Reflections on Peace Corps CHED program, Lesotho
Pictures 1 and 2: Where I live. Perceptive PCVs will note the flagpole at my neighbors. A white flag flies there most of the time. Some things never change.
Picture 3: The sunset from my door.
EDIT: For some reason the pictures were double posted. Sorry about that. Also, the house the arrows point to is mine.
As I ride into the village, I am suddenly conscious that all the eyes on me have behind them a quiet laugh, as if to ask “just what is this?” It is not that I am American—there have been aid workers through this area. It is not my horsemanship—while I am not Sir Galahad, I do manage to stay upright. No, what everyone silently laughs at is the contraption on my head.
The Peace Corps, effective though it may be, is a government agency in every sense. The night before I left for Bobete my APCD came to the door of our bunkhouse with the same laugh in her eye. In her hands were two black, velvet riding helmets, for myself and the other volunteer placed with MOVE. In a decision owing more to common sense and litigation than dignity, the Peace Corps requires that all volunteers wear a certified riding helmet while on horseback. Practically, this means that each horse-riding volunteer had an addition to the kit of equipment he or she is given. Next to the pots, pans, first aid kit and water filter sits a riding helmet. Now in the best of circumstances a riding helmet looks out of place when not in an Olympic steeplechase event, but riding around the mountains of Lesotho, the black bow at the rear on the helmet looks… words fail me, but the reader can imagine.
When I arrived in Bobete, my supervisor and several coworkers helped me to unpack and move into my new house. When the helmet came out, I learned a few new Sesotho phrases meaning roughly “what the hell is this?” If I hadn’t guessed in Maseru, I would have known then that this was going to be the source of a lot of office humor and village gossip at my new job. The first time I got on a horse did nothing to dispel that notion, and now I can’t help but laugh myself every time I “affix the chinstrap to ensure proper fit.”
It’s not that I do not see the sense in the decision. The paths we ride here are often very narrow, and with an amateur on an unfamiliar horse the chance of an accident is somewhat higher than riding around a guided bridle path at home. I have no great desire to go home with a severe head injury, so I wear the damn thing. It does look mighty peculiar though.
Trying something new today, it looks like it should work.
The story of my first three days in Bobete is the story of two sheep, in various stages of death.
I made reference in the last post to an outreach program PIH and CRS were doing on Saturday. Called the Male Initiative, it was the third in a series of pitsos (gatherings) for the Bo-Ntate of the Bobete area. Over the last few years, health workers here have found that in traditional pitsos, only women, children, and old men would show up and participate. When the young and middle age men did show, they did not talk much. The Male Initiative brings men from various areas to one central, very remote, location to talk about HIV/AIDS and get tested. The idea is that they will be more talkative and receptive in a single-gender environment, and judging by yesterday’s meeting, it is definately the case.
But back to the sheep. My first experience meeting the village council of Bobete was of walking up to a house and seeing two men sawing the horns off of a disembodied sheep’s head. It was explained to me that two sheep had been slaghtered that day for the Male Initiative pitso on Saturday, and that we would now eat the “insides.” First was the liver, which, while not my favorite dish, was something I could identify and eat. Following that we were shown to a room where the rest of the “insides” had been stewed together. I tried something that looked (relatively) tame, which I think was a kidney. Various other organs were also eaten, and all the while I thought of my description of the food in Lesotho as “not that different from home.”
Friday was spent in Thaba-Tseka Camptown. (To answer dad’s question on the last post, camptowns are larger villiages or cities that are the regional captials of Lesotho’s 10 districts). We were there to take the sheep to the butchers, and I watched the two chopped up into smaller and smaller pieces.
And finally, yesterday we ate the sheep. On top of a mountain. This is quite a job I managed to get myself in.
Pictures: My house, and various scenes from yesterday’s outreach.
Safe and sound in my new home for two years. At the moment I’m borrowing the laptop of the PIH Doctor here, so I’ll keep it short.
