6 Months In

I looked at a calendar the other day and realized that I left America 6 months ago. That went pretty fast. Seems even faster when a month from now, I will be 25% done with my job. The time flies.

I’ve been busy up in my village the last few weeks. Right now I am in the midst of preparing for the end of the first semester and my winter adventures.

Life at school has been pretty ordinary and uneventful the last couple of weeks. The highlight was the sports day we had with Orange River Hoek Secondary School last Saturday. The students were in charge of arranging everything and couriering the letters over the mountains (about a 2hour journey each way). They scheduled a busy day. We left at 5am (almost 3 hours before the sun hits my house) and arrived at the school a little after 7:30. They had a really nice school. It was built by a diamond mine nearby and had a full setup for solar power with lights in every room and a principals office and a photocopy machine. Impressive.

Anyway first up, we had a debate. The topic was HIV Testing Should Be Mandatory in Lesotho. Another choice made by the students and both schools were very impressive, especially compared to what I am used to seeing on alternate Wednesdays at my school. I was one of the four judges and my scores were the ones used because I am awesome. My school pulled out a narrow victory. At the end each judge had to make comments. I went last so all the good stuff was said. I just made stuff up for 5 minutes. Then applause broke out, because I am awesome.

After debate was volleyball. The other team was made up of grown men. Ours was 6 kids aged 13-17, 3 boys and 3 girls. They stuck with it, but wasn’t really close. Either way, considering none of them had played at all before I got here, they are getting really good.

Then came simultaneous soccer and netball (think I have described this before as 7v7 basketball with no dribbling or backboards). Again, the men-children beat us on their slanty soccer pitch. We even brought former students in as ringers but we couldn’t win.

By this point we were 2 1/2 hours behind schedule. After lunch (teachers had delicious papa, moroho, tomato salad, and chicken) I left with two of my students early because it was getting dark. They gave me the two smallest boys in the school for protection. We did find a giant knife to fend off rabid dogs, drunks, and herdboys.

We stopped and had a little picnic halfway and drank from the spring. There were tadpoles and frogs in it so it became a science lesson about amphibians, lungs, and gills (both boys are in my science class). It was also a potential lesson to me about parasites, but a week on I am fine. We ended up getting to my house around 6:30 (an hour after dark) and they hung out until the rest of the school arrived. Very fun, but very long day.

I have lots of plans and busy weekends until the end of school and beyond starting with some workshop in town tomorrow (my reason for being here now), but I’ll save those stories until they happen.

Oh, and my puppy died last Friday. Think he ate something that tore his insides up. I heard something crying when I woke up, but no babies are around my house. On my way to school, I saw Puppy laying on his side crying. When I got home he was still lying there, but silent. Poor Puppy.

Last thing. Mail has changed. The Post Office in Mapholaneng is awful, so I am using one in Mokhotlong now. I’ll still get everything that is sent to those old addresses, just for the future all letters and packages could be sent here. The address is:

Parker Bryant
Mabuleng Secondary School
PO Box 156
Mokhotlong, 500
Lesotho, Southern Africa

Its very important to include the school name, otherwise it is liable to get jumbled up into a bureaucratic black hole at the Ministry of Education never to be seen again. I’ll make the appropriate changes on the contact page.

Also the Things to Send page and Zoo in My Belly post have been updated.

One last, last thing: The African Libraries Project in Lesotho is not closed, the formation of new libraries in country has been suspended. There was some confusion over that when the original post that I described the causes of this got buried but I mentioned it in passing in my “goals” post. Sorry for the confusion.