Merry Christmas!

Today is Christmas eve.  That is hard for me to believe, sitting here in a t-shirt and skirt after watering my vegetables, but the Christmas music helps.  December has been a full and interesting month, although I think that is true of all the months here.  However, since I have not found time to blog during the whole month I think things have been even more busy than normal.  A big part of the business has been planting.  We finally got rain, and lots of it, so we have been planting for the last 3 weeks.  Planting has been slowing down, but since there is such a long growing season I will be continuing to put in more vegetables.  Rather than trying to tell you about the all the different things that have been happening in the last month I will give you a little picture tour.

Yeah for Christmas baking! Gingerbread, yummy!

We took a hike one weekend, trying to get to the far peek but...

...we didn't quite make it all the way!

The couple at a Basotho wedding I got to attend.  This is them at the beginning of the reception.

Weddings involve lots of 'costume' changes.  This is the couple in the traditional 'African' dress.

The wedding was in Quthing, so I got to see where my host mom is from. This is her sister's house where we stayed for the weekend.

Our work Christmas party was at some natural hot springs in South Africa, it was a wonderful treat.

We sat around singing after swimming.  

The other SALTers (people doing the same program as me) came visiting in November and we took a hike with them.

Can you see how long the line is? We are waiting to get back into South Africa, this has become a monthly adventure in waiting.

What do I do with this child? Actually she's alot of fun. A one year old granddaughter that is visiting for 2 weeks, she came back with us from the wedding.

Let is rain, let it rain, let it rain! This is what it has done a lot of this month.

 Well that is all for now folks! I hope you enjoyed the tour. Have a Merry Christmas!

The Simple Things in Life

It is always amazing to me how much more I appreciate things after being without them.  This simple Sunday lunch is a good example of some things I appreciate so much more now that they are not a part of my everyday life.  It may look like quite a simple meal, and it was, but I think I appreciated it far more than some fancier meals I have eaten in Canada.  Can you guess what I enjoyed so much? The ratio of green things to carbohydrates, eggs instead of meat, drinking my juice with my meal, ketchup (or at least the closest thing to it here) and eating with a fork were the main things.  The unseen parts that I considered a bonus were spontaneity (this meal was not on the menu), listening to music while eating and a quite lunch by myself.  I do enjoy eating regular meals with my host family, but this is just an example of how I am learning to appreciate things as a rare treat, rather than expect them as a regular part of life.  

A simple Sunday Lunch

Lesotho in November

Today was the first day it felt like summer here. This is not meant to rub in the fact that it is cold in North America, it is just an observation.  It has not felt like summer yet, even though there have been some very hot days.  Many days I am out working in the field, and it is just too hot to enjoy. But today is Saturday and I was finally able to just laze around in a tank-top and shorts and read a book (I was in the shade, which made being outside enjoyable).  The mountain climate though reminds me of Manitoba, in the variableness of the weather.  On Thursday (which was American Thanksgiving) it felt cold enough for it to be Thanksgiving in North America, but today it is too hot to be comfortable in the sun in the middle of the day.  There is my rambling about the weather, just to give you a little taste of what things are like here.  The more important weather news is that it RAINED this week! There was a lot of rain on Wednesday and Thursday.  Unfortunately it is hot and dry now, but we are hopeful that the rains will continue.  Hopeful enough that we (the project) have been planting and we (my host family) are continuing to plant.

We are getting to the end of school, and the beginning of the holiday season, which means a lot of comings and goings at my host family.  The 2 smallest children left a couple of weekends ago, the oldest girl left last Wednesday and the only other child will leave this week.  However, the house will not be empty for long.  MeMalintle’s son and daughter, plus the daughters child and husband, will be coming for the holidays.  We are going to be visiting family and going to a wedding in mid December as well.  I am looking forward to meeting more of the family and getting to know some new brothers and sisters.  However, I am going to miss having the other children around.  As much as I sometimes wish for my own space, I have grown a love for all the children.  

There have been a lot of groups coming and going at the project as well.  There have been groups from South Africa and Lesotho for training, researchers from Lesotho and America and most recently (and most excitingly) the other young adults doing the same program as me.  It was refreshing to be able to speak English, enjoy conversation and cards and late night star gazing.  It was also wonderful to be able to enjoy some of the foods I have been missing, like fresh vegetables and dairy.  I do get a little bit of each of those, but not nearly as much as at home. 

