March 16th 2003

Hi Everyone, Things here are fine. I have to say that I am enjoying some nice weather. I feel like that I have made it through the heat of summer and am now in the beginning of fall. These are the days that a person can really appreciate the nice weather of Lesotho. Almost every day is a sunshining day with a nice cool breeze. When it does rain it almost always starts around four o’clock and rains into the night. That happens about once a week if that.
Winter is coming soon. I am aware of that because of the fact that I recently went up into the mountains to a small lodge called Oxbow Lodge and it was much colder up in the highlands (I live in the lowlands at about 11,000 feet.). It was nice and I was there for Peace Corps business doing a in service language training. We had lots of parties and lots of fun outside of class but I have to admit that it made me a little homesick.
While there I decided to climb the mountain that the lodge was right next too. I learned a valuable lesson about climbing mountains. They can be tall. :-) The one that I set out to climb did not look that big. I thought it would not take very long. The thing is that when a person is actually at the base of a mountain a sort of visual trick happens. It just so happens that the apparent top of a mountain actually turns out to be just a ridge line and that only after climbing to that point does a person realize that because of the angle of the view of perception before there is actually at least another big section of the mountain that was not visible before. This happened to me three times. An hour and a half later on what started out to be a short little hike I was at peace knowing I had climbed the mountain but for now on I am planning on being more careful when picking the mountains I plan to climb. When I was done it was worth it. I was about 17,000 feet in the air and very happy but tired to be there.
Anyway I am attaching a picture from a recent festival I attended in the city I stay. It was another beautiful day. The people are dancers in a traditional dance. As you can see though that the people in the background where Western clothes which is the norm. love ya’ll, jeff