After One Year

It’s been a year since we arrived in Lesotho.  Half the volunteers that were here when we arrived have moved on, and others have come to take their place.  At the midpoint of Peace Corps (somehow etending just doesn’t seem that likely), it’s worth a little party, and a little looking back on the year.  I’ve been trying to spend the last few days thinking about the lessons leared and (in good NGO speak) the way forward.  After a year, mostly I’m just tired. Between frustrations with culture, difficulties with the politics of NGOs, and tired of the cold (I found out this week someone stole my heater from my house some time over the summer).

I’m going on an extended vacation, the first since Christmas, and the first time I’ve taken more than a week off since I got here.  I’ll be ending up on the beach in Mozambique, enjoying the sand, surf, and seafood with a few other volunteers.  The one year slump seems to be pretty general, so I’m hoping by the time I get back I’ll have pushed past it.

Most of you have heard this in one way or another, but for those that haven’t, CRS is in the process of leaving Bobete.  The project here was slated for three years, which they have now exceeded.  The staff has been cut down, and the project is now mostly concerned with the question of sustainability after it phases out entirely.  The results so far have been mixed.

This puts me in an interestin position.  The most optimistic scenarios have CRS leaving Bobete entirely by December at the latest.  Even if it doesn’t happen earlier, that leaves me with another six months to go, and no more project to work with.  I’ve been talking with the staff at the clinic to see if I can start working with them, and I am hopeful that after vacation I’ll be able to start transitioning to them.  Working directly with Partners in Health would make an exciting year, so cross your fingers for me.

On a lighter not, I’m nursing a bruised nose today after an impressive cooking accident last night.  While watching a movie on my iPod, I decided to make some popcorn.  As I was carrying it back to where I was sitting, the pot exploded.  Literally exploded.  There was a huge bang, as the lid shot into my face and popcorn flew across my house, somehow catching and destroying a catnip mouse.  I still have no idea what could have caused it- steam pressure building up from the popcorn?  After making sure I was alright, aside from a bit of a bloody nose, I checked the pan.  The whole bottom appears to be bowed outward, almost in a bowl shape.  The lid is similarly dented outwards.

My best guess is that the lid, due to a previous, smaller dent, had gotten stuck to the pan, as steam from the popcorn built up the pressure.  Somehow my picking up and moving the pan jolted it just enough to cause the disaster.  This morning when I woke up I was still picking up shards of popcorn, lid, and shredded cat toy out of my hair and beard.  And people say nights in Lesotho are boring.

Welcome Back Again to the Show that Never Ends

Hey All, I seem to have left this blog sit and moulder for the last few months.  My bad on that- the truth is there just hasn’t been anything I felt was interesting enough to justify its own blog post.  But, after having everybody from my grandfather to my college roomate ask where I disappeared to, I realized that maybe I should get back to this.  Sorry guys- I’ll try not to let it happen again.

So, updates…  what has been happening here?  There’s been a few things that have been happening, which I’ll try to write with some semblance of order.  First, the not so good news:

Staff Turnover

In the last month CRS has lost a lot of its senior staff.  The Country Rep (Director), and the Programming Manager have taken positions in India and Israel, respectively, while the head of Monitoring and Evalution and the tech support guy have both taken other positions in Lesotho.  In Peace Corps, one of our medical staff left, as well as our APCD, Maria Finch.

Maria, as well as the CR and PM for CRS, has been a huge reason why this has been as good of an experience as it has been.  Losing them is rough, but definately a part of life in this field.  I get the feeling that turnover in general within Lesotho is high.  Maria, you are going to be missed by all of us.

Cat:

At long last, I have a cat! No more rats, no more carrying on long conversations with inanimate objects, no more wondering what to do with leftovers.  It’s a wonderful thing.  Back home I would never have called myself a ‘cat person’, but here it’s a little frightening.  Nyx and I have long, involved conversations about everything from the latest economist article to frustrations at work.  She’s very perceptive.

I ended up getting Nyx almost by accident, after her previous owner declared her “creepy”, and asked if I wanted her.  She’s a  small,  all black cat in somewhat superstitious part of the world.  This, combined with her habit of demanding attention from people, could make her come across as a little off.  But hey, I’m happy to have her.

