The Library

Matholeng Primary’s classrooms each have a small library of books, obtained, I think, from the African Library Project through the hard work of the volunteer who lived in this area before me. The students are very enthusiastic about using these books, and as a fellow lover of books, I was very excited to let them at it. It turns out that we have a profoundly different view of books. This isn’t going to be a post about how the students descended upon the library in some kind of odd feeding frenzy type maneuver I’d previously not seen outside of Shark Week, or how they managed to disorganize and disorder the entire library in about three minutes, or how children in general are essentially agents of entropy. This is a post meant to highlight just one slice of that sequence of events, which was the line of students who came up to me saying “sir!” and holding their books up to me while flipping the pages rapidly, a look of disgust on their faces. I didn’t realize what they were doing until one said “no pictures!” Then it sort of became funny, as their attitude basically said “What is this, sir? You said you call this a book? You know that’s funny, because around here we call this a joke. Why don’t you let us know when you’re ready to get serious and give us the real stuff.”

The complex social rules that govern life at a Basotho primary school and how my lack of knowledge of same cause me to lose my students’ respect

Sorry for the long title, I just finished a cool book of essays, “Consider The Lobster,” by David Foster Wallace and he used a lot of long talky titles like that. That book was recommended to me a long time ago by my sister Karen who, in addition to having really good book suggestions, was also recently named one of the top state politics reporters in Pennsylvania by the Washington Post. Please congratulate her and follow her on twitter (https://twitter.com/karen_langley), and, if you remember, send her a fruit basket.

But to this post’s subject: I have been having a very tough time managing my classroom of 48 standard 4 and 5 students. A technique for getting attention and getting people to be quiet I learned at my summer job, the excellent Overland:

• At a conversation-volume voice, say “clap once if you can hear me.” People close by you will hear you and clap once.
• At the same volume, say “clap twice if you can hear me.” More people will hear you this time and clap twice.
• At this point, most of the crowd will be quiet, and a few remaining talkers will stop at the weird sound of everyone else clapping three times in synchronization.

This always worked really well at Overland, and I thought I might try it in standards 4 and 5. This was a big mistake.

I started it, and students clapped with me, and we got to 4 claps with every student looking at me with rapt attention. However, when they realized that we were not planning on going on to 5 claps and then 6 claps and then 7 claps and so on ad infinitum, and that I had only used this fun clapping game to get their attention and teach them some boring lesson about making singular words plural, they went back to talking and jumping on desks and slapping each other. So let’s say that I have very little control of the classroom.

One standard 5 girl, Kabelo, who is also a frequent player at the furious games of Uno that always seem to be happening with the neighborhood kids inside my house, explained that my lack of control was due to two grievous errors.

Grievous error number one: “You looked unhappy when Renang was crying.” One day, one of my standard 5 boys, Renang, was having such bad stomach pains that he was in tears, and could not stand when I tried to walk him to another room. Kabelo told me that I looked worried when this happened. I also told students to stop laughing at Renang.

Grievous error number two: “The know you will not beat them.” I may or may not write about this topic in a post of its own, but corporal punishment is a common practice here. However, the students have divined that this is not something I will do, and that under no circumstances will I beat them as punishment (or, obviously, for any other reason). This, combined with grievous error number one, means that I am basically a MAJOR SOFTIE in many students’ eyes, and that me standing at the front of the classroom deserves their attention as much as, I don’t know, a bowl of plain custard or an especially dull sheep.

Victory

Yesterday, at long last, I finally got my post office box. I will let you take some time to weep softly, hug your children, and call friends whom you haven’t spoken to in many years.

          

Done? Great. On Thursdays, I don’t teach until after lunch, so I was able to use yesterday morning to go to the post office. I had, in advance, verified that this was a good day to go with my fellow teacher ‘M’e Faso, who knows the people who work at the post office. Still, I did not have my hopes up. Not knowing what time they open, I figured that 8:00 was probably a good guess but that they would definitely be open by 9:00. I got there around 8:45 and sat on the porch, reading. I determined that I would leave by 10:15 if nothing had happened, and so I had basically decided that I was going to leave empty-handed once again when, at 9:54, a woman in a teal, fluffy bathrobe over her clothes came around the corner and looked at me. We talked briefly and I communicated to her that I wanted to open a post office box.

