Letters from Lesotho

June 7th 2004

2006-01-22T08:51:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

My family and friends, does anyone remember what they were doing two years ago around this time? I do, I was packing my possessions in two suitcases and a back pack and weighing it all to make sure I was close to a 98 pound limit that I was allowed. After two years I am packing again but this time into seven boxes to be mailed home and one back pack for the road. I have indeed done two years of service for the Peace Corps and tomorrow maybe by the time some of you read this they will be coming to my site to pick me up. Time seems to go by so fast in some ways but in other ways it seems to go so slow.

My Peace Corps experience was a trip. I had a lot of fun and did some meaningful work so I got exactly what I wanted. I was able to make a lot of new friends, learn a new language, new customs and ways of doing things and grow as a person. My work included setting up a computer program at my school, teaching English, and doing extensive HIV work. I had small projects here and there too.

By next week I shall be going on vacation. I am planning on traveling around Southern Africa for a month visiting some different countries like Swaziland, Mozambique, and South Africa. After that I am off for a week-end in Paris. In the end I am supposed to be back in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the night of July 20th. To me right now even after two years it seems so far away but I am sure will seem to come very soon.

So for the next six weeks I am going to be difficult to reach but not impossible. I shall be often checking my email because even in the third world in the cities there are internet cafes. But I shall often times have a cell phone for the next week my number shall be 011-266-5895-9134. Until about July 15th I may or may not be available depending on which country I am at 011-278-3539-5672. If I do not answer that number please leave a message and I can call back as I shall be checking my messages regularly. I do not yet have a contact number for France as I have not planned that far ahead but I will probably just be checking my email then.

I am enclosing the last picture of me for quite a while. This is in large part due to the fact that I sold my digital camera. I probably sold it for a little too cheap but I was weary of mailing it home and more weary of taking it with be for a month in my back pack. The thing is I am only going to take on back pack and the few things in it with me for the month vacation and everything else basically is being mailed home or has been sold. I am definitely going to travel light.

So that is it for me I am signing off. I am sure I will have more adventures and wild times in the next month but I am not sure if I shall be writing about them so I would like to say to everyone that read and enjoyed me emails thanks for the support and I am glad you liked them.

Fine times, friends, and love. Jeff

May 23rd 2004

2006-01-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I had the opportunity to go up to the mountains a couple weeks back. This was my last trip up into the mountains of Lesotho. I really had only been there a few times despite on a regular basis looking out on the horizon and being able to see them like the monsters of the land that they are. My taxi ride of rights, lefts, ups downs and all arounds was by all means bad. I take Dramamine to calm it all down (a lesson I learned as a child going out on the ocean) but I am always still tired and run over by the time I am done.

After I got to the mountains and settled into my friends house after a five-hour journey we started making our plans. We were going to build a fence and then go fishing. My friend knew that I was coming out of Oklahoma, which makes me at least a little bit by proxy a good fence builder. The real truth of the matter is that I actually did already have some experience. We set post in concrete and strung wire but the fishing if one would call it that did not take place till the next day.

I can now say that I have fished one of the biggest rivers in Southern Africa where it has its small but steady beginnings up in the mountains. Although, because I did not catch anything I am not really sure just how much fishing I can say I did. But I did spend a whole day walking up and down a river and up over a mountain to get back home so at least that was nice. As it is one of the small kids that came with us caught a fish about four inches long so it was not a complete failure of a fishing expedition. If I would of caught a fish that was big I am sure we would of ate it but I did not although a friend of mine had a little bit of a different experience when he was up in the mountains.
He had invited me over for dinner the other day and I heard about his day.

Thomas is a German and had also gone hiking in the mountains but a different part than me. He cooked dinner at his house and made for himself a piece of meat that was marinated in red wine and spices. Now, Thomas during the dinner had a little bit of a problem chewing his meat. He told me that he thought it would be tenderer and went into a little story about where the meat came from.

He was at the beginning sure that the meat was either goat or lamb but he was not sure but the story goes that he had been hiking in the mountains when he came across a herd boy with a lot of goats and sheep.

After some very very basic hand gestures and grunts (Thomas speaks no Sesotho and herd boys don’t speak English and definitely don’t speak German) they became friends. As a peace offering the herd boy gave Thomas a big slab of meat, this same slab Thomas was eating as he told me the story. At this point I had to tell Thomas that the Basotho generally slaughter animals for two reasons, one for weddings and the other for funerals. I asked him if there were any weddings or funerals taking place. He told me that there was no one around but the two of them for miles. I then began telling a number of stories I had about the Basotho and them giving away meat. The deal is in Lesotho that the people don’t really ever slaughter animals except for the two reasons I mentioned. All the other meat for the people that live in the villages or even farther out comes from fallen animals. I told him story after story of people carving up horses, donkeys, cows, goats, and sheep after they had led long lives and died of some kind of illness. The tradition was then to give most of the meat away so it does not rot any more than it already has. About this time he stopped chewing on his piece of meat that was tough like leather and asked me. Do you think this came from a fallen animal? I asked him again if he had seen any weddings or funerals? He stopped eating is meat about then and started working on all his vegetables. I gather for now on Thomas will be getting his meat from South Africa butcheries and not mountain herd boys like most of the Peace Corps Volunteers.
I am enclosing a picture of me and some of my fellow fisherman when I was up in the mountains.

Hope, happiness, and health
Jeff

May 17th 2004

2006-01-16T19:36:00.002-08:00

Hi everyone,

My time is coming to a close here in Lesotho. My contract is almost finished after nearly two years. It is a sad point in a way because now I am just getting used to the ways things are here and am getting really comfortable and it is basically time to go. That is the way it goes though. I am not planning on staying around but am definitely coming back. I am a little confused about a lot of things though. Now, at the almost end of a two year contract, I am basically signing myself up for two more years of school, if things go right. I am worried about how I am going to pay for this or that, what kind of job am I going to have to get, how do I get a car, and even if I do get to school, where am I going to live. Right now I am just trying to work out my plane ticket back to the states and worry about a lot of that later. I plan on being back around the mid July time.

There are many things that I would have wanted to do while in Africa that I have not done but maybe I shall try to go to do more of them. One of the things that I did just recently for the first time was go to a funeral.

I have to say that here in Africa people die a lot and that there are funerals every week. It is very possible that I could have gone to at least a couple funerals a month if I wanted but I was avoiding them in part because I had heard bad things about them. I had just gone to one before but it was for only a few minutes but this one I went to the whole thing and this is how it went.

Woke up at 6:30 AM because I was told the taxi would pick me up at 7:00 AM. (Most funerals are local so we would normally walk but this one was in a different city so I had to take a taxi) The taxi arrived at 7:30 AM. We drove for about 75 miles to get to our destination. It was about after about an hour and a half until we arrived of what amounted to some degree of punishment because the driver played traditional African music extremely loud which that early in the morning just makes it worse. From 9:00 to 10:30 we visited with others at the deceased’s home of residence, which was also now a stand by for a funeral parlor.

We then had a viewing of the coffin which here all coffins are enclosed in glass so it is kind of even more like the person is on display. By eleven we had the procession to the church. We were about two hundred in number by the time we arrived at the church at 11:30. We stood outside the church for fifteen minutes singing songs and then entered. For the next three hours I set in church and it was a pretty miserable experience. The trend seemed to be one person would get up and speak according to the program and then everyone in the church would sing two songs then another person would speak and all the people again would sing to songs. It seemed like a person from every aspect of this person’s life would get up and talk. One person could come from his family, another from his school as a kid, another from his village, then another from his work, then another that was his friend, then another from his church and so on. It was, like I said, a long drawn out process.

During said process people were constantly coming into the church and sitting down so that in the large church that we original two hundred people, the numbers eventually swelled to well over five hundred by my count. By 2:45 I was off to the burial, which was a relatively nice and short forty five minutes as compared to the previous three hours. After which all five hundred of us had the procession back to the house. It was there that four different food tents were set up and after standing in line for a while I had got my food by 3:30 PM. At 3:35 PM I was finished eating my meal. :-) I then got on the taxi and waited as we were missing a person and a search had to be sent for them. At 4:00 PM we were off. I was emotionally and physically tired for the ride home in which I phased in and out of sleep. At 6:00 PM I got home and thought about how to go to a funeral in America for someone I barely knew would not really ever take eleven hours but that is the way it works here. This is a story not just about funerals but portrays a classic example of why this is third world and not the first because not just funerals are handled in this manner but everything else is. What might take an hour in America will often times take a whole day or longer here.

I am enclosing a picture of me and one of my friends sitting on the doorstep of my house.

Paradox, proactiveness, and positive thoughts, Jeff

April 19th 2004

2006-01-16T19:36:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,

I imagine it is getting warmer everywhere in the States and people are getting out a little more and having a little more fun. I am still having nice warm days here but the nights are getting cold, real cold. I am not sure how cold but the other night I could see my breath.

I went to a concert this weekend or at least what I thought would be a concert. I gather concerts are a little different here. Last week went well and during the week a few times the schoolgirls told me there was going to be a concert at the school. They told me I would only have to pay one rand (20 cents) to get in and that they would be singing gospels. I told them I would come with a smile on my face.

My nice smile turned to a little bit of a confused look once I went into the concert hall (English room converted). Apparently a concert here means a person pays a rand to be humiliated by his or her friends.

This comes in a system of bidding for acts to be performed, which is usually singing but can be anything. Basically what happens is a mediator takes money and makes announcements of acts. So basically, if I want my friend to have to get up in front of everyone I go pay a small amount of money to the mediator. They then make an announcement that a certain person or group of people have to perform. If such chosen people want to refuse to perform such an act then they have to double the money. So if someone pays one rand for me to sing the national anthem then I either have to pay two Rands or sing. Since I am something of an anomaly, I was easy to pick on and the one rand for the concert that I had to pay to get in cost me about ten rand in refusals. I really am a terrible singer and was not about to get in front of everyone and sing. I might have danced or told jokes but definitely not sing. Anyway the fundraiser, which is what they should call it instead of concert, went well and they raised a considerable some of money and laughs.

ps
Love and laughter, Jeff

March 28th 2004

2006-01-16T19:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I had a nice day today. It went a little something like this. I woke up in the morning. Waking up in the mornings here is nice for me. I tried to set my schedule where I do not work so early in the morning so I get to wake up after I am fully rested. So about 8:30 AM I was out of bed and getting ready. I was supposed to be out of the house and on my way to do a project by 9:00 AM. I figured I had a lot of time because when someone tells you they are going to come by at 9:00 AM here in Lesotho a guy is doing well to see them by 10:00 AM. This person was on time and I was amazed. I ended up getting a ride in a back of a pick up truck with a few other people on a curvy, bumpy, and steep road. After about an hour and a half, I arrived at my destination. I was in a village deep in the mountains. As I went into the mountains, it was like driving back into time. I estimated I was now in a land where things are at least a hundred years behind how things are in America. I was arriving at the site of the meeting by the back of a pick up truck. Most of the others walked there but also quite a few road there horses. There clothes were all old and torn but many people were excited. At first it was only women but then a few men came to show up.

We were in a village and having an all villages in the area meeting to discuss HIV/AIDS and the possibility of getting a clinic in the site where we were meeting.
I had been asked to just come in and watch but after a little while when I tried to sit down with the general population there came serious objections and groans.
I was told I had to sit with the chiefs. So there I was sitting in a semi flat field on the side of a green mountain sitting in the first of a row of six chairs. The other five chairs are filled with the chiefs and we were all facing the villagers. The talks began and then the questions started coming to me from the other chiefs. They wanted to know what I thought of there being a clinic built for the village.

It was my turn to talk. After I introduced myself and explained and gave a brief outline of my answers to the questions in Sesotho I then found someone to translate my more complicated explanations. Of the people there only a few could speak English. Just guessing, the average level of education among all the people might have been third grade. With my translator by my side I started explaining about programs going on. I sighted that South Africa has recently promised to give medicine to all of its residents that have AIDS within three years (this probably won’t happen). Also the UN has set aside an enormous amount of money to get medicine to people with HIV and AIDS in this part of the world (that might happen). One main problem they outlined though was the lack of no clinics in the villages to distribute the medicine. I explained the medicine was good and that the thirty to forty percent of the people in the village that are HIV positive, in order to live would need the medicine to live in a few years when they developed AIDS. Most of the people were amazed to hear for the first time that there was actually a medicine for HIV. The audience was wide eyed, jaw dropped, and totally still for my advice. They all intently listened to the translations of what I was saying. I repeated some of the things to reiterate when they were most surprised. They were instantly taken with me. In Lesotho my name means hope and I was indeed giving these people hope.

Somewhere along the line though things got a little bit exaggerated. Even though in Sesotho I introduced myself as a Peace Corps Volunteer and the program I mentioned was with the UN and not the Peace Corps by the end of the meeting I had been elevated in there minds. There is now a group of villages deep in the mountains that personally believe they have been visited by the US ambassador to Lesotho. In addition the said ambassador (me) has personally promised them that if they can build a clinic that he will give them all the medicine for free. At one point the medicine I talked about was going to cure HIV. That was really the only thing I cleared up. I told them again if they could take the medicine that it would not cure the HIV, and that the HIV would not go away forever but that they could live for many years with out ever getting sick if they took the medicine. The whole bit about me being the ambassador, I did not correct because the truth was that I kind of thought it would be funny to be an ambassador for a day.

Anyway that was my day this last Saturday. It was a long travel to the village and a long travel back. It was an even longer day on top of a mountain on a bright sunshiny day for four hours with no sun block, which led to me getting a sunburn, but all in all it was worth it.

Love, light, and laughs, Jeff

March 14th 2004

2006-01-16T19:35:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone,

I am doing fine here in Lesotho. I have been just trying to bring some of my work here into the final stages. I am teaching English, doing HIV awareness work and overseeing the computer program at my school that I set up.

I have asked permission to finish my Peace Corps work by mid June. I still have not had any official word back on this so I am not sure when I would be coming back to the US. I do plan on traveling for a little while in Africa after finishing Peace Corps. I am currently under travel restrictions now. Basically because I am nearing the end of my service I am not allowed to travel. This policy ensures that volunteers finish up there work instead of blowing it off and traveling there last months of service which some would definitely do.

I took my last vacation with Debra my mother and her friend Donna. We had a nice time seeing game parks, going around Lesotho, and visiting tourist areas of Cape town. I promised her a vacation that would be different and exciting and I feel like she got one. I am sure Debra and Donna will both remember this vacation for a very long time and be very glad to have been on it. One of the funny moments was when I told them that I would be having a lady come over to do our laundry. They both thought me a lazy for not being able to do my own laundry and were probably thinking about doing it themselves when they learned that the lady that would be coming over to do the laundry would be doing it by hand. In the whole country of Lesotho there are really only and handful of washing machines.

To be truthful I really don’t care for doing laundry by hand. I remember coming to Lesotho and being told for the next two months while I was in training all my laundry would be done by hand. My hands. I from the get go did not go along with that. My first plan was to wear my clothes over and over again as long as they were not stained or smelly. That worked for a while but eventually still the two suitcases of clothes I brought with me were dirty. I would then go on to just wash what I needed until we went to village. In the village I found a young girl that needed money and bribed her to wash all my clothes when and where the careful eye of Peace Corps was not looking. My plan worked great and was repeated as necessary in training. After arriving at site I quickly found a lady more than happy to wash my clothes for money.

Otherwise I have been getting use to life and Lesotho and after almost two years am feeling fairly adjusted.

I am not sure if I can ever be totally adjusted. I just stick out too much and everyone stares. I went to a jazz concert the other day. I went with a German friend of mine and amongst a jammed packed crowd of bobby brown colored African heads were two heads clearly a head taller than most everyone else and to make it worse our head were not dark but light. I in a way will look forward to being able to blend anonymously into a crown back in America in a way I cannot ever do here.

I also in a taxi ride the other day noticed that the man next to me had a chicken wrapped in a blanket.

This soon to be dinner noticed about the same time I noticed it and apparently being scared and confused decided to bite me. Luckily as far as I know chickens don’t carry rabies and I still seem fine. I can’t explain just how comical and near fatal the taxi rides have been here. It is a different part of the world and I should not forget it for a long while but I am sure I might not miss it very much. Which brings to another point my coming back to America is going to be coming soon enough if anyone has an old car that they would sell fairly cheaply I could be interested in buying it. Keep me in mind please. Also I sent a disk with Debra with a lot of pictures on it. If anyone is interested about seeing pictures I took please ask her and she shall let you borrow it.

Peace, Paradise, and Good Vibrations.

Jeff

February 2nd 2004

2006-01-16T19:35:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

It has been a long time since I have written to everyone, I know. In part I have not written because I have been on break and in part because things are becoming more routine. After a year and a half of being in Africa I have become use to it. At times I am still in awe of who I am where I am at and what I am doing but for the most part I am getting into a state of normalcy.

Part of my routine that I have been involved in is my having a regular work schedule. For the last year I have been able to do regular work at the school I am assigned too. I am now working every school day overseeing some computer classes, teaching others, and assisting in teaching of English classes. Things are going well. I have a nice amount of work that I am scheduled to do and then lots of other work I do when I feel like it.

I am looking forward to a new break in my routine with the visit of my first visitors from America coming to see me. My mother, Debra and her friend Donna are set to come to Africa in a couple weeks with me as their tour guide. Hope everything goes well.