Well there is a short update on life here in Lesotho.  As always, if you want to e-mail and chat about anything I have said, or ask other questions feel free.

Welcome to my office!

Can I help you?

I am a self centered, independent individual from a very individualistic culture. I came to Lesotho with the idea that I would help out and do ‘my’ part around at work and with my host family; that I would pull my own weight and not let others do tasks for me simply because I was the white North American.  I had ideas about how I had the position of privilege and power and how I was going to independently fight against those imbalances.  However, I have been coming to see that being so individualistic in my idea of work is indeed continuing the power differences.  Me dictating what is ‘right’, rather than being respectful and trying to learn about and experience another culture is just another way of exercising my position of privilege.  You may be wondering what experiences made me think about these concepts and the one that started me thinking today was a little girl trying to wash my underwear.

Here is the story.  Washing clothes by hand is a physically demanding and time consuming task that has to be done often if you want to keep on top of things.  Since wash is such a labour intensive task I have been trying to resist help, to show that ‘I can do it’.  So whenever my sisters ask on Thursday night if I have any wash for them to do, I say no, and do my wash myself on the weekend.  I like to think of my laundry as a private matter, it is my problem how many clothes I wear and how dirty I get them.  Not to mention that washing my underwear is definitely private.  However, as I brought my wash outside this Sunday morning those around me had a very different lesson to show me.  As I started to work independently, in my little bubble, Zanele appeared and started ‘helping’ me soak the clothes.  (Zanele is my 4 year old sister).  And just as she was pulling out my hot pink underwear 3 small faces appeared smiling and staring, looking at what I was doing.  Two of the children do not even live at my house, but after 8 am on the weekend is fair game for friends to come over.  So my washing had become a community matter.  As I continued doing my wash Noxolo (my 11 year old sister) came over and told me (not asked, just told me) she was going to help me.  When she saw Zane hanging up my underwear she mentioned how when she was little she loved when her mother let her help wash the handkerchiefs.  

These are the events that made me think about how helping out, and letting others help, is not just about the person doing the task (ie. It’s not about me).  You are letting someone feel valued by letting them be part of your task; to tell them you can do it all alone is saying their help is not appreciate.  This is a communal culture, and your problem is never just your problem, as much as you may want it to be.  And so although it will probably continue to go against my grain, and bother me when my little sister sees how dirty I got my jeans this week (because I thought it didn’t matter if I kneeled in mud since it would be my wash and my problem), I will continue to try to say yes when people ask if they can help me.   I will continue to try not to be annoyed and overly ‘feminist’ when the men take the shovel out of my hands and say ‘I am helping you now’ while I am shoveling compost.  I will try to see that these people are taking me into their life, their culture, their family, and want to be a part of what I am doing.  I will also try to remember to offer to help, even when I am tired after a long day in the field.  Which brings me to my last thought, one about me offering to help.  I have tried to find a way to ask, do you actually need my help, but maybe that is the wrong question.  It’s not about ‘do you need my help?’ but can I join you where you are at in your task? May I be a part of you life?

Pictures

So it is Saturday morning, which here means chores not cartoons :) But I am done my washing and helping clean the house so here it goes trying to post some pictures before I take off for some hiking.

The view on the way to work

The house where some staff live and tools are kept

The view from the offices at the project

The Maphusteng river (noka) at bottom of our fields

Playing soccer with the boys (bashanyana) outside the offices. The building in the background is a kitchen and guest house

Zanele, the very cute just 4 year old

Zane playing by the wash lines

Lebo giving me a funny face

The shed in the yard beside the peach trees

Noxolo beside the donga (the deeply eroded stream by our house)

A beautiful view of the valley

A lovely spring tree we saw while taking an early morning stroll to catch the taxi

The river that separates Lesotho and South Africa where we cross the boarder

Inside the kitchen at work

Sorry for the slightly jumbled order of pictures, I hope you enjoy the few random snapshots of my life here in the Mountain Kindgom 

Welcome to Lesotho

So here is my first blog post after 25 days in Lesotho.  Within the last month the thought ‘I should update my blog’ has kept crossing my mind, but when to write and what to write have been elusive.  I am finding that the best time to do some computer things is just before bed, and then put things on the internet the next time I go to work.  So here I sit in my room on Saturday night with the lamp burning (literally) and the Lesotho wind howling at my window.  As for what I should write on my blog, at first there were so many new things happening at once, and so many things I was finding out, that summarizing it in any way seemed like an overwhelming task.  Even though the rate of new experiences has slowed down so many different and interesting things happen every day that it is hard to know what to share.  So for this post I think I will try to just keep to the basics of life here in the Maphutseng Valley.

