Just for fun I used wordle to make a word cloud of the 250 words I used most on this blog this year. I think it gives a cool little distillation of my year and how I experienced it. Plus it exposes my writing crutches so you know, bonus! (Click to enlarge)
Living without electricity means that when the sun goes down your entertainment options are fairly limited. If I’m not visiting with some of the other teachers or working on a lesson plan, I might spend my evening cooking a meal or writing a letter home. But usually I read. Among all the new and exciting things I did this year, I also made a quiet rediscovery of reading for pleasure. This was an activity that had largely fallen by the wayside in college, when I barely found time to do the required reading. But the pace of my life drastically slowed down in Lesotho, where I was often waiting in a taxi or proctoring an exam or home after dark for several hours. Without the internet to distract me I found myself turning back to books, and enjoyed the shift very much.
Bo Grinnell has a healthy collection of books left by previous fellows – around 200 by my co-fellow’s count. I read several of these over the course of the year, but I also depended heavily on my kindle. Iowa’s public libraries provide ebook lending, so even though I was in a remote African village I had access to hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of recent releases. I could download up to three ebooks while I was in Maseru, and didn’t have to worry about overdue fines because they were returned automatically.
Anyway, I did much more reading this year than I have for a long time. The experience was so fun and satisfying; I’ve resolved to make time for reading now that I’m back in America. In any case, I thought I’d share the books I read (or re-read) this year.
More or less in the order that I read them:
Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Green Hills of Africa, by Ernest Hemingway
On China, by Henry Kissinger
Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, by Gabrielle Hamilton
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World, by Eric Weiner
Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
The Odyssey, by Homer
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese
The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht (I LOVED this book – so enchanting.)
Blue Nights, by Joan Didion
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (I’ll definitely be returning to this one – it’d make a great Halloween read.)
Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, by Paul Greenberg
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi
Dune, by Herbert Frank
A Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick (There weren’t many book I read this year that I felt were a waste of my time. But this was one of them. It’s just so incredibly boring.)
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (Also not a big fan of this one. I guess when it comes to wives I want less reliability and time travel, more tigers.)
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold
The Last Werewolf, by Glen Duncan
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President, by Candace Millard
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson
A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
The Grief of Others, by Leah Hager Cohen
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Robert K. Massie
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
Emma, by Jane Austen
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, by Janet Reitman
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, by Erik Larson
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, by James Gleick (This book blew. my. mind. Highly recommended, especially if you enjoy reading about science.)
Seven Years, by Peter Stamm
Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett
Open City, by Teju Cole
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild
The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, by Helen Simonson
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remnick
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Angelology, by Danielle Trussoni
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
1861: The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart
When classes resumed in August my co-fellow and I began teaching Guidance & Counseling classes to all forms. Over the course of the semester we covered a number of topics, including self-esteem, goal-making, role models, study skills, decision-making, peer pressure, and alcohol/drugs awareness. Most of these lessons also had a component that incorporated HIV/AIDs awareness.
Several of the in-class assignments we gave them were writing exercises that asked them to express their personal feelings on the topic at hand. When discussing future goals and role models we asked them to write two short essays. In the first they answered questions about who they consider their role model and in the second they described their dreams for the future. All of their essays were charming, enlightening, and often moving. I think they give a better picture of my students than any descriptions I’ve attempted to write on this blog. From the dozens of essays I read I chose a few and asked their authors for permission to publish them here (anonymously). I chose them not necessarily because they were the “best” in some way, but because I felt they gave a somewhat representative sample of the responses I get from students in assignments and in class. In some cases I’ve corrected spelling for ease of comprehension, but I’ve mostly left them as they are.
Anyway, enough from me. Presenting my students:
Role Models
(In this assignment students answered the following questions: 1) Who is your role model? 2) Is she someone you know, someone famous, or someone from history? 3) Describe your role model. What is she like? 4) What do you admire about your role model? 5) What can you do to become more like your role model?)
Essay 1
1) my aunt
2) Yes, I know her, but not so famous.
3) She is someone who is educated. She is a lecturer at University of Lesotho. She has no husband but has one child. She is very friendly and rich.
4) I like the way she dress and the way she walk. Also I like her the way she live without having husband.
5) I have to be educated and so that I can be like her.
Essay 2
1) Ophra Whinfrey
2) Someone who is famous
3) I have read about her and watch each and every show of her. She has no children even husband, and she have reasons for not having the children. But thought I like the fact that she is helping many people.
4) She is a businesswoman.
5) I will work hard on my studies, be educated, I think everything is possible when you are educated because education is the key to success.
Essay 3
1) Ciara
2) She isn’t someone I know but then she is a famous person.
3) I really don’t know a lot about her personal life but as much as I know: she is a singer of R&B and is sometimes featured in hip pop songs. She is a celebrity who is so cute.
4) She keeps her personal affairs privately. I like the way she dresses. I also like the fact that she so pretty. I like her voice. I like her because she enjoys being in a boys company which is what I also prefer.
5) I will try as much as possible to keep my love affairs secretly. I will dress like her. I am pretty so I will use make-ups to be extra beautiful like her. I will make my voice so melodious.
Essay 4
1) My role model is ‘M’e Gwen. She is from America. She is a teacher at St. Rodrigue High School. She is a handsome lady, and tall and has a beautiful shape.
2) ‘M’e Gwen is always smiling in class (ever smiling). She wears fashionable clothes with different colours. I mostly loves her when she has worn black skirt with a pantyhose wearing the long leg boot and pink scotch shirt, and a brown hand back the leather bag. (As you may have already guessed, this is just a description of what I happened to be wearing that day.)
3) What I admire from here is the way she wear and the way she moves and the way she teaches in class.
4) I will attend school and go to university and work so that I can be a teacher and wear the way she wears.
(Actually one other student also wrote about me, and it’s even cuter than this one. I thought it’d be a bit much to post them both here, but I can share it with you in person if you like.)
Life Stories
(In this assignment students imagined what the rest of their life would be like and wrote down what they envisioned as their “life story.”)
Essay 1
Next year I will be completing my high school and in five years I will be graduating in the university. In ten years I will be a working lady staying at my own house and I will be having only two friends. I will be dating three boyfriends which I will be making choices between as to who will be my man in the future. This time I will still be HIV negative. In fifteen years from now I will be married, having an educated man and we will have only two children. My husband and I will be free from HIV and so it will be obvious that our children are also fine.
Essay 2
I am now in form D and I want to pass it with second class. Next year I will be in form E. When I finished my form E, I want to go to the university to finish my studies. Afterwards when I finished my courses I want to be a nurse. When I am working and get the money, I want to have a husband.
When I get the husband, I want to have only two babies with him. We will build a big house of bricks not stones. He will be working and also myself. I will be working. When we get a lot of money we will buy a beautiful car which has four chairs.
We will make sure that we do not get the infections so that our babies will be born good, healthy, and attractive to everyone. When they grow up, they will be attending school. After when they are educated, they should take the example from us as their parents.
If God will give us a boy and a girl, it would be better for us, because the girl will be married and the boy will marry the girl of his choice. They will do that only when they are through with their studies like us, because we start our marriage after we have gone through our studies.
We will live a happy life with our children, and me and my husband, we will help the needy people with everything they are in need of, because I know that I am going to have a rich family until we get too old. That will be the end of my life.
Essay 3
I am now in form D and I will be completing my studies in high school next year. My willings for next year examinations is to pass the exams by first class. Therefore I should work hard in my studies to achieve that goal. Form there I want to continue with my studies in National University of Lesotho. In future, I want to be a doctor and so far I am working hard in sciences and English for my plan. I want to be graduated at least after eight years coming. I prefer to work in my own country because I want to bring some changes in my country and be close to my citizens so as to help them for better life.
After I have completed and achieved my goals, I want to have a partner. I want an educated man so as to work together for our family, parents, and the needy people. I love the man who is light brown in complexion, fat, strong, taller man, not handsome, and who always dressed in formal and well shaved. I also like to have three children, two boys and a girl. ‘Two boys’ because I love baby boys a lot. I want to wed because I like a legal marriage. I like a man who work in his own country so that we can be together and enjoy some meals together and visit places together always ‘like a pair of doves’.
Essay 4
In my life I have so many wishes that I would like to fulfill as long as I am still alive. From now onwards I have to tell myself that I am working hard in my studies. I should be confident in everything I do because patience comes to those who wait. I am not just going to work hard to please my parents but for my own sake. I want to be an actor and have a peaceful family with three kids and my husband should be a lawyer hardworking lawyer.