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One last thing:  I’m starting up a “help Oscar get a new pair of boots” drive.  My hiking boots, after a long and glorious career ranging from Greece to the shores of Lake Superior, now find themselves used up entirely by Lesotho.  Should you like to donate to this worthy cause, I would ask that you contact my parents, as they can get money to me easiest.  I will provide contact information for them on request.

Ok, I’ll try not to disappear again any time soon. Until next time!

Oh, and congratulations to the St. Mary’s class of ‘09.  Now comes the hard part.

Wishing I were home tonight

If you’re in the states, you’ll see the shooting on the news tonight.

There have already been too many deaths this month.  I’ll try to post more coherently later.

Two Funerals

Saturdays are for funerals. This was one of the first things we were told after arriving in Lesotho last June.  In a culture in which funerals are such a common occurance, this is indeed an important thing to be aware of.  Imagine, for a moment, living in a place where, over the last fifteen years, the average life expectancy has dropped from nearly seventy to under forty.  How would we deal with it?  When a single disease is responsible for what feels at times like a war of attrition, a war whose effect is funeral tents each weekend, and hardly a single family who hasn’t lost someone to it.  How would you react?

A few weeks ago, one of the men who worked at the clinic passed away.  He was one of the night watchmen, and had been sick for awhile.  While it has happened before, this was the first time since I’ve been here that a member of the NGO staff in Bobete has died.  I was invited to the funeral as the guest of the clinic staff, and spent the weekend immersed in memorializing and burying Ntate Thabo (name changed).

Friday night was an all night vigil, that I can only describe as a marathon wake.  Singing and dancing in concentric circles went on from 10:00 PM until dawn.  Every few songs, someone would raise a hand and tell a story about Ntate Thabo or a short speech.  Thabo’s wife was laying on the ground on the other side of the room.  There she remained until the funeral the next day.  She had, I was told, been in that position for ‘only’ a week, since returning from Maseru.  Tradition dictates that the wife lay on the ground from the day of her husband’s death until the funeral, but allowances must be made for modern life.  We sang and danced upbeat, joyous hymns until the sun rose, and then retired home for a few hours sleep before the funeral itself.

The funeral saturday was much what you would expect in a Christian family.  The church’s choir sang many of the same songs we had sung the night before, and several male family members spoke, followed by the minister.  After that, the men carried the coffin to the gravesite, followed by the women.  A hole had already been dug, and the male family members took turns throwing a shovelful of dirt into the grave.  The women went later, taking a handful of dirt each.  Both the wife and mother collapsed at this point, and had to be carried away.

Up to this point the language barrier had been a blessing, forcing me to concentrate on what was being said, rather than the feeling behind it.  A mother’s cry, though, is universal.

And that was that.  The men finished filling in the grave, and a meal was served before we all went home.  I was invited to an all night prayer meeting saturday night, but declined.  As I see it, it would have been more impolite to go, but begin snoring halfway through.

While it was certainly a hard weekend, it was a major milestone in my time here.  Trying to become part of a community is difficult and there isn’t one moment you can put your finger on to say ‘yes, that’s it, now I am no longer a stranger here.’ To be invited to participate in their funeral, to keep vigil with the family and friends, was more than just an honor, it was a sign that this is my home now.

Before I finish this entry, I would ask that you keep the family of Catherine “Kate” Puzey in your thoughts, and, if appropriate, your prayers.  Kate was a volunteer in Benin, and was killed near her home last week.

Every few years there is a death in the Peace Corps.  Lesotho has seen several and it seems hard to even begin to understand.  Still, it’s comforting that it’s a worthy cause to work towards Peace and Compassion. Ms. Puzey, like all of us, would have been proud to serve it.

Work Update

A new month, a new way of looking at work here.  I’m starting to branch out as much as I can from what I’ve been working on, which I hope will help to give me more to do at my site.

I volunteered to work with a group at the end of the month, looking into tracking and reporting at the three MOVE sites.  There have been some problems getting the right numbers from the field offices to Maseru, which we believe is leading to underreporting of the project’s results.  It will be a good opportunity to have a concrete impact on the project.  I’ve started sorting through the hard copies of reports we have here at the Bobete office, and while it will take some time, I think once we are done going through them we’ll be able to track down where the problem has occurred.

