An Action-packed life: A review of the past week

Apparently moving over seas has changed us into social people. Who saw that effect coming? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we never went out in Portland. It’s just that we’ve gone out A LOT more here. Since Friday the 10th, we’ve been out 5 out of 10 days. 50%. Clearly we’ve gone wild. :) Actually, we’ve decided that the going out has more to do with the fact that the community here is transient, so people don’t put off get togethers.

Here’s a summary of our social life along with some pictures for your enjoyment:

Last Friday we had a staff party at the director’s house. It was awesome. First of all, the food was prepared by the Basotho members of our staff. We contributed cookies as an “American desert”, but the feeble hour it took me to prepare them does not compare with the dozens of hours it took to simmer the lamb and cook the chicken and braiworst (sausage) on the braii (that’s a South African bbq, btw!). Here’s a picture of the pot they cooked the lamb in outside:

And here is a picture of a pot full of the ever-loved epapa, a pasty, gritz-like base that goes with most everything here in “Basotholand”.

After dinner, which consisted of epapa, braiiworst, chicken, lamb, salad, beans, potato salad, mac and cheese (homemade), coleslaw, and samosas (we have a few Indian people on staff!), we all danced till late into the night. The dancing was assisted, of course, by the Bring Your Own Beverage clause in the invitation and by the awe-inspiring dancing abilities of multiple members of the staff. We’ve discovered a lovely drink they have here called Amarulla, which tastes a bit like Bailey’s Irish Creme, but which is, in fact, South African liqueur made form Marula fruit. It’s lovely.

For those of you wondering what kind of music Basotho enjoy, here are a few sample song titles for you. They enjoy hearing the same songs over and over again, apparently, so we listened to each of these at least four times!
Black Eyed Peas -- “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night”
Waka Waka -- “This Time for Africa” (from the World Cup!)
Taio Cruz -- Dynamite

In addition, several members of our clan came dressed in their traditional or adopted national attire. Here’s a picture of our librarian, director, and two teaching assistance representing (respectively) India, Amero-Lesotho, Nigeria, and Lesotho. It added a fun element to the evening.

All-in-all, it was a lovely evening and we had a great time.

Then, on Saturday, we went to the second grade teacher’s house for dinner. She is Indian, and she was excited to teach some of us how to make chicken marsala and paratha bread. Her husband is with the Indian army, which has a The meal was delicious!


Tuesday took us to Ladybrand, South Africa, about a 20 minute drive over the border, to see the music teacher, John Albert, perform in a concert. The concert was actually the final concert of the term for the students at the Ladybird Music Academy with John Albert (bascially a professional counter-tenor) attached on the end, so we listened to many up-and-coming young people before John Albert made his appearance. The concert was lovely, and we saw a lot of people connected to the school, so it was a great chance for us to “see and be seen” as they say.


On Wednesday we went out to dinner with some counselors from the international school on Johannesburg who had come down for a visit. They were lovely, and we have a standing invitation to visit Jo-burg anytime we want (apparently Mama Mia is there for a bit and they have wild gameparks within an hours drive!). Again, it was nice to “see and be seen” and make some connections in the international school community.

Thursday brought us, exhausted but excited, to the Maseru Sun Hotel in downtown Maseru for a night of Cajun food, French music, and African dancers. The evening was sponsored by the Alliance Francaise here in Maseru, which is run by a parent of a student in our class. Our student, Gabii, actually sang in the concert as well. It was a delightful evening with world-class entertainment. Plus, the hotel is lovely and well taken care of. We were impressed. We were glad to be there too because we saw multiple parents of students in our classes, and it was good to show our support for the Alliance Francaise. Some of the musicians were from an island off of Madagascar called Reunion Island, and they were projecting pictures of the island as they sang. It looks amazing, and we’re already trying to figure out how we’ll get there sometime soon.

By Friday we were home early eating pizza from a nice pizza joint we found called Scooters, and watching “West Wing” episodes on i-tunes. That kind of evening is more our style. :)

Tune in next time for pictures of our bearded dragon (No, I'm not kidding.)

Your Questions Answered!

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!

Things are Gettin' Better All the Time

Dumela friends!

Good things are happening for us here in Maseru.

First off, we have wonderful students who love to read and write and learn! We’ll definitely keep them. They LOVE the books we sent over, and there are more on the way thanks to the USPS who, in trying to be helpful, bundled all of our small boxes together into one big box that the embassy would not ship. Our director is headed to the states soon and will get them while he is there. Meanwhile, the students wrote things in their start-of-year letters such as, “One of my goals is to read all of Ms. Sarah’s classroom library books.” Does it get any better than that?

Besides lovely students, we also have lovely breaks (20 minutes in the morning and 40 at lunch), and the campus is beautiful and sunny. We have time to eat lunch with colleagues outside under a thatched-roofed picnic table and enjoy it thoroughly. It’s wonderful.