I don’t want to please friends in whatever they do or advise me to do. I want to do my own choices not someone’s choices because sometimes the choices we made can be wrong. Some can be good. I want to have one friend whom I knew and trust and whom I know I would share my problems with, it can be either good or bad.
I will make sure that my family comes first and my work, secondly my friend. I don’t want to see my parents suffer but I want them to feel special in their lives. I don’t want to be an alcoholist but I want to live the humble and decent life. I want my husband to respect me so that I can give him the respect that suit him and our children can learn from us as we are parents. I wish to have my own school for those who are in need, especially children who lost their parents and those their parents have no money to educate them.
I want to be someone who is mercy to other people and have faith in God in everything I do because everything is possible with God without him I am nothing. So I am going to work hard so that I could achieve my dreams and wishes.
Essay 5
When I complete my COSC I just want to go to the National University of Lesotho to further my studies. I am hoping to do nursing, in particular general nursing. After succeeding with my studies I will like to be a nurse in Queen ‘Mamohalo Memorial Hospital in Lesotho. After something like four years being a nurse, I will like to have someone to marry me. Then from that marriage, I would like to have at least two children. Then I would like to have my own house as well as a car. Then I would like to have someone who will take care of my children when I am at work. From there I would like to open my own clinic where I will work not as an employee as usual but being self-employed. I will then employ two or three nurses just to help me. Then I will like my children to be more educated than me even to attend the English medium school in order to improve their English.
Essay 6
I would like to finish my COSC and then go to the university for more studies. I want to be a nun because I do not want to have boyfriend. Boyfriend wasted time because sometimes a boy can impregnate me then after that he refuse to take responsibility for the baby. I want to be a presenter, so I am going to study hard so that I could get where I want to. I will be helping needy people and double orphans. I am going to be a good person who is friendly and open to everybody.
My life is going to be good because I like school very much and I am saying it is not too late to be what I want.
Essay 7
I am a girl in grade 11 doing commerce studies, aged at 20 years old. Next year I will be completing my high school. After that I am going to face the world. Pretty much my world is going to change and I am going to meet variety of people with different personalities, people who would either build me or break me. I am going to choose friends who know what they want in life and friends who will be ready to fight for it. Life is going to be challenging for I am going to be in love. The person whom I am going to be in love with might disappoint me or make me pregnant and leave me. My parents might be disappointed in me for they want a better life for me. I will be doing Marketing Management and hopefully will have my own company. As I meet different business owners my knowledge will increase and I will be awarded for the most youngest business owner of the year.
I will then buy a house and a car but for my mother, I will take her around the world. I will do anything that she wants me to do at that time. I will spoil her rotten.
Finally I will settle down, get married, and have two children, both girls or boys, but mostly I would love to have boys. I will then buy a house and car, also will invest my money into other businesses.
Finally I would be married to my loving husband who is ambitious about life, who will love and respect me and his children too.
Essay 8
I want to finish my study and go to Oxford University, also I want to work hard in order to achieve my goals. Spinster is what I want to live.
After all, I want to buy a car, to have my own belongings to help for charity, to help my parents for they are there for me every single moment.
I want to have Dehonours, Degree, Demasters, and Deploma. I want to be somebody in the world. I want my parents to be proud of me.
I want my teachers to be proud of me wherever they see me doing.
Essay 9
From now I want to finish school and after graduation is then that I will look for so many things like finding a good job so that I could be able to raise up my family.
After finishing at university I want to be a nurse. After having got that is then that I will enjoy myself to the fullest. Currently I will then find a boyfriend with whom I will share my problems and happiness with.
Recently I will then build a very large house at town where I will stay with my younger sister, who is double orphan because she lost her parents two years ago, and then satisfy my grandmother and grandfather who is now working hard to make me have a bright future.
Lastly I will make a child myself, the one whom I will raise without a man the whole of my life. Indeed I want the enjoyable and bright future.
After classes ended I had until December 23 to say goodbye to Lesotho and Africa. My plans included a little trip to see some places I hadn’t had a chance to visit yet, but also a healthy chunk of time just enjoying my old haunts.
My first destination was Sani Pass, which is located on Lesotho’s border in the eastern highlands. In order to get there I traveled from Maseru to Butha Buthe to Mokhotlong to Sani. The last leg is also known as the “Roof of Africa” route. To give you a better picture of the places I’m talking about I’ve made a map of the route I took.
Summer is the rainy season in Lesotho, and from the time I left St. Rodrigue the rain barely let up. This was the cause of some concern to me throughout the trip, as I knew the roads would only get less paved and more hazardous the closer I got to Sani. The trip from Maseru to Butha Buthe was fairly straightforward. The roads are good, but I had to take three different taxis (one to Teyateyaneng, then Maputsoe, and finally to Butha Buthe). After the third taxi, which was actually a rickety little Toyota Venture with no seats in the back, I was tired of traveling and sick of the rain. So I checked into a drab little hotel. (The Crocodile Inn! It sounds much cooler than it was.) But it had electricity, which was still a thrill.
The next day the weather finally cleared up and I had an ambitious plan to make it all the way to Sani that day. I left the hotel at the crack of dawn and caught the first taxi to Mokhotlong. The drive was very scenic, especially at the beginning. There were a ton of little waterfalls on the mountainsides, gushing with water from the heavy rains. Several were very close to the road, but weren’t in a position to be flowing over it. As we drew closer to Mokhotlong the number of villages and people I could see grew fewer and farther between. Soon the view was just the road and the mountains in every direction as far as the eye could see. Maybe a hut or two here and there. I had thought the Maseru district was sparsely populated, but this was much more remote.
I arrived in Mokhotlong around 1:00pm, and after asking around a little I learned I’d just missed the last taxis to Sani. I knew there was a hotel in town, but I wasn’t sure where it was, so I asked a woman near me. Our exchange went something like this:
“Where’s the hotel?”
“Oh, you’re looking for a hotel or guesthouse?”
“Yeah.”
“Come with me.”
I wasn’t really particular about where I stayed, so I followed her down the road and she took me to a little house that had “Safari B&B” painted on the side. It had beds and electricity and was close to the bus stop, so I was satisfied. And actually the people working there were really nice and fixed me a meal (mutton and rice) right away. Plus it was significantly cheaper than the Crocodile Inn.
The next morning I had a hearty breakfast of cornflakes, fresh bread, two hard-boiled eggs, and a giant sausage that didn’t look particularly appetizing. But I ate it anyway because my snacks were running low and I wasn’t sure when I’d get a chance to eat next. As I was eating a guy who worked at the B&B (or owned it? not entirely clear) told me he was going out to Sani that morning anyway, so I could catch a ride with him. Which sounded good to me – I was eager for a little variety in my transportation.
There was a guestbook on the table, so I jotted a quick note and started looking back at previous entries. To my surprise and delight two previous Grinnell Corps fellows (from 2010) had stayed at the very same obscure little B&B in Mokhotlong, either on their way to or from Sani. Lesotho: it is a small country.
After breakfast I went outside to meet my ride to Sani. The guy driving me was taking a bunch of thatch to some houses, so he had a small pickup with a huge pile of straw bundles in the back. We picked up a woman in town and the three of us squeezed into the little cab. But it was still a more comfortable (and quieter) than a minibus taxi. I was sitting next to the window, so I had a great view of the mountains, which were even more stunning and sparsely populated than on the way to Mokhotlong. The weather was perfect, to my intense relief, all blue skies and puffy white clouds.
The whole trip to Sani took about five hours, which is longer than public transport would have taken. (I know this because the minibus taxi passed us an hour or two into the journey.) The driver stopped periodically to check on the thatch and tighten the ropes holding it in. Which didn’t bother me because it gave me a opportunity to snap some pics of the landscape and stretch my legs. The little pick-up also seemed to have more trouble with rougher patches of the road than the indomitable minibus taxis. But it carried us to Sani, slowly and surely.
I was dropped off at Sani Top Chalet, which is a restaurant/inn located at the top of Sani Pass. The Lesotho border post is located just across the road, and marks the beginning of the actual mountain pass. Driving up to Sani Top, the road and surrounding mountains look much like everything I’d seen for the last several hours. But as you go past the border post, the world suddenly drops away. The road descends into this cavernous valley that I cannot sufficiently describe. Sani Top Chalet has a great view over these mountains and the lowlands that stretch out beyond, seemingly to the sea. I spent a long time just sitting on their deck with my lunch, taking in the grandeur of the scenery.
