Hello, Winter

It is April and in Mokhotlong, that means winter. Been getting chilly the last few weeks and everybody has been warning me to brace for the real cold of June and July. Full preparation of the home will start soon, but I’ve been super busy recently.

First I had “Phase III” of my training. Basically my group all met back in Maseru for a week and a half. We learned some new things, but mostly it was time to get together again and chat. After that was over, it was Easter break and vacation. For me, that meant Durban in South Africa.

Durban

Going from Mabuleng where maybe 250 people live and the nearest electricity is an hour drive away to a huge city like Durban (which I would compare to Miami) is a bit of a culture shock. In a good way, though. There were 11 people in my group and we met up with 2 more for most of our trip. We stayed at a hostel in the suburbs that had the Southern Hemisphere’s largest rock pool. It was tiny. We also went to uShaka, which is a water park and aquarium in one. They had Africa’s tallest water slide. It was tiny. We spent most of our time at uShaka taking laps around the lazy river with beers in our hands (it was on tap AND cold!). We left straight from the waterpark to a rugby game. The game was a great time. Lots of great people – from crazy local fans to a group of American exchange students – and a really close, exciting game. They also sold beer by the pitcher. It was also cold and on tap. Also probably expensive, but I don’t remember. We went to a giant mall one afternoon (and it wasn’t THE giant mall which puts this one to shame supposedly). They had everything there including McDOnalds, Subway, Sunglasses Hut, and Cinnabon. They also had a pub on the roof with Guinness. It was on tap and cold.

So in Durban, there was some drinking, but mostly there was eating. Oh the food. The first night we went to a sushi place on the beach at the casino. Pretty damn good. The spicy tuna roll was spectacular. The next night we had Indian food. It was magnificent. So many good curries. I got some crab thing. Amazing. (Side note: Durban has the highest concentration of Indians outside of India. They are everywhere. All dressed like they are from New Jersey. The club at the casino was almost exclusively Indians. Except for us, it probably was, in fact.) Our third night -and last night out for dinner- a few of us went to Wilson’s Wharf for seafood. By far the best meal while in Durban (which is saying a lot). I had another curry fish thing, then a seafood pasta deal, and some kind of appetizer which was also great. I don’t really remember what anything was called. Some of the best seafood I have ever had. The waitress was unpleasant though. Oh well. My last night we BBQ’d (they call is braii here). Tom and I did a little surf and turf. Steaks with a bleu cheese sauce (which some South African dude was complaining about, but was delicious), prawns with a lemon herb rub, then baked potatoes, zucchini, and corn all on the grill. Also some sautéed mushrooms, but they didn’t survive until mealtime.

Other fun things that happened: went swimming in the Indian Ocean; had a crazy adventure with our taxi driver, Dennis; people falling asleep in inappropriate places – at a club, on the ground in a parking lot, on the taxi driver’s shoulder; I injured Tom playing rugby on the beach; got searched for smuggled weapons after crossing back into Lesotho (they didn’t find any contraband fortunately). All in all a great time and a fun city. But expensive, especially when you are making about $210 a month.

Back in Mabuleng

It took me two days to get back to Mabuleng after some miscommunications on the transport side of things. This included waiting 3 hours in Mapholaneng for gas to come from the camptown (an hour each way) because the gas station in town was dry. The extra hour was because the taxi had to fill up with people before returning with the gas. Oh, Africa, I love you. 80% of the teachers at my school were stuck at the taxi rank because of the Great Easter Gas Crisis of 2010.

The Monday after I got back, Peace Corps came to visit me and see how things were going. This was exciting because I left tons of stuff for them to bring me from Maseru. This included 4 packages from America, a bunch of groceries and fun things from Maseru, my heater, a rain collection barrel, and my solar panel setup. It was like Christmas and took me 4 days to go through, sort, and put everything away. The good news is I now have electricity (I’m going to buy a lightbulb with a switch and everything next time I am in town. Right now it is really strange to by typing on a computer by lantern light.) so I can charge my computer and speakers, a box full of candy, more drink mix than I can shake a stick at and all sorts of goodies to make the dark winter more bearable.

Coming Attractions

I also got news that I may be having another Peace Corps staff visitor in the winter. Some very special Peace Corps staff members are traveling on public transport to a volunteer’s site to get the feeling for what it is like. Basically they are getting sent to the farthest, most difficult place to get to. Right now, it is between me and a volunteer in Qachas Nek. He has a river crossing and a hike to his site, but I have much crappier roads and taxis. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this one. To sweeten the deal, in addition to pizza (you still supply the cheese), I am now also offering lemonade – pink or original, your call. Coldness TBD.

The good news about having a computer up here is now I can take the time and write these blog posts and respond to emails. It was kind of stressful trying to do the 35 different things I have to do every time I go to town in the 3 hours I have on the internet. I’m going to try to do a time delay post thing. Some of it will be just stories that I haven’t told yet, some stories from other volunteers that I like, and some random things that I’ll just throw together mostly just to entertain myself. So look for those, I’ll try to make it clear which posts are time delayed.

If you look up at the top of the page (just under the awesome new banner) are the different pages that really aren’t blog posts. I hadn’t updated the timeline in forever, so that has changed. I’ve also updated the contact info and am adding some new things. There is now a list of things which I do and do not need from America and also soon to come an Unofficial Guide to Peace Corps Lesotho. It is a little project that I thought up awhile ago since I had a long time to wait in between finding out I was moving here and actually coming with very little in the way of actual information. My goal is to have it completed by the beginning of June and hopefully Peace Corps will ratify it so it can become “Official” and go out to the next Education group that will be coming Novemberish. I’ll host the rough draft version here for now since a lot of the info will be helpful to the new CHED group who is arriving in June and I know a few have stumbled along here at some point. There will be packing lists, what you need to do to prepare, what to expect, what training is like, a run down of all the districts – all that fun stuff – and I am working on getting other people involved to get multiple perspectives on it. I’ve already been shot down on table placements for 4. We reached a compromise of 2. I still think those 2 people are being anti-social.

I’m also sending home all of my photos (and some other people’s) along with a video of my house this weekend, so hopefully once back in America they can get put up on the intertubes and I’ll link to them here.

That post has been entirely too long. Sorry about that. Hopefully the sections make it easier to get through. Might be a few weeks before another “live” update, but look for the in between mini posts.