She left and a few minutes later I heard motion in the post office and she unlocked and opened the front door, bathrobe now absent. We got to the business of opening me a PO box, and she laughed when I asked if I needed to show her my passport (which I had brought, not willing to take any chances). This took some time, and I asked her some practical questions, like “What time does the post office open?”

“Oh, it opens at 8:00, but it was raining today.”

“Oh, no worries ‘M’e, I understand,” I lied. We both laughed. I also had the chance to mail off a few things to a few people, which she assured me was only 4 maloti worth of stamps, even though I’d heard it was 7.70 maloti during training. We’ll see what happens! Anyway, you can now reach me at:

Michael Langley, PCV

PO Box 5

Ha Sekake 640

Lesotho

Southern Africa

You may now ask: “PO Box number 5? Who do they think you are, the mayor? Or at very least, the city comptroller?” And I have to say, I’m pretty excited to have such a high number, and will try my hardest for that top spot. Furthermore, you may note that I have put PCV, which stands for “Peace Corps Volunteer,” after my name. Naturally, a letter will reach me regardless of whether you put those three letters, but please know that they make me feel very cool, and it will give my ego a huge boost if you include them.

The first two weeks of school

I've now been an official teacher for two weeks, and have been overall loving it but could probably sleep for two months. My school is really terrific, but we are having some unfortunate scheduling things, teachers moving on to better opportunities, etc., that are leaving us shorthanded, staff-wise. Our fourth grade and fifth grade classes are now taught together, which is somewhat difficult. I teach English and Life Skills to grades 4, 5, and 6 (and have taken on a period a week of grade 7 Life Skills). There is a very noticeable difference in ability in 4th and 5th grade students, as 4th grade is the first year where students have all classes in English. On top of all this, our teacher who teaches 4th and 5th grade was called to Maseru for a weeklong workshop, so those students were sort of just running around and hitting each other. But on the plus side, I have FINALLY found a group of people who will, without me having to inform them that this is the proper title, call me "sir." My lessons I plan are going pretty well, but the times when I was trying to watch over the class without a plan, desperately trying to get them interested in the impromptu lesson I was teaching on soil erosion (which we were both seeing for the first time) were works in progress. Overall, it has been an exciting, stimulating, exhausting two weeks, and I'm excited to keep it going.

One of my students' favorite, favorite activities is the fruit salad song, which they request I sing approximately 5 times a lesson. The song is to the tune of, I think, Frère Jacques, and goes "Watermelon, watermelon/Pineapple, pineapple/Banana banana, banana banana/Fruit salad, fruit salad." The students LOVE this song, particularly the "banana banana" portion, and I've heard them singing it during classes, on break, out in the village, and at all other possible times. So I've made a difference!

New Year's Eve

Like many of my favorite New Year's Eves, I was in bed several hours before midnight for the end of 2013. I did not get any fireworks, but I did get to see something pretty cool. On one face of the leftmost mountain facing Matholeng, I noticed from early evening a scattering of fairly large fires. I asked my Ntate what was going on (fearing that a village was on fire), and he told me that it was the herdboys. My pictures will not come close to doing the sight justice, but it was very cool to see these fires spread out on the mountainside from a few miles away.

Trying to get a post office box and my World Wise Schools match

I have, a few times over the past two or three weeks, attempted to get a box at the local post office. This is important both because many people (thousands) have expressed interest in sending me care packages and also because I recently received my match for the Worldwise schools program.

However, the post office has been closed each time I've gone. Occasionally, there's a woman lying on a blanket out front who tells me that the post office will be closed until next week. Or the week after that, she's not sure.

Today I went to the post office. It was closed in the sense that there were no staff there, but open in the sense that the front door was propped wide open with a brick. I had a fun time performing an impromptu one-man show inside the post office, depicting to myself what might happen if I could actually rent out a box. Here's the stage!

But the good news is that once I do get a box, they will be easily accessible outside.

Also, could one of the many Sesotho experts who read my blog (I know you're out there!) provide us with a translation of this notice which I believe pertains to P.O. boxes? 

Well, I suppose that's enough pictures of an abandoned post office (if it's not, please contact me for more pictures of abandoned post offices).

In other news, before coming to Lesotho I signed up with World Wise Schools, a program that pairs Peace Corps Volunteers with U. S. teachers in order to promote cross-cultural learning. I did not put down any regional preference, so I was very surprised to get a match less than a quarter of a mile from my childhood home. I will be working with Mrs. Susan Thompson and her students at The Winston School, and am very excited to begin corresponding with them via post.