Anyway, my driver asked around at Sani Top to see if anyone was going down the pass to Sani Lodge, where I was planning to stay that night. It turned out there was a German couple also staying there, who had just done a day trip into Lesotho. When I first arrived at Sani Top they were out hiking with their South African guide, and when they returned they kindly agreed to give me a lift. As I was chatting with them and explaining where I’d traveled from, the guy asked, “So you hitchhiked here?” (from Mokhotlong). And for second I was confused, because of course I don’t hitchhike, but then I realized oh, I kind of did. So I rolled with it and pretended that my mode of transportation was due to my cool, edgy travel style, rather than the everyday friendliness and hospitality of Lesotho.
The four of us got into a land rover-type vehicle (as I was getting in, still in minibus taxi mindset, I was thinking “Man, we could fit like nine more people in here!”) and made our way down the pass. On my way to Sani I’d begun to flatter myself that I’d adjusted to the narrow shoulders and precipices of mountain roads. Sani Pass completely erased those notions. I have a hard time trying to describe the hairpin turns and sheer drops. My co-fellow had described the road to me when he made the same journey just a couple months prior, but I was still completely unprepared. Later I found out that the road is sometimes used in car commercials, so maybe this will give you a clearer picture of the pass. (The best couple shots are near the beginning.)
The South African border post is located at the bottom of the pass, and as our driver cautiously maneuvered down the road he explained that the Sani border post does not give out visas, which was slightly dismaying to me because I was counting on getting the same 7-day visa I get every time I cross the border in Maseru. I knew that I’d be able to cross the border into SA because my co-fellow had done the same thing in October. But without a dated stamp showing how long I could remain in the country I could run into some problems when I tried to re-enter Lesotho.
Sure enough, when I got my passport back from the two guys at a little window that constituted the border post, there was a stamp saying “Sani Pass Border Control” but no date. (Seriously, South Africa? Why would you let me into your country if you won’t tell me when I should leave it??) This threw a little wrench in my original plans, which had been to go straight to Durban, then go back to Maseru through South Africa. Now, I’ve crossed the border in Maseru enough times to know that it’s pretty laid-back, and in all likelihood they would have let me back into Lesotho without any trouble. But I couldn’t stomach the thought of having to pay several hundred dollars just because I had the wrong stamp. Especially when I had plenty of time, no one to meet, and no bus tickets booked.
So I reluctantly decided that, after spending a couple days in South Africa, I would turn around and go back to Maseru through Lesotho the way I had come. From there I would catch a bus to Durban. I was mulling all this over as we arrived at the backpackers, which was just down the road from the pass. The lodge was very cozy and not very crowded, so I had a 4-bed dorm all to myself. Rainstorms moved in again, so I spent most of the next day in their very cute cafe taking advantage of the free wifi. From there I was able to book my bus tickets and adjust my reservation in Durban for the extra time it would take me to travel through Lesotho. Plus work on a grad school application and some other tasks I’d been putting off.
The day-long downpour was starting to make me nervous about road conditions, especially after having experienced Sani Pass firsthand. A leisurely trek across Lesotho was fine the first time around, but now I was eager to get back to Maseru quickly so that I could move on to Durban.
You may have realized that the smart thing for me to do would have been to go straight to Durban in the first place, and then cross Sani from the SA side, and take my time getting back to Maseru. This never once occurred to me before leaving, and I really have no good explanation as to why.
Anyway, I was planning to spend another day at the lodge, taking in the Drakensberg mountains. But when I saw the weather was sunny and clear, I felt so worried that it would storm again the next day and that this might be my best chance to cross the pass. So I decided to leave right after breakfast and walk to the taxi stop to get a ride up the pass and to Mokhotlong. It wasn’t exactly a mountain hike, but there was a nice wide sidewalk along the road for the mile or two that I had to walk to meet the minibus taxi. I still had an unobstructed view of the gorgeous mountains surrounding the valley. Clouds of mist from the previous day’s rains were still hovering around the peaks, but quickly evaporating in the morning heat. There were interesting rock formations all along the tops of the ridges, the cutest of which were two small pinnacles. They were called Salt & Pepper and looked just like two little shakers.
There were a couple other people at the minibus taxi stop, but we were waiting on another taxi coming from Pietermaritzburg. A couple hours later we were all packed in and bouncing up the pass. I didn’t have any real concerns about crossing the border, but because I technically didn’t have a valid visa, I was nevertheless somewhat relieved when I was back in Lesotho.
It only took about three hours to get from Sani Top to Mokhotlong, and it was just as beautiful a second time around. I had told the people at Safari B&B that I wasn’t planning to come back through Mokhotlong, but when showed up by surprise they were just as genial and welcoming as the first time. They also informed me that there was a bus (like a real bus, not a minibus taxi) that went straight to Maseru from Mokhotlong every morning at 8am. As I was eating supper in their little restaurant area I learned from the TV news that the previous day’s storms had caused an air force plane to crash near Giant’s Castle (a mountain in the Drakensburgs, not far from where I was staying), killing 11 people. I was just really grateful I wasn’t on the road at all that day.
I woke up early to catch the bus and managed to snag a seat by the window. Unfortunately, I failed to realize it was stuck shut until we were already moving, so it was a pretty warm bus ride, but otherwise tolerable. There were a lot of people standing in the aisle, so I was glad I arrived early enough to get a seat. We ended up making pretty good time. The bus left at 8:00 as promised and we arrived in Maseru around 3:30pm. Lovely mountain scenery once again, but I was dying to get off that bus by the end of the trip.
Because I’d left Sani a day early and didn’t have any travel hiccups I had an extra day in Maseru, which I used to meet with one of my students. She wanted to set up a facebook account so she could see my pictures and keep in touch. We arranged to meet at an internet cafe at the mall and I helped her create both an email and facebook account. St. Rodrigue does offer computer classes, but there’s a lot to learn when you’re starting from scratch and don’t have a computer at home, or even the library, to use for practice. My goal was to make sure she could access her accounts on her own from the internet cafe, so there were I lot of things I had to consciously think about that are second nature at this point. Like making sure she knew how to use shift, remembering to press enter to load a page, and the difference between a username and a password. I tried to be very clear that her password should be easy to remember, and that she shouldn’t share it with anybody. The one she chose was kind of ingenious, but you’ll just have to imagine how great it was.
I made my usual trip to Bloemfontein, stayed overnight, and caught a bus to Durban the next morning. On both the drives in the minibus taxi and the bus I saw a lot of what I later learned were long-tailed widowbirds, which look so beautiful when they fly. They’re like what our red-wing blackbirds would be if they were 100% cooler.
The place I stayed in Durban (Gibela lodge) was really gorgeous, and almost completely empty. The building was a refurbished Tuscan-style house with an interior courtyard where I had breakfast each morning. It was one of the cleanest and most tastefully decorated backpackers I’ve ever stayed at, with big windows and bright wall displays of Zulu art and textiles. The first night there was one other person in my dorm, an American former professor of math and astronomy doing workshops on math education for school districts in rural South Africa. Go figure. Her projects on “family math” sounded especially cool, and involved bringing in parents to the school to learn math with their kids. The second & third nights I had the dorm to myself, and there were only two other people staying in the lodge. My last day & night in Durban I had the whole place to myself – as the Danish guy told me at breakfast, “It’s like you’ve your own private villa!” Indeed.
Anyway, I had a lovely few days just wandering around Durban and then coming back to the lodge to enjoy electricity and get work done (i.e. application stuff). Durban was quite a beautiful city; it reminded me a lot of Cape Town. And it was SO hot and humid. Highlights were visiting the city’s botanical garden, shopping in some exceptional art gallery gift shops, and catching a last look at the Indian Ocean. But mostly I just enjoyed relaxing with electricity and hot showers.
Although I had a ticket all the way to Bloemfontein, the bus from Durban stopped in Maseru on the way, so I was able to get off there and cut a lot of hassle out of my itinerary. Otherwise my journey back to St. Rodrigue was quiet and uneventful. When I arrived home the house smelled just the same as it did when I first arrived in January, and I suddenly got the urge to take pictures of all the rooms in the house because every little thing seemed so precious. Then I got out a pot to cook supper and found a dead centipede in it and felt less sentimental. Needless to say, I had a lot of mixed feelings in those last few days at St. Rodrigue.
