March 18

There was an ever-so-slight chill in the mornings this week, hinting that fall autumn (I have to keep stopping myself from saying fall in my agric classes – I’m pretty sure that season name is an Americanism. Not much falls in autumn around here.) is on its way. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, haha! Actually, I’ve been told that there have recently been unusually high temperatures in Iowa, so perhaps weather-wise we’re matching up and seasonally meeting in the middle.

Back to St. Patrick’s Day, I was disappointed when I realized that it falls on a Saturday this year, which meant that I wouldn’t be able to celebrate at school and make it a little cultural lesson for the kiddos. I thought I might celebrate a day early, but then I learned that school would be canceled Friday due to a sports competition (away). So I settled for a St. Patrick’s Day in Maseru.

Early Saturday morning I donned my on-the-nose getup of a green t-shirt and green skirt in almost-but-not-quite-matching shades, which is super classy as any stylist will tell you. Walking to the mall to retrieve some groceries I kept my eyes peeled for fellow celebrators, but there were none to be found. If I didn’t know better I’d have thought people were intentionally wearing no green at all. At Pick-n-Pay (where we buy the vast majority of our groceries) I thought my chances were higher. It’s a good place for spotting expats, and the mall itself attracts the most well-off residents of Maseru – my co-fellow spotted the Queen (of Lesotho, not the Helen Mirren one) there a couple days ago.

Unfortunately, all the likely-looking foreigners I spotted must have been from South Africa or some other country that doesn’t observe St. Patrick’s Day. Nevertheless I loaded my cart with potatoes and cabbage (placed strategically on top of my cart to enhance my Irish-American vibes) and honest-to-goodness Kerrygold butter! I’ve mentioned before that Lesotho imports basically all its food products (our flour and sugar appear to be at least packaged in Lesotho, but that’s about it) and at a store like Pick-n-Pay, which caters to expats and other residents rich enough to indulge in international flavors, this means that we fill a pretty globalized shopping cart. In the past we’ve bought Bertolli olive oil, Nutella, Colman’s mustard, and Heinz ketchup. If we wanted we could also buy Barilla pasta, Lipton tea, and Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

These brands sometimes (but not always) cost more than the alternatives. The Kerrygold “Pure Irish Butter” was a little pricier, but I reasoned this was an excellent occasion to splurge, so I bought a block in its very appropriate gold foil wrapping. I had vague plans for preparing an Irish-themed supper, complicated by the fact that Uncle’s oven doesn’t work (no soda bread for us), but I figured if I had good butter to slap on everything it would all turn out fine.

The result was a big pot of mashed potatoes topped with some cheddar cheese and green onions (not strictly traditional but who cares), a mound of green cabbage cooked down in butter, carrots cooked in mustard and brown sugar glaze (veering even farther from traditional flavors…) and crescent rolls from Pick-n-Pay (so we’d have something on which to smear any remaining butter). Even without corned beef (I can only push my Indian hosts so far) it was a very satisfying meal, I thought. To lend a festive tone I played a couple episodes of the Thistle & Shamrock and listened to Fiona Ritchie’s soothing voice while I cooked.

All in all it was a pretty satisfying day. It came in the middle of a long weekend here in Maseru. No school Friday because of sports, and no classes Monday for us because we’re picking up our program director from Grinnell at the airport! I can’t wait to see the whole school make a big fuss over his visit (students and staff alike). My co-fellow and I are also glad for the opportunity to have some good discussions with him over points both minor (a fresh coat of paint for the walls at Bo Grinnell) and sweeping (thoughts on the future of the program).

Clearly last week was pretty light on work. Not only was it a four-day workweek, but the practice of dismissing classes at 1:00 on Fridays was transplanted to Thursday (because why not) so classes were only 30 minutes. I was grateful for a relatively laid-back week – a chance to catch my breath between our visitors last week and the one coming next week. It’ll also be time to give students exams soon, which will come with its own set of professional challenges, as I’ve alluded to before. I took advantage of the time I had this week to take some walks in the morning and spend the hot afternoons sitting on my porch with my solar chargers reading a book and waving to passersby. I’m soaking up as much of the remaining warm weather while I can before the chill sets in. When that happens I’ll just have to hang out in our house-cum-refrigerator and comfort myself with butter.