Bobete is amazing. The flight was good, and was followed by a very busy day. Unfortunately I seem to also be coming down with a cold, so everything is not perfect, but there’s a lot to do here.
Tomorrow the MOVE project and PIH are running a retreat for the men of the surrounding villages to talk about HIV/AIDS and (hopefully) get tested. Attendance is expected to be somewhere about 600. Talk about hitting the ground running. I’ll get a more detailed post (and pictures) up when I bring my laptop in.
“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge my duties in the Peace Corps. So help me God.” –Peace Corps Oath
So here we go. As of about 11:45 this morning, we are all no longer Peace Corps Trainees, but are instead full volunteers. Nine weeks of training are over, and we have started to accrue pay and vacation days. Twenty four hours from now I will be moving into my new rondaval in Bobete. This has all gone very fast, and I don’t have any kind of post prepared (as usual), but it still is an occasion worth mentioning.
The oath, quoted above, is a big deal. As several of the other traine—ahem—volunteers pointed out after the ceremony, there is no end date on the printed certificate we received. The ambassador’s speech focused on our place as on the ground representatives of our country, which caused a lot of gulping in the audience. Imagine, now we have the potential to create and international incident! On a more serious note, the way I see it we swore to serve both our country and the world this morning, and that is a very serious duty. The next two years are going to be difficult, awe inspiring, and ultimately difficult to measure. We can all only hope we live up to the potential we have today.
Tomorrow I will leave the training compound at 7:30 in the morning. At 8:00 I will get on a (tiny) Cesna to fly out to my site, and for the rest of the day I will travel around the village, paying my respects to the chief, the PIH doctor, my coworkers, and pretty much every one that I meet on the road. It’s going to be a busy few days.
One last communications note: the PIH clinic does have internet access, but I do not automatically get access to it. According to Maria, I should get to know the folks there well, and will then most likely be invited to use their connection. It might be a few days, or weeks before this is the case however.
Until then, I can still be contacted through the Maseru mailing address (see previous post for details), or by phone. If you want to call, please email my parents or Gaylen for the number (privacy does have some place on the internet, after all). Please remember that there is a six hour difference between EST and Lesotho. Until next time, take care, and send me good thoughts for the flight tomorrow.
Pictures, from left to right:
1) Drinking joala in Ha Sole. Responsibly of course.
2) My neighbor in Ha Sole and I.
3) Training group right before swearing in.
4) My friend Ashley and I at swearing in.
5) Maria, the APCD for the program, unofficial volunteer counselor, problem solver, and generally awesome person. Who is taking a much needed few days of rest after the ordeal of getting all of us through training and to our sites.
Typed this yesterday, but internet died before I could post it:
Alright, first the cool news: I passed my Sesotho exam! I can leave for my site! Granted, it was with an intermediate low, the minimum to pass, but I figure living in the village for two years should help my language skills. We swear in tomorrow, and then I leave on Thursday morning for Bobete. Not an hour too late, either. I have now been living in the training compound for a week and a half, and am very happy to be getting out of the city.
Question time: I never know what to write about here, so I thought I would take a post to see what people were interested in hearing. I’m still not sure how successful that was, so bear with me.
From Dad:
What’s it like to post a letter (or pick up a package) in Lesotho? I remember how challenging it was to pick the right line in Poland, until we had been to the post office enough times for the clerks to know us as the Americans that always need help. It seems like the post office says a lot about the day to day life of a place.
The post here is handled by the Peace Corps, so all I have to do is drop my letters in a cardboard box that goes to the Post Office. I haven’t tried sending a package yet, but one of the other trainees did, and it wasn’t too traumatic. This actually leads well into an important bit of information. My mailing address will not be changing when I move to Bobete. The Maseru address will still be the primary one. This is because I am very remote, and will not have regular access to a post office. Peace Corps will continue to pick up mail sent to their Maseru PO Box, and will deliver it to the Mission Aviation headquarters to be taken out to Bobete with the next supply run. Pretty cool eh?
