Today, Robby and I visited the places we will be working for the next 8 weeks.  First, we went to Masianokeng with Ann and Karthik and met the teachers at Masianokeng High School.  They are all absolutely inspiring people, I hope to hear more of their stories as I get to know them.  I’ll do my best to share them on this blog, mostly so I don’t forget them.

After Masianokeng, Robby and I went to the Family Art and Literacy Center.  Here is a decription of the Center from the invitation to the Grand Opening that will be on June 13th.

The FAMILY ART AND LITERACY TRUST has been established to develop the ‘Family Art and Literacy Centre’, where

• beautiful picture stories in Sesotho will be illustrated, prepared for publication and collected;
• children and adults can come to be read to or read the stories themselves;
• children can be taught and given the opportunity to carry out the art of drawing and painting; and
• (resident) artists be given the opportunity to create their art, exhibit their pieces and sell them to the public at large.

Working with the Center will be great, but there is a lot of work to do.  Driving there, I saw all the kids walking home from school.  I finally realized that these were primary level kids, some looked as young as 3 or 4.  They were walking home along the high way by themselves, not wandering in to traffic or anything.  I was absolutely amazed to see such young children being so responsible.  Then I asked Mike the Perfect Taxi driver how old he thought the littlest children were, and he said, “about 5 or 6”  A child that I had thought was 3 or 4 was 5 or 6 in Mike’s book.  This could be that one of us is bad at guessing ages, or that our discrepancy in age-guessing is due to child malnutrition.  Children who are 5 or 6 in Lesotho look like they are only 3 or 4 because they are so undernourished.  That was the second rock that fell in my stomach.

 

The differences between Lesotho and the US aren’t so different on a major level.  I’m living in the capital in an apartment, and everyone goes to the grocery store and people use cell phones, there are taxis honking and driving crazy through the streets, and people can go to a restaurant for a meal instead of cooking, and tonight, everyone is watching.  People live in houses and wake up early in the morning and go to school or work.  Sure, the houses might look different and the unemployment rate is much higher here, but those things are mainly the same.  The differences come from much more subtle things, like five year olds walking home from school because there aren’t buses or parents are working and can’t pick them up.  The difference comes when Thabo, a part time artist at the Family Art and Literacy Center, has to find ways to support his grandmother because both of his parents are dead and so he can’t go to school.  Or when you pay for everything in advance – power, water, cell phone – because few can depend on a regular paycheck to pay bills at the end of the month. 

 

Some lighter anecdotes from the trip though.  When the girls moved into their apartment at Leseli 10 (pronounced Luh- say-dee because there is no D letter in Sesotho), it was already dark (because it gets dark at 530). I went into the bathroom, and after groping around the walls realized that there was no light switch, which meant no lights.  No worries, thought I, I’ll just go get a floor lamp from the family room and move it in the bathroom, just like we have it set up in the kitchen.  On my way out of the dark bathroom, I ran into the washing machine.  Awesome, I thought, we won’t have to do our laundry in the bathtub by hand.  After returning with the floor lamp (no simple balancing act trying to walk up the stairs and not hit it on anything, we have a small apartment) and my solar powered flashlight (which was given to us by the BTB and I was so excited to use), I searched for an outlet.  No luck.  Ann and Danielle came up to look too, and they found no trace of outlet either.  Then I realized that if there was no outlet for the light, there was no outlet for the washing machine either.  Darn. Do not despair, though, we have now put extension cords on the list of things we need from Shoprite.  But until we make our next trip to the grocery store, we shall be using the bathroom in the dark.  It’s more romantic that way anyways.

 

Next anecdote: towels.  We were told that our apartment would be furninshed with linens and bedding and a kitchen.  I think my first mistake was taking anything in Lesotho for granted.  I assumed that since they said there should be towels in the apartment that meant there would really be towels there.  I have very much learned my lesson, and after extension cords, towels are on the list of things to buy.  Until then, I shall be towel drying using two orange superabsorbant car towels that my dad gave to me a year ago to wax my car with.  I threw them in my suitcase thinking, “Superabsorbant towels can always be useful somewhere.”  It was one of the most clutch moments of my life.

 

And I tried to build this into the story somewhere, but it failed, so I’ll just add it at the end.  All of the outlets have their own switches, so if you want to turn on an appliance, you must first turn on the appliance, then turn on the switch on the outlet.  Wait, back up.  First you must have a converter to convert your American plug into a three prong South African outlet that only exist in Lesotho and South Africa (and not on any universal travel adapter or the Apple travel adapter kit).  And, it you have a South African cell phone, or other similarly small electronic with two prongs, you must have another converter to convert the two prong to a three prong.  THEN, you can flip both power switches and hope things work.

 

Life in Lesotho is a ton of fun, if you have a good sense of humor.  It keeps you on your toes.