Lipompong

Sometimes when I am walking into Ha Sekake, children will run up to me with their hands out and yell "Lipompong! Lipompong!" Now, lipompong (pronounced dee-pomp-ong) either means "candy/sweets" or is the plural of "water pump."

I generally respond thusly: "Lipompong? Le batla lipompong? Le tlameha ho batla metsi a mangata!" (Water pumps? You all want water pumps? You must want a lot of water!").

They are generally not amused.

Life in the Senqu River Valley

It rained a lot yesterday. I am not sure if that was responsible for the great clouds above the Senqu today, but as I do not know much about meteorology and am assuming you also don't, I am going to say that that's the way it happened. These photos are from my front door; I noticed that the clouds were below me following the path of the river. A little while later, the clouds floated up and briefly covered the village.

This is the way I live

Well, after a few days of painting, having used five paint cans of brilliant green glossy paint and juggled back and forth between two brushes that were mostly too small and one brush that was definitely too big, I have finally decorated my Rondavel to my satisfaction. Let's look at the before pictures, from my site visit.

You'll notice the kitchen area is up against the walls, away from the windows, which simply WILL NOT DO. Now see how I fixed the place up.

The grand entrance/foyer.

The master bedroom.

The office. On the wall is a painting by my Ntate.

The kitchen. 

Making my rondavel-house a rondavel-home

I live in a rondavel. A rondavel is a thatched-roof, circular one-room stone house. Mine was painted a salmon pink on the inside, and while I do not object to salmon pink, I have always wanted a green room. This is not to say my parents forbade my painting my room green as a child, but I did have a dark blue carpet, and I'm not some sort of troglodyte.

But now that I've got a home of my very own, one I will live in for the next two years, I decided that it should be decorated exactly how I want. I had stenciled up RFK's Tiny Ripple of Hope Quote as a border around the circumference, and had bought a can of "Brilliant Green" paint from the local hardware store. However, when I started painting in the letters, it appeared that they were not brilliant green, but in fact only a darker shade of pink. I decided that I had to go through with the painting even so, because while it would look very silly to have dark pink letters for my quote, it would look even sillier to have just one dark letter. But I was not happy, and I spent some time pacing around my rondavel, huffing and saying things like "Brilliant green? More like... more like... not so brilliant green!"

A few days later though, I was painting another quote, from The Old Man and the Sea ("But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated."), and the paint did look brilliant green. I reassessed my approach, and realized that I had not properly shaken the paint can, and that perhaps it was me who was not so brilliant. I have since painted about a quarter of my room, but the process has stalled due to funding issues. I'll get that green room someday!

Now, some people have informed me that my Hemingway quote is perhaps a little much, and have asked me why I chose to paint it on my wall, and I am forced to look them in the eye and patiently tell them: "Because it is true."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6n34E2vXzs&feature=youtu.be&t=2m25s

A Peace Corps Christmas

I spent my Christmas with fellow PCVs Justin, Lauren, and Mary at Justin's house in the Quthing district. Quthing is right next to Qachas Nek, and I had a trouble-free time getting there. I had to catch a Sprinter (no longer a van, but not yet a bus) that passed by my site at 5:30, so I was up at 4:00. I got on the Sprinter and found a seat next. To my right the hills fell away down the Senqu River valley, and a thin ribbon of cloud mirrored the river's path. To my left sat an inebriated bricklayer from Qachas Nek, who was on his way to see family in Maseru for the holidays. He was very friendly, and periodically took sips from his bottle of Castle (Africa's Premium Lager, if you hadn't heard). At one point while I was looking out the window, I felt him tap on my wrist. He was pointing at my watch.

"What time, he said?"

"6:30," I said.

"6:30," he repeated, looking at me suspiciously. "Morning? Or Evening?"

"Morning," I told him.

"Oh! I am so tired."

I said goodbye when the Sprinter came to Quthing, and met up with Justin and Lauren in town. We spent the afternoon at a hotel, met Mary, and then went on to Justin's site. The next day was Christmas, and after I made everyone listen to the Neil Diamond Christmas Album, we hung out, chatted, and read. I thought it would be a fun idea to go down and read by the river, and so we went down and around midday. Justin had been given a bottle of wine as a Christmas present, and I remembered that scene in The Sun Also Rises where Jake Barnes and his friends go fishing and they store a bottle of wine in a stream, I thought we should bring our wine down. The river was muddy, and having stabbed the cork into the bottle with a fork, I was wary of placing the wine in the river and polluting the content, so instead we just let it out in the sun. It was a wonderful day out in the sun, and only as I went to sleep that night did I realize how badly my legs were burned. They are looking a lot better a week later, and I predict a full recovery, though for a while they looked like that textbook picture of second-degree burns.