From Grandpa and Grandma:
Hi Oscar, Just read your plea for questions. We just got back from our eastern trip and have to deal with some things here — a big limb in the backyard, an infestation of mites in the downstairs garden. But we will start making a list and shoot them at you. Here’s one, however: is there any way we can donate directly to the CRS MOVE project?
I don’t know yet what the donation situation is. While I assume you could donate to CRS, and include a note marking it for the MOVE project, there may be other, more concrete things you can do. For instance, we just had a session regarding the African Library Project, which is expanding their Lesotho operation. Lesotho is the only country they use Peace Corps Volunteers, and we are their main contacts in the country. Basically, I can request that ALP donate a library to one of my villages, and they will ship about 1000 books over, free of charge to the community here. What they ask is that we partner with folks at home to run book drives for the project. I’m not sure what the library situation in Bobete is, but look for me to bring up opportunities like this over the next few years.
We’re interested in what the rest of the world looks like from Lesotho, and, in particular, the U. S., it’s current, ah, administration, and the Presidential campaign. Also, we understand that much of the population is Christian but wonder if some follow the traditional religion and, if so, what its beliefs, myths and practices consist of. Will you take care of your own horse? All we know is what we’ve learned from listening to episodes of “The Lives of the Cowboys” on Prairie Home Companion
The international situation in Lesotho is a little strange. Other than the US, the two big embassies in Maseru are the Chinese and the Irish. Irish Aid gives a lot to the country, and there are a lot of businesses owned by Chinese nationals. (This leads to some tension, and some see the Chinese pushing the Basotho out of business). As far as US domestic politics are concerned, there isn’t a whole lot of detail know. Most people know about Iraq, and everyone knows PEPFAR. Incidentally, PEPFAR has done a ton for this country, and the extension that was just passed doubled the PEPFAR money coming into Lesotho. So, give credit where credit is due, President Bush has done something for this country. (Though I would add that Chris Dodd had a lot to do with the extension and expansion recently passed).
While the population here is almost entirely Christian, there are still some traditional beliefs, and the Sangoma, the traditional healers, are well thought of and have a large clientele. This is not seen as contrary to Christianity, but rather complementary.
Food Questions, for Ade and Cathy (Brandt)
You mentioned the food, but I’d like more details. How much protein, carbs, vegetables, friut is in the regular diet there is Lesotho? How is it fixed? Do they eat insects? Have you eaten any insects? (Our friend from Uganda talked longingly about the how good the grasshoppers were.) What is your favorite dish?
The food here is actually not that exotic, and resembles nothing so much as midwestern picnic food most of the time. The three main dishes eaten almost every meal are nama (any kind of meat, generally grilled and on the bone), papa (a kind of thick corn porridge about the consistency of mashed potatos), and moroho (chopped greens, usually spinach or something like it). In poorer areas, nama is not so common, and I’ll looking at different ways to get protein while up in the mountains.
Other common dishs are potato salad (usually at feasts or special events), rice (like papa, only thought of as classier), and pumpkin (which is a generic term for any kind of squash, butternut and hubbard being the popular ones this time of year. Overall the food is very good.
What is the home brew made out of (since my curiosity hungers for answers).
Joala is made with pretty much whatever is at hand. Generally it is some kind of sorgum, wheat, and maybe corn mixture, the taste of which can only be described as chalky, weak beer. Unfortunatly it is a lot more potent than it seems, probably about 30 proof, and at 5 Maluti for a liter (70 cents), it’s a very easy way to get drunk. Which people do. A lot. Look for a post at some point regarding alcohol consumption in Lesotho. There are rumors that battery acid is sometimes added to the mixture in order to “improve” the taste. I’m not sure how much of that is true and how much is our trainers trying to scare us. In any case, it’s not a pleasant drink.
As far as pictures, they are going up in the next post.
And Megan, the parallels between Shrek and PC life are extensive. If I have some time at site I’ll try to write an essay on it.
Really?
You make the Oscar sad 
I’m going to try to put together a blog post with questions I’ve gotten in letters, but if you have any additions, shoot them my way.