I am enclosing a picture of the school some of the teachers and some of the girls. I hope everyone is doing well living in the light and love.

Jeff

August 25th 2003

2006-01-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

How is it going? I am doing fine here. I hope everyone is fine. I recently had a chance to take a nice hot shower. It is refreshing to do so. I waited all day till about four o_clock. It had been a clear sun shining day and the temperature had reached about 80 degrees. I get hot water fed to the shower from a solar panel on top of the house. There is no hot water tank, no back up source for heating water except manually so when it is cold or cloudy there is a definite lack of hot water here. That shower sure was nice though.

Soon after the eighty degree weather came a cold spell. My clothes on the clothes froze solid and that night the neighbor that shares the duplex with me had his water pipes freeze and bust. I left my house that morning to see that water was just pouring out of his front door. I then turned the water and electricity off for both our houses. Water kept coming into his house from the ceiling well into that night. The plumber came the next day. Took a part of the roof off and fixed the broken pipe. He fixed it with a plastic pipe. I could not help but ponder the logic behind if a metal pipe can break when it freezes wouldn’t a plastic pipe break that much easier. I also noticed though that I did not even have a plastic pipe. Apparently from the stains on my ceiling mine had broke some time back. Instead of fixing mine with a metal or plastic pipe it has been rigged with the basic water hose. I am amazed mine did not break but the continual stream of water that leaks from the sinks in my house I am sure had something to do with it.

Right now it is windy. It is dusty and windy and it is nasty. The wind gust are forty to fifty miles per hour. The dust is filling the air and even though above me there are no clouds there is a so much dust the sun has been browned out. I went to a meeting today and by the time I got there my eyes felt bad and there was dirt in my mouth. When I was my hair next it is going to turn the water tea colored from all the dirt in my hair. This dry and windy weather is going to last off and on for about a month people say. It should not always be as dusty and windy as today though and I would rather have it than the winter weather we were having.

Winter was cold. It lasts about two months here and I know compared to an Oklahoma winter it is mild but they do not often have heaters here. The heater I do have is good for heating a bedroom and I kept it going a lot during winter but when I was outside the bedroom I was pretty much on my own. The colder it gets here the more clothes people put on here. The common thing to do is to wrap up with many blankets and walk around like that. Because of the fact I am not going from a heated house to a heated office to a heated car to a heated grocery store back to the heated house here the cold weather kind of sinks deep down into a person or they get chilled to the bone. It is a kind of coldness that does not seem to go away. I sure am glad though I had Carhart overalls to wear and a quality sleeping bag to keep me warm.

The rainy season is supposed to be coming in about a month and I sure would like for Lesotho to get a lot of rain. Part of it has been in a drought but not the city I stay in. I was in the village the other day and saw some kids with the swollen bellies so I know they had not been eating to well. I am enclosing a picture of a schoolgirl I took in that village. She is standing in front of an aloe plant which as you can see can get quite large in Lesotho. Love ya’ll. Jeff

July 31st 2003

2006-01-16T19:33:00.001-08:00

July 31^st 2003

Hi Everyone,

This thing about being a Peace Corps Volunteer is not always easy. A lot of the volunteers lately have been going home early. Six in the month of July to be exact. It was like one girl set off a train a while back and the others have just been following her. Some are done with their time but a lot are leaving early. A couple of them Lesotho has not really been ideal for but a lot of them it seems like are not making the most of their experience.

I feel like I am faced with a lot of the same problems they are but am having a comparably much better experience. What is working for me and not them is I am proactive and have been for a few years now. I know for some of my family that has known me for quite some twenty-six years that was not always the case but people and times change. I like many of the people here was given a place to stay and a big fancy description of what I was going to be doing. The house was nice but my job was basically null. I can remember during my training I was talking to a Volunteer that had been here for about a year and I asked him how it was. He replied, “It is okay once I got over the fact that I did not have a job” The whole time he was here he did very little in the way of building up the community but what he did do was cultural exchange. Real quickly there are three main goals of Peace Corps. One build up a community. Two give foreigners an idea of what it is like to be American and three vice versa. So he did real well two of the three goals.

I seem to find a lot of people though that aren’t doing much of the three and they seem to be unhappy. For the most part they don’t leave their houses but to buy food and to do Peace Corps related activities. They then when we get together complain about how their jobs are either non-existent or that people don’t show up very often or are not motivated to do anything when they do. Well, that is Lesotho and that is for the most part third world Africa. Over half of the people that could work don’t and of those that do most really don’t do very much at all. This results in not very much getting done. Many Peace Corps Volunteers complain a lot about how there is nothing to do. The fact of the matter is though that I have not talked to a single one that has said that they were basically like okay my job is basically non-existent and so I need to find something else to do. They can do anything they want and in a country with a high HIV rate there is lot’s to do with that. This would of course mean them being proactive and going around looking for ways to help people instead of someone coming up to them and saying, “You are a volunteer and you are going to do X,Y, and Z” which it seems that most of them want and are unhappy they are not getting it.

I feel like Peace Corps is really a proactive person’s dream. And I know that still some people might not think me proactive but let’s not get the difference between proactive which I am and overactive which I try not to be. Love ya’ll, Jeff

July 23rd 2003

2006-01-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

I have a story I wanted to tell about when I was on vacation. My buddies and I were catching the train. I have not really been to experienced with traversing longer distances on a train before this so it was all new to me. I have to say I like it a lot. Far as I am concerned travel by train is a top-notch way to go. Two of my friends and myself were assigned a sleeping compartment. Now it was not very big but it had a small table for eating or playing games on and some sleepers that folded down that we could get rest on. So for on a ten hour ride instead of basically being confined to one seat with my seatbelt on much like a bus, automobile, or car I was free to sit at the table and eat food I brought, walk up and down the cars to the restaurant car or to the bathrooms. I could sit with my legs stretched out talking to my buddies or even lie down and sleep the hours away. It really is to me a cushiony way to travel it reminded me of traveling across the miles in my grandparents motorhome when I was a kid.
So it was on this one train ride when it was late. My friends had gotten some drinks and we were sitting around the table while they were drinking and talking. It came to get late and we all went to sleep. Next thing we heard was a large pounding at the door and yelling. We had no idea what the guy was saying as he was not speaking in English but we had an idea it had something to do with us getting up. My friends and myself were not to quick to get up but we did. After a short bit of communication we finally got someone that could speak English. They asked for our tickets and I just so happened to have them in my back pocket. I handed them over and at this point the guy told us that we had missed our stop. Not only had we missed out stop but also we missed it by a lot! It seems we were supposed to have gotten off the train some couple hours earlier and we definitely had to leave then. The whole train was delayed as words were being exchanged between my buddies and the conductor. We were dazed and he was a little confused on how to handle the situation. We were kicked off the train in basically the middle of nowhere. We almost even made it to a whole nother country. That would have been even funnier. As it was we got dropped off in some place in the middle of the night where we were basically just stuck. We did by sunlight find some one that was able to give us directions to a near by highway where we were able to get a ride on our way. We finally did make it to Swaziland that morning although a different area then what we first intended and it ended up being alright after that incident later on in the day when our bus broke down and another one had to be sent to pick us up as we were again stranded in the middle of nowhere. I am enclosing a picture I took later on in Swaziland in a cattle coral and a picture of some of the peace corps sitting around watching a moving at the Peace Corps transit house in Maseru which is where we stay when doing medical or office business. The T-house as it is called is another story. Love ya’ll, Jeff

July 13th 2003

2006-01-16T19:32:00.001-08:00

Recently I had the opportunity to take a vacation. I went to Swaziland. Swaziland is in many ways a lot like Lesotho. In that it is not very far away so the weather is similar but noticeably warmer. It is also very much influenced by South Africa. One difference is that it is a lot more developed. In fact I would say it is more developed on a person per person basis then South Africa which outside of it’s major cities is still very undeveloped. I went to a cultural village and there I saw how the old people lived before development came. I saw that the ways in this place thought were in a way fake. It was like walking through a museum. And in fact it was just like walking around in the villages of Lesotho, which make up maybe about a quarter of the country. The words of my buddy that lives in just a secluded mountain village ring so true saying, “You live in the third world and I live in a museum.”

I have to say I liked Swaziland the most though of all the places. I liked it because of the integration of the races. I liked the weather and the development there. I also liked the feeling that it had been able to retain much of it’s identity though despite it’s change. It was still distinctly Africa.

I also went to Grahmstown. There I was exposed to lots of art including the opportunity to see lots of plays. The only one that was particularly heard of was the Vagina Monologues, which I find to be just all right.

I went to Durban and there I was able to see lots of movies. None all too special. I was able to walk on a warm beach even though it is wintertime here. I did lot’s of relaxing and was able to fulfill a long term desire of mine since I was a teenager to go sky diving. It was really easy and fun. I did have a bit of a rough landing though and jammed a couple fingers. I recommend it to anyone as it really is a neat thing to do. I am enclosing a picture of me after landing. I actually have pictures of me jumping out and in free fall as a cameraman jumped with me but I as of yet don’t have them developed. I am also enclosing one of the swazis dancing.

Hope to talk with you all soon, Jeff

June 17th 2003

2006-01-16T19:32:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

This email does not have to do a lot with Lesotho directly but because of the fact that I am about on the other side of the world as America and have to often put up with a lot of things that are annoyances or not favorable this email has a lot to do with Lesotho. So it deals with just the idea of in some ways having things rougher than what a person would want and being able to overcome it.
Some many years ago I was doing the dishes at a restaurant getting paid minimum wage and I hated it. I could not help but think that if I had enough money I would be willing to pay someone else even more than what I was being paid to wash the dishes, if I only had the money! Some years later but still some years back I was again doing the dishes. I had cooked diner at the house and needed to do the dishes. Now I remind you that this meant only rinsing the dishes off and sticking them in the dishwasher but still I hated it. That is when I had a personal epiphany. Maybe it is common sense to most people but it is one of those things that was not ever too clear to me. The dishes basically had to be done and I should probably just get over it. The dishes were and are like so many things in this life. They are a hassle, something I don’t like to do but manage because somehow it is going to make things easier in the long run. If it didn’t make things easier in the long run I definitely would not be doing it. I started thinking about just how many of the things I do in the day and found that quite a significant portion of the things I do are fitting into this category. My next step after I realized that much of life fit into this suffering/have to do/hassle category was to realize that I could over come it. My ways I do this are different at times, sometimes I turn it over to a higher power, sometimes I seem to only need to accept that the situation is not ideal. By doing this I am not fighting but accepting the situation and by accepting the situation I get some kind of control over it. I then instead of with something like washing the dishes am not like “this sucks” but get to notice how warm the water fills on my hands and the smooth and rough textures of the different dishes. It might sound silly but there are some pleasurable things about doing the dishes. This for me though seems to mainly come into focus though after I have gotten over the fact that I really don’t like doing the dishes. So what I am trying to say is something like by accepting my difficulties it makes them in a way easier to deal with in a way. Then by making the most of what is left as long as there is something left over to find fun in I can have fun. This is an origin of my saying that I am sure you all have read by now of ignore the ignorable and enjoy the enjoyable. It was a nice little way for me back then and now to remember this idea I had a long time ago that struck me so wonderful and seem to clear up a lot of problems in my life.
This philosophy time and time again has proved successful for me in the last five years except once. I recently got sick. I feel like most people when they come to third world Africa for Peace Corps more or less expect to get sick. I am fine now but for three days I had been sick. The first and the third day were not much more worse than a bad cold but the second day was not so nice. At one point my temperature was 103 far above my regular 97.2. At another point I was wearing my insulted overalls in my sleeping bag rated for fifteen degrees with two blankets over the bag shivering and shaking for thirty minutes because I was cold. This also with lots of trips to the bathroom. One day of this kind of sickness was enough for me. I am not sure what it was that got me sick. Maybe the flue or food poison or something else but I just could not effectively ignore the ignorable and enjoy the enjoyable. Everything seemed bad. A one point of some kind of relief came from turning it over to my higher power. Things were still bad but somehow not as bad after doing so.
This was one of the first negative experiences that has made me feel being away from the land that I came from. There is of course good medical staff with Peace Corps that came by to see me and I have neighbors here that could help me if I am really bad off but there was no one to take care of me. I was sick and I was alone and it was not too fun. It has been over six years since I had been that sick but before I felt like there was always someone there where as here I felt like I was alone.
Not only has it made me feel Africa in a different way it also made me reevaluate one of my philosophical statements. I, when on an overcrowded taxi with someone’s butt literally six inches in front of my face and someone next to me that won’t roll down the window even though it is 90 degrees outside, or when walking for an hour to get to my friends house and it starts to rain, or getting my food cold, or when on a regular basis have to deal with outages of either water, electricity, or phone will still probably use my old philosophy but now I know that it does not work all the time for all people in all cases and am trying to figure out a new one. I thought that last one was pretty good, I am not sure if I am going to be able to beat it but I am going to try. Anyone have a suggestion? Love ya’ll, Jeff PS. I am attaching a picture of me the day I got better just for the fun of it!

May 18th 2003

2006-01-16T19:31:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone. I am doing fine. I want to talk a little bit about the HIV epidemic here in Lesotho. First of all I think it should be called something more than an epidemic. Maybe we could call it a plague or catastrophe. I say this because it is out of control and does not seem to be going to be in control for a long time. Some of the reasons are that people just don’t believe in it. There are others that just don’t care. Also when I say this I mean it in a way I don’t even understand but that this culture encourages the transmission.

First the facts as stated by UNAID. In the year two thousand an estimated thirty-one percent of the people in Lesotho were infected with HIV. Also a projected growth rate if left untreated is about seven percent a year. What does that mean today in the middle of two thousand and three? It means maybe about half of the people here have it. I know this sounds outrageous. It sounds ridiculous. I feel like it is true.

I recently talked to a doctor. He said that at the hospital in the capital city that all the people that come in that are pregnant are now automatically tested. The rate of women being HIV positive is right at fifty percent. This also means a high rate of children are being born positive. I also have recently talked to a lab technician at a hospital. The story is that a lot of people are coming in sick. They are then often referred to be tested. I remind you that such a population is going to have a higher HIV rate than people that are not sick going to the hospital but that eighty percent of the people coming into that hospital are HIV positive. To me that is the kind of news that really is infuriating.

I know this culture here is a kind of benign culture. I don’t have to tell you what it would be like in a proactive land like America if half of the people had a potential terminal disease. We all know that there would be some serious government money being spent as well a numerous activist trying to promote a better understanding. Here it is not so. In fact one would think that I would be surrounded by HIV prevention campaigns. I am not.

About a year has gone by since I joined the Peace Corps. I have been told repeatedly that I am not too just go out and start projects. For the most part this is because after I leave they will fall apart. So I usually just sit around waiting for someone to come ask me to help. Everyone here for the most part knows that any white person here is probably Peace Corps and they know we help. Be it that I am very visible I figure people would be pounding down my door to help. They aren’t. But since a year has gone by and I went to the local office that deals with HIV and volunteered my services and nothing came of it I decided to go out on my own and do something.

I of course have a great venue for such work. I am assigned to a school and if I get the principle’s support then I instantly have about seventy students that are a captive audience. I recently organized an HIV assembly. I managed to present a short film about people being HIV positive. Two guest speakers were presenting. Both openly admitted that they are HIV positive. Now in a country where about half of the people in between the ages 15-50 are also positive (the age range of students at my school) one would think that it would be no big surprise. They were. They even openly challenged these to brave men that were speaking to them claiming that they were not.

Some things that make it worse here are the fact that a significant percentage of the people that live here in Lesotho are migrant laborers. They have wives in Lesotho and girlfriends or prostitutes in South Africa. When they are working the wives left in Lesotho also have side lovers. In fact having multiple partners here is common when married and expected when not. It is not uncommon to find one guy that claims he has three to seven girlfriends that he is actively with. One guy in particular who is HIV positive that I know of has twelve steady girlfriends that he sees on a regular basis. That type of behavior incubates the spread of HIV and again is infuriating.

To make it worse there are indeed a small group of people that have been tested positive and now have set out purposely to spread the virus. In such an environment as Lesotho it is a very easy thing to do. Personally I am not exactly sure what to say to such people but I do not condone such behavior.

Now having said this I feel like the main problem for the spread is not the highly active sex lives. I mean that is yes the way it is spread but personally I feel the problem is much deeper than that. I think it is a cultural thing in which people generally are not proactive. The parents here for one do not ever talk to the kids about sex. In fact not only can it be said that they are not proactive but also they are the opposite. They only for a large part act when something is staring them down in the face. HIV is hidden though and so as long as they don’t see it they don’t want to deal with it. The saying in America don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today does not apply here. In fact much more applicable and something I have actually heard is don’t do today what you can put off till tomorrow and tomorrow never comes. So as you can understand that many people here just don’t want to deal with things unless they absolutely have too.

Much of the country is indeed civilized. For instance where I live there are telephones, electricity, cars, and a paved road but it is still very much third world. But back in the villages away from the camptown it is a very different story. It is a way of life that is archaic I am not even sure if it is more advanced than how the Native Americans lived before Columbus crossed the ocean. One volunteer that lives deep in the mountains recently told me, “You live in the third world but I live in a museum”. We laughed but in a very serious way he is right. Such a primitive type of society indeed is very susceptible to such things as HIV.