I had four days set aside to pack up all my things (I hadn’t even started when classes ended) and say goodbye to St. Rodrigue. I ended up using one of those days to make a quick trip to Maseru so I could send some emails, which is not noteworthy in itself, but as I came back to St. Rodrigue I realized I was taking not only my last minibus taxi ride to St. Rods, but my last one for the foreseeable future. As chance would have it, on this particular taxi ride we switched taxis when we were about an hour from St. Rodrigue (so that the one we were in before could turn around and go back to Maseru). Between the people with me with the first taxi and those already in the new one, we managed to stuff 17 people into one vehicle, plus the driver, a baby, and a box of chicks. I thought it was a fitting last taxi ride.
The rest of my days in St. Rodrigue were spent packing my bags, cleaning my room, and organizing the things I was leaving in the house. No one was really around except for the nuns, so I spent spent some time chatting with them too. In one of those conversations, a sister reminded me that I had talked with her about participating in the Wednesday mass, which I attended when I could because it was held in English. So she gave me the readings from the Old Testament and Psalms for the next mass so I could prepare. And on my last full day in St. Rodrigue I walked up to the chapel at 7:00am to read the Bible to a room full of nuns. I was a little nervous (feeling underqualified compared to present company I guess?) but the reading went smoothly, as far as I could tell. Afterward the sister who’d made the request, and who’s been a very good friend to me this year, gave me a big hug and exclaimed, “That was fantastic!” I ran into her a few more times that day as I was tying up loose ends, and each time she’d say, “The sisters are very happy you read the holy word this morning!” I was just glad I was able to squeeze that in before I left. And it gave me something to feel good about on a day when I had a lot of nervous energy and was trying not to freak out all the time.
But the next day I actually had to put my bags in the nun truck and leave St. Rodrigue, and at that point there was no holding back the tidal wave of emotions. I somehow managed to fall asleep the night before, and when I woke up I took one last walk up the hill to watch the sunrise. And then paced around the house, staring at my bags, paranoid that was forgetting something. When the nun truck did arrive and I had to say goodbye to the principal I couldn’t quite keep back the tears. But I tried to keep it together because she was all smiles and kind words and I wanted to part on a happy note.
Anyway, I continued to be a little weepy on the trip to Maseru, mentally saying goodbye to the mountains that had been my home for the year. And after I’d been dropped off at the guesthouse where I was staying and said goodbye to the sister traveling with me, I finally got a grip on myself a little. Saying goodbye to St. Rodrigue was really difficult, but I have fewer mushy feelings about Maseru. I had a couple days there to buy gifts, send letters, and run other little errands I wanted to check off before I left. I did get the chance to meet up with my co-fellow, who was on his way to St. Rodrigue with his parents. But of course there were many more people who had been very important to me during my year, and I wished I’d been able to give them all a proper goodbye.
But that really would have been a monumental and impossible task. There wasn’t any way I was ever going to feel like I had done all the things I should, that all my affairs were neatly tidied up and I was ready to leave Lesotho. Because I had felt so invested in my life there I couldn’t stop myself from making plans in my mind, even ones I knew full well I didn’t have the time to actually fulfill. There were always more people I wanted to talk to, more things I wanted to learn, more stories I wanted to hear. So even as I sat in the taxi on my way to the airport, what I felt the most was a sense of disbelief. I couldn’t actually be leaving all this – surely I’d be right back, right?
Anyway, I’m getting rambly, and this post is already way too long. Suffice it to say that my flights home were all on-time and problem-free (which surprised me, given that it was Christmas eve) though very culture shock-inducing. Being back home is both wonderful and disorienting, and I am hoping I can keep in touch with my St. Rodrigue friends while keeping a respectful distance from the new fellows as they have their own Lesotho adventures.
November was my last full month in Lesotho, and a number of notable things happened. But I’m too lazy to string them together into some kind of coherent narrative, so here they are in a sort of Stray Thoughts Omnibus:
Theater Club continued to have a couple meetings every week. We read through many of the scripts in Plays magazine, and then I asked the students who attended meetings most regularly to choose their favorite. We had read quite a range of works – dramas, comedies, historical plays, folk stories and book adaptations. But when asked to pick out just one, the group of teenage girls unanimously chose The Dowry, essentially a romantic comedy set in olden timey Spain. They got a big kick out of the play, but were mildly outraged that in some cultures a dowry was paid by a girl’s family. (Traditionally in Lesotho a boy’s family pays the bride’s in the form of several head of cattle.)
We didn’t really have time to put on a full production that we could perform in front of the school, especially once the Ds began taking their own final exams. But I did hold auditions and assign parts, and we had several long practices in which we blocked scenes. I worked with them on reading smoothly and clearly, projecting their voice, and reacting to the other actors in their scene. I’m pleased with the progress we made in the time we had, but I also really wish I had another year to keep working with these students, given all that I’ve learned about them. I suppose that applies to my classes and everything else I’ve worked on this year, too.
As the weather warms up I’ve been seeing a lot of these crazy rainbow-colored grasshoppers. I did a google search and it looked a lot like a rainbow bush locust except I’m not sure it had those red spikey things on its back. But it was big and had rainbow colored wings and was kind of awesome. I’ve seen a number of interesting bugs around St. Rods actually. On hot days when I’m walking along the dirt path to Mpatana to get milk and whatnot I’ll sometimes see dung beetles. One time I saw this crazy electric blue, furry spider that really stood out against the red soil. It also moved really fast and was pretty creepy looking. I haven’t even come close to identifying it (clearly my naturalist skills are pretty weak).
Earlier in the year I started thinking about how I could encourage my students to keep in touch with me after I returned to the US. One idea that occurred to me was to give each of my students a business card with my address, email, phone number, etc. on it. I passed this notion on to my family, and they did all the work for me. My parents brought a bunch of cards with them, including some that were laminated, and in the middle of November I received a package with cards that also had my picture on them. So by the end of the school year I had several hundred cards to hand out to the students, teachers, nuns, and pretty much anyone else I had met in Lesotho.
They were a big hit with the students. I met the E2s in their classroom after their penultimate exam (which happened to be their last math exam) and gave them the cards as well as gingerbread cake. As I handed out their cards they burst into a song that consisted solely of singing “M’e Gwen-y, ‘M’e Gwen-y” over and over. It was incredibly sweet but also hilarious, and that is why leaving those girls broke my heart. The word spread to other classes that they’d all be getting little tokens with my face on it, and I had only to walk into a class and pull a stack of cards out of my bag to trigger immediate applause.
Of course the real test will be if any of them contact me – but if I get just one letter or email or text, even if it’s ten years from now, it will be worth it.
One morning I was groggily going about my morning routine of putting water on the stove to boil and shoving food in my face when I heard what sounded like something heavy hitting the kitchen door. I was about to swing open the door and see what was going on, but first I peeked out the window. Several of the neighbor kids plus one teacher were standing outside, staring intently at our doorstep. Every now and then one of the kids would slowly raise a rock, take careful aim, and hurl it at our door. I thought better of my original plan and went out the back door and around the house to ask what was going on.
As soon as I rounded the corner of the house I understood the situation – there was small snake (maybe 1.5 ft long, not terribly thick) with its head reared back and hissing. The teacher was standing with a bucket, watching apprehensively. She had been on her way to get water from the tap by our house, spotted the snake, and called over the extermination squad.
The snake didn’t look poisonous to me – more like something that eats mice. But, as I’ve already shown, I am not to be trusted when it comes to identifying Lesotho wildlife. And anyway, the kids had already maimed it, so I just let them keep throwing rocks until it was dead. When I took a closer look at the snake I saw a couple really distinctive characteristics. There were red stripes on each side of its head near the mouth, and when it had reared its head back and hissed black folds of skin (or something) stood up behind its eyes to make it look sort of like a cobra (but it wasn’t quite a hood). From these details I’m pretty sure it was a red-lipped herald snake which, sure enough, is harmless to humans.
Seshoeshoes are traditional dresses worn by women in Lesotho. Many previous (female) fellows have purchased them in the past, and buying my own and wearing it to school was on my to-do-before-the-end-of-the-year list. The entire process involved talking to my fellow teachers, meeting with a woman in Maseru who sews seshoeshoes, having a couple meetings about exactly what I wanted (there’s very wide variation in the colors, patterns, and style of seshoeshoes), and finally picking them up in Maseru. I had two seshoeshoes made (one blue, one green) and managed to have them ready a couple weeks before school closed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite in time to wear them before the Es and Cs left. But all the other students (plus all the teachers, of course) were still around to bear witness the day I paraded to school in my seshoeshoe.