Stray Thoughts:

• A while back I was walking home past the field outside the convent (where sports practice sometimes takes place) and saw the Scouts (not related to Girl Scouts at all – I think it has something to do with Cadets/Association but honestly I’m not entirely sure what all they do) with a teacher practicing responding to different whistle signals. You know what this means, right? Now, I’m far from the first Grinnell Corps fellow to compare our life in St. Rodrigue to the Sound of Music, (nuns, goatherders, hills alive with music, rushing because you’re late when you hear a bell tolling) but there are children answering to whistles. This seals the deal. I am now going to stay on guard for blonde telegram-delivery boys who seem nice at first but then turn out to be Nazi youth.
• I learned in my weekly Sesotho lesson that in Botswana they speak a version of Sesotho called, logically, Setswana. The more you know.
• Some students asked me why I say “zee” instead of “zed” (remember, British English generally prevails around here) and I explained that it’s my American accent. We also solved the mystery of why it’s “Jay-Z” and not “Jay-Zed”.
• It’s butternut squash season! They are plentiful here and I am going to be cooking a lot of those suckers in the near future.

March 10

Nothing but excitement and luxury at Bo Grinnell this week! Why? Because my co-fellow’s parents arrived last Saturday from India to experience St. Rodrigue & Lesotho for themselves.

On Sunday we escorted them to St. Rodrigue. Unfortunately we weren’t able to give them a taste of our 3-hour+ ride in the public taxi van that we usually use to travel between Maseru and St. Rodrigue because there was just too much luggage. That luggage contained lots of goodies for us, so we were hardly complaining. Instead we had a private car take us home, which provided us the opportunity to carry many more groceries than we would normally be able to carry. So my co-fellow and I stocked up on as many heavy nonperishables as we could – cans of tomatoes and beans, dish soap, oil, peanut butter, etc.

I’ve commented before on the gorgeous landscape that surrounds us in St. Rodrigue, but listening to our visitors’ exclamations over the views from the road helped me appreciate the environs all over again. News spreads like wildfire in our little village, and just a few glimpses of the new faces entering our home were enough to begin the contagion to notify everyone of the exciting news.

Official acknowledgment of these international dignitaries waited until Monday morning assembly, when the principal introduced them to the student body and asked them to say a few words about themselves, which my co-fellow and I cruelly neglected to warn them would happen. It was fun to hear the students ooh and ahh when they heard that my co-fellow’s mother is a university professor.

After assembly they received a tour of the school and classes, and I taught my schedule as usual. Little differed from a normal week in my actual classes, but the day flew by because it was such fun to meet up with our visitors when I had breaks and talk about their impressions. Because it was Monday we were hoping to (finally) hold a Theater Club meeting, so I was annoyed when I saw an announcement on the chalkboard in the staff room declaring a staff meeting at 4:00. Luckily, we had reinforcements to deploy! When classes ended at 4:00 I rushed to unlock the empty classroom we use, hurriedly told the students we were having an original skit competition with special guest judges, and basically left them to their own devices. Take note, prospective visitors to St. Rodrigue, that my co-fellow and I will shamelessly put you to work if it furthers our own goals.

After fidgeting through an especially tedious meeting, my co-fellow and I essentially leapt out of our seats when the principal said, “I think that is all…” and rushed to the Theater Club meeting to see what had happened in our absence. We walked through the door just a couple minutes before 5:00 and to our delight saw that the students had completed performing their skits and were now interviewing their judges about India. They asked some really great questions about Indian languages and culture and geography, as well as how one might become a university professor. The girls also sang a few songs in both English and Sesotho.

Our meals at Bo Grinnell Sunday through Wednesday were absolutely indulgent. Of course the cuisine my co-fellow and I prepare is pretty delicious to begin with, haha (we did cook our favorites, but ours is simple fare). However my co-fellow’s parents (from here on I’ll just call them ‘the parents’ – even though they’re not my actual family they transformed our home during their stay, making it feel so cozy and, well, familial. They certainly treated me as though I were their own daughter.) brought a treasure trove of delectable treats. So not only did we have fresh dishes at every meal (four cooks meant we didn’t eat leftovers until Wednesday when we had to clean them up before we left) but we gilded the lily with chocolates and olives and South African wine. It felt completely decadent and I loved every bite. Not to mention the varied and lively conversation that accompanied it.