A good Christmas, all in all!

Field trips

During training, we went on two field trips: one to Thaba-Bosiu (Mountain of Night) and one to Tsehlanyane (The Little Yellow). Thaba-Bosiu is an important Basotho historic site, where King Moshoeshoe set up camp to defend his people from Shaka. From Thaba-Bosiu, you can also see the mountain that gave shape to the Mokorotlo (the odd-shaped Basotho hat). When we got to the point overlooking the hat mountain, we were somewhat surprised to see that all of our LCFs (Language  & Cultural Facilitators) had green plants sticking out of their noses. They explained that these were mint leaves, to clear the sinuses. I tried it, and it was a pleasant enough sensation. I highly recommend sticking mint sprigs up your nostrils if you get the change. Here's a picture from Thaba-Bosiu.

I am on the left. The hat mountain is on the right.

Tsehlanyane is a national park in the Butha-Buthe district, and was very beautiful. We went for a short hike, then stopped by a swimming hole which was freezing but very needed, and then we had a cookout. King Letsie III was rumored to be visiting, though I did not see him. Here are some pictures.

Me on a bridge at Tsehlanyane. The top of my backpacking bag can be worn as a messenger bag, which is, in fact, fashionable.

One of the somewhat creepy forests we walked through. I think you will agree it does not take much imagination to picture those black-cloaked riders from the Lord of the Rings storming through and kidnapping your hobbit friends.

Learning to coexist with the flies

Perhaps you know that one of my favorite quotes is this one from Maya Angelou: "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."

And it's amazing to see how much your attitude can adapt to different circumstances. Back in the U.S., a single housefly entering the room is often an unacceptable breach of the peace. Now, my view is generally this: if a fly is not currently trying to gain entry to my tear ducts, there really isn't a problem.

The flies generally wake up at first light and then anxiously buzz around my face. I like to imagine that they are very excited to start the day. However, this does not stop me from flailing around with my fly swatter, trying to eliminate as many as possible of them.

When I was visiting Justin for Christmas, He had a neat little flypaper device that you could hang from the ceiling. Here is a picture of one after being left out for one day.

Swearing-In

On December 18th, I, along with my fellow trainees, were sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. The swearing-in took place in one of the training villages, Ha Mabekenyane, and was attended by our host mothers, various important personages from the Lesotho and U. S. governments, and Peace Corps Staff. I was concerned about sitting out in the sun, as I was wearing my traditional short-sleeve Seshoeshoe (seh-shway-shway, after the founder of the Basotho nation, King Moshoeshoe) pattern shirt, with a V deeper than I am accustomed to wearing, and had also recently shaved my head, but these fears were allayed when I saw that big tents had been put up for us to sit under.

The ceremony was about two hours long, and there were many speeches in Sesotho and English. Right before things got underway, there was a small point of contention over phrasing in the oath (as you know, I love points of contention over phrasing); we were permitted to decide for ourselves whether we wanted to solemnly "swear" or "affirm." Not having the Oxford English Dictionary handy (I know, I'm still kicking myself over it), I decided to use "swear," because it sounded weightier.

Here are some pictures from swearing in:

Tumisang, Rorisong, Rethabile, and I. I swear we have American names, but I can't seem to remember them.

Tumisang and I with Tumisang's host mother, 'M'e Maqanahelo.

Tumisang and I with my host mother, 'M'e Makeisara "Mama K" Kose.

An Internet Connection

I've periodically been getting communications from folks back home expressing the general idea "A full month without blog posts? That dog won't hunt, Michael." And they're right. I've been, once again, out of touch.

However, there is an NGO called SMARTD (Southern Mountains Association for Rural Transformation and Development) based out of Ha Sekake (this translates roughly to "the place of Sekake"; please let me know if you need anything else translated) that has, among other features, a very nice library with wi-fi. It's only an hour or so walk from my house in Matholeng. Today, I ran into a herdboy named Leshohona who was taking a donkey to SMARTD, and he showed me a shortcut. He spoke English very well, and I was pleased to hear that he was a graduate of Matholeng Primary.

With internet access close by, I will hopefully be much better at updating this. We'll see though!