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.