I would really like to make a difference and think that I might make a very minute one while I am here. I am doing work when I talk to people and even have started a catchy little phrase of, “lerato, le hloka dicondoms” which I say a lot especially as a good bye in the taxis. It means, “having sex means using condoms” in a nice unobtrusive way. Truthfully though I feel like unless some outside agency does something to save these people lives there is going to be some big problems. I do know that quite of a bit if not most or basically all of the HIV prevention programs are funded and run by outside organizations but they still seem to be too little to late for many. Peace and love, jeff

April 26th 2003

2006-01-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Maybe in Italy all roads lead to Rome but here in Lesotho the two roads lead to Maseru. This is the capital of Lesotho and is centrally located in the lowlands of the country. The first of the two roads leads connects the southern provincial capitals known as camptowns and is appropriately named the “southern road”. The second of the two roads connects the northern camptowns and is not surprisingly named the “northern road”. If a person wants to get honoree they could really argue it is really only one road that is divided by Maseru into a southern and northern half. This is the road that when there is a car accident, it probably happened on this road. This is also the road that people use to give directions and go anywhere.
This single two laned paved road connects eight of the ten camptowns. The other two camptowns are found deep in the mountains and have to be traversed by a dirt road. I would be willing to say that two-thirds of the people in Lesotho live with in an hour walk of this single paved road and that it makes up to eighty percent of the paved road in Lesotho. It is laid out so that no matter where I go in Lesotho it seems I end up on this one road and I am getting to know it well. Not only because I travel it a lot but because it lies about a hundred meters from the place I stay.
The road for the most part is not too bad. It is straight in the lowlands but when a person starts to get to the highlands it gets curvy, steep, and filled with potholes. I always thought I was good at riding in cars. A trip to the mountains on this road taught me that I could very well get carsick. The road has two speed limits. The first is for the camptown and many villages along the way and is about thirty miles per hour which here means forty. The other is for the clear open spaces and is about sixty-five miles per hour and often means a person drives at least seventy-five. This road though despite being the main route of travel does not have very much traffic. It has two rush hours right before when work starts which is no set time but totally dependent upon when the person feels like starting work and might range from seven in the morning till about ten. The other rush hour is right when work gets of which again is variable but might be between four and five in the afternoon. Rush hour in Lesotho means that you can actually see other cars on the road and will either pass or be passed by three or four cars during a thirty-minute trip. Off times means that a person more or less has the road to themselves especially the farther one gets away from the capital. By ten o’clock all traffic stops and I would not be surprised if between ten o’clock at night and five in the morning if less than thirty cars pass my house on the road.
Maybe it is that a lot of the cars on the road are very old beat up stolen cars from South Africa that aren’t taken care of. Maybe it is that the people here just don’t drive much and so aren’t good at it. It probably has to do something with a high rate of drinking and driving. The fact of the matter is for a road with so little traffic I see a lot of accidents. I would say at least half of the time I see at least one accident that has just taken place on this higher on the two hour drive from Maseru to my place. Often time I see more. Many of them are not bad accidents. Some of them are. Something I had not ever seen in America but have now seen many times since coming to Lesotho is bloodied and mangled bodies lying lifeless on the side of the road. I am very serious that this is not a very uncommon sight here. Of course there is people always standing around but the truth of the matter is that after and accident it might take upwards of an hour for one of the few ambulances in the country to respond.
I when coming here tried to prepare myself for HIV and famine and such things but at no time did I think that I would see a lot of trauma from road accidents. It is one of the things too that always seems to sneak up on me just when I am not ready. When I first came here I didn’t really take heed to older volunteers talking about the amount of accidents or the ways to prevent them but now after seeing first hand I do. First and foremost I don’t ride with anyone that has been drinking. I also try not to travel on the big drinking days. I take rides from people I trust as much as possible that I think are safe. Anyway I hope that I did not get anyone to upset but I was just trying to tell a story of how it is here. Love ya’ll, Seatbelts buckled, Shirley Temples, and stopping at stop signs, jeff

March 16th 2003

2006-01-16T19:30:00.001-08:00

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

March 5th 2003

2006-01-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Things are going fine here. I haven’t been doing a lot of work lately but I have still kept myself busy. I have been doing other things like reading, working in the garden, and hanging out with friends. There are a lot of reasons why I am not doing much but I would have to say that a major reason I am not doing much is neither is anybody else.
It is just a way of life around here that people don’t get excited about much except sometimes maybe football. It is also a way of life in which no one is ever accountable or responsible for anything. It makes for a life filled with little stress but it also makes for a life in which not a lot gets done.
It is kind of hard to explain and I am sure I am going to do a poor job but I would like to try. From first impression one might say that Africans on a whole are lazy. This is something I hear quite often from Peace Corps Volunteers and Basotho alike. I personally don’t fully believe in this. I feel like it just often looks that way. The thing is it appears to me now that they just do not want to have any stress. They do not want to be responsible for anything is more of a way of putting it. I can see this in when someone does take charge an orders other people around that the Basotho actually do work. The thing is though is very rarely do I ever see any chiefs but everyone is an Indian. This in a way is in stark contrast to the American culture in which at times it seems like I watch five people in a group and see five people that are chiefs.
This way of life is very apparent. For all the shopping and over a hundred stores I have been in only a handful of the shops have been Basotho owned. All the shops that are in Lesotho are for the most part either owned by the Indians (who have the food shops) or the Chinese (who sell cheap made in China clothes and electronics). I firmly believe that is because the Basotho just do not want to be responsible for running such shops. There lack of responsibility or accountability for a businesses welfare goes as far as if by somehow they do get a business many other Basotho will come and borrow stock from the business with intentions of paying later. Of course the shop does not get paid back because the person borrowing does not feel responsible to pay back the money. Time and time again I have heard about Basotho businesses going out of business because they gave everything out for free. This is also a reason for the banks in this part of the world under no circumstances giving loans out with out solid collateral and even then it is tuff.
This way of life is fundamental and it goes down to the way they even walk. I would like to tape the place I live and play back just how slow people walk. Everyone here walks like the elderly in the parking lot of a cafeteria. J I know they are going somewhere but they are all definitely not in a hurry. This of course has one exception. Sometimes if a person is not walking slowly they are running very fast. It is almost like there is no in between speed. I have met one Basotho that likes to walk at a decent American pace and every one else walks at lest three times to five times slower than me. This is of course except for the people that are running which I think have for some reason or another been obliged to run for some circumstance as running here is not a big past time for health reasons. Also I have checked around and heard different theories as for explanations of the walking slow and have been told it is too hot. The walking slow is a year round all weather phenomena though whether it is really how really cold, whiter it is nice, or even if it is raining they are still walking slow.
I am lucky though I was prepared for periods of times in which I knew it was very well possible that I was not going to be doing much work. I had been talking to one of my African friends one time about Lesotho. He had basically explained to me that when I went to Africa most people would not have jobs. At least half of the people that could work won’t be maybe even as few as one in ten will actually be working. More to that is the fact that the people that do have jobs will often show up late or not at all to work. If and when they do show up they will not work much but will pass the time by talking and talking. I was so surprised in him questioning him just how much he knew about Lesotho. How could he know all about the habits of these people? He admitted he had not ever been here but that maybe a few times he had met a Basotho but he assured me he was right. Well I have to admit he was pretty close to right except the people here when they come to work instead of doing a lot of talking and talking they do a lot of talking and eating. All these women are fat. At almost anytime of the day I can go into the teachers lounge and find a few of them in there if not almost all of them. I would also say about half of the time I am visiting the teacher’s lounge that they are eating too.
I am getting used to not much happening around here and for the most part I don’t mind. We really only have one old computer at the school and I have taught much of what can be done on it that applies to the teachers. In the meantime now I just take a book or magazine and go to the teachers lounge and hang out with the teachers. They seemingly love to talk with me and treat me real nice always for a little while. When they get tired they then usually start talking in Sesotho and I don’t follow the conversation much so then I just start reading the magazine or book. I spend at least half of my scheduled computer lesson times in the staff room talking, reading, and of course snacking until things work out with some new computers. Next semester though new computers or not I feel like I am going to help out with the English class and see how it goes.
Otherwise I have been considering different HIV campaigns to wage. The HIV rate in 2000 was at 32 percent for Lesotho. They say that it has also been consistently rising at least five percent to seven percent per year too. Which means by the time I go back to America about half of the people will have it. This in large part also goes back to the fact that no one is accountable for the disease. The people that have it are saying too much this or that person gave it too me instead of I did something I was not supposed to do and am paying for it. No one also wants to be responsible for wearing the condom and no one wants to be responsible for trying to prevent it. A person might think that where it is statistically known that so many have HIV and is even acknowledged by the Kind and the Parliament that there would be a lot of HIV prevention programs and maintenance programs. There are not. There are less than twenty places to be tested and only one place in the country gives the proper medicine for treating it. Furthermore in a country where tradition is culture and is sanctified no one wants to be responsible for changing tradition. The tradition here is too that people for one do not talk about sex and do not promote condoms but people secretly have lots of it. So as is perceived by me most of this country maybe even upwards of seventy five percent will have the disease before any serious changes are done about the culture and the way people perceive this new disease. The disease is already won in devastating this country in the years to come and that is at the point it already is. It is not getting better though but worse and things aren’t changing because everything is fine and people don’t want to be bothered with all the changes. It is like watching a culture and people die being here sometimes. I do understand though that it is the course of things and not much is going to be done about it. I honestly feel that if it was not for people like the Peace Corps and other International aid organizations this disease would basically of wiped out the whole indigenous peoples of the whole sub-Saharan Africa.

As it is I am planning I trying to do my part and help this place. It is not clear to me if I am going to be able to do much good but I feel like that if people keep on presenting over and over facts about HIV and Aids to the Basotho that after a while some people might turn around. I know that this email might have been kind of depressing and was long as I have not written in a while but I am trying to present a representation of what life is like here. It is in a lot of ways real nice at times and at other times and in other was often not so nice. I hope everyone is well though and I love ya’ll. Jeff

February 13th 2003

2006-01-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I have been lately hanging out here in Lesotho. I have been reading a lot, doing some work, and having fun with other volunteers. At times it would seem like having fun is the actually the main thing volunteers do here. We so often get to see other volunteers that we keep much more of our American identity and culture than I had previously thought we would.
It is this point that has depressed me a little bit. I had come to Lesotho nine months ago with ideas and hopes of trying to blend in to a completely different culture. I now realize that it is probably not going to happen. Instead I am just going to get some exposure to what it is like to be Basotho or more importantly African but while I am here I probably won’t really know. This is due to a few reasons. One I am white, two I am do not speak fluent Sesotho, and lastly they for the most part do not want me to integrate into their ways.
I am white and when walking around downtown Hlotse if you can call it that it is very apparent. I immediately stand out. Every time I go outside my house the very young kids if not all people of all ages constantly call out in the air “lahoya”. This is the word for white person and it has become a sort of third name for me and most of the other volunteers. It is not necessarily a term that is as negative as the word nigger but anytime someone uses a word to identify someone that is based on their race it is a kind of derogatory term. I have also seen mothers correct their children telling them not to say it so even though they told us in training it was not a bad word sometimes I wonder.
Secondly, I do not speak Sesotho. This one of my biggest disappointments at first. I thought when coming here I was going to be fluent at another language before I left. The truth of the matter is that if I even only spent as little as an hour a day studying I feel like I very well could be able to speak Sesotho very well before returning to the States. I have a great environment to practice it and it is a really easy language to learn. The thing is that I feel like there is not going to be a lot of opportunities for me to continue to speak Sesotho nor do I really have to know it now. Sure there are times on average I say about once a week where I find my self in a situation in which I really wish I knew more Sesotho but for the most part the limited Sesotho I know does just fine for what I need it do to. There is not a need for me to learn Sesotho here for the most part as English here is fastly becoming very popular. All the classes in schools are being taught in English and while these kids speak very broken English if times get tough and I need a translator I just have to find a teenager near by. There is no shortage of teenagers and they are almost always very excited to use the English they have been learning. Otherwise like I was saying for the most of the time I am working with someone professionally they can understand English at least on a 7^th grade level and so I am able to express my point and them likewise even if we can not articulate as much as we would like.
A third reason I do not fully melt into society is that they do not want me too. From the first glance to the first word out of my mouth I captivate their attention. Not because I am white. They have seen more than enough white people from South Africa. These South Africans, which are called Afrikaners, are not very well liked here at all and have set up camp in the district next to Lesotho. They are in fact despised and are referred to as boors, which is a very derogative term. Most of the Afrikaners do not also like the Basotho. The hatreds go back a long way for good reasons I do not have to get into but as soon as they see my face, clothes, and here me talk (the Afrikaners do not usually speak English) I am instantly realized to not be one of them. I to them am an American and the word American here is synonymous in a way to better or blessed in certain ways. The Basotho simply like having an American around and they want me to show my Americanness instead of trying to adapt to their culture. Sometimes I can go as far to say that I am a token American. In theory this is a reason why many Peace Corps Volunteers don’t do much that the community just wants to have a celebrity American in their midst. The American that does not really do anything but somehow is treated wonderful and looked up too. Kind of reminds me of the British royal familyJ. But seriously that is kind of how it is and to be honest while at times it can be frustrating most of the time I feel like I take it just fine. I mean how often will I get this chance to be treated like this and then be able to go back to America and not let it really get to me. I should point out it is not all good. While the young kids look at me like I am a famous movie star and just about most of the girls I have talked to between the ages of 15 and 30 seems like she wants to my girlfriend and the old people are most of the time honored to have me around it is the young men between the ages of 20 and 30 that harass me. It is not all the time but it happens frequently and they definitely are letting me know that I am different and not really a part of their culture.
For the most part though my good experiences are more than my bad ones and it is nice to be here. I am adjusting to the fact that because of my color, language, and country I come from I am going to be outside of a lot of what goes on here but I can say that Africa has something enchanting about it. It is not necessarily the clothes, food, and music or even for that matter the race or language but it has to do with the Spirit of Africa. It is this spirit that has been my biggest surprise and greatest gift since coming here and while I feel I do not experience it fully I do experience it and it has changed me forever in a way that I am grateful for. love ya'll Jeff

February 2nd 2003

2006-01-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Life here has been beating to the tune of a different drummer. More specifically commercial free oldies from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, a lot of the new stuff in rock n roll and rap, music from Turkey, India, and the very important classical. In the past I have been one that has not really been interested in the radio or music. I know that it was stressed in material that I was given that music is very important to the volunteers but I feel like I underestimated just how much so. I know that I spent a lot of time downloading songs from the Internet on the computer but other than that I brought little music with me.
I think that part of the reason that I did not bring very much music with me is that really it seems like most people like music a lot more than I do in the States even the same applies to the other Peace Corps Volunteers. I was one that as a child used to watch three to four hours of TV a day or more. I was always into watching TV more than music but later on I found that neither of them very likeable. I had a few songs that I would like that had grown on me but for the most part I did not like all the rest. I held the opinion that musicians were just a little above cave men pounding on things until a beat and or rhythm appeared that they found likable and then decided to pound and strum there new song wherever they went until if finely stuck on people and my opinion about the people on the TV was just as untactful with the exception of some fine programming on channels like the Discovery Channel and useful information like the Weather Channel.
I ended moving out on my own and not even owning a TV or stereo as I had been so programmed, bombarded, and surrounded by the American media machine that it was hard for me to be clear just how much influence it had on me consciously and unconsciously. I had a few songs on my computer that I downloaded off the Internet and Art Bell on the late night AM radio I would listen to on the alarm clock. But after coming to Lesotho it would seem I was at my sight with now only songs on my computer to listen to and they were becoming old fast.
I purchased a radio in town and got it to pick up Lesotho and South Africa stations. I was able to receive two. One was the BBC which was fuzzy and the volume level would uncontrollably and unpredictably go up and down varying from just soft fuzz to so loud that now I am also sharing the news with my neighbor. In addition I could also get one other station known as “Radio Lesotho”. This is the same station which when I ride on public transportation is blasted out of speakers right next to me often inches away from my head at what seems like rock concert levels. I remember my brother turning sixteen and having loud stereo systems his car playing it very loud for me and even my friends that when they turned that age blasting their music like teenagers do and I am undoubtedly sure that the Basotho play their traditional music much louder. Radio Lesotho is almost like torture at times with it being played basically everywhere, as it is the basically only station. For all that I have listened to it the music on it still sounds like the exact same song. All the songs have the same beat and while the words change from song to song the melody of the guys words has the exact same melody. The basotho say it is music/poetry and if it varied from this form then it would not be their traditional music.