Additionally, I am trying to get more involved in the Peace Corps committee system.  I volunteered for the Gender and Development committee, which is responsible for many of the gender related programs Peace Corps runs around the country.  I would like to compare them to the Male Initiative the clinic and MOVE have developed in Bobete and Lebaking.  There are certainly similarities, and I would like to see what the two programs could learn from each other.

Finally, the microfinance program I have been working on is slated to run out of funding at the end of the month.  I am putting together a proposal for an extension, and am confident that we will be able to make the case that while we have made very good progress in the last six months, we will be able to significantly increase the chance that the program will eventually continue without our support if we keep working directly with the community groups and volunteers for the next few months.

I’ve been getting emails from some of the new CHED volunteers who have received their invitations.  If any of you guys are reading this, we are all looking forward to you getting here.  Quite a few of us with blogs also have semi-regular internet access, and would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Reports of my Disappearance

… have been greatly exaggerated.

(February 20) : It’s been a long time since I updated anything here. The last month has been a little strange for me – my supervisor and a significant amount of the staff were transferred, and after a long delay Sempe’s replacement arrived this week.  The delay in updating was certainly not intentional, I simply have been moving around the country a lot in the last month, and haven’t had much time to stop and write about what has been going on.

I decided to take some time while waiting for the new supervisor to arrive, to travel around Lesotho a bit and see what some other volunteers are doing at their sites.  It was a good trip, both to see how things are going for everyone and to see more of this country.  I now have at least driven through nine of Lesotho’s ten districts. and spent time in seven.  For such a small country on the map, it is surprisingly large when you are traveling in it.

We’ve started to have some members of the new CHED group coming in June joining the Lesotho facebook group.  It’s strange to think that we are going to be the old group so soon.  On one hand it feels like we just got here, on the other, like I’ve never known a life outside of this one.

(February 23): With little happening at my site and a lot of time on my hands, I’ve had ample opportunity to catch up on my reading.  The variety of books I’ve read in the last two weeks is illuminating, both of the variety available and the willingness to read anything that is part of Peace Corps.  An incomplete list would include this following:

Reinhold Niebuhr, Prodigal Summer, Sandman vol. 1 and 2, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a Star Trek pulp novel, The Wisdom of Whores:  Brothels and the Business of AIDS, and The Red Tent.  If anyone can find a theme in that list, you are better at pattern recognition than I.

(February 28):  Down in Maseru for the weekend.  The recent changes at work have left me a bit in the lurch, trying to figure out where I fit in with the new staff and how I will procede over the next few months.  This has led to a lot of thinking, pondering, and, let’s be honest, complaining with other volunteers about our collective problems.  It’s been a good weekend though, giving me a chance to talk out the things that have been bothering me, get reassured that I wasn’t going crazy making mountains out of molehills, and recommit to the next year here.

Pictures from Cape Town

One of the new volunteers in my District has a computer with a card reader, so I was able to get these pictures off of my camera.

1)  Mandela’s Cell (Robbin Island)

2)  Penguins in Africa (On Robbin Island)

3) Downtown Capetown

4)  Your’s Truly on Table Mountain, overlooking Capetown

5)  Flower on Table Mountain Summit

6)  Sunset on Table Mountain

Best sign my computer is working again

Video Blogs!

Cape Town to Bloemfontein

 Back from Cape Town, and about to Head back to Bobete, this time for the long stretch.  I’m feeling pretty good about it, and it will be good to spend some time in the relative simplicity of life up there.  After the break are my notes from the vacation.

 

And a happy new year

2009 is almost upon us, and in an hour or so I am getting on an overnight bus to Cape Town.  Sitting in a bus somewhere in the African countryside should be an interesting way to pass midnight, I think.

So far, this little vacation has been good times.  Seeing Bloemfontein (and South Africa) for the first time was shocking.  Sitting in a movie theatre, eating popcorn, and watching a bad Keanu Reeves movie has never been so fun.

Now it’s Cape Town for a week, and while I’m down there, it looks like the computer is finally getting fixed.  Once we get back, hopefully there will be an update with pictures, and maybe even video.  Exciting times.

Happy 2009 everyone.