I’ve seen countless variations on seshoeshoes worn by women around Lesotho, and nearly every outfit differs a little from the next. They’re all made with the same seshoeshoe material, which comes in many colors, but most commonly blue and brown. There are also many different patterns, but they’re all very small and subtle – they remind me a little of the patterns I associate with Japanese fabrics (not that I know very much about Japanese traditional attire).
The dress itself can be almost any style, but most have elaborate embroidery, especially around the neckline and pockets. It doesn’t even have to be a full dress – I’d seen many women wearing a seshoeshoe skirt paired with some other top. This is what I chose for myself, because I thought I’d be more likely to wear it back home. Women also frequently wear a headscarf, called a luku, made out of the same fabric of their seshoeshoe. As I was getting my seshoeshoes custom-made, I made sure I also got matching lukus for my skirts.
I was a bit nervous the morning I donned my seshoeshoe and luku for school. It was certainly a departure from my usual wardrobe, and I had no sense of whether I looked awesome or ridiculous. The reaction when I arrived at school, however, was resoundingly positive. Students burst into applause and cheers as I walked down the hall. If you’ve never had that response to your choice of outfit for the day, I can tell you it does wonders for your self-esteem. My favorite moment might have been when I was in the staff room, and one of the other teachers walked into the room. As soon as she snapped eyes on me her face broke into a big grin and just shrieked at the top of her lungs. I also received lots of expert advice on how to properly tie my luku.
My other seshoeshoe skirt was in a very traditional style, and it received an even more enthusiastic response, if that’s possible. I wore it on the last day of classes, so the general euphoria of students anticipating summer break may have also been feeding their goodwill. I think the students also liked the fact that I had bought two seshoeshoes, because they took it to mean I really like seshoeshoes (and I do). They made me promise that I would wear them in America, which I fully intend to do.
I’d been looking forward to Thanksgiving since, oh, April because it is definitely one of my favorite holidays, and I couldn’t wait to celebrate it Bo Grinnell-style. I figured by November I’d be a pro at cooking without refrigeration or electricity, and all year long I scoped out grocery stores in Lesotho and South Africa for Thanksgiving-y ingredients. I even recruited my family into sending essentials that were difficult to find in Africa (namely cranberries, canned pumpkin, and evaporated milk).
For the last couple years the Namibia fellows have visited Bo Grinnell on Thanksgiving, and I looked forward to meeting the new Namibia fellows (they arrived in July) and whipping up a big feast. Unfortunately the Namibia fellows couldn’t make it because of work (they work at a desert research station and thus have a less predictable schedule than those of us at a school). So we invited a couple friends from Maseru who had been hoping to come visit us and see St. Rods sometime anyway.
We planned to have our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday. Our friends would drive out that morning, bringing poultry and other refrigerated Thanksgiving essentials, and stay at Bo Grinnell overnight. I woke up Saturday morning and looked out the window to find a completely overcast sky. (I’d been hoping to do some solar charging.) Well, I thought to myself, at least it’s not raining. And of course a giant crack of thunder immediately responded and basically set the tone for the rest of the day.
Rain soon followed and barely let up for the rest of the day. I had a strict schedule of food preparation to follow, so I hurried to the kitchen to get started. That was when I discovered that we were completely out of gas. My visions of a holiday feast were rapidly dimming, and my co-fellow texted our friends to let them know the situation. It turned out that one of them (the driver, as it happens) had gotten sick. We had so many reasons to cancel our plans it felt a bit like overkill. So instead of a Thanksgiving celebration we spent a rather gloomy rainy day feeling sorry for ourselves because we couldn’t make hot drinks.
We did get a new tank of gas eventually, and I was determined to have some kind of Thanksgiving meal. After all, we had all those cans of pumpkin from the US sitting around. So on Sunday I woke up early and made a super speedy day trip to Maseru to buy chicken, butter, green beans, sour cream, and other Thanksgiving-y things. Normally it would have been way too hot for those things to sit in a taxi for several hours, but I bought a couple bags of ice from the movie theater and stuffed them in my tote bag, which worked pretty well.
I arrived at Bo Grinnell around 6:00pm, and my co-fellow and I proceeded to stay up late making our Thanksgiving feast (finally). Our menu (for four in theory, two in practice) included barbecue chicken (cooked by Pick N Pay), corn casserole, green beans, mashed potatoes (with butter!), cranberry sauce, homemade bread, pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie (with whipped cream!) and sauvignon blanc (chilled!). The cream unfortunately had a pretty strong UHT flavor, but I was still super proud that I’d been able to whip it by hand. (I used the remaining ice to chill the bowl for the cream.)
It was nearing midnight by the time we actually had our feast, three days late, but it was still very satisfying. And candlelit, naturally.
At the end of the school year, when all the teachers have finished marking exams and filled out report cards, we have a meeting called Promotions. This is where the teachers meet to discuss those students who did not pass outright and decide whether they should move on (be promoted) to the next form. Passing was based on a cumulative grade – I was never clear on exactly how this number was calculated. But if it was over 40% the student passed. A significant number of students did not meet this standard, especially in the upper grades. Only 11 Ds out of 60+ passed (although many more were promoted).
In deciding whether a student should be promoted, teachers evaluated her potential for performing well in the next form. This was especially important to consider in the case of Bs and Ds, whose advancement the next year would be determined solely by standardized tests. Very few students ever repeat form E, so teachers are hesitant to promote a student in form D unless they’re very sure she’s ready for form E.
If a student had a cumulative grade somewhat close to 40% (35% or higher) and passed at least four subjects, one of which was English, then she was promoted with no argument. The more in-depth discussions of a student occurred when students didn’t quiiite meet even that standard. Then teachers started comparing their impressions of that student in class, her improvement/decline over the year, and whether there were home/personal issues to take into account. Some students had been held back for multiple years, and we discussed whether it was better to pass a student if she would otherwise become discouraged and drop out of school altogether.
As the only math teacher of the A1s and A3s I was proud to be able to vouch for a couple of my students. One of my students had been struggling at the beginning of the year, but recently made huge improvements. She was asking me questions outside of class, doing her homework, and improved her final exam score over her midterm by about 35 percentage points. We ultimately decided to hold her back, thinking she would perform better overall next year and be better prepared for form B than if we promoted her now.
Another student consistently did well in my class, always doing her classwork thoroughly and promptly, and asking questions when she didn’t understand. I believe she passed all of my exams and finished with a strong pass in math overall (55% or thereabouts). I was surprised to see on her report card that she had only passed one other class. I don’t remember which subject it was, but it was not English, which would have helped her case greatly. All the other teachers said that she was lazy in their classes and that she should repeat the grade. I spoke up because she’s easily one of the best five students in that particular class (in math). It seemed that she was very bright and capable, but apparently unmotivated in her other classes. We decided to promote her, under the condition that she work hard and apply herself in form B.
I felt really good about being able to contribute to the conversation and help create a fair depiction of each student. And it was even more gratifying to have the other teachers listen to my perspective and give it equal weight, even though they all have much more experience with promoting students than me. The meeting started in the late afternoon and ended well past 8:00 (my first experience lighting candles in the staff room). At the end of the meeting I regretted that I wouldn’t be able to stick around for a few more years and continue to watch these students grow and improve. I hope those address cards work, and that I’ll be hearing from both students and teachers so that I can cheer them on from afar.
As soon as classes resumed after Independence holidays the Cs and Es started taking their final exams. Now, St. Rodrigue High School is usually a pretty laid-back place. Teachers aren’t coming to assembly because it’s raining? No biggie. Want to dismiss class early so students go gape at the landing helicopter? Sure, whatevs. But when the time came for testing the Cs and Es (“externals”, as we call them – because their exams come from outside sources) the entire process was very stringent and official.
The assembly hall became our testing center. Assembly was held outdoors for the rest of the year, which was fine because the weather was warm and lovely. (If it happened to be raining at 7:40am students would just have assembly in their classrooms.) Instead of long tables scattered around the room there were neat rows of 50-odd desks labeled with each student’s name and identification number.
The exams themselves arrived in sealed envelopes to be opened only on exam day. Students took no more than two tests per day, and followed a schedule set to correspond with all other schools. So Cs across Lesotho would take their physics exam at the same time on the same day (much the way AP exams are administered in the US).
There was also a schedule on the staff room chalkboard for us teachers, indicating when we needed to invigilate the Cs. (Outside officials came to invigilate the Es.) I was signed up for invigilation duty twice over the testing period. If you’re wondering whether “invigilation” sounds less hilarious after repeated exposure: it does not.
