Christmas Time in Lesotho

Christmas has come and gone, as has New Years.  However, being in a new culture gives you quite a bit to compare and contrast at this time of year, so I would like to reflect back on my holiday season, and give you a little picture tour of Christmas Day.

The build up to Christmas Day, and the ‘sacredness’ of the days around it are non-existent in Lesotho, compared North America.  There is no Advent series in church, there are no Christmas trees in the houses, there are no Christmas carols in the regular shops, children are not counting down the days until Santa comes.  Christmas here is a religious holiday in the middle of summer holidays.  This is not a bad thing; in fact it is refreshing to see a place where the commercial/consumer mindset has not taken over Christmas.  Also, from what I have heard, Easter is a bigger deal here, which makes far more sense from a Christian point of view.  However, it was still difficult for me to adjust my thinking and accept the low key manner of things when I am used to Christmas being a very special time at home in Canada.  

Now I would like to take you through the story of my Christmas Day, which will also be a story about a typical Sunday here in the valley.  I had been voluntold to make supper, which is typical of a Sunday.  So I got up early to prep, then after a special breakfast (we had granola, which is not on the menu for Sundays) I bathed and headed out to Chruch.  This is the first thing I saw out my door.  

It has become ‘normal’ to me, but I realize that sheep in the front yard would never be ‘normal’ in Brandon.  I walked along trying to keep balanced in my lovely borrowed shoes.  

I did not bring heels, I did not think I would need them.  However, I quickly discovered that all ladies wear black shoes to church and most of the shoes are heels.  It is always amusing to me to see them pull heels out of their purses and slip out of their running shoes just before they get to chuch.  So far I have just worn my sandals, but since it was a special Sunday I borrowed shoes from my host mom, who incidently is only 5 feet tall, so the shoes were a little small. 

As I walked past the water tap (the cement rectangle on the right) I saw the donkeys grazing, just like any other day. 

Along the way I also saw a couple of girls. I had my camera out, so of course they wanted me to take their picture. So here are my new 'friends' posing on Christmas morning.

It is always amazing to me the beautiful view I have whenever I walk out of my house.  In the foreground is the house of a grandmother that I always greet on my way to work.

Continuing along the way I got to the 'door' to the church yard.  It is just a hole in the barbed wire fence. It always makes me smile when I see ladies ducking through in their skirts and heels.

Here is everyone gathering outside under the tree since it was a very hot sunny morning.  It was such a hot day that during the church service we actually had a thunder storm!

The service itself was quite a long affair.  We got there at 11 am and left around 4:30 pm.  There were many different, special parts to the service, because it was Christmas Day.  One of them was christening, there were about 20 babies being christened that morning.

After church I finished making my 'traditional' North American Christmas dinner.  We had mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and a variety of other dishes.  It was enjoyed by everyone, but especially by the North Americans :)

Left to right: Atang (host brother), Randall (SALTer), Ntate Moletsane (pastor) Me Malintle (host mother)

After dinner we sang Christmas Carols together, a wonderful way to end the evening.

That is the tour of my Christmas in Lesotho.

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)