Week 1 Update: Friday, June 11, 2010
This has been our first week in Lesotho, and my first week ever in Africa. I already can’t wait for this experience to get into full gear! I arrived in Johannesburg on the 7th, after a surprisingly quick 15 hour flight. It’s amazing how fast time flies when you have a few movies as long as “Avatar” available for the flight. The airport there is much bigger than I ever would have imagined, and was full of life and excitement for the World Cup. Brittany said she even saw the Brazilian team stroll through the airport, and man was I jealous!
After closing my eyes for the entirety of the flight from Johannesburg to Maseru (I am a huge baby when it comes to flying in small planes), we finally landed in Lesotho! The countryside is beautiful, something I would describe as a well-watered Arizona, with large tabletop mountains and small canyons. Mr. Chimombe was there to pick us up at the airport as soon as we came out of the baggage claim. He was so kind and helped us get everything into our rooms at the hotel. The hotel is really nice, with clean rooms, a restaurant, and even electric blankets (yes!).
The town we are staying in, Thaba Bosiu, is a rural community about an hour outside of the capital Maseru. The poverty level is evident as soon as you drive through. As with many developing communities, keeping a steady water supply is a challenge. There are some water pumps in the small villages, but I noticed people down in a small, isolated stream gathering water and washing clothes. The effort these people were going through just to complete basic daily activities was a far cry from my usual walk to the bathroom or laundry room at Baker (one of Rice’s residential colleges). However, there is electricity through the town, and most people seem to have sturdy homes made from cinderblock with corrugated tin roofs held down with rocks.
The people here are very friendly; they always say hello and ask where we are from. The students and teachers at Letsie High School were no exception. On our first visit to the school, the teachers were very welcoming. They helped Brittany and I prepare for our course and introduced us to our class. I could not believe it when all of our students cheered after their teacher explained that we would be taking three hours of their time for 6 weeks during their winter vacation to teach them math and science. I probably would have cried… or at least been grumpy. Perhaps they will be able to teach me how to have this desire for learning so I can use it before my first biochemistry exam.
Needless to say, I am thrilled to have such a motivated class and cannot wait to start teaching them. For those not familiar, we are teaching a Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC) review course. The COSC is an exam analogous to our SAT exam in the United States, except that if students do not pass, they are not permitted to apply to college.
For the sake of not exhausting everyone with an overly extensive blog post (though I may have done that already), I will save my description of Maseru for another time. At this point I can say that I am fully enjoying the trip and am waiting in excited anticipation for classes to start. Thanks for reading!