My first experience with super-official invigilation was much the same as regular invigilation (in which I sit at a desk and read a book, glancing up now and then to make sure there’s no shenanigans going on) except I had to fill out some seating charts and get signatures from students. Something about holding the examinations in the assembly hall made the environment feel more austere and ponderous. Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting at a desk on a small stage, glaring down at several dozen heads bent over their papers and scribbling away. On that first day of invigilation a big afternoon thunderstorm rolled in, so students had to tune out the sound of howling wind and rain crashing against the corrugated steel roof. The assembly hall is often somewhat dim anyway, and the storm blotted out so much daylight I was worried about students’ abilities to read their papers easily. But none complained; they carried on with their exams as though nothing were happening.
Initially invigilation wasn’t too much of a chore, and had the added perk of coffee & biscuits in the principal’s office afterward. But then my co-invigilator and I found out that we were not allowed to read a book (or use a phone) during super-official-invigilation. So my second round of invigilation duty was a pretty dismal affair – basically 2.5 hours of staring blankly into space.
I wanted to make sure the Es had the best possible chance of doing well on the first of their two math exams. They were testing in the afternoon (2:00-4:00 or something) and I didn’t want them to do math on an empty stomach, so I baked a couple loaves of bread and took them out of the oven just in time to rush them up to the school. The students were pretty thrilled, and hopefully it helped them relax a little bit before plunging into their exam. Here’s a pretty good example of the type of test they were taking. (The CIE website has exams from previous years, but I couldn’t find the exact version St. Rods students take. Anyway, this one gives a good sample of the types of questions, but the actual exam is much longer.)
I’d been giving out a lot more treats in class recently, actually. Maybe my looming departure date made me feel more generous. The As suggested that the math exam they took before Independence break be a competition between the A1s, A2s, and A3s. The reward was a popcorn party for the class with the most passes (40% or higher) and a discount on printing photos for any score over 60%. The A2s wound up being the winners, so as promised I popped a whole bag of popcorn (over the stove, of course) and carried it in two giant bowls up to their classroom.
Word soon spread to the other classes, and I found myself constantly hounded by girls shouting, “‘M’e Gwen! The popcorns! We want the popcorns!!” I don’t know where they picked up describing popcorn in plural with a definite article, but it was adorable.
The most persistent of the popcorn hunters was the B1 class, who mentioned the popcorns! every time I saw them. They also happened to be one of the most unruly Guidance & Counseling classes, so I cut a deal with them. I walked into their class, prepared to discuss passive and aggressive behaviors, and wrote “POPCORN 1 2 3” on the board. I told them that every time someone talked out of turn, worked on homework for another class, put their head down to sleep, or did something else that annoyed me, I would erase 3…2…1…popcorn. And if “POPCORN” was still on the board by the end of class I would bring an actual bowl of the stuff to their next class. This is basically shameless bribery, but it worked. They were perfect angels for the whole 40 minutes. (I only had to move threateningly toward the 3 with an eraser to restore peace.)
Popcorn days were bright spots in my routine, but even they were not nearly as much fun as Halloween. I essentially abandoned all my regularly scheduled lesson plans and decided nothing was more important than educating my students about the glories of Halloween. I only had As that day, and they were really an ideal audience. This was their first year of having Grinnell Corps fellows as teachers, so I was fairly certain they had minimal exposure to the concept of Halloween. And they’re also the most game for listening to whatever crazy thing I bring up in class.
I started each class by asking if they knew what today was. They looked at me blankly and a few ventured,”…Wednesday?” All Saints Day sounded more familiar, and I explained how Halloween is derived from All Saints Day, and is a day to celebrate everything spooky and scary and wicked. When my parents were visiting they brought me a bag of candy corn, which I had scowled at (seriously, it is sugar-flavored wax), but it became a useful prop in my Halloween lesson. I reminded my students that although it was late spring in Lesotho, it was autumn in America. (I’ve explained this several times, but I guess it takes awhile to wrap your mind around the concept.) And because Halloween is an autumn festival, we have special sweets that represent the season. In reality candy corn looks almost nothing like actual corn, but when I asked them to guess what it was they caught on pretty quickly. The pumpkins were a lot easier.
Before handing out the candy I explained that kids in America would put on scary costumes, then go to their neighbors’ houses and knock on their doors. They would say “Trick or Treat!” and their neighbors were then obligated to give them candy. My students seemed fairly awestruck by this idea. After all, it is a pretty brilliant tradition, as holiday celebrations go. They wanted to test-drive this practice immediately, and rushed to the staff room to yell “Trick or Treat!” at my co-fellow. He was disappointingly lacking in candy, and he cited their absence of costumes.
This did not daunt my last class of the day, the A2s, who promptly began to assemble costumes. They threw whatever blankets they had over their shoulders and smeared chalk dust all over their faces. The results were pretty adorable, and my co-fellow and I spent the rest of the class taking pictures of them and showing them how scary they looked.
I heard lots of students wishing me “Happy Halloween!” after classes were over for the day, but if we had trick-or-treaters at our house we missed them because of a long staff meeting immediately after school. There were a lot of events coming up in November (the last month of the school year!) so being stuck in a long meeting was the scariest thing that happened in St. Rods on Halloween night.
Stray Thoughts:
Back in July my parents bought plane tickets to come visit me during the first week of October, when school would be on break for Lesotho’s Independence holiday. As soon as I heard they were officially coming to visit me I started madly planning all the adventures I wanted us to have and all the things I wanted to show them. I got a huge kick out of going about my daily activities imagining my parents’ reactions to them. So, as you can imagine, actually having them with me in Africa was just about the most fun (albeit surreal) thing that’s ever happened to me. Anyway, the following is an account of our little vacation.
My parents arrived in Maseru on the first Saturday of my break, and I met them at tiny Moshoeshoe International Airport. After hugs and lots of ecstatic jumping on my part we all piled into a taxi to take us straight to Morija. Every year Morija, a town about an hour’s drive south from Maseru, hosts a festival celebrating Lesotho’s arts and culture. It happened to be the same weekend my parents were arriving, and I thought it would make a good introduction to Lesotho. Plus I had been meaning to visit Morija, home to Lesotho’s only museum.
However, at this point I had been living in Lesotho for nearly eight months, and evidently I had started to take for granted the adjustments I had made to life here. In retrospect I did not quite fully allow for the fact that things that seemed reasonable to me were a bit more challenging for my jetlagged, culture-shocked, disoriented parents. To wit, I was more concerned about missing out on the festival than letting my parents catch their breath, so we went off on our merry way to Morija.
Actually, in many ways the first couple days of our trip were the roughest and least planned – partly due to lapses in my judgment and partly due to Lesotho being Lesotho. Morija is far from a large town, and only has a few regular guesthouses and B&Bs. By the time I’d made arrangements for our weekend, all the prime options had been booked long in advance. Luckily the festival was arranging homestays, so we wound up staying with a very nice family that was helping organize the festival.
Their house was similar in size to Bo Grinnell and had electricity, but did not have running water. Its best feature was definitely the commanding view from a hillside overlooking the town and the mountains beyond.
The festival itself was lovely, with plenty of great music and dancing and traditional wear, although it was all much more novel for my parents than for me. I was more impressed by the Morija museum, which has some very informative displays on Lesotho’s history as well as a number of fascinating books and other printed materials on Lesotho (published in Morija). Plus dinosaur bones!
We all turned in rather early (after I gleefully rifled through the suitcases filled with presents for me) – my parents because they were exhausted, obviously, and I was still on my sundown = bedtime schedule from St. Rods. Our accommodation was quaint and pleasant (a beautiful sunset goes a long way), but I was looking forward to getting back to Maseru because it would mean a less demanding schedule and cushier environs. The reality was not quite this easy, as it turned out.
The next morning things seemed to be going swimmingly (lovely sunrise; our hosts kindly heated a big pot of water so we could wash up) until the power went out. I wasn’t terribly concerned by this at first – we were heading to Maseru in a few hours anyway. But gradually I learned that the power outage was affecting all of Maseru and the surrounding area. Apparently it was a planned outage, lasting from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm – hadn’t I heard about it on the radio? (I had not. Even if someone I knew had, such things do not make big news in electricity-less St. Rodrigue.)
This was a bit more of an obstacle. I had counted on going straight to an ATM upon arriving in Maseru, and the inability to do that put a severe wrinkle in my plans. (There are even more details to this comedy of errors that I can regale you with privately should you choose, but to prevent this post from reaching an obscene length I’ll simplify the story.)