Anyway I was hurting for something different. On vacation I found it in the form of satellite radio. (By the way thank you all that that gave me money for my Christmas present, this was expensive and I needed all that money) This radio works very much like XFM in the States but not quite. The satellite, which is about as big as a soda can, is like very many TV satellites having to be pointed to a specific point in the sky for the reception to work. While this is a drawback a positive point is that I don’t have to pay a monthly or yearly pay subscription for it to work. So I get some forty odd station most of which are commercial free and a lot of news stations like CNN, BBC, and Bloomberg.
The new radio has been like a kind of medicine. While before I was in the States and had very little to do with the radio or TV I still through going outside of my house got exposed to it a lot and now that I had very little exposure I was feeling in lack of sorts. Lot’s of people here have TV’s but it seems like I have watched little and while American music is popular it is not the type I like. Now that I have the radio I really feel like the radio stations on it are top notch. They are even better than the one’s in the States for the type of music that I like to listen too. One of my favorites is the oldies station that plays the rebellion hippie rock n roll of the 60’s and 70’s and like I said it is commercial free except for little commercials for satellite radios and promos for it’s own station. The commercial for the oldies station is something like “This is the music your parents listened too when they did everything they are telling you not to do”. I know at the beginning of coming to the Peace Corps none of my family except for one second cousin was totally excited about me coming to Africa some even telling me I should not come but now that I am here I am having fun and now that I have the satellite radio I am doing it with music. jeff

January 19th 2003

2006-01-16T19:27:00.002-08:00

Hi everyone,
Wall to wall the room must have been big enough to fit four single size beds. I know this because it had two single beds in it and I figure they took up about half of the room in that “house”. The house was a part of serious of housing kind of like a duplex but I would say it was a ten-plex. Maybe twenty to thirty people were living in this sort of long skinny building divided into different separate rooms kind of housing in this one family compound. The people living there are all related in one way or the other and most do not have jobs but basically just spend there time with the family in the compound most of the day. I had walked by this specific housing block which I know for all the people it houses is not any bigger than the place I stay by myself and I saw the old lady, a grandmother of the group. Something set her apart though from the rest, a Hindu might say she had the Dharmakaya light but in the Western culture we just say, “there was something about her”.
I was walking with a young man in who was taking me to his garden. He is an Aids orphan and not having any money or an education enough to get a good job is more or less reduced to begging. I have told him basically he is not getting anything out of me but after coming into a surplus of seeds I struck a deal with him that if he dug a garden I would give him the seeds. If it all works out he will have more food to eat and can maybe sell some of the food to have money for other things.
After we walked passed this lady he kind of mentioned in a soft humble voice that the lady is a sangoma or traditional African witchdoctor. A week later I am sitting in her house as I described above making a deal for a potion. She while not having the thing that I had come for was willing to make a bargain for something else. After negations that for me seemed to go on and on in an excited “I can’t believe I am in Africa making a deal with a sangoma type of way” even though it could not of been more than twenty minutes the deal was struck. Like I had said I had not got the thing that I had intentions of getting and had also passed up a certain concoction that was supposed to make “people obey me” some kind of power potion I think, I settled on a mixture that is supposed to make me more in tune with my spiritual side. I paid fifty rand which by all means is very expensive here. It is one third of what I pay on a monthly basis to have my house cleaned and my wash done once a week but is better than the two hundred rand we started negotiations with. All in all though fifty rand in American money though is only five dollars so I gather it is how a person perceives it.
Sitting in that little room on a hot day making a deal with a witch doctor is not for everybody I guess. In fact I am not too sure if very many Peace Corps have actually done it but I know many must have. I am sure it is not too unsafe or they would of warned us about it in the way they warned us about the herd boys or the secret circumcision schools. And I can also take into consideration one of the other Peace Corps volunteers who stays on a compound with a supposed sangoma saying, “My dad is supposed to be a sangoma but every time he has a headache he comes to me for aspirin.” After all the mixture I bought is probably something like ground up herbs and vegetables or something and I am not sure just how blessed I will be from the mixture but I am excited to have had the opportunity to have done such a thing and been brave enough to do it. Love ya’ll, jeff

January 9th 2003

2006-01-16T19:27:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone,
My vacation was wonderful. One of the things that I did was bungee jump. The Bloukrans Bungee was the one my friends and I decided on. A reason was it was easy for us to get to and another was is that it is billed as the world's highest bungee jump. I am not too sure about that but for sure by jumping at a place that bills itself as the world's highest one can be assured that it is going to be high and it was. It was the kind of high that people get when they stand on top of a sky scraper and look down and wonder how someone could possibly work up that high. It was the kind of high that even though one is walking on a sturdy stable surface it seems like a good idea to walk slow just in case.

The bungee jump was a lot of fun though it was very easy for me to jump. I was like a model for the others and it was my first time even. I was the same person that as a little kid climbed of the high dive for the first time with my dad watching and instead of jumping off like a scared little kid decided to smile, wave, and jump head first into a dive. I was the same person that as a young child use to climb high into the trees not knowing how I was going to get back to regular ground. Ah, but this time I knew how I was going to get back I was going to be pulled back. Even after I came back up a person that was also in the group watching me said basically that I had a really good jump, meaning I jumped like a person would want to jump, strong and sturdy. I stepped up to the line where people are supposed to jump. The routine was that they yell 5-4-3-2-1-bungee and then the person jumps. The jumper is not supposed to look down for obvious reasons but just keep the head up and look forward.

I stepped up to the line. They started to count down saying "5" I looked down at the ground about six hundred and fifty feet blow me and looked up and smiled. They had now got to "5-4-3-2" and I started to bend my legs down squatting for a jump of a lifetime. I gave a long hard jump and as I sailed of the bridge I could hear them saying "bungee" in the background which was of course my cue to then jump but I was going to jump on my own in my own way. The first second was nice and then I panicked a little bit and started flailing my arms. After a little bit though I let my self loosen up, relax and enjoy the ride. I let my arms go out to my side and I loved it. I was falling and I loved it. I was really getting to like it for the last couple seconds and then the cord caught me and for a second or two started to go taught and I got slightly disappointed because I knew then that I was not going to be in my long freefall anymore. The experience of being pulled up was interesting but just not like it was falling. A couple minutes later I was back on the bridge conversing with my friends that it was indeed something I liked.

Some people say that it is not good for a person to jump like that but far as I know I did not have any of the back problems or knee problems but that I felt like the bungee cord just gently caught be and slowly broke my fall. It was the fact that the fall stopped though that got me I really wish I could of fallen for a couple of minutes. Seems like on my next vacation I am going skydiving! love ya jeff

January 8th 2003

2006-01-16T19:27:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I am back from vacation and had have a lot of fun. On this vacation I got to play in the water at the bottom of a waterfall, hang out in the beach, swim in two different oceans, go on a couple nice walks, bunji jump off of a very high bridge, went to a big game park and partied a lot. Seven of us Peace Corps Volunteers went on vacation. We rented a mini-bus and took off. During the course of about two and a half weeks we stayed in six different places. I was staying in dorm type style rooms with about six people per room on average and the bed in the room cost from about five to eight dollars a night depending where I stayed. We partied quite a bit and it sure seemed with all the intoxicants my friends did they all seemed considerably less smarter at the beginning of the trip than at the end of it but they had fun and I did too. I saw some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen in this two weeks. I now know why the Europeans came here so long ago and wanted to stay. Most of Africa might not be that hospital of a place but parts of South Africa are much like a paradise. I have so many pictures to send that I don't know quite how to send them but I am planning on trying. I thought going into this vacation that it might be up unto this point the best one of my life and it was definitely pretty close.

About half of the vacation was spent in Capetown. The city is one of the best I have been in. It has a grandness to it maybe like a mix between Washington DC and a New Orleans. The Street we were staying on was called Long Street and it designed in a style of Bourbon Street with it clubs, bars, and little shops all with balconies that over look the street but a lot cleaner. During the week of staying there our car did get broken into which put a bit of damper on the attitude of the day later on which proved to have another twist to it when the car broke down but we did finally get everything taken care of and we kept of vacationing. I am enclosing two pictures one of me at a waterfall which I am going to consider my first real waterfall which I got to even get pounded right underneath a quite considerable amount of falling water and one of me on Christmas morning early after having stayed out late on Christmas Eve dancing part of the night away at a club. Love ya'll. Jeff

December 2nd 2002

2006-01-16T19:26:00.000-08:00

I am enclosing a picture. In America on the 28^th of November it is Thanksgiving and even though this photo might look like these girls are celebrating thanksgiving holding up little pieces of turkey and turkey bones for the camera I assure you it was just chicken. They were celebrating the last day of school a day, which by all means I am glad, has come. I felt like it was a pleasant day and semester I should say though a little bit more about this picture.

In this culture being fat is good. Food is celebrated. I guess it has to do with the fact that for generations there might not of been enough food so it has been engrained in the subconscious that times of plenty of food are times to celebrate. So here the girls when having full plates of food with chicken see it as a perfect photo opportunity where in as in America if some one wanted to take a picture of the family gathered around the table in the middle of a session of stuffing themselves on thanksgiving that it might not go over to well. These girls while the idea is changing still want to be fat and as you can see from the picture some of them are on their way. Being fat is such a celebrated thing here. It is just fine when referring to someone to call them “the fat girl” or “the fat lady” and the conversation moves on like it would normally. I feel like the stereotype might be changing some especially with the younger girls as they see the models in magazines and watch the TV but for the most part most of them still want to be fat.

A teacher earlier that day was just telling me, “I am jealous of Me Machama (a fellow teacher) because I am older that her and she is fatter than me.” She really thinking it unfair that a person younger than her had been able to grow fatter had been earnestly complaining to me. Anyway with a big smile in Lesotho I write. I hope you all got fat on Thanksgiving. Jeff

November 24th 2002

2006-01-16T19:25:00.001-08:00

I have been traveling and after such a trip I want to sit at home for a while by myself. I guess in the back of my mind I knew that travel was different in Lesotho, as I have been experiencing a different way of travel since coming but much of my illusions that travel here being okey with me has been shattered on this last trip. The trip was fine actually once I got there and was able to do what I came for. I stayed with the Welch couple that live on a campus of a school where he teaches a computer class and she works with the crafts department. They were wonderful giving me a comfortable place to sleep, pleasant food, and entertaining company. I learned more about computers and got some valuable information from him. They live in the small town of Thaba Tseka which is deep into the mountains of Lesotho a place we call the highlands where as I stay in the lowlands where apparently travel is much nicer.
And this is where the story begins. I am in part to blame for the confusion about my trip, as I should of checked out more about the information before making such plans. In my defense looking at the map it looked like a trip to Thaba Tseka from Maseru would be only about seventy-five miles. For me in the US getting in my car and driving that far was more or less no big deal. Here it is a different story. I had heard that I had to be in Maseru which is the capital of Lesotho at about eight o’clock in the morning to catch the bus for my destination. I thought that this was probably because the city was so small not very many people would want to go there. It was not until getting ready to leave that morning that other Peace Corps Volunteers hinted at just how bad that trip was. At a little past eight o’clock in the morning I was there at the bus ready to go. Approximately eight hours later at four o’clock in the afternoon I was getting off the bus vowing that no more would I undertake such a trip. It was long, hot, bumpy, curvy, and dusty. The window we were sitting in next to would not open. Barely anyone else had the window open because of the superstition that the window open makes people sick. Among the crowded bus with people sitting in the seats and people standing squished together standing in the isles were in the seat in front of me a woman holding a cat and a man a little behind me with a couple of chickens.
We were going up into the mountains and at first it did not seem that bad. But the it started to get hotter and the road went from being paved to a bumpy dirt road the curved and twisted it seemed like so much I was even amazed. Slowly we rose and the more I got tired. It could have been that my legs were scrunched or not enough fresh air or that the air was thinner or much more but I was not feeling well. I toughed through each turn though and in the end I and another Peace Corps Volunteer made it to our destination.
If that was not bad the ride back was worse. I had again looked at the map and found a different back way to my house. I had heard it was possible that it could be done and my host said that he had traveled it before and while had said it was a little better for him to get to the area of the country I was going he thought that it was not nearly as nice as he had thought it would be. So even though I had hopes of a nice easy trip I had my doubts do to his warnings this time though I was only going about sixty-five miles with most of it being paved road. I’ll just say it was just as bad. At one point the driver even backtracked going the wrong way so he could pick up more people. So ten hours later I was back into my house thinking Thaba Tseka was a nice little town but I plan on for the rest of my time in Lesotho plan on not going back... I am attaching a picture of me hitch hiking to the bus stop in the back of a truck. Jeff

November 11th 2002

2006-01-16T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hi, Everyone

Things here are fine enough. Actually I am having some beginning successes in my primary project. I have been helping a few of the teachers to type of tests for the end of the semester. Hopefully up to half of the students will this time be able to take finals that are neatly typed instead of hand written. I have been very busy teaching how to use the computer and prepare the papers. Even when they are typed up though I have been reformatting and doing spelling and grammar corrections and most people know my spelling and grammar are not even as good as they should be. J Although I admit I did spend about two months on teaching solitaire to the teachers it has only taken about three weeks for some of them to learn how to type up papers on the computer. This is of course though with my constant supervision and guidance in what to do and how to do it.

I am still amazed though how it is that they can be so slow to learn how to use the computer but still be so musically talented as a whole. Some of the teachers can have to be told time and time again how the backspace works or how to bold, underline, or italicize. Still though at the same time many of the teachers can hear a song that I am playing for the first time that they have not heard before and before the song is finished be able to sing along with the singer in tune and harmony so beautifully.

The weather here is warming up and I am in the midst of the rainy season. I know the temperatures though in America are getting cooler and what I feel like I have to say about that is, I am here and your not, haha. But seriously I did have to go through two winters back to back so I am really glad to have some nice weather.

I am enclosing a picture of the night watchman’s sister who is often times seen just sitting in front of the school day in and day out. I recently found out that part of that might be because she is always getting stoned but she is a great picture of an older Basotho woman who has earned the title of respect of ”N’khono” which would be translated to English as simple grandma but here in a country where few people live to be very old is considered to be an honorably title.

Love ya’ll, Jeff

November 2nd 2002

2006-01-16T19:24:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone,

The taxi rides are the main support of transportation for both the Basotho and the Peace Corps Volunteers in Lesotho. In fact that is one way a Basotho can distinguish a Peace Corps Volunteer from a tourist or say another Aid organization. All the white people in Lesotho the few that there are with the exception of the Peace Corps Volunteers all more or less have their own vehicles and usually nice one’s at that. As for us though we ride the taxies. The volunteers have been here long enough to give us a stereotype one I myself often fit into and use myself to identify other Volunteers. We almost always travel by taxies, have big backpacks filled with stuff, and carry water bottles. Having met many of the volunteers but not all of them I like any Basotho when seeing a white person with a big backpack riding in a taxi sipping on their own water bottle can almost for sure be assured that it is a Peace Corps Volunteer.

So maybe it is that the Basotho can readily recognize us from any tourist and have got use to us on the taxies that we get no special treatment when in the taxies. First of all let me say that what Americans call and think of as taxis and what the Basotho call and think of taxies varies significantly. The taxi in Lesotho is a van with usually about three long bench seats in it. This van if having seat belts would have seatbelts for twelve people including the driver but the van does not have seatbelts. Not only that but it does not have nice carpet or even any carpet and the same goes with the headliner. The seats are often ripped and instead of spending the money on fixing the seats they put in a stereo and I can tell you it is loud. Hopefully the sliding door is fastened well but I have heard the stories about the doors falling off and have seen many a cheap weld job on the sliding doors where it is apparent they at one time had not been connected. Luckily the door has not ever fallen off while I was in the taxi. And some how the twelve-seater van very easily can become twenty and so often does if not more. On the few times that it has got above twenty I am not even to sure how many more then twenty it gets up to. Sometimes I might be like twenty-two that I can count. There could have been another one or two stashed away though. It gets especially bad when we have the big backpacks that I mentioned and the only place to put it is on your lap and when it is crowded some of that space rolls over into the person next to you. It is amazing how people squish in. First of all every seat that is designed for three now sits four and this is even with the fat women I have been telling you about. It is almost more than I can take to be squished in a seat with four people and on either side of me is a fat woman who is invariably wearing some kind of clothing that is really hot. I can’t help but think just how bad it is to be that intimate with someone I don’t even know. Sometimes I feel like a sandwich (literally) it is like I am being smothered from both sides. To make it worse it is very possible as I have explained that this is only the part of the people that are sitting. There are also people standing to so while being squished from either side it is also very possible that some one is standing where my feet are supposed to be and you know what that means. It means there but is in my face. Yep, I am serious the first time it is very uncomfortable and it is not always like this most of the times it is fine but there are the times when this does definitely happen.

To make things worse even if it is a hot day and I am crammed packed in the taxi and they stop to pick someone else up and I can’t help but wonder, “where is this person going to go” we are already packed in like sardines in a can. But they do fit the person in somehow in someway. Sometimes though the person might have an animal with them so instead of a person sitting with a bag on their lap there they are holding chicken hopefully it won’t get worse than this but the volunteers are filled with stories about goats and sheep.

And as you can guess there is no air-conditioner. Now when I came with the expectations of it being hot I also expected no air-conditioners what I did expect and was disappointed in is that every one would have every window possible open or down. Well that is right I was wrong the windows stay up and open. I just am amazed with how hot it is and so many people and they will not open the window. Sometimes if I have a window seat I open it just a little just enough so the air blows on my face and not anyone else but I dare not open it too much or they will tell me to close it. The thing is that there is a superstition here that if the windows are opened you will get sick. In a country where one third of the people have HIV a little cold really could kill and so they try not to open the windows because they are afraid they will catch a cold. What they need to be doing though if you ask me is not worrying about the windows and worrying about wearing a condom when they have sex so that they won’t get it in the first place but obviously that is not what is happening. I am seriously not exaggerating at all either when I say that people live in denial about what has happened and why so many people are dying. Nine time out of ten a person would much rather say that one of their family members died of something like having the window open in the taxi and caught a bad called then admit that what really happened is that they had Aids.