First I will start with my name.  On my first day here I was told that my name was too difficult, and I would need a Sesotho name.  My host mom, Me Malinkle, quickly provided that.  Within the first 10 minutes in the house she told me that my name is now Mpho, which means gift in Sesotho.  So I am now Mpho Mantutle.  I am living in a household of 6, including me.  Me Malintle is the principle of the primary school, a generous and loving lady who is quick to smile and laugh.  There are 2 girls in middle school, Rorisang and Noxolo, a 4 year old girl, Zanele, and a 3 year old boy, Realeboha.  None of the children are biologically Me Malintle’s (including me) but we are all part of the family.

Our house has square corners, and is quite large.  I have my own room and there are 3 other bedrooms, but everyone else sleeps in one room.  There is no electricity or running water, but there is a gas stove and flush toilets that we fill up with water.  Our water comes from a tap, not too far away, which is supplied by a gravity fed line from a spring in the nearby mountains.  The village I live in is called Bathesda and it is quite small.  However, just across the donga (a deeply eroded stream) is another village.  In fact all around the valley there are many villages, so there are always people around.

My work is divided between the youth programs and the Growing Nations farm.  There are many different groups with the high school and primary school children that I help run, such as a drama group and a bible study group.  Growing Nations has many demonstration fields and many projects on the go.  My jobs have been quite varied in the 3 weeks here, and I expect that will continue.  During this last week I have been helping set up irrigation lines for vegetables, digging holes for maize, planting a hand watered vegetable garden and piping in water taps for a campsite that will be used for people coming for training.

In the sake of not making this post too long I will stop here.  I hope this helps give an overview of my life in Lesotho right now.  My adventures and stories continue to grow, so I will try to do a better job of sharing them with you all from now on!

On top of a plateau with 2 of my sisters after looking at Dinosaur Footprints!

(Left to right Rorisang, Noxolo, Mpho)

First South African Week

The last 10 days have been a whirl wind of new places, people and ideas. In the previous blog I shared a few of the things we had done, but the list has expanded since then. There are many stories behind the places we went, but I want to mainly give you a picture diary.

On the first day we went to constitution hill in Johannesburg. It is historical site where Winnie and Nelson Mandela, as well as many other political prisoners, were imprisoned.  It is now the location of the constitution court. They have taken the bricks used for oppression and built a place that is working towards freedom; which is an amazing story of redemption.

(The sign for constitution court in the 11 official languages)

(The women's prison block)

(The South African Flag inside the Constitution Court)

On Sunday we visited the Apartheid museum.  This was an informative and heart wrenching place to visit. All over the world there have been times when the things people have done to each other makes you want to weep, but it is always hard when you are exposed to the ways we dehumanize each other.

 (The pillars outside the museum, showing the rights in the now South African Constitution)

We also visited Soweto, which stands for South Western Township, while we were in Johannesburg.  The tower below was part of a power generating station, which provided electricity for elsewhere in the country.  It was been reclaimed and used as a mural of what life in Soweto is like.

We had the opportunity to visit an orphanage as well, but I do not have any pictures.  It was a family that started by taking in a few black babies, as Apartheid was ending.  Since then the scoop of the place has expanded to having over 70  children.

After Johannesburg we took a car trip down to Pietermaritzburg, which was a fun bonding experience. It was also interesting to see some of the South African landscape.  

(On the road)

We have been staying with our country reps here in Pietermaritzburg.  It has been a great time of relaxing, learning and feeling like a new family. We got to visit the work places of those team members working in South Africa.

There is a diverse project that is housed the grounds of an old prison (another story of redeeming the old).  My team members will be working on a variety of projects, including working at the school.

 (Walking through the old prison walls)

 (The school at the project)

2 people will be in Durban, working with refugees and children.

