I’ve been feeling a little overwhelmed about writing another entry here since there is so much to report! Jay suggested that we do a small entry each day for a while until we feel more caught up. So in this entry we will answer the question that we got asked from last time.
1) A question from our nephew, Brandon, in Montana: “Which way does the toilet water spin when you flush?”
Well, Brandon, the toilet water in most of the toilets here gushes rather than swirling, which makes it hard to tell. However, when we go to the restroom at a swirly toilet, the water goes down whichever way the toilet is designed to make it go. Yes, it’s true! Despite popular notions the so called “Coriolis Effect” is not strong enough in a small toilet bowl to change the direction of the swirl depending on the hemisphere. Instead, factors like how your bowl was designed, effect the direction of swirl much more directly! If you’re interested, here’s a link to a short, easy to read article from the Berkeley Science Review
2) A question from a blog reader nicknamed (we hope!) Molecular Evolution (BTW: We would love to know your real name, Molecular Evolution, so if you want to shoot us another comment, we’d love it!): “If you could transplant the school and the students to the US would it feel different?”
The answer to that one is “yes and no”. The student themselves are tweens and teens, and teenagers the world round have many similarities (you know: the hormones, the giggling, the teenage girl scream, the dramatics, the homework aversion, the disorganization, the soul searching, the desire to be "cool" and act "mature", etc.). The difference here is that the vast majority of these students have not experienced American middle school or high school, and they don’t know what that social situation is like. This means that their teenage tendencies are not magnified by the American middle school and high school experience. Add to this the fact that there are only 16 of them, and you come away with a lovely experience of teenagers who want to do well, respect their teachers and parents in a fundamental way, and who get giddy at the idea that they will be getting lockers this year (“Wow. That’s like at a real high school!”).
3) Another one from Molecular Evolution: “Is there a different feeling you have now, when you think about your more distant surroundings, your physical, political, and social context there in Lesotho than you would if it were all somehow magically present somewhere here in the US?”
I guess, overall, we’re a lot more humble here. First of all, we’re humble about what we have and don’t have. It’s a long way to get to a city that has things like good doctors and specialty items. It makes us feel like keeping simple and safe is a good thing. Also, we have so much more than most every Basotho person. It’s mind-boggling. Today our house keeper asked us to borrow 10 rand because she broke her oil lantern last night and it is the only light source at their house. 10 rand is peanuts to us, yet it is the difference between light and dark to her.
Certainly one could get away with having a “The American Way is Best” attitude here, but it wouldn’t do one much good since the attitude here in the “Kingdom in the Sky” is that if we have one kind of anything non-essential then we’re doing pretty well. We get excited when we find “luxury” items at all here -- things like q-tips, lawn chairs, printer cartridges -- we don’t have the option to say “well, we’ll keep looking around and see if we can find another price or a better quality”. For the most part, the one you find is the only option. You go with it.
Politically, most of the ex-pats here are pretty liberal, so that fits our mindset well. We haven’t had to the opportunity to talk Lesotho politics with anyone yet, but we’ll let you know if we do. What we do know is that Lesotho is weighing whether or not to become a province of South Africa and the country is split about what to do. We are unsure how that decision would affect us.
Socially, we have found a very open community here, but we are pretty sure that people are open because the population is to transient. We’ve literally gone out to someone’s house every weekend we’ve been here (unheard of in the life of Jay and Sarah Harrington!). It’s struck us as unusual until we realized that if we waiting 6 months before having dinner with our colleagues, they might be moving the next week! It’s an interesting mindset, and not altogether a bad thing, we don’t think. Maybe we should have been a little more open when we were in the states, where our colleagues were, more than likely, going to be around for years and years.
4) Last one from Molecular Evolution: “I am curious about the intangible stuff- the je-ne-sais-quoi that's been going on in the back of your heads these past few days as you have become more and more at home there.”
Let’s see...we’ve been thinking a lot about our jobs and students. When you’re a teacher you worry about kids and wonder about them almost constantly. Since we have each other around 24-7, we are able to process information about students thoroughly and constantly as we discover it.
We’ve also been thinking about our colleagues and how we will work with them best. Many of them are surprised by the higher degree of structure that is being put in place at the school this year. The school has been tiny, tiny for so long, and now, as the school grows, the director is really pushing the staff to be more organized about how we grade and plan. It’s hard for many people at the school. We are struck by how people from different ethic backgrounds react differently to the new requirements. Most of us don’t like change, but the American way is to work hard and try to comply with requirements as best as possible. From our perspective, the Basotho way is much more passive, and when action is taken, each step must be approved by a higher up. It’s an interesting comparison.
We also think a lot about the processes we have to go through to get fully settled here. The processes to get car insurance and join a medical scheme and the like are all very vague and unclear. We spend time thinking about who we need to contact, when we’ll need to go to the bank, and how we will work it out if there are issues. It’s time consuming.
Interestingly, a lot of the Basotho want to know from the Americans whether they should join the health scheme that is being offered by the school for the first time this year. The deal is that the school will pay 1/2 of the cost and take the other half from our paychecks. The cost to us will be about 385 Rand per person per month (that's about $55 per month). The Basotho are overwhelmed by the idea that they might pay in to the scheme for the year and then not get back the money that they don’t use during the year. They think of it as a waste rather than payment for peace-of-mind in-case something big happens. We keep telling them, “Everyone in America does this. In America you wouldn’t think of not having insurance if it was offered to you. It’s the norm.” They think we’re crazy, but I think many of them will take the offer. The scheme is a good one that pays for general check-ups as well as major incidents and covers one anywhere in Africa with Primary Care Physician options in both Lesotho and South Africa.
We’ve also spent a good amount of time thinking about entertainment. We didn’t realize that Netflix and Hulu don’t work overseas, so we’ve been looking up ways to bypass the blocks. We aren’t there yet, but we’re hoping we’ll figure it out soon! Let us know if you have tips. :)
Okay, that’s all for now. As mentioned, we’ll try the post-a-day trick to try to catch up with news from the past few weeks and see how it goes. We’d love to hear from you about what you think of the blog and what you’re wondering! Thanks to those of you who have written already!