So I am uncomfortable a lot of the times in the taxi and while sometime I got right on a taxi right away I also could of waited for upwards of an hour just to endure such conditions. The taxies here go on there own schedule. There is no set schedule. They come when they come and they leave when the driver feels like he has crammed enough people into the taxi. I might take five minutes or thirty for it to fill up and I assure you the driver will wait most of the time. So it very well might take me two hours to do a trip one day and the next day on the exact same trip might take three hours. It really just all depends.

Invariably too there is often some drunk man on the taxi as people here drink a lot and I mean a lot it seems like the men drink sometimes as much as the women eat. And he wants to talk to me. Oh it happens that a lot of the times people want to talk to me but it those times when the drunk man wants to know, “where I am from, Where I am going, What do I do, so on and so on and if I will drink with him?” I get use to it but it can get frustrating.

For the times though like that I do have to say there are other amusing times. Like the time that I was on a non-overcrowded taxi. I was in a seat and to my right there was a large woman and to my left got on board a young, pretty, school girl. She was maybe about seventeen years old. Immediately the older lady on my right starts with the questions,” where are you from, where are you going…?” And then gets to the are you married question. After finding out I was not she was like, “what about the girl next to you, she is pretty, huh?” she asks. I told her she was and then the lady went on the assault. I felt like a guy trying to buy a new car with this salesman doing everything they could to sell me a car. But it was not a car it was the girl sitting next to me who by this time was very flushed red or as red as a Basotho can get. Now I mind you that the young girl and the old woman sitting next to me did not even know each other but yet the older woman was intent on me marrying the young pretty girl next to me. So, I was very taken back but the thing that is even more amazing is that the young girl next to me while being very embarrassed actually gave me the impression that she would have married me. Can you believe that?

Anyway I hope everyone is doing well and I will talk to you more soon, maybe sometime else I might write about the taxi ranks instead of the taxi rides that are also just as interesting. I am also enclosing a picture of my night watchman unaware that he is getting ready to have his picture taken and plan on sending a picture of one of the taxies maybe next time, Jeff

October 24th 2002

2006-01-16T19:24:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

I was in a nice restaurant. Well you might say nice for Lesotho. The fact of the matter is that by American standards it would be an acceptable but yet low class place to eat but for the city I live in which is a camp town or provincial capital it is one of the three nicest places to eat out. We were having a birthday party for a colleague of another Peace Corps Volunteer. In to the restaurant walks a lady carry a box of apples and bananas. She walks up to our table (we were the only ones there) and the sticks the fruit in front of us implying we should by some. After a go around of telling her we are eating at the restaurant and that we don’t want to buy her fruit she then just starts begging for money. She then explains she needed money for food and that she was hungry. We were very taken back not but kind of use to this kind of thing too. Not only though did she want money but also she wanted it for food when she already had a big box of food she was trying to sell. She then explain not only did she want food but that if we gave her the money she was going to go and buy fat cakes. I am not sure if I have explained fat cakes but it is a deep fried bread maybe comparable to a donut that by all means is very tasty but not very good for a person and is known to make people fat. Well I have to say this lady must have already eaten a fat cake or two because she was fat and I mean pretty fat. The kind of fat that people have to start walking slow because they weigh too much. Her and just about every other lady here that eat more than there fair share of fat cakes. Which brings me to a side note, how can there be a famine here if eighty five percent of the women are fat? Sure all the men are very skinny and one might even think that all the women just ate all the food and did not give any to the men (which might actually be happening) but by no means should Lesotho have been declared in a state of famine by the world food program. There is more than enough food if the women would just share.

But as I was saying there was this lady begging from us. Why? Probably because we were white. I might in a ten minute walk to the store and a ten minute walk back be asked for money three times and not think much of it as out of the norm of things. And I am not sure if they all the times really want money but it is just a good way for them to start a conversation. I know we as volunteers don’t really give money (or at least I don’t) so there must be an ulterior motive for asking. I really do believe though for many of them some of the only English they know is “Give me the money” and for others it is just a game to ask for money.

I should also say as I write this my neighbors some of whom are girls from the ages of eight to fifteen are standing around in a circle singing and dancing. The drum they are using is not really a drum but from the sound of it is a plastic bucket turned upside down but I assure you still can make a lot of drum like sound loud enough to get in a circle and sing, chant and dance to as the last bit of daylight fades into the night sky. I know that the idea of people getting around in circles and singing and dancing is kind of a romantic idea of Africa and while it does not happen every night like it probably use too it still does. A lot of things have changed like now there is no campfire, the people are wearing a lot more clothes, a bucket has replaced a drum, and the songs now have a pseudo-Christian meaning but the tradition has still remained somewhat in tact. I should reinforce though also that the Basotho are what I could consider natural dancers and singers. These people on a whole can sing and dance so well that when they break out in a melody (as they often do) it can almost make a man break down at times it is so beautiful.

It really amazes me the contrast in how well the people I work with are almost musical geniuses in their own way but it takes me seriously ten minutes to teach someone how to use the arrow keys are a keyboard. This is of course to most Americans whether their ancestors came from Africa or not something that is almost instinctive or might take ten seconds to teach with the student even after ten seconds knowing much better how to work the arrow keys then after ten minutes of me explaining it. I am serious in that some things are so foreign and difficult to teach but with time they do learn and seem to be able to use. All this the while like their ability to sing and dance so well is a skill to me that is just as foreign.

Now I don’t mind saying a little R&R wouldn’t be to upsetting. In that since the beginning of this month I went to a four day cultural festival, went to a week long drawn out conference, then came back and went to the capital city for a couple days for Peace Corps business, came back entertained people coming to my house for an Outward Bound Program, went to the Outward Bound Program (which is related to the one in America), came back and for three days have hosted people on post outward bound trips. It would not upset me too much to just have some time here at the place to myself for a few days with no travel or too much company.

I am enclosing a picture from the scenes of Outward Bound. I hope everyone else is doing well. Jeff

October 16th 2002

2006-01-16T19:23:00.001-08:00

So, I went to a store the other day. I had been wanting a new pair of shoes. When I came to Africa I had a baggage limit. I only brought with me two suitcases and a backpack (all of which though were jammed packed). So one of the things I felt like I wanted more of was shoes. Unfortunately though a pair of shoes my size just does is not exactly at every store. In fact the men’s shoes maybe in a big size is an eight or nine. I prefer a ten and a half to eleven. Store after store when I went in told me they do not have shoes my size. So then I went to one store and they had a pair of Nikes. I was very pleased to find a pair of shoes my size and even a brand I knew and trusted. The price was eighty rand or about eight American dollars. I thought it was a great deal and thought how nice it was in the third world that things are so cheap. I think cheap might be the right word as now I know even in the third world that a good pair of Nikes does still cost a lot of money which means the one’s I bought were bootlegs. Just a counterfeit pair of shoes worth about eight dollars but with the Nike swoosh on the side. I did do some additional shopping and found out that a pair of Nike’s at a South African shop might cost me one thousand rand and not eighty. This is not the only time I have been taken on a purchase.

I have also bought a radio. It was supposed to be an AM/FM/short-wave radio. It is just that but the reception on it is not very well. I though am seriously considering buying a satellite radio in South Africa. I feel like I have learned my lesson though when it come to things like food I should not be surprised that classy meal that might cost twenty to thirty dollars in the US might only cost two or three dollars. The same goes with clothes so sometimes a good purchase can be made but when it comes to getting something of quality or any electronics a person should go to South Africa. So tomorrow I am going to South Africa and I might just get a satellite radio. Supposedly they even work in the US, which means I might want to bring it back with me. I heard they are hard to find though so then again I might not.

I hope everyone is well, this weekend I am planning on going to a conference in the mountains. Jeff

October 12th 2002

2006-01-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Looking out among the crowd I can see thousands of Africans. They are all enjoying themselves and the music. My friend and I decided to go right out among in the middle and dance and we did. I have to say we really stood out for many ways. For one and most obviously amongst a lake of Africans we are the only ones that are light skinned. To make things worse compared to the Basotho we are giants both being over six feet tall in a country in which 5’10” is considered being tall. So not only do we have white heads but also they stick up much higher than the rest of the heads in the crowd. Can you see it? We also dance with a much different style than the Basotho to make us stand out even more. I have to say though with all the differences I felt very comfortable and had a lot of fun. It was a party after all.

The Marija Festival that I was just describing in part was quite an unforgettable experience. There was music, food, crafts for sell, traditional dancing and shows, plays, and the rest of the stuff that goes along with such a show. I do know that I had said that I would take pictures and show them. I carried around my camera quite a bit but was really too often just living in the moment that I the whole time only took one picture and it was not even at the festival.

There was a jazz concert too. It apparently was broadcast over Radio Lesotho and while only a couple thousand people attended physically it seems like most of the country was there in heart and soul as they listened on their radios. I was there though along with about thirty other Peace Corps Volunteers. That was the night that one of the bands left the stage and came right in the middle of the crowd and played amongst us. I am not sure while they picked to stand right where the Peace Corps Volunteers were in the crowd but I have my suspicions. It might have been with the exception of me the Volunteers were all more or less very drunk. We were rowdier and dancing a lot more. In fact at one point no for the most part were not dancing until a group of us made a big group and went right up in front of the stage and starting dancing. With in about fifteen minutes basically all two thousand people there were now all standing and the empty area in front of the stage was shoulder to shoulder with people dancing. But the band came down in front of the stage and I was right in between the guitarist and the trumpet player. It was astounding. They played a couple songs in the crowd and then went back on stage for some more. The party went on late into the night and there was another night that I new I was not going to get much sleep.

With four volunteers in the area the Volunteers that went to the festival kind of just dispersed here and there during the night. I was one of the lucky ones. I got to sleep on a love seat. Many of the volunteers got better places to sleep like couches or beds but most slept on the floor, in tents or just outside in their sleeping bags. The one picture I did take was of the Volunteers sleeping outside all together huddle together like cows on a cold night to keep warm.

So there is much more to write about like our bond fire, my friend at three in the morning walking around drunk and falling into an open sewer, how when I was dancing the Basotho circled me and yelled, “dance white boy” of course though in a different language, how the traditional dancing and singing is, the crafts and competitions but I am planning on keeping this email kind of short. Just know though it was fun and I am already planning on what I am going to do next year.

Also I have added some people to this list, if anyone does not want to be on it please let me know.

I am not sure if I have sent it or not but I am including a picture of a Basotho man herding his cows.

jeff

September 28th 2002

2006-01-16T19:22:00.001-08:00

Well, my vacation away from work is on. It really is a time to do some painting at the house, work in the garden, go to a cultural fest, and then attend a conference. After I get back I am planning on going back to work, hopefully the electricity will be back on and reliable.

I know I told everyone about how I have electricity but let me now revise that to say that I sometime have electricity, which to me is still wonderful. It is surprising just how important some electricity is some time but not all the time. So I guess the week started out on Sunday, which for some reason I am not sure the electricity went out for the whole city, and maybe even more from in the middle of the night till that afternoon. On Monday I went to the school knowing that the electricity was on at my house only to find the breaker box was messed up, no class that morning. By that afternoon one of the students eager to learn (or really just play solitaire) had somehow flipped many of the breakers down so much of the building did not have electricity but the computer room did so we had class that afternoon. Tuesday morning right before class the electricity for the school compound went out and was out till Wednesday morning. I had class Wednesday morning and that after noon! Wednesday night a storm came in. No power for the whole city till about 7:00 PM that night. Friday while the electricity came and went I did not have class because apparently some people were planning on starting the holiday early (why not?). I am not supposed if the weeklong holiday even last longer than that too. Actually I am going to count on it, because chances are it does. I can tell you though that the phones are seemingly stable here. Well the landlines more so than the cell phones. Apparently though up until about three years ago the phones were basically just as bad as the electricity if not worse.

So just to reinforce things that is kind of the attitude here, let’s knock off early and show up late. Seriously, I was even talking to someone the other day and they said something to the extent,” There is a meeting of all the school officials for Lesotho in the capital city. I am planning on showing up around on time because I want to sit around and socialize with my friends before anything really gets started” It really is amazing and no one here really seems to mind that someone says “I will be by on Tuesday to do the work you requested but does not show up until Friday” That around here is still keeping your word. But while it is okay to be late I still have yet to find someone to be so casual with being early which to some extent is fine I guess. Meetings here kind of are assigned to a day and not a time. One of my friends holding a meeting on a certain day that he was told to be at after being there a while and a few people showed up and he asked one something like, “when does the meeting start?” And the Basotho kind of looked back at him like he was silly replying like he should know, “when everyone gets here.” So, yeah, that is how it kind of is here.

My garden is coming along. I have planted quite of few seedlings and am wanting them to grow. The sun though has been scorching them during the day and I feel like a day of clouds could be absolutely wonderful for them. I have planted tomatoes and pepper seedlings, two kinds of lettuce, American style spinach, carrots ( I don't think they will grow), onions and moroho. Other things I have growing from a resident before me is parsley, green beans, moroho (which is a mixture of some kind of spinach but not American spinach, Swiss chard, radish, and cabbage), an apricot tree and some kind of berries which no one really knows the English for so I guess I have to wait and see. Supposedly I have a couple of pumpkins growing in one of my seedbeds according to the night watchman. I am planning though on maybe even growing some strawberries, salad onions, corn, and probably planting some more stuff before planting season is up.

I have been having troubles so hard with my computer. Maybe I will fix it but I am not sure what the problem is. I am not going to bore you with details but I may or may not have pictures to email after the cultural fest but it is my plan to at least try. So maybe next week you can see some Africans in traditional African dress (or in some cases not in it) hehe.

jeff

September 19th 2002

2006-01-16T19:22:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

The music is playing and as I lock the door and close the blinds I listen to the sound coming from the bathroom. I hear running water going into a bathtub and I know it is hot. This is since moving into this place my first hot bath. I think it was about seventy five degrees fariegnhieght outside today with clear blue skies from sunrise to sunset. This of course meant my solar water heater was going to be working well. I was careful to let the hot water set and warm up and about four o'clock I went to check and it was hot but was it going to be enough to fill the bathtub I wondered. It was and twenty minutes later I was enjoying I nice hot bath as I thought of my friends in America that would of thought me making such a big deal about a nice steaming hot bath an absurdity and then I turn my attention to my fellow Peace Corps volunteers here in Lesotho who for three weeks now have been bathing out of a bucket with water they fetched from a spicket outside there house and heated up with a kettle on the stove and I know I am not making too much of a fuss. I know how some of my buddies in Lesotho would be so grateful for a hot bath. I know the hot water in my bathtub is more bath water than one of them might use in an entire week or two and that I did not have to fetch it but simply turn on the facet.
Other things here have also been going well. The teachers are learning how to play solitaire even if it has taken my two weeks an average of two hours a day teaching the ten of them. Many of which are starting to stay after class and come in before to play solitaire. One has even been able to win with no help of my own. It is really starting to pick up and it is no big deal to see two to four Bo-Me (women) gathered around a computer with three chiefs and one Indian or three people telling the one actually playing what to do and often times with them all working together and they are winning. Almost a solitaire fever has hit and I am wondering how far it will go. I think back and now that I realized more or less every time I have seen someone on a computer since coming to Lesotho Peace Corps volunteers aside they have all more or less been playing games. I have definitely decided at no point will I be teaching free cell! I can easily believe it or not considerably halting what little gets done around here anyway. The bo-me seriously have already told me, "if I had one of these in my house I would not do any work but just play the cards and listen to the music" and I am reminded of someone I know that use to come home from work and play music on the computer and play free cell for a couple hours just about every night (you know who you are). I actually have been teaching other things like the calculator and painting but for the most parts for next week I just planning on letting them play cards all class long just to get comfortable sitting in front of a computer and operating a mouse.
After next week I am going to have two weeks off from work. Yes a whole two weeks. One week is a holiday and the next is a conference. I feel like even though the semester might last three months only about two of it will I actually be working with the rest being social functions, holidays, no electricity, or this or that. The two weeks off will be great though as I will be able to do a lot of work in the garden and just kind of finish settling in as I after training did errands for about a week and then started work but still would like to do some more things to get myself ready for the next two years. I can tell you though I sure am not upset I am not in training now though. It was really like basically if I wasn't doing something training related then I was probably sleeping. I was so busy during that eleven weeks. They kept on telling us "you'll have more than enough time to relax when you get to your site" and probably for most of the volunteers it really seems like that is true. On average it seems like the volunteers do work about five hours a week which makes my sixteen and a half hours a week on my schedule in comparison look like a nice amount. One volunteer after telling him how much I was doing was joking and was like "slow down, take a vacation, you don't want to work yourself out of a job" but other volunteers telling me similar things are kind of more serious.
As it is though I should say that I am not now checking my email as often as since my phone works now I can watch my money just tick away now that I have a prepaid account and an account balance. It is a lot easier to just call and get the bill later than it is to prepay and be like if I call this much then there won’t be any money in the account. I know it is Psychological but sure does keep me using the phone less.
I hope you all are well and during my two weeks of vacation I am planning on going to a cultural fest so in a few weeks I might have some more pictures. jeff