Fortunately for us our taxi driver was very understanding and not only trusted me to contact him when the power came back but also ferried us around between guesthouses when there was a little mix-up about our reservations. All in all it was a much more tiring day than I ever could have anticipated, but in the end we wound up in comfortable rooms (with electricity, water, and internet) with food in our bellies. Although I would have been perfectly fine skipping this lesson for my parents, those two days were illustrative of how the best-laid plans can go awry in Lesotho and patience is vital to survival.
The experience left me a little disgruntled with Lesotho, so I was somewhat relieved to cross the border into South Africa the next day. We spent something of an in-between day in Bloemfontein waiting for our bus to Port Elizabeth. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s not a lot to see in Bloem, but it’s usually a necessary stop on my ventures into SA. There are also a lot of foods and stores there that don’t yet exist in Lesotho, so it’s good for restocking.
We had an overnight bus to Port Elizabeth, and upon arrival went straight to the beach. When I visited Port Elizabeth in July I spent quite a bit of time walking along the very pleasant boardwalk. The weather had been particularly clement and the walkways were filled with families riding bikes and walking dogs. And I was all alone. (June and July were largely solo months for me.) So it was very emotionally satisfying to be strolling down the same beach a few months later with my parents in tow (on an equally gorgeous day).
In the afternoon our ride to Chrislin Lodge (in Addo) picked us up at the beach. For much of my year I’d been hoping to visit one of South Africa’s many national parks and see some animals. In particular, elephants were really what I cared about seeing, so I thought Addo National Park would be a good option because it’s relatively close to Lesotho and not a malaria-risk area.
Our arrival at Chrislin commenced the luxurious portion of our trip. I just can’t do justice to what a stunning little oasis we found there. We stayed in spacious, classily decorated African mud huts based on traditional Xhosa building methods. (This sounds spartan, but I assure you, they were well equipped.) The grounds were completely surrounded by orange groves, which were heavy with fruit and gave off an intoxicating scent that mixed with the fragrances of vibrant springtime blooms. The entire setting was more than a little surreal for me. Needless to say it was worlds away from life in St. Rodrigue, but also a far cry from the backpacker dorms I usually frequent on my travels.
And the food! We had our meals in a lovely dining area that had a thatched roof like our huts and was completely open on one side (though there was canvas that could be rolled down when the wind picked up). I haven’t had too much trouble making decent meals at Bo Grinnell, but they do sometimes get repetitive, and the restaurants in Maseru are barely worth mentioning. So the truly wonderful meals I’ve had this year stand out vividly. All the cuisine at Chrislin easily made the grade. Our feasts included kudu potjie, braai, onion & brie hors d’oeuvres, butternut squash soup, strawberry tarts, and malva pudding. Breakfast was also a gourmet event, with eggs to order and very local fresh-squeezed orange juice.
Wednesday was devoted to the elephants! The sky was rather cloudy that day, and when I woke up I was terrified that our safari was going to get rained out. Fortunately it merely stayed overcast and never really rained. Our guide picked us up at the lodge just after breakfast, and as it was just the three of us he gave us a really personalized safari. He was extremely warm and knowledgeable, and really made our visit to the park. Plenty of people drive themselves through Addo (and other SA national parks), but I definitely would not have spotted nearly as many animals, or appreciated what I was seeing, without our guide.
Right from the beginning we saw plenty of birds, kudu, zebras, warthogs, and tortoises. All of these were exciting to see, but after an hour or two without seeing any elephants I was beginning to get a little worried. Our guide was very sweetly conscientious, assuring us that he would find the elephants.
And then there they were, a big herd of them! I suppose a little suspense made our first sighting that much more satisfying. I can’t really explain how excited I was to see them – I’ll just say that there was a fair amount of squealing on my part. We ended up seeing several herds throughout the day, and I just loved watching them playing and eating and drinking. They even passed right in front of and next to our vehicle, which was a jaw-dropping experience. Once again, that was really thanks to our guide, who was bent on strategically moving our vehicle to where he thought the elephants would go so that we could get the best possible view. He also kept saying, endearingly, “I want you to be close enough to smell an elephant! I want you to wink at an elephant!”
Later in the day we saw a large herd of water buffalo (at least 100), and also a bunch of guinea fowl, which I have a huge soft spot for. I just think they have such pretty feathers and they look so funny when they run – they’re adorable and they always make me giggle.
Overall the safari was absolutely one of the highlights of the trip, and even my whole year. It was completely amazing and unforgettable, and I’m so glad I had the chance to experience it, especially with family. Although we didn’t see all the “Big Five” I still felt I checked off an essential part of a trip to southern Africa. And as I said before: elephants. All I care about is elephants.
Thursday we had to go back to Port Elizabeth, but before we left Addo we visited the nearby reptile & raptor center. I had really just expected this to be a way to kill time, something to do before starting our travels back to Lesotho. In fact it was unexpectedly fun and interesting, due largely to our very enthusiastic and informed guide. She was a fount of information about snakes in Africa, several of which she let us hold/slither around our shoulders. We also held a gecko and a meerkat and saw a porcupine, crocodiles, lots of owls, and other birds. I was actually regretful when the hour we’d allotted was up – I could have happily stayed much longer.
But it was time for us to head back to PE so we could repeat our journey in reverse. Our second visit to Maseru was much more relaxed than the first, and we caught Platoon to St. Rodrigue just as planned. I’d kept my fingers crossed that the minibus taxi wouldn’t be too terribly crowded or loud, but as there were plenty of students and teachers and nuns also returning to St. Rods from their holidays, this was too much to ask. We managed to all squeeze in with our big bags full of goodies from America, and it was otherwise a fairly typical taxi trip from Maseru to St. Rods. Which is to say that it was routine for me and fairly traumatizing for my parents.
When we arrived at Bo Grinnell it was dark and we were beat, so my parents didn’t get to see much of the house other than to find a bed and crash. The next morning I gave them the complete tour of both the house and the school, which was a load of fun. Most of the students were still gone, but that actually gave us a chance to get a good look at the school without a couple hundred curious pairs of eyes watching our every move.
As I’ve mentioned several times before, having visitors at St. Rodrigue is always an educational experience for me, giving me perspective on the place and my work from a fresh source. But introducing my parents to my home and coworkers and students was its own special experience. This was especially true when my parents accompanied me to school on Monday.
My lessons plans for the day basically consisted of “Look, here are my parents! Ask them questions!” The students were, of course, very obliging and had plenty of questions for my guests. They seemed most interested in hearing about their jobs as well as trying to wrap their mind around the long journey from America to Lesotho. I did manage to do a little bit of actual teaching, so they were able to see how I usually spend my time.
Also fun was introducing my parents to my fellow teachers, although not all of them were around. (First day after any break is not a peak day for teacher attendance.) We rounded out the day with tea in the principal’s office, where we had a lovely chat about the history of St. Rodrigue and all that’s been going on here recently.
Mostly I spent my parents’ visit basking in the glow of having their company after so long apart and thoroughly enjoying watching them experience St. Rods and Lesotho and southern Africa for the first time. When it was time for them to go home I accompanied them to Maseru and helped them pick out gifts to take home. I also proved that I had not been exaggerating when I raved about the glorious food at Ladybrand’s Living Life Café.
Saying goodbye at the airport was a little difficult, but it was also a brisk reminder that it wouldn’t be long before I was departing from that same airport myself. Two(ish) months suddenly didn’t seem very long at all. But the thought of my parents arriving at home and enjoying all the things I miss most about America also made me somewhat anxious to return home. In the time since then I’ve been swinging back and forth between those two emotions – excitement about returning home and anxiety about leaving Lesotho. I simultaneously can’t wait to go home and never want to leave. Of course the only sensible response is to cram as much as I can into the time I have left, and that’s what I’ve been attempting to do.
I mentioned in the previous post that at school the spotlight has really been focused on the Cs and Es as they prepare for their exams. In September these forms took their mock exams, which were copies of last year’s exams from the Lesotho Ministry of Education (for the Cs) and Cambridge International (for the Es).
I was eager to see my students’ results, but not surprised to find that they all had a lot of room for improvement. However, I think the exam gave them a realistic idea of what to expect on the official exam without shattering their confidence.
After mock exams the Cs’ and Es’ regular class schedules were essentially abandoned. Instead, teachers would wander into their classrooms whenever they were free and have marathon study sessions with them. Of course, it seemed to me there were never any teachers supervising the Es except when I wanted to have my own study session. Then someone else had inevitably booked them for the entire afternoon.
