also the all-purpose receptacle for loanwords. So a quick look through the nouns that fall into the “junk” class reveals a large number of words (and by extension, the concepts/things they represent) that are likely recent additions to the Sesotho language and to Basotho culture. I can only readily identify those words that seem taken from English (though I’ve been fooled by false cognates before!), but you can see that things like kofi (coffee), oache (watch), and peneapole (pineapple) must have come from other languages and cultures fairly recently.

Ho tsela tsela kapa tsela hatselela

or

To cross a road or path six times

Another fun thing to note is the similarities between semantically related words. Is fun the wrong word? This is what I do while everyone’s watching Breaking Bad. Anyway, as you noticed while translating the above subtitle, the word tsela means both road and path. The action “to cross,” something that you often do with roads and paths (second only, I believe, to “walking/driving down them”), is also “tsela.” With a little tweaking, you can also see that “tsela” makes its way into the word for “six times” and also the standard “six” (tseleletseng). This is, I am told, because when you count on your fingers (using a standard human hand), you must cross from one hand to the other when it’s time for six.

Ha u e tsoara ke’eng?

To say that you have a headache in Sesotho, you say Ke tsoereke hlooho, which means basically “I am suffering [from the] head,” but translated literally means “I am touching [the] head.” The other day I was suffering from my head, and I told my class so, and one of my students, Rapelang, said something in response and everyone laughed. Later he explained to me that he had said Ha u e tsoara ke’eng? Playing off the literal meaning, this question translates to “Why aren’t you touching it?”

This made me think of the joke we have where you ask someone if his or her face hurts and then tell him or her that it is killing you. I told them about this joke and they laughed, but I’m not sure if they laughed because they understood it and thought it was funny or because I had told them it was a joke.

Back 2 School

At a recent staff meeting, 'm'e Faso mentioned that Matholeng would have a "Back to School" day before closing for winter break. I was somewhat confused by this, because in the United States "Back to School" often refers to a night near the beginning of the school year during which parents come to school and meet all of the teachers and your Chinese teacher tells your parents that she thinks you will potentially be a good student, but that you need to stop sitting next to Dan Morrison because together you two distract the rest of the class.

But in Lesotho, "Back to School" refers to something that is different and, in my opinion, much more fun. Here, it means that the teachers all dress up in old school uniforms and the students dress in private clothes. I think that this occasion is more aptly described as "Back 2 School," hence the title of this post.

Here is a picture:

Left to right: ntate Thamae, Me, 'm'e Makoae, 'm'e Mosakeng, 'm'e Faso, and 'm'e Ntsiuoa

Honest Abe and behavior change

One of the aims of the Peace Corps volunteer is to facilitate, broadly put, behavior change. This ranges from things like teaching practices to healthy living (specifically, in Lesotho, with respect to HIV/AIDS). I think that people can sometimes forget just how slow behavior change happens, and get frustrated when education doesn’t immediately correct the problem. When you know which lifestyle changes are required to avoid a major health problem and see that these changes are, in your opinion, self-evidently in the target group’s best interests, it’s difficult to recognize that information is almost never, in and of itself, enough.

Think how long it took for percentages of people who smoke cigarettes after the Surgeon General provided irrefutable proof that smoking causes lung cancer. Think how many people still smoke. Think about the resistance to wearing seat belts, and think about the fact that residents of New Hampshire are not required to wear them after the age of 18.

Despite overwhelming statistical evidence that these things (smoking, not wearing seat-belts, risky sexual behaviors) can lead to death, people still do them. This is because while statistics and facts and figures can provide a very useful framework for understanding the world, they are not a part of day-to-day life. You don’t sit next to a percentage in the front seat of your car and you don’t share a pack of cigarettes with a bar graph.

Real behavior change happens when you notice a difference of behavior between you and your friends, you and your family members, you and a person you admire. Seeing the statistic that around 23% of adults in Lesotho have HIV/AIDS? Fine. Hearing your teacher tell you the ABCs (Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomise)? Good. Having a frank talk with a parent, or an older brother or sister, about your future and how that might be affected by contracting AIDS? Great. Hearing your best friend say that he would never have unprotected sex, or would never have multiple partners? Terrific.

This, I think, can be one of the real strengths of Peace Corps Volunteers; the mission of Peace Corps has always been to promote friendship and peace. Provided you are not constantly heckling people with facts about HIV and AIDS, or shooting judgmental looks at people who drink beer and smoke cigarettes, your community will be able to see you as what you are: just another person. Eventually, these topics will come up on their own, and when or if people do ask your opinion, they will ask it not looking for your view as a Peace Corps Volunteer or a development worker or a foreigner, but as the person they’ve seen lugging water buckets back from the tap, or the person they know is teaching their children, or perhaps even the person they’ve checked in on while he was too sick to leave his rondavel and was probably not too fun to be around. Or maybe not. Behavior change is very, very slow.

I have been reading a book called The Essential Abraham Lincoln (published in a series called “Library of Freedom,” which raises several important questions. Chief among them: should I start referring to my rondavel as the Library of Freedom and see if it sticks?). This is a collection of speeches, letters, and proclamations, and I am enjoying it a lot and may be including a few quotations from Mr. Lincoln in my coming blog posts. For now, I want to leave you with a quote from a speech he gave to a Temperance Society early in his career back in Springfield.

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.’ So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a  rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interests.

Gaining trust

I noticed one good sign that I am integrating well into my community at a recent intramural soccer tournament: my students have become very protective of me. My school had gotten past the first round, and we were at Letsooa, a nearby Primary School, for the finals. I was standing outside the classroom that served as Matholeng’s base station, putting on some sunscreen, and I was drawing something of a crowd from the students from other schools. I had no problem with this, as I imagine they were just curious. Why’s he smearing white cream on his face? Isn’t he white enough already? What’s his problem? But the students from my school were not pleased that the others were staring at me, and they yelled at them to go away.

On the public acceptance of nose-picking

Some cultural differences between America and Lesotho will be, I’m sure, points of tension throughout my service (how adults interact with children, the prevalence of corporal punishment, etc.), but others are just kind of odd and funny. For example, in Lesotho, it is completely acceptable to pick your nose. Everyone, from my teachers to my students to people I talk to walking to town, picks his or her nose. It is completely normal, and this of course throws me off completely coming from America where you’re looked on like some kind of deviant if you pick your nose. People will be talking with me and, while keeping eye contact, go knuckle-deep exploring for treasure. It is an especially funny difference considering that I am a reckless spendthrift when it comes to Kleenexes, and my mother and father made sure that I had a stack of new handkerchiefs in my luggage before I left. Standing across from someone who, I have no doubt, would put a finger in each nostril if the situation required it, I feel like a real dandy taking out my little square of white linen and gently blowing my nose into it. Incidentally, this feeling isn’t helped by my habit of periodically dabbing sweat from my brow with the handkerchiefs and exclaiming “mercy!”