September 15th 2002

2006-01-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

Well it seems like once again another week has gone by. What makes this one different is that it seems like it is a normal week. A normal week Africa style though. I feel like I am getting settled and it is boosting comfortabillity level having a place to myself, especially in how I center myself in relation to the world. For a while in training about the two months of it I felt like I was being moved around a lot. I was, from Alanta to South Africa to Roma to stay with the nuns, to the village, to Roma again, to stay with a Peace Corps Volunteer in the field, to village, back to Roma, to my site visit, back to Roma, to a lodge for graduation. I think Bob Dylan sings about a person being a rolling stone with no direction home. Meaning a person that doesn’t really belong anywhere and has no home but just goes here and there with their meager possessions which was of course two bags and a backpack that was packed jam full. So it is an experience during the last three months seeing the third world and even living like a person lives in the third world (kind of) but I am not too upset to know there is a place that I can come to a rest at the end of the day.
Some work was accomplished by me this week. The regular thing during a week is that there is going to be interruptions. This week they included power outages and social functions. My regular work week’s set hours might not really be that much in theory and even with many distractions it does not take too much out of me and the pace is fine. Even though I am still a very busy person it seems. I at first thought that I would have a lot of time to myself and would spend it reading but it seems like that is not going to be so. I am having visitors and cultural exchanges. So many people want to talk with me and so far I have been very friendly in stopping and talking when they want me to stop and talk. So often I am just walking down the street and someone comes up to talk with me usually it seems the talks last about five minutes and include where I came from my, where I am staying, what I am doing, if I am married, who is my mother, father, brother and sisters, how long I will stay and such questions that in America a complete stranger would not just walk up to you and ask but here is protocol if you want to talk about something more serious maybe the next time they see me. But after about five minutes and the Basotho feel like they have gotten an idea of who I am then just like they stopped me then they let me go and say good bye. The level of friendliness varies dramatically from person and person and city to city. Some people just want to be left alone or might hold a grudge in general with white people but it seems like most do not and of course there are the people that on any other day would be very friendly but are just having one of those days. But maybe about half of the people I see on the street say hi to me on a good day. I still have not been able to figure out who I am supposed to greet as sometimes when I try to greet everyone most people greet back but some do not. It is just a way here I guess but is more of a rural thing where farther out a person is the more they must greet and if they do not greet someone they see then that country person will think they are mad at them at times.
I did have my first two house guests stay the night. A girl that lives in my district (there are eight of us) was planning a birthday party. So volunteers came from around the country two of which decided to stay with me. We all then met up in South Africa and spent the day having a lunch and then time at the bar. Most of the volunteers stayed in South Africa that night but I did not as until my first three months are up I am not supposed to stay away from my site unless approved by the office and school. As it was it was nice to see such a big group of volunteers. It also seemed like people got along quite a bit better than after a couple weeks of not having to share rooms and all live together.
I also got some shopping done and while I was especially pleased to find things like vegetarian hot dogs I was disappointed when it came to other things like soy milk. As it is though maybe I will be able to find it in another store. The city in South Africa while that I went to and plan on going to many more times is even smaller than Stillwater. I think though it has many things that I want. Ah, if it only had a Walmart though, oh well. :-)
I still have not been able to get my land line fixed just right but I really feel like it will be fixed by the end of the week (crossing fingers). I can though still receive calls on my land line which is quite nice.
I am not sure if I wrote about it but last week I had an assembly at the school I teach at to introduce myself to the staff. It was really neat the students but on plays and sang songs. Afterwards the teachers went to the teachers lounge and we ate food cooked by the students.
I also for the first time in three months ate meat besides fish. We went to a restaurant and this was after a long day of me bustling here and there. We went in and looked at the menu. The waiter/host/busboy/money taker/bartender came over and asked us what we wanted. Well there was only about six things on the menu so I picked the thing with fish. He said "no, we don’t have that" my buddy tried to order. They did not have that either. We asked them what they did have. One thing which was the baked chicken and rice. We ordered two and started to feel lucky that they even had something as nice as baked chicken after all it could of been fried. Of about the eating places/stores/gas stations around the town I stay in all that sell food sell fried chicken. Most also sell fried fish and french fries which they call here chips.
As it is I also have been sick this week but I planning on feeling better soon. I know though that I have spent more time spent sick from colds and bronchitis in the last couple months than I did in a couple years before. Maybe it is the stress, maybe the altitude, who knows? After this goes away I am going to be healthy enough and it is going to be warm enough for me to start exercising and running so that should make me even that much stronger.
Love ya, jeff

September 6th 2002

2006-01-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Things are going well today. We are having a lot of rain which I gather for just about anywhere in Africa is something to celebrate about. Actually I am in a rainy season which I don't quite mind because I know if it was not regularly raining here it would be getting hot. I am sure not as hot as Oklahoma right now but still probably hot as it is though the rain makes for some nice spring time whether. I am only three weeks out of winter and from just a little bit of work in the garden on some sunny days already have a nice tan on my arms and face, I wonder just how dark I shall get after two years of 300 days of sunshine. I am guessing probably about as dark as my Grandpa Tom though who spends his summers in Oklahoma and winters in Arizona.

My garden is going to be quite a garden. This is really the first time I have had the time, tools, land, and desire to plant a garden that I can get enough food out of to eat a "good" meal basically on a daily basis just from the garden if I wish. So far I have started seeds for tomatoes, onions, radish, cabbage, carrots, and chili peppers. I in my garden already have from a previous renter of the duplex two rows of spinach and other spinach like plants. I have been considering also other plants but as of yet have not yet decided, there is talk though of maybe growing corn between a teacher at the school and me.

It is not going to be to hard being a vegetarian here in Lesotho. I am eating a lot of fish and eggs to make up for the protein. I do think even if I did want to eat meat I might not even do it. I have kind of been exposed to a practice here that we as Americans do not practice. It seems that when it comes to the meat much of it has not been butchered but just kind of died in the field, maybe of old age, maybe of disease, maybe of not getting enough to eat or drink, who knows. The deal is though they eat fallen animals and if I am going to eat meat I would prefer of course eating a healthy animal that was recently slaughtered. I have not observed them eating chickens that have died versus being slaughtered but I figure if they eat the fallen cows why not eat the chickens too. So I am not eating too much meat here and if I am it will be coming from South Africa where I would gather that kind of thing is regulated.

I think the eating of fallen animals has many factors surrounding it, one of which is that this is a third world country and there is a famine going on which means if there is food do not question where it came from just eat it. But another part of it is that because people are so poor here and cattle is so prized that if a person has a cow they like to keep it as a sign of wealth or something. It is not like in America where when most of the time after three or four years when a cow has reached a big enough size to butcher they butcher it unless someone is using it for breeding more cattle. Which is another point it really confuses me while some people have cows they are not too excited about breeding it. So basically they have this cow that is just eating there grass and they will flat out tell you "I will never sell it, or butcher it" but finally after many years of them not breeding it the cow finally dies and then they eat it now that the meat is old and tough and possibly even disease infected. I even have been so bold to ask some Basotho after they tell me that they have one cow "what do you do with it?". I ask because I want to know why someone would first of all just have one cow. I am thinking all you have to do is get it pregnant and then you have milk and another cow. But mainly I just get a confused look back from the owner of the one cow. Like they just have it to have it or something, they don't really do anything with them but they want them. It just does not make much sense to me. I can only relate in the way that some Americans might have antique couch or car. They don't really do anything with it and it is more of a sign of wealth than anything, except for the Americans of course don't eventually risk their health by some day eating their antique! I have also seen the Basotho eating horse and I can also gather that especially the horses have not been slaughtered but died of old age.

So anyway back to the point that my week has been going well. I have a job now and it is to tutor computer skills I work about three hours a day and that just might be enough to fill up another e-mail. So I shall talk to you all soon that is of course only if you call me love Jeff

September 2nd 2002

2006-01-16T19:19:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone, Things are acceptable here. I had a first mild success. I have after a day of clear blue skies my hot water got hot. It got so hot in fact that when I was doing my dishes that I actually got to mix the cold water with the hot water to get really warm water! I know that it might sound silly but as being a person that for over a month of cooking for myself to have running hot water for the first time did not upset me too much at all. On the other side I am not getting very good radio reception and while other people joke about it I am basically refusing to get a TV. I do kind of regret not getting that "clear channel" radio that is supposed to get really good reception versus the radio that I wind up. You know though a guy would much rather have a wind up radio that can be plugged up with lots of electricity to plug it into than a state of the art radio and no place to plug into.
One of the other volunteers I went and visited has a little square house made of stone with dung walls, a dung floor, and a grass roof with lots of insects and spiders. Her sqauredovel is not even as big as my living room. This kind of really makes feel special to have such a comfortable place to live. For her though as far as I can gather it is the worst place she has ever lived. Once the pest problem is stopped I am sure it can be livable and she should be fine and living in such a place can be a growing experience for her. Some of my feelings on the situation is as a person that has lived out of my car before I don't need anymore "learning experiences" with housing. It seems things are just fine for me in comfortable pest free housing with electricity and running water.
I still haven't started work and am in a after training before work transition still. So far people have been nice and it seems like quite a few of the volunteers are working together to plan parties. I would not of minded having a party but then again I right now am not to worried about it.
My telephone line seems to be up 011-266-2240-1198, but I won't know for sure until someone calls me :-) I also am planning on only checking my e-mail every other day because of the cost.
My garden is coming along. It is still not clear to the exact things that are to be planted. It does seem like it would be right to plant a variety of tomatoes, onions, carrots, peppers, and lettuce. Already in my garden are two rows of some types of spinach and radish. A person that lived here before must of planted these and they just continued to grow. The idea of being able to eat food basically that is growing out in the front lawn is really comforting to me and also might save me some money in the way of having to buy vegetables but there is only so much of these few things that it seems like a person would fancy eating. I am attaching a picture of some kids that use to play soccer. As mentioned before soccer is one of the main parts of the culture here. In the picture the kids and I are standing in the soccer field. As one can see it is a little ruff but that does not matter. I am serious when I say they would borrow the soccer ball from me almost every day and play if they could from early in the morning till it was dark. That field in front of the house became a regular meeting spot for the local kids sometimes five would be playing but often times very many would play. I bought that ball new and after three weeks of daily wear and tear they had completely worn it out. I am not sure if I before this had seen an abused soccer ball that worn out and they managed to do it in a mere three weeks. love, jeff

August 30th 2002

2006-01-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

Things are going fine here. My site is now officially for the next two years "my site" and my Peace Corps idea and passport has been issued to me. So what's it like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer? I am not sure yet. I do know that it seems like it will entail some ups and downs and many learning experiences. It might also be enlightening or a waste of two years figuratively speaking time will tell.
As I am saying training is over with and my work assignment here in Lesotho is now under way. So far things seem to be acceptable. I have a supervisor and a counterpart. The supervisor is my boss and the principle of the school. My counter part is named Me' Mahlampo. She is a teacher at the school theoretically she kind of shows me around and if I have questions about what it is like to be here in Lesotho or a teacher or this or that than she is the one I am supposed to go to. Also if there is any type of work that I am introducing and I want someone to carry on after I am gone than she would be the one I am to train how to do it. So theoretically she teaches me some things at the beginning of my stay and then I teach her some things at the end of the stay.
Every thing minus one box of mine has been moved here to my place. The exact location of the "missing" box is not exactly known but I am optimistic I shall get it back. The thing is I am not sure if it did not get loaded on the truck from the last place I was at or if it was then it just did not get unloaded off the truck. I would not mind if it was the latter of the two which means tomorrow I can walk to a friend of mines house and pick it up as it would of got mixed in with their stuff. Otherwise it could quite a while before I get that box back, it unfortunately has many papers in it too that I want. Not having a car and dealing with Peace Corps office means if I really needed something I just can't go and get something I forgot.
Like the mail, I am not sure if any one in the last couple of weeks has sent me any mail to my old address but if they have it might be at least another month before I get it but of course anyone sending mail to my address at

Jeff McDonald/ Tšepo
P/Bag C0020
Leribe 300, Lesotho
Southern Africa

will get right to me after of course the average two weeks it takes for me to get mail here. Anyway the cord I purchased to connect the computer to the phone line is in that box so for me to have sent this email out I either have found the box or not found it and decided to buy an additional cord.
These ladies at the school are just so excited to see me. At the end of two years if they are still just as happy and excited to see me when I walk into the teachers lounge I am going to have to change my thoughts and theories about a lot of things. It was amusing my last visit to the teachers lounge. As the days have now moved into a rainy season which almost all of Lesotho's rain for the year will be precipitated in the next month and a half it was kind of cool today. By no means the cold of winter we just came out of but definitely cool. I went into the lounge and the women were circled around the heater like a camp fire even bundled up in blankets. Generally speaking it seems like the Basotho on a whole are more sensitive to the cold than Americans. I shall have a hard time forgetting about the time I went and visited a school. I was wearing a thin long sleeve shirt with no jacket and slacks and had spent much of the day outside. I went an administrators office and a lady was bundled up in a blanket. Now that is not too bad but this lady had the heater on and I am serious when I say that the room was well into the ninety degrees. I just could not believe someone could keep the heater going. It reminds of a story of someone that when air conditioners first came out years ago that some people would turn them on and turn them on high just keeping them going as much as they could not really realizing that just because they had it does not mean they had to always use it. But this lady was doing the similar thing with an electric heater and after about five minutes in that room I was definitely ready to leave.
I am inclosing a picture it is of me by a waterfall by Roma where I was doing training. There is another waterfall as this one is small but the other one is supposed to be really impressive. You all might very well notice I have had a haircut and shave. I look like most of all remember me now but that shall probably change again soon enough.

As it is though I hope things are going well and I will talk to you soon. Love ya, Jeff

August 26th

2006-01-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, Yeah! I do have a new account in Lesotho. I purchased a years worth of internet unlimited access for 1400R or $140. It is nice to be paid up for a
year but the thing is I still have to pay the phone line at half a rand a minute which here is quite a bit of money. I am thinking on trying since I have a laptop to take it to the school and plug into their line if they let me. This is in part because if I did then maybe they would just pay the bill or if they did not then maybe at least it would be cheaper for me as their phone service might charge even almost as much as half as mine does. Also though it is still better than going to an internet cafe around here for one because I have a lot better computer than they do and for two because I get the whole bandwidth to myself which is only at max a 33k per second connection but is still better than before. I have been getting at least 30k per second on my counter most of the time which is fine. I am also supposed to have a land line soon. Actually by like September 3rd and maybe by late August. The number for my land line is theoretically is 011-266-22-401-198 or maybe if that does not work then 011-266-401-198.
To dial the cell phone the best I can tell is 011-266-873-9380 the other night someone called it and it did work so I feel like it must work. I do know it works with people calling me inside Lesotho which would work in case of emergencies. I also have found out about some kind of deal that can get a person some kind of cheaper phone rates to call here. The number is 1-800-986-6235 and is supposedly call Bell Talk Africa. If you called it I would be interested to know but supposedly many people here have it set up. It is supposed to have better rates than people have than using phone cards and much better than just dialing regularly.

Other than that I have been kind of just relaxing as I have finally had a couple days off now. I have done basically all my training and am just waiting for things to get along so I can have my final interview and swearing in and then of course a big party. As far as I am concerned I could just go to my site than go to some party where basically everyone except me is going to being drinking and almost all of which not only will be drinking but drinking quite a bit and shall be very drunk.

Actually people here have been drinking just about every night and for the most part I didn't mind it sometimes I get irritated but last night was well worth it as a very funny show was put on by two people that were drunk. Probably since coming here just about the funniest thing I have seen. All and all I was prepared for such things as I was told before coming in that as the trend goes Peace Corps volunteers like to drink and drink a lot.

It is really hard to explain how at times the land can be beautiful here. Sometime there are stretches of land that are almost pristine and beautiful. The stars here at night are really nice and are so vivid. On the other hand anywhere the people are there is a lot of trash. The trash and pollution here is definitely a downer. In town things are just dirty. And people just go the bathroom very often just wherever they are. It is a common thing to see a person just relieving themselves here or there so there is the smell in the cities that one sometimes does not like. This is in part because people here have only had the idea of toilets introduced on a wide scale for about twenty years and it is just slow to change. On thing that is even weirder is people will actually go right up to the out house and then squat on the ground so especially when walking near the out houses one needs to be careful where stepping. It just does not make sense though that a person would walk all the way to the out house only to not use it. Why? and no toilet paper either. It is just not how I was raised. But like I was saying besides the trash and the human waste laying around that one finds anyplace people are the land is very pristine. This is a reason I like going to South Africa.

In thirty minutes I can be in South Africa where there is no trash, people speak fluent English, where cars are a normal part of life with lots of roads, and just a general western attitude about things. I am supposed to be going the day after tomorrow for some shopping so I probably will enjoy the break from the third world atmosphere. It really amazes me too that I can be living and surviving in one of the poorest most undeveloped countries and then thirty minutes later be in a city that a person would recognize as totally developed and doing fine.

The picture is of me on top of Thaba Bosiou. It has a lot of history, when I went up there I drank water right out of a mountain spring. It tasted great and I did not even get sick. Also those green plants that are as tall as me are aloe and they get very big. The tall tree things are something that grows here but I do not know very much about what they are but that they grow tall for a weed. If you also look you can see some of the grass is burnt even on the most "sacred" mountain is Lesotho people still burn the grass. I really would not mind if they would stop burning the grass but it is part of the culture. The people many of which are convinced that the grass will grow back better if it is burnt are mistakenly burning as much as possible where it is actually on good for the grass if it is burned once every many years. Some of the other people a lot of which are kids like to burn it just to burn it.