On the bright side, with the specter of their final exams specter looming ever closer, my Es showed a renewed interest in what I was trying to teach them. Somehow vectors were much more interesting than when I had introduced them back in April.
The “final” of final exams bears a lot of weight here. The Cambridge exams are not only the final exams of the year, but of their time in high school. The scores on these exams will determine whether or not they’re admitted to university, which will shape what jobs they can get in the future. Their employment opportunities could mean the difference between whether they lead a relatively affluent life in Maseru (or perhaps South Africa) or live in a small village with no electricity. Of course, a number of other factors are at play here, but the results of their exams are still significant, and the students are aware of this. As someone who never took a final exam until college, I can’t imagine facing that kind of pressure at 18. (I don’t consider the ACT/SAT similar because they’re aptitude tests, whereas the Cambridge measures acquired knowledge.)
Lesotho’s Independence Day is October 4th, and school closed for that entire week. When students returned to school the second week of October, Cs and Es would begin their exams. Not all Es took exams in the same subjects, so some students would complete their exams at different times. Cs and Es were free to go home when finished with exams. For this reason, the school organized a graduation ceremony (called Farewell) to be held just before Independence break.
The Farewell ceremony was definitely one of the highlights of my semester. Classes were cancelled for the day and all the students and teachers gathered in the assembly hall. The school had hired the dj who lives in Mpatana to bring all his sound equipment and play music throughout the show. Each class had prepared a song or skit or both to entertain the crowd and send off the Es in style. Most of the songs were Sesotho hymns, but the one that brought down the house was English. Its refrain was very simple: “Remember, I remember, you remember, I remember you.” And on each verse a student sang a solo to the Es, wishing them success and telling them to make St. Rodrigue proud. Students and teachers went nuts over that one, and I can confirm that it was very, very sweet.
The skits were also very popular. There were two, both in English, and both moral tales of students who didn’t work hard at school, got involved with drinking and boys, and met a horrible demise. The dramas were complete with costumes, including some good old-fashioned cross-dressing and super fancy high heels and makeup to distinguish the teachers/mothers from the students/children. The Oscar went to a girl who dressed up as a herdboy (blanket, stick) and did a flawless impression of the grunts and whistles herdboys use when driving cattle, to everyone’s delight.
In between the songs and skits there were dance routines from students in all forms doing what was listed in the program as “jive”. Basically the dj put on an endless beat and the students, dressed in their identical St. Rodrigue blue track pants and white polos (but with the collar popped), showed off their very best moves. Which I have to say, were much more impressive than anything I could do on stage. The students all had a blast and their classmates rewarded them with riotous applause and cheers.
There were also speeches from one of the priests and a member of the school board. Much of it was in Sesotho, but it all seemed very heartfelt. At the end of all the performances Sister Tsiki gave her own speech and handed out the diplomas to the Es. (I was told that they had satisfactorily completed the work for their classes, and would graduate from St. Rods regardless of the scores on their Cambridge exams.) Watching each student shyly approach the principal, shake her hand, and extend both hands to receive her diploma was especially moving.
After the ceremony, the Es shared a meal with all the teachers in the library. (The other forms received food also, but not as much and not with the teachers.) We moved to the library just as a storm started kicking up, and as we ate our chicken and vegetables hail began thundering against the metal roof. So we had an excellent excuse to detain the Es and celebrate with them a little longer.
Independence break began shortly after Farewell, and I had fabulous vacation traveling with my visiting parents (!!). More on that adventure in the next post.
Stray Thoughts:
I’m working on updating this blog with all I’ve been doing over the past couple months. That means my writing will be a combination of remembering what’s happened and transcribing what I wrote in my journal at the time. So my tense will almost certainly be inconsistent and my chronology confused. Sorry about that.
The Grinnell Corps: Lesotho program sends two members of each graduating class to St. Rodrigue. However, arrivals of each fellow are staggered by six months so that at any given time one fellow has at least half a year’s experience living and working in Lesotho. My first co-fellow showed me the ropes and eased my introduction to St. Rods life. After she left in June I had to adjust to the idea of being perceived as somehow ‘experienced’ and qualified to fill in my new co-fellow on his new life in Lesotho. (My two co-fellows subscribe to different pronouns, which makes keeping them straight on this blog mercifully simple.)
While I am constantly humbled by my awareness of how much I still can learn about life in Lesotho (such as when I add a word to my glacially increasing Sesotho vocabulary) I have somehow managed to navigate the public taxi system, learn how to cook at altitude without refrigeration, and not repel the awesome expats I’ve met in Maseru. I assume it’s these skills that are useful to pass on to the next daisy in the Grinnell Corps chain. Although my ability to play with matches and candles is pretty refined at this point too.
As I shared these tidbits with my new co-fellow I received the privilege of watching someone else experience Lesotho for the first time, which I’ve mentioned enjoying when guests visit us in St. Rodrigue. However, this time I also got to hear observations from the perspective of someone planning to spend a year in Lesotho. As a result I took fresh stock of what I had accomplished in my year so far and what goals I have yet to achieve.
One project that’s worked relatively well so far is the multiplication context I piloted with the Es during winter classes in June. I opened the competition up to the whole school when classes resumed at the beginning of August. Because all students need to learn their multiplication tables and have a relatively equal ability to accomplish that, I thought it was a good opportunity for a school-wide competition on a level playing field.
Students started catching on pretty quickly after I started posting the names of the top ten scorers in the library window each day. At the beginning of term I had given suckers, brownies, and free photos to the top ten Es (from winter classes) during morning assembly, so they all new what prizes were at stake. But I think putting their hard work on display for the whole school was motivation in itself.
Pretty soon I was spending hours after school each day drilling students with flash cards. I was blown away by how long students were willing to sit and just practice the cards over and over. One Friday I sat in the library for nearly five hours with several groups of students just doing multiplication drills over and over. To be honest their enthusiasm lasted a lot longer than my own, but how could I say no to students willing to spend their entire Friday afternoon doing math? Their excitement reminded me a little bit of playing computer games, where you just have to beat your highest score.
Another thing I hadn’t anticipated was the helpfulness of working with a group (maybe 4-6 students) instead of individuals. When I first introduced the competition to the Es I was careful to emphasize that these would be one-on-one sessions, hoping to avoid embarrassment on the part of students who were really struggling. However, when term started in August I had students asking to work on their multiplication in pairs or groups. I would still only time one student at a time, but I would rotate between them, letting them watch their friends’ performance while they waited for their turn. Contrary to my concern that they would tease each other, there was a lot of encouragement and praise for their classmates when they did well, and when they flubbed a round they were able to laugh it off.
Also, I noticed that while one student was writing her answers the others would watch the flash cards and mentally quiz themselves. This allowed them to practice without the pressure attached to a timed test or a teacher staring them down. When I was working with students one-on-one they would often get flustered and tense, which makes it very difficult to commit anything to memory. Just another example of my preconceived notions of teaching being completely overridden by what works in practice.
Anyway, I’m putting this little project in the win column because it resulted in students getting excited about math, me feeling very proud of them, and many many batches of brownies.
On the teaching-in-regular-scheduled-classes front, there have been a couple big changes. I hinted after our director’s visit back in March that there would be some changes to the role of Grinnell Corps fellows at St. Rodrigue. This includes discontinuing team-teaching, which had been causing more trouble than it was worth. So, instead of fellows arriving at the beginning of their year, having a chat with the principal to decide which classes they should teach, and splitting the workload with one or more Basotho teachers, fellows will now teach solely Guidance and Counseling with their co-fellow.
The intent was to make this shift in August, when my new co-fellow arrived. However, in July I learned that one of the math teachers wouldn’t be returning, and the principal asked if I would take on his classes so she wouldn’t be faced with the difficult task of finding a replacement in the middle of the year. I didn’t mind taking on the extra math classes at all, especially as I would be teaching them on my own. But it has meant that I’m not able to attend all the Guidance and Counseling classes like I’d planned. My co-fellow and I have had to be rather flexible in making lesson plans, but for making a significant program transition like this a little temporary unevenness shouldn’t be unexpected.
Between math and Guidance and Counseling classes I have a packed schedule this semester, but I like keeping busy and feeling useful. The spotlight is especially focused on Cs and Es, who will take their standardized exams in October and November. I’ve been spending a lot of time helping the Es study math, and even though the Cambridge exam is going to be very difficult for all of them, I’m still hoping they can achieve good results.
Stray Thoughts:
Gender, in development 