Visit from PC staff

On Monday, I was visited by the excellent Ntate Clement and ‘M’e Masechaba, two Peace Corps–Lesotho staff members and very familiar faces from training. This is part of the routine site check-ins whereby staff goes out to make sure that everything’s going smoothly. They observed me teach, checked out my rondavel, and talked to my colleagues at Matholeng Priimary. Ntate Clement has a fun sense of humor. Ostensibly he should have been supporting me as a new volunteer, but this took the form of him, when we were walking through my yard, asking “do you have snakes here?” I responded in the negative, and then a little while later he said “I feel like you probably have snakes here.” This was not a ridiculous assumption, as we have waist-high grass in the yard, but it was funny to hear from Peace Corps staff.

They also conducted a quick little check-up type interview thing, asking about settling-in, housing, work, integration, etc. It went something like this. Ntate Clement’s questions are presented verbatim. My answers are not.

            Ntate Clement: How’s everything with the rondavel?

            Me: Oh, fine, nothng to complain about.

            Ntate Clement: And have you managed to stave off insanity so far?

            Me: I have.

            Ntate Clement: How?

            Me: Oh, you know, reading, hiking, talking with the homunculus who lives in the thatching in my roof about how to control the goats, that sort of thing.

            Ntate Clement: Good, good.