Well I should talk with many of you soon on my new phone. Love ya, Jeff

August 22nd

2006-01-16T19:17:00.000-08:00

Hi, Finally training to be a Peace Corp volunteer is reaching a conclusion point. I left Oklahoma June 15 and should be an official volunteer by August 29. This last eleven weeks has been definitely busy with business starting early and ending late. I spent much of my free time either writing home via computer or letters or just napping as much as possible. I actually am at my site and am pleased to be here and no longer with the group of trainees. I feel like I am moving on.

I compared to other volunteers I have mentioned had been given a "good stroke of luck" figuratively speaking. As mentioned I am staying in a two-bedroom duplex. Let me first say though that some of the other volunteers are in basic accommodations consisting of on roomed "round or square huts" with grass roofs with no electricity, running water, or plumbing. Their places are furnished with one bed, one, gas stove, and one gas heater. My place first of all has electricity, running water and plumbing. My place has a kitchen and in it is found a four top gas stove with oven, a stainless steel sink, refrigerator, covert for storage of pots, pans, and food. My living room has in it the kitten table that is coming with five chairs, a book shelf, and additional covert for storage, and a comfortable long couch (which I am sitting on while writing this). The bathroom is a small bathroom with toilet, sink and bathtub. I do not have as of yet a shower but have had ideas about making a make shift shower with hose and a bucket. One bedroom is furnished with a wardrobe with a place to hang clothes and shelves to store items. The other bedroom has a similar wardrobe and a small bed. My place is about 24 ft by 23 feet or about 550 square feet. It is by no means huge but for a person whose bulk of possessions were able to fit into two bags and a backpack it has a nice open feeling almost even bare feeling. One strange thing is that the living room, and bedrooms all have vents in them as is common in Lesotho. The vents in buildings are metal grills about the size of a cement block and allow air to circulate from inside to outside. As I mentioned these are very common in Lesotho I have of yet to figure out just why though most of the building have vents in the walls unless it has something to do with keeping things cool in the summer time but in the winter time it is really quite a nuisance. In some places with the gaps around the windows and doors and the vents in some houses with all the windows and doors closed one can actually still feel a draft. It right now just does not make sense to me.

I also have a different system for hot water. I actually having been residing here for over 24 hours am still waiting on the hot water. I apparently have a hot water solar panel. This of course needs sun and it has been cloudy and rainy. There was a little bit of warm water when I arrived yesterday but it has been cold since. I do believe though that I shall have hot water maybe even by tomorrow. If not I can just heat the water on the stove for a bath. As Lesotho is supposed to have 300 days of sunshine a year and so far I believe it I am not as yet too worried about it. I am also suppose to be getting a phone soon as my duplex is wired for a phone and the previous volunteer had a phone. With this of course I am planning on trying to get wired into the Internet.

My connection shall only be a 33k per second but for a third world country with 99.5% of the people here I am estimating not having internet I am feeling fine with it. Actually excluding the Macintoshes at the Peace Corps head quarters and other volunteers that brought computers I have what seems to be one of the nicest computers in the country which by American standards is still good but starting to get old but by Lesotho standards is actually nicer than any of the computers they are selling in the stores here. I am under the impression that the computers here in the stores for the most part are hand me down computers from the U.S, Asia, and Europe that have been refurbished. Even my old computer which was a hand me down computer from my brother which now would probably be five years old at least if I did not sell it to a buddy for $25 is nicer than most of the computers they are selling here as new.

I have already me one of my neighbors who introduced himself as Mr.

Abraham an he seems to me to be Pakistani by ethnicity, he shares the other side of the duplex with me and it seems like the wall that we share while being made of stone is actually quite capable of letting sound come through.

The walls of the building are all made of cement block and the ceiling seems to be like a dry wall type of material, the floor is linoleum tile like is often found in public building in America. All my widows are equipped with bugler bars and the door equipped with a burglar door. There also is a bob-wired fence around Mr. Abraham's and mine's duplex. Last night I also met Ntate Maholo which is his real name but translated into English is Mr. Big. He is about 5' 5" and probably ways about 110 pounds.

He is though for a Basotho man about normal size or just a little bit small.

The Basotho men here are not as compared to American men very big. As it is though Ntate Maholo is the night guard who apparently has been hired by the school to watch the school and the other residence that live on the school compound with me. He seemed very nice but spoke little English so before I can really talk with him I shall have to take more Sesotho classes.

I have been explained to that one of my neighbors will be able to tutor me in Sesotho as my language skills are only basic. As far as what I am going to do while I am here it still has yet to be determined. Some possibilities that have been discussed include, Teaching English or teaching computer skills. Setting up a system to take pictures of the people employed by St.

Mary's and making idea cards. Doing general administrative work and working in the community on various projects. I kind of get the impression though that I actually may not be doing much but then again will probably be as busy as I want to be.

I find it very ironic that I gave up almost everything to become a volunteer and have found myself in the middle of a situation where my house is now a lot nicer in a better neighbor hood and am now treated well and respected in the community. Oh well :-)

Yes it is kind of sad being away from America. I feel often times loneliness and isolation but at the same time feel like this experience is going to be better for me.

One thing that is kind of different though is there is no place to but your trash so the new modo is "if you can't burn it then smash it" I am serious, I mean this is what it seems like everyone else here does as there is no public system around here for disposing of trash. So I am actually trying to reuse things and make the most of them with out being too wasteful. I feel kind of bad burning my trash but should probably feel worse for having so much in the first place.

It seems like my radio stations at my site have been significantly reduced though. While I can pick up some stations I am no longer picking up the BBC and the one music station that I feel like I like and have been able to turn into is really fuzzy. The plan though is once the rest of my stuff is brought out here to my site which includes aluminum foil I can then put foil around the antenna to boost the reception. I have already seen that this works and might have some music and news to listen to after a while. There is radio stations here that speak Sesotho which I basically just recognize but can't understand, Afrikaner which I do not understand, French which I recognize parts of but do not really understand and of course English which what I feel really for now the intercontinental language and fastly I feel becoming the language of the world. One note though is often times I heard people talking about something called "Voice of America" which obviously deals with news that is important in the United States. I was with patience able to tune it in fuzzy and then walk around my residence for a few minutes trying to place it in different places until I found a place to put if for better reception, yeah! Don't let the name Voice of America fool you though it apparently is broadcast from Africa using African reporters with heavy African accents. I feel like now if I can The Voice of America, the BBC, and a quality music station or even two than I should be all right with my radio listening choices.

Most if not almost all of the Basotho here speak a very little English but for also most that is all the English they speak like I feel my Sesotho after two months is better than most of their English. In addition it is like a common dream that most of the Basotho have in common to go to the United States. I feel like they really do not exactly know what it is like to actually be in the United States and while I agree it is probably all around a better place to live it is not a magic land. Basotho when they talk seem to talk about America like it is many times better in every possible way compared to Africa. It seems like to the Africans that not only the grass is greener in America but it is the most perfect grass that has or ever will be grown. In fact with a few exceptions of soccer, rain, and getting something for free the most excited I have seen many of the Basotho is when they talk about someday going to America.

Again I want to emphasize that time here somehow works differently. It was my very first day here as a resident in my place and the next day some kind of walk was taking place and one of the Basotho was inviting me to take place in the walk. I agreed and he told me a strange thing for a westerner to hear. He told me basically, "Tomorrow we are going to a walk in a place outside of town, I will need to pick you up and drive you there, it is supposed to start about 8:00 AM so we can be there in time I will pick you up at 8:00 AM." Now I was told to watch out for this that the Basotho will be late for many things but this kind it seems to me is not even trying to be on time and in fact if it starts at eight and wants to pick me up at eight is going to make us obviously late. In addition the next morning when about half past eight when I was picked up everything seemed fine. No one seemed rushed that it starts at eight and it is already half past. This is just normal here and is among one of the differences I shall try to get use to but not necessarily adopt.

Day Three of My Site Visit:

Today the weather was much better finally the sun came out and the weather was very fair. I was able to do some errands and shopping today. One thing I was able to do was be able to buy and install light fixtures. While I had electricity and lights before it was kind of like just a wire hanging from the ceiling with a sleeve attached to the wire to put the light bulb in.

Well I felt like having a light bulb just hanging from the ceiling was tacking and also hurt my eyes. Barring the idea that I could just go into town and buy a halogen lamp :-) I decided to but the light fixture. The light fixture and light bulb that came with it (but one burnt out already) was only twenty rand or two American dollars a piece. So I bought a couple and installed them. Because of the way things were I still have a wire just hanging from the ceiling but then it runs into the fixture so I guess that is better.

I tried to get a telephone today. They told me to come back later, when I came back later they told me to come back tomorrow. I had a lot more luck at the post office though. While there I got something called a P/bag which is basically the same thing as a PO Box while the P/bag is bigger it can only be checked from inside the post office. I am not sure why exactly I got a P/bag instead of a PO Box but it is fine with me. It has a disadvantage that I will have to actually go into the post office each time to check my mail instead of using my key to open the box but I guess that is one less key. It seems like the lady at the Post Office maybe just wanted to talk with me but on the other hand there was when I was looking at the other P/bags only one space open which is the one I got so maybe somehow they are better. I decided since there was only one opening for the P/bags and she said she was giving it to me like I was special to just act like it was a neat thing and that I appreciated while inside I wonder now why am I getting a P/bag when I wanted a PO Box. It is not a big deal that the post office has to be open because they have regular hours on Monday through Friday and half a Day on Saturday. As it is I would not be out at night anyway and would most of the time be checking my mail during the day as it is.

I was able to purchase a cell phone today. It is a Nokia and is so big and bulky that if I saw someone in the USA with a phone this big I would of probably wondered why they had a phone so big and old especially when they just give away phone that are better than that. In fact I threw away three phones before I left all of which were better than this one. oh well. I am

still not too sure about all the details but I do know that it cost me four hundred rand which is of course forty American dollars which was basically the last of the money I brought with me. For my four hundred rand I get the phone and a entire year of unlimited incoming calls, unlimited voicemail, and unlimited voicemail retrieval. In addition there was a limited amount of call time, maybe like about ten minutes worth of calling out to other people in Lesotho. If I want to call out more on the cell phone the deal is they want me to buy more prepaid cards. I have got the phone mainly just for emergencies for people to call me on. The catch is my phone works kind of like a nine hundred number. If someone is calling me it really cost them a lot of money but does not cost me beyond what I have already paid anything. For someone to call me in Lesotho it cost them about three rand a minute or thirty cents a minute for someone to call me and from the US as far as I can gather so far it should costs about two dollars a minute which means I am not expecting too many calls from the US on my cell phone. I am curious though if that is really how much it would costs even though this was basically explained to me when I bought the phone I do not really consider the information a reliable source.

I was also able to purchase a coffee table today. Peace Corps basically gave me some money which they called a "settling in allowance" this is for the people I mentioned before that only had a bed, stove, and heater. My money is going towards a phone, coffee table, and internet. Tomorrow after trying to get the phone I plan to check on seeing about the internet. I have a feeling that there is no place here in town to get internet but I do know it is possible to get because some of the volunteers in my class that live about ten minutes away from me walking have replaced some other volunteers that had internet. I also am supposedly supposed to teach some computer literacy to the teachers. Maybe I can get some of my internet subsidized by the school then.

As it is I am starting to have an idea about how I ended up at this assignment. Well it seems about a quarter of the volunteers brought computers and more are planning on buying computers but the rest of us brought laptops. But out of the seven people in vocational only two of us brought laptops and I made it known that I brought one. Actually during one of the interviews or maybe all of them I kind of slipped in that I had a nice laptop that I brought so I just needed a place with electricity having heard that someone in the class before said basically the same thing and got electricity. So if I can put one and one together it would seem that me telling them how important my using my computer was they figured I would be "the right man for the job" here. This makes sense after today the principal of the school told the group of teachers that she requested someone with computer skills to come here. So as it is it seems like I am here to teach computers and as it is English.

Anyway I know I am writing a lot now but that is because everything seems now seems so new and exciting with my situation changing on a daily basis.

I am obviously adding words to this e-mail when I have free time which since coming to my site I have had a lot more of. Maybe I should be studying my Sesotho for my test but it seems like the people are already very impressed with how well I speak it. I have also for the first time in training had what I consider to be real time to myself and time to do things like write e-mail. I get the feeling in six months my e-mail will be like. Well not much is new here, I am just kind of doing the same thing everyday as I have for the last couple of months, see you all later. Anyway even when that

comes though I should still have some pictures that I can be sending. The

one I am trying to attach is one of me and some of the kids in the village that I was doing training in. I tried to send it before but had some technical difficulties with hotmail.

I also was given another name today. My new African name is Tsepo. I guess it is Tsepo McDonald for all I know or I can just be T?epo kind of like Madonna or Prince or Cher. :-) As it is Tsepo is pronounced basically Tsae-poe, it is more complicated than that but I through an email do not right now want to explain it. The ts sound is like the ts sound pronounced in pizza or eats. My name means "hope". This apparently for a while and probably for two years should be the last time I really have to change names. As it is though I have kind of always liked the name hope and kind feel like being known as a hope is acceptable.

Day Four of Sight Visit

Today I just did a lot of shopping. I was in town again today to try to get a phone and they told me it would be a while I am not really sure just how long it will take to get a phone. I do know that while talking to someone today they told me there was a computer store in town. I want to go and check it out but I am not sure if it will have an internet cafe actually I kind of doubt it will but it very well might. I do know I had visited one town even smaller than this one that had an internet cafe.

I tried looking in many shops today to get some adaptations to make my sink better all I would of needed was some hose of the right size and then cut it to length. I thought that this would be an easy task but it would appear that in Lesotho in my district a person can not just buy hose. The seem to have garden hose and that is about it. So it looks like I will have to wait till I get to South Africa sometime to get the things I wanted today also one thing I wanted was a shower curtain. While many people were very familiar with the idea of a shower curtain once I explained it to them not a single person had an idea of a place in town about where to get one.

Town is pretty neat, when I am saying town I am mainly referring to one strip that is about a block long and is considered downtown. I live about a five to ten minute walk from the strip and going there it is all up hill at a fair incline but I would rather the incline be on the way there versus on the way back when my hands are full. It has a paved road on it and cars do drive on it but it is really mostly people walking as cars are kind of a major luxury here. There are a lot of people pushing wheel barrels with items they bought. The main stores are consisting of about three big grocery stores about as big as a neighborhood grocery in America or maybe even half as big as an Albertsons with more than enough food and variety a person can eat just fine but maybe not everything one wants. They also have about five small groceries on the strip. There are about ten furniture stores. And about fifteen clothing and shoe stores. It is also the location of the electric and phone company both of which here also seem to be a hassle to deal with even more than in America and a post office. There is also two banks and two butchers in town one of which has quite an extensive variety of meats. Now in front there is about eight feet of walking space and then the street vendors are set up. These are mainly selling fruits and vegetables that are home grown and other small merchandise that appears to either be made or "have fallen of a truck" which is slang for stolen off of a semi before it could deliver it to a store.

Then in the paved road many people are walking around well people are just walking around quite a bit as it is and then there are of course the beggars and even one street performer that is playing an accordion. I have to say though that the blind street beggars here sometimes really are blind is about as apparent as it can be as they do not have any eyes. An idea in my head is from an Indiana Jones movie. It is just kind of like that. It seems in each of the movies it does not matter which one Indiana at some point always found himself in some kind of market place in a third world country usually he is lost it seems like and no one around speaks English.

For me it is not seemingly that bad though and maybe sometime if I am brave enough to flash my camera I can get a picture of it so you all can see just what bustling commerce third world country style in Africa is like. :-)

There really is so much more to write like how the bo-me which just means a group of married women, they want me to marry their daughters. Adventures in taxis. How the little kids yell out "layhoa" which means white person, this by the way is not necessarily a negative thing for them to do. It is just something they do. What the plants and animals are like here. About how I got a house keeper to come at least once a week and do all my laundry for fifteen dollars a month. Just generally how things are but I am starting to feel like I need not be writing a book here and can probably write more at another time. Jeff

August 15th

2006-01-16T19:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Everyone

I have been told that problems have been occurring when sending mail to my jabo###@hotmail.com address. It seems like this is in part because when I don't check my e-mail for over a few days that my account fills up. It seems like when it fills up that they do not let me accept anymore e-mails.

I right now am very limited in what I can do about this but am eventually planning on changing things over to another email account very possibly the jabo38###@yahoo.com which anyone can also send mail to now if they please even though it is not my main account I still use it and check it. It will probably be at least a month maybe two before I will be able to really resolve how I am going to switch out of hotmail. Two reasons for me to switch out of hotmail is that it is significantly slower than other e-mail like yahoo and has a smaller mail box and accepts considerably more spam.

Other happenings have to do with the electricity going out. It has been very unreliable the last few days with the power only coming on a few times for short bursts. I am confident that since this last time it came on it might lasts for a while though. It is kind of funny that when the power goes out in America everything stops but here in Africa since electricity is still so knew and most people don't have it anyway when it goes out not really much stops. People just keep on going on about there business what little they were doing anyway if they even had business.