After a few days of country living the parents (or maybe I should call them ‘our generous benefactors’?) swept us off to Maseru to prepare for our jaunt to the artsy little town of Clarens, SA just north of the Lesotho border. We picked up our rental minivan Wednesday night so that we could head out early Thursday morning. Going through immigration was pretty slick – especially because we beat the crowd – and we were on our way to South Africa (country tally number 4 for me – 5 if you count my overnight in Japan, but I really don’t). We didn’t have any visa/passport issues at the border, but in general I’ve had a much breezier time of it than my co-fellow, and the only reason is because I’m an American citizen. This feels unjust to me – it’s not like I did anything to earn my citizenship and accompanying travel status – but it’s something entirely determined by circumstance.

Anyway we drove to Ladybrand (which is just a few minutes from Maseru) and had breakfast at the Living Life Cafe, which is hands down the best restaurant I’ve been to in Africa so far. It’s a beautiful open space with mostly outdoor seating completely enveloped by carefully tended gardens. (I couldn’t identify most of the flowers, but I did spot pear & pomegranate trees, chrysanthemums, and lavender.) Some of the tables sit under a trellis covered in vines heavy with plump grapes. Everyone’s breakfast looked scrumptious – I ordered flapjacks (here flapjacks=pancakes, pancakes=crepes) with a generous side of fresh fruit. No maple syrup of course – that’s a pretty North American condiment. (Someday I am going to tell my students about maple syrup: sit down kids, because in America the trees are full of sugar!) But I did get golden syrup and the wide variety of perfectly ripe fruit was garnished with mental exclamation points (pineapple! mango! grapes! RASPBERRIES!) I also tried mangosteen and fresh papaya for the first time.

After our very filling breakfast (my co-fellow and I couldn’t resist taking some pastries to go – a carrot cupcake for her and an apple/rhubarb tart for me) we set course for Clarens, which was about a two hour drive from Ladybrand. Taking in the view out the window was really a treat. Actually just riding in an air-conditioned car on good roads with friends was refreshing, but I also enjoyed contrasting the surroundings to Lesotho. We weren’t really that far away – we traveled along the northwest border of Lesotho, so we were still in the foothills of the Maluti Mountains. However, the difference in living conditions was immediately apparent. The fields were suddenly filled with uniform, weedless corn that reminded me of home – complete with the Pioneer Hi-Bred sign. Round hay bales were another familiar sight. I haven’t seen evidence of any balers in Lesotho. When I saw the cattle in the pastures for a brief moment I thought they were all fat – and then I realized they were actually just healthy and well-fed. There’s not a whole lot of muscle development on many of the cattle I see in St. Rodrigue. Other sights included sunflower fields (which you can find in Lesotho too, but not as big), an ostrich farm, and lots of big ant hills. A quick google search makes me think that they’re harvester ants – maybe messor capensis?

We arrived at Clarens around noon and checked into the adorable Aspen Bed & Breakfast (which felt all the more extravagant because I associate ‘Aspen’ with mountain luxury). Each of the four rooms was uniquely decorated. My co-fellow and I stayed in the Writers’ Room, while the parents took the Nature Room. Both had back porches that opened into the backyard, which housed two absolutely gorgeous Great Danes (one black, one a pretty mottled gray). I thoroughly enjoyed playing around with them – the dogs in St. Rodrigue aren’t very friendly and not nearly as pretty.

Clarens was a very laid-back town with a central square lined by art galleries, shops, and restaurants. It was perfect for two days of relaxing and just enjoying our surroundings. I didn’t buy any gifts on this particular trip – I’ve promised myself I’ll wait until at least halfway through my year. This serves the dual purpose of not accumulating more than I can pack in my bags and also getting a good sense of prices and availability. There was a lot of wonderful art in the galleries; I especially liked the landscapes of the Great Karoo (the region of South Africa we were in). A deli/food store called the Purple Onion held more temptations for me – I was especially intrigued by the nastergal jam and a rooibos tea infused syrup. The Living Life cafe also had locally produced honey and olives that I may retrieve at some point. So if you like getting food gifts let me know and I will set you up!

The restaurants in Clarens were all very pleasant – miles apart from even the best food you can find in Maseru. I had a very good chicken kebab yogurt and pita, but the Living Life Cafe is still my favorite spot. We went back there for round two on Friday on our way back to Maseru, and my fish cakes with roasted vegetables did not disappoint. I should also mention that all this wonderful food is sold at the same prices we see in Maseru – sometimes even slightly cheaper. The reason for this is that Lesotho imports a lot of food from South Africa.