(The courtyard in the building where the Refugee Services has offices)

We also got to go to the beach while we were in Durban, which was wonderful! My first time swimming in the Indian Ocean!

(Yeah the Ocean!)

(What a beautiful city)

On friday we got the chance to visit a traditional Zulu homestead. It was similar to a living museum experience, except that the people who worked there had actually lived in a homestead similar to the once we visited. They showed us around the houses and let us try some of the jobs, like milking cows and grinding sorghum by stone.  They also fed us a traditional meal and performed some dances and stick fighting. We were able to try out the dancing and fighting as well, which was fun. 

(A sword fighting demonstration)

This past weekend we have had a spiritual retreat at the house we are staying at. It was focused on transition.  We talked about three stages: saying good-bye, being present in God's presence, and Welcome.  It was a helpful and thoughtful time. Now we are all on our way to our assignments. Those in South Africa went to their host families today, and I will be leaving for Lesotho first thing in the morning! 

As I have been thinking about going to my assignment, I am excited to meet my host family and the people at Growing Nations.  I am nervous about meeting so many people at once, but I am glad that the time is finally here!  

Travel and Arrivals

On thursday morning I left American Soil and by Friday night I had set foot on South African Soil.  It is amazing how quickly we can travel across half the globe.

          (Here is the large group of us leaving from Pennsylvania Airport on Thursday morning)


One of my first impressions has been that Johannesburg is quite similar to North America in many ways.  The city is full of malls and traffic and many of the other things you find in a typical big city.  In some ways it is hard to believe I have made it to Africa, but I suppose that exposes my stereotype of what Africa is supposed to look like.  I am  looking forward to ways this year will show me where I have a narrow view of what the world is like, and I am looking forward to finding a broader worldview.

                                                              (My first morning in South Africa)

In the first few days we have visited constitution hill, the Apartheid museum, Soweto, an orphanage and 2 churches.  These places have given me a little more understanding into the country, but some have been very challenging for me to process.

(Kliptown, a very poor area of Soweto)

       (A garden at the Kliptown Youth Project, which is supporting young people in the area)

We (the 6 of us serving in SwaLeSa and the country reps) have been staying at an Anglican retreat centre in Johannesburg.  Our time has been a good combination of activity and down time in order to start getting adjusted to the country.  It has also given us more time to get to know each other as the SwaLeSa SALT team, which has been very positive.

Well those have been some of the first goings on here in South Africa. Next we are driving down to Pietermaritzburg to continue our in country orientation.  By the beginning of September I will be heading to Lesotho, along with one other SALTer.  I am looking forward to our continued orientation, as well as the start of my assignment!

Lesotho

I will be leaving for Lesotho on Thursday. It is a country that I do not know a lot about, but one I am excited to get to see and experience, a place where I will have much to learn. I do have a little knowledge about the country that I would like to share.

• Lesotho is a small mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa

• Lesotho is the country with the highest low point in the World (If you think about it it will make sense)
• The country is smaller than the province of Nova Scotia and has just over 2 million people
• They are a democratic monarchy with a king and a president
• Over half the people practice subsistence agriculture (They grow a lot of corn and potatoes)
• People speak both SeSotho and English

 As my date of departure gets closer there are some different things I have been thinking and praying about. I will be living with a host family who will speak mainly SeSotho, I am nervous about learning a completely foreign language, and I hope that I fit in well with my host family. In orientation we have been talking a lot about how difficult it is to live in, and learn, a new culture  and I have been praying that I will have an open heart and be flexible. I am excited to be leaving so soon, but it is always a little scary taking off into the unknown.

The start of the Adventure

I have made it to Akron Pennsylvania, after some lovely family time at the lake and a fun road trip with the parents.  The adventures start here because this is where I get to do a cross-cultural orientation.  There are other SALTers going to countries around the world, as well as IVEPers who are going to Canada and the USA.  There are 26 countries represented here, so it is quite the multicultural event. We are learning about MCC, about cross-cultural interactions, about the cultures we are going to and many more things.  We have music every morning from a group from a different region in the world, which is quite interesting.  This morning was Asia and here is a clip of the song they led with actions.

 We have also had a lot of time to talk with all the other participants, which has been interesting and enlightening.  There is one person here who is from Lesotho and was working with Growing Nations (which is what I will be doing), so it has been nice to here a little about the community I will be living in.