I did get to go to South Africa today. Another guy and I were going to get hair cuts but it turned out to be a chance to go to the Internet and do some "quality" South African shopping. I almost don't like to admit it but it sure was nice to go someplace not so desperate. Lesotho is so destitute and the lives of people so poor here it can be quite depressing and it was nice to see a nice little clean town with a working economy and people on a large scale living a life to be considered a good one. It was also nice to see the style of businesses, roads, cars, clothes, and even attitudes in the people that one typically finds in the West. I am really feeling like I am getting a choice assignment here. It is like when I get tired of the poverty of a third world culture and the ways that I don't feel are right with the Basotho culture I can take a thirty minute taxi ride (which is a short ride for here) and be eating, walking, shopping, and relaxing in a westernized city. I really did not know how good it would feel to get to see that again until it actually happened today. Anyway back to the point which is I did not get my hair cut because the two places we went to were still busy. As it is though I not to upset about having to got to do a little shopping, hanging out at a coffee shop, and going to an Internet cafe.

You know though I think they are finally about through giving us most of our shots. We have got so many shots that I feel like my immune system should be really boosted up. I was even part of a conversation the other day when one volunteer said to another, "man, I have got so many shots my immune system is so strong that I think if a dog bit me that it would get cured of rabies" haha. In actuality I have only been given fourteen inoculations with two more to go some of which did not hurt but some of which did. I know some of which include, yellow fever, typhoid, rabies, hepatitis A and B, meningitis, flue, measles, mumps, and rubella. Just to clear things up I have not been given any medicine for malaria but if at any time I do any real traveling to any other countries besides South Africa I am to be given medicine for it.

I was asked how my radio is doing. It seems like me bringing my solar powered or wind up radio was definitely a good idea. It has so far been very useful. I mainly listen to only two different radio stations. The main is the BBC Africa I listen too. It is to me not quite as good as the regular BBC is actually quite nice, but quite often repeats the same programming over and over. They also report some stories that I am just not sure of like Boeing is doing experiments with anti-gravity technology. That a scientist in the USA can with in ten years put chips into people's heads to give them extra-sensory cyborg like senses, and often a new core for this and that like today they are reporting that soon there will be a vaccine for malaria. Anyway all of which might be true but are for me to be taken with a grain of salt. The other station I listen to is an African music station that plays music from around the world with every few songs being one from America they play a range from Elton John (yeah I know he is British but he is popular in America), Eminem, Will Smith, Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Dido, and more. They do also play some South African music to that is fine but most of the stuff from around the world to me seems elementary and decades behind American music.

As it is though I am going to be busy during the next week and may or may not have access to the Internet or phone so I am not sure how my communication availability will be. This is because I am going to my actual site to stay for a couple of days and then am back to training for some final classes and testing and if everything goes fine my actual ceremony to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

Love ya Jeff

August 13th 2002

2006-01-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone

Things have been quite different here. Training is coming to an end and I have now been able to come back to stay with the nuns after having finished my fourth week in village living. So here is something. How long do you think Spring lasts here in Africa? Well it apparently lasts two weeks.

hehe. No I am seriously in two weeks we went from to the 30's and 40's of winter to the 80's of summer. I obviously haven't yet well adjusted but am glad to not so cold anymore. So all of you in Oklahoma thinking how hot it is it is now for me still not as hot as it is for you but seems really hot just coming out of winter.

Village life was kind of neat. You all know that I was living with out indoor plumbing, electricity and all that stuff. It was kind of like a four week camping trip. At first it was fun and then it was really bad but finally I just kind of use to it and it felt kind of normal. Knowing that my future sight though is supposed to have electricity, plumbing and maybe even my own personal phone does not make me really upset though. The assignment itself is at Saint Mary's which is a girls vocational school which is in Hlotsa, Leribe which is similar to a state capital. Hlotsa being the capital city and Leribe being one of the ten states in Lesotho. I am also about a twenty minutes taxi ride from a South African city called Ficksburg which basically has lots of the things I have grown accustomed to in America.

The truth is that I am actually not too upset about being released from village life. I feel like I was kept really busy and that I did not know quite how to make it all work. We had Sesotho class daily and then technical sessions in the afternoon and then when coming home I had a lot of visitors. On a slow night I would have about five visitors just dropping by and on a busy night upwards to twenty people could come by. I was actually living a celebrity type life except for all the money and stuff. Really I could not even often times make that walk to the outhouse with out someone wanting to talk to me. Invariably they would end up asking me "who is your mother?" "where do you live" and "what time is it in America?" In two weeks I seriously was asked each of these questions probably at least fifty times.

I am serious. I explained to that over the next couple of years I am probably to be asked "what state I am from and city?" like they would really know the difference between Oklahoma and LA but they still want to know. I will probably be asked these questions hundreds of times by complete strangers and people I know.

I have already been so changed for my experience in Africa, I really feel like I needed this experience to become the person who I am to be. While the human experience differs in Lesotho from the experience in Oklahoma most of the main points still overlap. Although the people here on an evolutionary terms of thinking and living seem to be progressing far behind America. The villages are physically like the Wild Wild west. But peoples ideas and beliefs are a lot like the 40's or 50's in America. It is really letting me get an idea of "what" happened when and the natural progression of things. But this aside I am far from understanding the Basotho way of life and seeing it as a Basotho if I ever will.

The schedule has me staying in the city called Roma with the nuns. Ah yes, no cooking, cleaning, or laundry. You know in America it is a lot easier to do these things. In the village this means first of all these things I need water, and that means either talk someone into getting it for me or taking the bucket down to the pump and getting the water in a bucket.

Laundry by hand is definitely quite a bit more difficult. I won't go into it but it is not quite like in the USA putting the clothes in a machine and pressing a button. Even doing the dishes are so much more difficult. I have to heat up the water wash all the dishes in soapy water. Next dump my water clean the plastic tub I was using and then make another batch of water to rinse the dishes that still have soap on them off. It takes two hours in the morning to get up get dressed, cook and eat breakfast, do the dishes and then do minimal self-hygiene cleaning which is a fancy way of saying "sponge bath" since obviously there is no American style showers or baths. You all should see this thing I am supposed to bath in. It is like a big bucket and some how the expected me to take a bath in it. I tried to get into it one time even with out the water and was having a lot of problems. And even worse was some of the out house stories. I think right now I won't say to much and just leave that topic alone.

On a light note I told everyone they had to leave the house the other day I thought I was telling them because I wanted to do laundry only later did I find out that I told them they had to leave because I wanted to vomit. Oh well :-) that kind of thing is bound to happen when someone is learning a language. I actually have probably said a lot worse than that though.

The picture in the attachment is of some village kids. Like I mentioned over half of the population is under 25 years old hear so there is a large amount of kids many of which do not have parents or have very little parental supervision. But the kids were really nice to me and were often the ones that would help me out or explain things to me as many of them have been learning English in school.

The idea of free public school has just caught on now in Lesotho up until grade seven. Right now they have integrated free school up till third grade but are currently working on a system to work up to the seventh. So in a few years many more of the kids will be able to speak English quite a bit better as English is the official language of the country and of the schools though a small percentage of the people here can speak it fluently.

As it is I love y’all and shall get back to everyone soon. Jeff

July 24th 2002

2006-01-16T19:14:00.001-08:00

Hope things are going okay here. I have been doing village life. First of all it has been cold. Really cold, every morning I look out the window and even though I keep the heater going all night I can still my breath in the morning it is so cold and I am inside the house. Other inconveniences include no running water, electricity, plumbing including toilettes, and phones. Life is made a little bit more inconvenient by the village superstition that a person cannot have more than one light per room. So for instance I can only have one candle going. If I need to use the flashlight then I have to blow out the candle. There are other superstitions too, like not being able to hang laundry between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM so all laundry is taken off the lines at ten and put back on at one. I am also not allowed to draw water after sunset or to light the candle until it is really necessary because it is so dark.

Something that is exciting to me is that I have been able to also been given a new name. I am now called Tanki Liphole. Which is actually pronounced Die-een-key Dee-poe-loe. If you wonder how is not said maybe sometime I can explain the name of the village which Mahloenyeng which by all means to the traditional English speaker is unpronounceable but if I were to try to explain how it is pronounced it would be something like Mah-shlway-nya-nng!

I have had so much of a time in this small African village. The house I stay in is despite not having modern amenities has nice walls, and floor, but a tin roof ceiling. I am really having nice luck to have it my nearest Peace Corp neighbor has been staying in a round hut with a grass ceiling, dung floor and lots of bugs. I am becoming able to put together very simple sentences in the Sesotho language. The villagers though find me quite funny with my accent and even when they speak English their accent is hard for me to understand.

No one should worry about my health now though. I am getting so much better. I also feel like I currently have the best health care right now than I have ever had as far as once I actually get to a hospital. Of course the local clinic is often far away but I think I will be all right it is a little uncomfortable knowing help is just picking up the phone and it will be there in five minutes. I have also been vaccinated with so many shots for so many things.

I do now think I might get a cell phone. So many people here have them and what I found out is like for between thirty to fifty dollars I can get a phone that has prepaid time on it that will last a year. The catch on the deal is that I can only make so many calls and really just local ones, I really need to go to a payphone with a calling card for it to be efficient to call but if I got a cell phone then people from the US could call me and I could talk as long as I wanted with out being charged. Actually I am not too sure though if all this is accurate information and I will really have to find out more about it later on from a reliable source but is seems that basically the cell phones here are like the land lines in America where a person can receive as many calls as they like but there is only charges for outgoing calls.

Anyway village life was nice. Now I am in transit to another cite where a Peace Corp volunteer is and has been for a while, someone to figuratively speaking "show me the ropes". I am going to another small village with a volunteer. I will be spending some of the night in one of those round huts with a grass roof. It will only be for a few days and apparently it is nice enough for my host to live in so it will probably nice enough for me even if I am supposed to sleep on the floor at night.

My sleeping bag is still one of the most important things I have brought.

It keeps me warm at night. There was one night though that my heater ran out of gas. By design it should have lasted the whole time but they were not planning on us keeping them on all night. They actually told us not to but it was just so cold those first few nights and I kept on turning it off later and then back on earlier that I just started leaving it on all night.

Anyway one night my heater was not running because I had run low on propane and even then I just put a blanket over my sleeping bag and cinched the sleeping bag hood on my head and was basically warm. The big problem was that the air was still like twenty-five degrees though and I was having a lot of difficulty trying to sleep breathing air that cold even if the rest of me was warm.

The population here has been devastated by HIV. The closest house next to me not owned by my adoptive family had two people die that lived there during the two weeks I was staying. There are actually more people in the country under the age of twenty five then there are over twenty five so here just by age alone I get some status just because I am older than most of the people here. It is really apparent in the villages. There are just so many kids many of which have no parents at all and are being taken care of by a relative. I really don't feel like I will really know how to "do the right thing" here it is just so terrible. I am just planning on what doing what feels right. To make it worse there is a lot of substance abuse. There are a few things here that are a way of life. Farming is a way of life, being Basotho is a way of life with the traditions and beliefs that are unquestionable, and apparently among almost all the men and some of the women smoking pot is a way of life. It is almost like even walking outside seriously one just can constantly smell the smell of it in the air.

Supposedly it is the countries number one moneymaker from growing it and selling it to South Africa.

The picture I have enclosed is of girls that are often near my house. Yes the women here really do carry things on there heads. It is a daily thing to see a women carry a bucket with water in it on her head with no hands on it. It is a skill that they really practice a lot. The women also wrap their children in a blanket that is wrapped also around them so they carry their baby in the way Americans carry a backpack. The people here also wear blankets. Lots of blankets everyone here it seems like but us volunteers wraps up in blankets instead of coats.

I have been told more about my site that I will be going to that it will be in a Campton and that I will have electricity unlike most of the people in my class. I should also have some kind of limited access to Internet in one way or another. I hope everything is going well for everyone and I send light and love, Jeff

July 5th 2002

2006-01-16T19:14:00.000-08:00

This is almost for sure for a while my last e-mail. Sunday morning I am off to the village. There I will be living in my own little place. It may or may not be directly connected to a host families house but it will be my private place with my own private entrance. So far it sounds like quite an experience.

The two weeks will be spent doing the things that the rural traditional Basotho do. It is the plan to learn how to cook traditional food, steam bread made from scratch, wash my clothes by hand, bath and cook with water that was carried by bucket to my living quarters, learn to live without a toilet, electricity, and so much more. It is like in a way going back in time to the middle ages. I relish the idea knowing that even Lesotho one of the worlds most undeveloped countries in the world will still be developed enough that in thirty years I predict this "old way" of living will be all but to a few gone away. I relish the idea because I got to experience it.

What those who came before me lived like on a community scale. Yes I really believe that on an evolutionary view of the world that the last of the communities of the people that still lived in an unmodernized world are fastly disappearing and all but too soon will be gone. I feel like this is figuratively speaking "the last chance" for someone to experience such a way of life.

As much as I am going on about this experience it is only going to last for about two weeks. After that I get to see the site that has been made ready for me that I may reside there for two years. I have today been able to receive additional information about the place I might be assigned too.

The information is a preliminary scale of information but it seems like it won't be as primitive as the village I am getting ready to stay in. In fact from what I understand my counterparts for the most part are going to be in rural areas with non of the modern amenities where as I will be in a "camptown" which is what would be the equivalent of a state capital in the United States. Basically there are about ten providences in Lesotho and each one has a camptown which is like the providences main operating city.

It is the place that has more of the shops, phones, indoor plumbing, electricity, libraries, and modern style communities. So I have already been told that I will have electricity and regular access to a phone. I am speculating that I might not have running water but will not have to go far to fetch it and while I have not heard really of to many people having showers in their places especially the rest of the people not in my group but in my class but I might have a community shower nearby that can be accessed. I also while having not heard any official word on it nor talked to any other volunteers that have told me they have managed it, I plan on getting internet access. Far as I can tell if I have a phone I can regularly use that maybe I can sign up for dial up and be able to get on-line occasionally! Of course it might not be a daily thing like I use to get on before but maybe like twice a week or so for an hour.

As it is missing America is something for me at the time is not going to just go away. You all which have move around before which is almost all of you should have some idea of what it is like to move away.

On the good news the health care here at least so far is phenomenal.

Anything these doctors say goes. To put it in perspective the doctors are like the supreme court of the Peace Corps. The directors might make decisions about this and that but anytime the doctors want to overrule anything then everyone is subservient to them. They seem to be absolutely eager to help out in any way. They prescribed some new pill for me to take for the asthma once a night. This new pill has totally cleared up all signs of asthma and even made it so I don't really snore so much at night.

Unfortunately I had developed a bad case of bronchitis and a cold that still has be down. The cold should be gone by a week but the bronchitis might stay as long as it is cold which will be a couple months but will eventually go away I suspect. Also three of the four places where the wisdom teeth have basically healed up with the fourth one coming along really well now.

I suspect that in a couple of weeks it will be finally healed! That same spot has bothered me now for like four years and I am glad this is the last of it and I can figuratively speaking "see the end of it".

We went shopping today in Maseru the capital city. Everything went really well. I was basically allotted 450 rand for my spenditure and bought everything I needed it seems like except for my cooking ware for about that much. I was the only one that bought cast iron cook ware where as everyone else bought aluminum pots and pans. Most of you know I don't cook on aluminum anyway and I had no plans to change.

Other than that things are well, I send light and love Jeff

July 3rd 2002

2006-01-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone Happy 4th, we obviously don't really celebrate it here so get one in for me. Things here are coming along. The thing is my asthma has acted up. More than that I have a cold and bronchitis. After going to the doctor though I have been given a new medicine and my capacity for breathing has been at least doubled.

Other than that I have been given some preliminary information about where my assignment will be and it will not be in the mountains and there is a fair chance it might be in one of the bigger cities here in Lesotho. Be it so it won’t be like two years of camping. Some of the modern amenities might be able to be acquired including the net.

I am learning some differences in culture. One is that the food her is
not on much of a rotation. It is decently prepared food but it is just the same old stuff basically three times a week. Another thing is that girls are looking good the fatter they are here. So it is actually quite common to here a guy tell a girl “you are so fat, I love you.” Another is that the Basotho don’t really ever say no. They just always kind of say yes and then do as they please. And a last thing is that time here is really the way things are organized but is more of a suggestion about when things should take place. Oh. Another thing is that the women are property kind of here.

The man buys the wife from her parents at the wedding and then she is his, what a difference!

I had a couple of questions about the rand. Basically everything is priced the same here but we spend rand. So like a soda costs 1 rand instead of 1 dollar. But the catch is that I can get 10 rand for 1 American dollar because of the exchange rate. So really everything is like 1/10 the amount.

This also goes for my pay too

Good news about me being sick is that we got rid of the gas heater and now have an electric heater. This allows me to sleep better now that it is no longer 30-40 degrees in my room during the night!

Anyway as I mentioned earlier we are starting to prepare for going to the villages next week to see how the country folk live. Apparently it is quite different from the city people. The place I am going for a couple of weeks is not my permanent cite. I should though have a host family that is helping to fend for myself.

As it is I feel like going I will talk again as soon as possible. I have heard that there is some possible problems about my address. It is

Jeff McDonald PCV

Peace Corps\ Lesotho

PO Box 554

Maseru 100, Lesotho