Today we wished the parents a fond farewell at the airport. They’ve completely spoiled us; I don’t know how we’ll manage in the upcoming week. This was my second trip to the airport – I’ll make another next weekend when I pick up our program director, who’s visiting both the Grinnell Corps: Lesotho and Namibia sites. I can’t believe it’s already been two months since I arrived at the airport myself – I have a lot of things I still want to do in the next 9-10 months!

Stray thoughts:

• We had fun trying some different ciders with our meals – the Savanna brand is good, but I think I prefer Hunter’s Gold
• Last Friday night I went to a dinner for the Indian High Commissioner, which was pretty fun – there was a lot of great food and live music. I feel kind of silly at these things, like I’m inserting myself into the Indian expat community, but I’m glad to be included in things like this!
• My team-teacher and I have taken the liberty of splitting up our largest maths class (C – 50 students) into two groups. I take my group to the empty classroom we use for Theater Club and teach them on my own, which seems to be working really well. If we’re really organized we might set up a little competition between the two groups.

Climate Challenges in Lesotho

http://www.irinnews.org/Report/94947/LESOTHO-Weather-extremes-threaten-food-security

March 1

Previously I thought that accomplishing my goals in the environment of St. Rodrigue meant picking my battles, but I’ve modified that outlook. I now believe that it’s best to have as many goals/projects as possible, because if one falls through (and many will – for reasons unexpected and often absurd), another is bound to succeed.

According to this theory I’ve sown my interests widely, and sure enough a few promising results have sprouted up. My co-fellow and I are both very interested in learning more Sesotho, and a while back we spoke with one of the teachers about giving us lessons. This week we finally arranged a time when we could meet, and our first session was so enlightening. It turns out even the few things I thought I had mastered (hello, how are you, thank you, I’m fine) I’ve been mispronouncing. So we started with bare basics – vowels and consonants and, surprisingly, a little bit of tones. Not in the same way that Chinese uses tones, but there are significant rises and falls in words that I haven’t fully parsed out (I’ll explain more when I understand it better). I also need to remember which letters are aspirated and which aren’t. We haven’t even started on combined consonants – that’s where all the impressive sounds are. For now the biggest challenge is a really interesting ‘k’ that’s somewhere between an English k and a click.

As much fun as my first Sesotho lesson was, the highlight of my week definitely came through teaching. Last week I mentioned that I no longer teach E1 maths, which was disappointing because they’re a really fun class. I told them I’d be available in the library during mid-morning break every day, and after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As bait I told them they’d have to come at one of those times to get their exams back (which I wanted to do anyway so they’d have a chance to ask questions about how I graded it if needed).

Students started trickling in at 4:00, and at first I went through the exam question-by-question, but soon there were too many to continue that approach, so I left the answer key on the table and let students isolate the trickiest problems. I did make a point of speaking with the student from E1 who had the highest score of all the Es. The test I created was based on everything I had talked about in class, but several parts of it were intentionally challenging. Certain questions combined concepts or presented them in a format slightly different from what they had seen in class. This particular student scored an 80%, and was the only student to correctly answer a bonus question that required a proof. A score of 80% is impressive not only because the test was difficult, but also within the academic context of St. Rodrigue. Schools in the US have extreme grade inflation – 80% would be nothing special there. But here 40% is a passing grade. When I gave this student her exam her wide-eyed reaction, “I can’t believe myself!” was simultaneously sweet, sad, and galvanizing. I see my role in maths class as not only teaching the subject but convincing the girls that they are good at math.

After a while students started bringing me math homework (from both classes I taught and others) and it felt like being a tutor in math lab again. There was even a smattering of questions from other subjects – I helped one girl summarize an article on sleep disorders for English, and I had a lengthy session with a few students from E working on their agric projects. This was especially interesting to me – the assignment, as far as I can tell, is to choose a topic on agricultural methods, and write a research essay on that topic. Several of them are using farmers in their home villages as resources, so naturally I want to hear everything they have to report. So I helped the students organize their thoughts and meanwhile I learned a few things about traditional methods of weed control, soil erosion prevention, and grass burnings in Lesotho. When the last student left I had spent nearly 2.5 solid hours helping students, and it felt amazing! Just five meaningful minutes with a student can make up for hours of inefficient, shortened, and canceled classes. So that marathon study session gave me an armor for the rest of the week.

Not that I needed the extra protection, really. All my classes went very smoothly this week, including the ones with my new team-teacher. Agric class was, as always, a source of interesting conversations with the students. Evapotranspiration was the topic at hand, and I was trying to explain what humidity meant to a bunch of girls who had spent their whole lives in these relatively arid mountains. They knew that the definition was ‘the amount of water in the air’, but I suspected they didn’t have a tactile understanding of the term. When I tried to explain that feeling of thick, sticky air inescapable in an Iowa July, I received 30 blank stares. Finally I resorted to an example of a pot of boiling water, where they could visualize the water vapor increasing humidity, and told them that the air near the pot would feel different from the air far from the pot.

In the same class I taught the students how to use a glossary. Apparently no one had yet told them that the words in bold are paired with their full definitions in the back of the book. Unfortunately the glossary isn’t quite in alphabetical order (add that to my long list of complaints about the textbooks) but I decided to ignore that fact.

Maths classes were mostly uneventful, with one amusing exception. On Monday I was teaching the Cs, marking homework on drawing journeys according to directional bearings (e.g. 090 degrees is east). My team-teacher was angry at the students who hadn’t completed their homework (“Why didn’t you do it??” “We forgot…” “You forgot your future?!”) so she sent them outside to find the sticks she would use to whack them on their hands. As they filed glumly back into the classroom one glutton for punishment had a giant stick nearly five feet long (maybe she felt especially penitent about skipping homework?). Of course when my team-teacher saw it she latched onto it right away and used that stick on all of them. The length of the stick meant she could sit regally at her desk in the corner and whack each girl from afar. The combination of the giant stick crashing down, the girls dancing around in front of it, and my team-teacher’s expression of total indifference made it very difficult for me to keep a straight face. Before you decide that I’m some horrible sadist, let me say in my defense that all the students in the class were giggling away. While I don’t doubt their fear and pain, many of the victims clearly milk the attention and drama for all it’s worth. They hold their hand in front of them and then squirm away at the last second, shrieking, giggling nervously, and making the most outrageous faces. Students reward their most ridiculous classmates with gales of laughter.  The spectacle is really hilarious.* Every now and then a student will receive her punishment solemnly and without reaction, and there’s nothing funny about that all.

*I’m not sure I’ve done a good job explaining why this is so comical, but I swear I’m not a horrible person.

The same teacher also brought a stick with her to the SRC elections after school, where the student body chose the Head Girl and other prefect honors. After the nominees gathered on stage the teacher stood behind them and named each one (This one is Making… This one is Nthabiseng…) gently poking or tapping them with her stick for emphasis. My co-fellow and I were at first impressed that the method for choosing Head Girl, Study Prefect, English Prefect, Compound Overseer, and other positions was so democratic. But as the meeting (at which all the students A-E were gathered in the assembly hall) progressed we realized that it was not a very rigorous democratic process. Nominations ended after the first three (based arbitrarily on who was called on first) and candidates were immediately elected via the very not-secret vote of hands in the air. As a result votes were near-unanimous. I’m not even sure why they bothered to count hands – which was pretty hastily done anyway. We were a little crestfallen that the honors were so heavily dependent on popularity, but the winners seemed genuinely excited about their new roles. At the badge ceremony (held at morning assembly the next day) some students were even in tears as the principal pinned their copper badges to their blue sweaters and shook their hands.

This is a short post, but it’s felt like a short week. I’m looking forward to an extended weekend in Maseru, and next week should be exciting because we’re expecting some visitors at Bo Grinnell! But I’ll save that for the next post.

Stray thoughts:

• We ran out of gas on Saturday (meaning the tank that fuels our stove and oven) so we had to get a new one from the convent. So we were waiting at home for our delivery when we heard a clanking sound from the road and looked outside to see the bo ntate rolling our giant tank of gas all the way down the hill, hahaha THAT’S TERRIFYING. Whatever, it seems to be working fine. And it should last a really long time.
• No Theater Club again this week. Monday was the SRC elections and Wednesday there was extra sports because there’s a competition this weekend (remember what I said about plans falling through?)
• I heard there’s an English mass Wednesday mornings at 6:30, so this week I went to check it out, and I’m glad I did. It’s a very small service, just the nuns and maybe 15 students, so it’s held in the chapel instead of the church. The space is lovely and the acoustics complement the nuns’ voices. It was just nice to finally be able to understand the sermon and scripture, and even a couple of the songs.
• Several cooking experiments this week: spiced nuts, garlic bread, and a casserole of cheesy grated potatoes. I think the garlic bread was my favorite (surprise, surprise).
• I know I’ve said this before, but the stars really are so bright. It still catches me by surprise.
• Bottles of honey from South Africa have a WWF-certified label stating that it’s “badger friendly.” But I doubt the honey badger cares.

February 24

When it rains, it pours. I can’t think of a more appropriate description of this week, both literally and metaphorically. It felt like I faced a deluge of challenges, and only some of them were related to the summer showers.

To begin, my co-fellow and I left Maseru around noon on Sunday, which was a lot earlier than we originally anticipated. Platoon Guy couldn’t take us, so we took a different taxi van. There were a lot of dark threatening clouds over the mountains, and sure enough, within an hour of leaving Maseru it began to rain. I was feeling grumpy because we’d had to leave the internet cafe early. (I’d spent three hours on the internet, and I did not think that was enough to sustain me for two weeks.) On top of that, I was sitting on one of the shaky fold-out seats near the door, and kept having to stand in the rain to let people in and out.

As we trundled along the rain started coming down harder and 2 hours from Maseru we came to a halt at the top of a hill. The reason soon became apparent – the road crossed a small stream spanned by a concrete slab, which was now completely submerged in very fast moving water. There was another vehicle at the foot of the hill, apparently contemplating whether it was safe to cross. The driver of our van and the guy who takes the money (the conductor? haha, that makes it sound so classy) decided the best option was to wait and see if the water would go down. It didn’t look like a flash flood situation to me – the stream was probably collecting runoff from the surrounding hills. After 30 minutes the rain was heavier, if anything.

By this time it was past 2:30, and my co-fellow and I were growing impatient with this plan of inaction. We thought our prospects of reaching St. Rodrigue were looking pretty dim. After all, we were still on the paved roads, and conditions on the steep dirt roads we’d have to take were unlikely to be any better. If we needed to go back to Maseru we wanted to get there before dark because we’d need to arrange a place to stay for the night. So when we saw a gaxi van and a bus comign from the opposite direction, I got out of the van to see if they had space for two extra passengers with backpacks and grocery bags.

The van came first. When it crossed the bridge the muddy water splashed up way past the windows, but as it approached our van I could see it was packed full. The bus crossed fairly easily, and as I was explaining to the driver of our van that my friend and I wanted to go back to Maseru, he said he would stop the bus and ask the driver where he was going. I turned back to our van to update my co-fellow on the situation, and then looked up to see the bus roll right on past. I was pretty annoyed and asked the driver point-blank why he didn’t stop the bus. Our fellow passengers got a good chuckle our of this – I probably looked like an impatient American angry at the rain. But my co-fellow and I were seriously concerned about being stranded in the rain and the dark.

You may be wondering why we couldn’t cross the bridge if the van coming from the other direction made it, but there was clearly a dip in the bridge at such an angle that it looked easier to approach from one direction than the other. So our driver decided to keep waiting.

I was kicking myself for not flagging down the bus myself, but luckily within about 10 minutes another taxi van came up from behind us and drove down to check out the bridge. After a few minutes the van appeared to decide that it was too dangerous to cross, and started to turn around. My co-fellow and I had been watching this new van intently, and as soon as I saw it begin to turn around I indicated that I wanted to get out of the van.

The taxi dudes were rather reluctant to open the door, although I couldn’t understand why they cared whether we stayed, because we’d already paid them. At this point I was pretty fed up with the situation. I wasn’t shrieking or anything, but I was pounding my hand on the door and telling them in no uncertain terms to “Let us out NOW.” As soon as there was space to squeeze through I clambered over the person in front of me and climbed out into the rain to flag down the taxi. Mercifully, it was practically empty (probably influenced their decision to turn around) and after a quick conversation with the driver (“2 people? Maseru? Shop!* Wait here!)

*’Shop’ is an affirmative – like ‘okay’ or ‘cool’ or ‘sure’

I returned for my co-fellow and our bags. We checked once more with our driver to see if he’d reconsidered his plan. He was going to “wait a little longer and see,” so we wished him luck with that and said adios. We felt relieved, and I’m confident we made the safest and smartest decision. Still, it felt strange to be going back to Maseru when an hour earlier we had been mentally prepping for another two weeks in St. Rodrigue.

Our next item of business was to arrange a place to stay stat. Fortunately, an American friend of ours had just returned to Maseru that day, and she graciously let us stay at her lovely apartment. So when we arrived in Maseru a couple hours later we grabbed supper because we were starving – we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Then we had a fabulous evening with our friend, enjoying her cable TV, internet, ice cream, and goofy cat.

First thing in the morning we called the principal to let her know we wouldn’t be at school (later we learned we were hardly the only teachers absent), and she was just glad we were safe. It was a good thing we had an extra night to recharge before returning because all sorts of challenges awaited us in St. Rodrigue.

We arrived back home (via good ol’ Platoon) Monday evening. I’m going to blame the crazy weekend as the reason I forgot that I was ‘on duty’ this week. Each week two teachers are ‘on duty’, which means that they arrive at school early to unlock the staff room, and when the bell rings at 7:00, it’s their job to shoo all the students into their classrooms. If students are late, the on duty teachers need to punish them accordingly. Corporal punishment is pretty common at St. Rodrigue (although technically school policy asks that teachers refrain from it) so many teachers will give tardy students a good smack with a stick. My co-fellow and I aren’t comfortable doing this, so we opt to make them pick up five pieces of trash from the ground, which is more useful anyway.

The responsibility isn’t really a big deal, but it did add some extra color to the week. As I said, I completely forgot about it Tuesday morning, so I got several reminders to show up for on duty – not that the other teacher on duty had been there either. So I clocked in promptly before 7:00 Wednesday through Friday, yelling threats and counting pieces of trash until 7:15 or so. On Friday I was sentencing a lone latecomer to her five pieces of soggy litter when she asked, “Should I call the others?” “What others?” “The other girls who came with me.” Well of course you can you stinky little tattletale! She went around the corner to get them (The buildings are arranged in sort of an L-shape, so it’s easy to miss students who don’t come down the main path, especially when I’m on my own.) And when she came back I told her she only needed to pick up two pieces of trash. Because I reward snitches, apparently.

Tuesday my team-teacher and I had planned to give an exam to the A1 agric class. I had written several questions over the chapters I taught, and I was actually pretty proud of them. I was curious to see how the students would answer them. I expected my team-teacher to write questions over the chapters he taught. However, when I arrived at class he said we should just give them the exam the other agric teacher (with whom I team-teach B1) wrote. I was not at all okay with this because, as I said, I was looking forward to reading the responses to my questions. I thought we could take some questions from both tests, and proceeded to write these on the board.

Apparently this was unacceptable to my B1 team-teacher, because when she heard about it she called me from class and I had a little powwow with both agric teachers. I think the B1 teacher and I were both pretty upset, but I did my best to keep emotions running low, and we calmly decided that for this test we could use her questions, and I would write the questions for the next test.

Several aspects of this little kerfuffle were frustrating to me, but I don’t want to include much more detail here. I will just say that the challenges of working with team-teachers and struggling for control over the material I teach have been very noticeable this week.

I also added a colleague to my team-teaching roster this week. A sub arrived for the teacher who usually teaches the Ds and Es maths (classes I’ve been covering until now). This addition to the staff meant I had to drop not only the Ds (which I expected – they don’t really fit into my schedule anyway) but also the E1s, which made me sad because they’re one of my favorite classes. I held onto the E2s, and I’ll be sharing that class with the new sub. The E1s were also unhappy with the change (their reaction when I told them: “Nooooo!” which made me both sad and smug) so I told them I’d be in the library during free and study periods every day if they ever wanted some extra tutoring, and I have high hopes for that.

There were so many changes and conflicts at school this week that sometimes it felt like a very hostile place to be. This isn’t universally true – many of my co-workers are always very friendly, and of course the students are their usually lovely, hilarious selves. The mood also improved significantly toward the end of the week, but every night I went to bed totally exhausted, and I think I can attribute that to the extra stress. I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend in St. Rodrigue (nearly all the other teachers are going to Maseru when I can catch up on some grading, bake bread, and take some long hikes to clear my mind.

Stray thoughts:

• No Theater Club this week – obviously I was absent Monday, and there wasn’t time on Wednesday due to Ash Wednesday services
• The rain in the gauge when we arrived home Monday evening was 4.5 inches! Total rain for February is 8.5 inches.
• The storms apparently knocked down a bunch of apples in the orchard, so someone brought them to the staff room. Finding an apple on my desk makes me an official teacher, right?
• Finally received our Time magazines again (5 issues)! Also two birthday cards for me. :)
• I made baked beans from scratch this week (on the stove because we don’t have a dutch oven) complete with homemade barbecue sauce, and I was pretty darn proud of them.