We are also happy to be independently mobile! The father of one of our students owns a car dealership in town, and he told his staff to let us try out whatever car we wanted for the weekend and not to worry about payment until later. Let me tell you how much we appreciate Mr. Abdullah!! Anyway, so Jay went to the lot on Friday (without a penny in his pocket, no ID and no idea what our cell phone number is!) and chose out a Silver, 4wd Toyota Spacio. Although we have no idea what year it is (the majority of the writing is in Japanese), we like how it drives and appreciate its ruggedness and small size.

Other good news about the car is that most probably the school will give us an interest-free loan to cover the cost (a little over $5000). We’re feeling really good about not having to figure out how to get 38,000 rand into the right bank account! In addition, the dealership takes care of all the registration issues, which means we don’t have to fuss with the bureaucracy (which, as you can tell from previous posts, can be a mess!).

Driving-wise, Jay has been driving it on the left side of the road without much trouble except for a phantom right handed shift here and there! He also turns on the windshield wipers frequently when he means to hit the signal light. It’s actually kind of funny. Mostly we both pay a lot of attention and remind each other to “Think Left!!”

In other good news, we’ve acquired a housekeeper. Her name is Mamohau (Mah-Mah-How). She is the wife of our day guard. Incidentally, in finding out her name I also learned that Basotho women traditionally change their first names when they get married. Interesting, huh? Today was her first day. She did a great job even though the water was not working for the majority of the day. She’s in a probationary period for a few weeks, but we’re confident that she’ll work out. She’s young and has a young son who lives with her father-in-law...I think she’s just happy to have a job. We are certainly happy to be helping the economy, bolstering this young family, AND not doing dishes at the same time!

One other piece of good news is that we went on the “hash” this weekend. The Hash House Harriers is an international hiking/running club with chapters all over the world. The Maseru chapter is a particularly kid-friendly, non-macho one. The hike was about two hours long, and we are told that it was a particularly difficult one, although it was moderate for us. Jay did get overheated at one point and had to sit down and rest for a sec (the altitude doesn’t help!), but mostly we just had a wonderful time. We’ve got our Hash t-shirts, and we’ll definitely go again. We also met some lovely ex-pat friends. It’s nice to know people!

In no-so-good news, our water was out most of the day and when it came back on this evening one of our faucets was on with the drain plugged (the housekeeper had been hauling water all day and trying to fill sinks to clean), so we had a small flood in our hallway. Luckily we had lots of towels! We spent the evening soaking and wringing. Our wrists are in a bit of pain, but it looks like it’s going to be okay. Luckily it’s the dry season here in good old Lesotho. Nothing stays wet for long!

Alright, that’s all the time I have to write! We have parent night tomorrow, and I have a few handouts that need to be ready for the morning. For our next post, we’d love to answer some questions from you all! Please send them our way by commenting on this post!

~Sarah and Jay

MPBN playing on i-Tunes

My cells soak up home-news
like the red cracks in the Lesotho dirt
eagerly absorb the gardener's water.
Refreshing.

Oddities of Lesotho

So I’ve been keeping a list of things that seem odd to us in this fine country, and I have quite a collection at this point. I’m sure this topic will warrant many more posts in the future, but here are a few things we’ve come across so far!

1) Cattle herding in the capital. Here is a picture of the herd of cows that come own our street on a regular basis. As you can see, the cars have to wait for the cows. The herd boy tries to whip them to go faster, but the cows go at their own pace no matter what. It’s a sight. :) We’re told that Lesotho has open grazing and that one of the biggest reasons that the Basotho (that’s the name for people of Lesotho) want to stay separate from South Africa is to preserve this policy of open grazing.

2) Lots of workers, lots of supervisors, lots of sitting and chatting. Things in Lesotho get built on African time. The guard stand out front of our house has taken more than two weeks to take shape. The guards finally got their own bathroom finished yesterday and we’re told their going to have power on Monday. We won’t be holding our breath. We also have been trying to get a shower installed in our bathroom and Jay has been to the house on no less than three occasions with plumbers to discuss the process. Meanwhile, we haven’t seen any progress nor do we know what the timeframe might be. It’s a guessing game.

If we were in America, Jay would just go get the parts and do it himself, but in a country where something like 45% of the people are unemployed, hiring out is important. Not only that, but we have no idea where to find a hardware store, and no car to get there! Our director, Dwight’s, favorite phrase is, “When in Maseru, be patient!” We understand now.

3) Pre-paid in cash is the norm. Everything here is prepaid and it is the norm to pay in cash. The cell phones, the internet, even the electricity is pre-paid! Also, when you go to a store and want to pay with a credit card, they have one line that will accept your card, and it holds up the whole store to have to run the card! People simply get their paychecks cashed and take the cash for the month. Almost all of them get paid on the last Friday of the month, and there’s a huge line for the bank on that day.

While some of our salary will be direct deposited to our American account via electronic deposit, we will also be paid a majority of our salary in Maluti and will have to cash our checks and take the cash since you can’t open a bank account here without residency and residency takes a LONG time (read: about a year). Having been to the bank once already (on a day that was NOT the last Friday of the month), we are not looking forward to this task.

Also, the biggest bill they have here is a 100, and our checks are going to be for numerous thousands (we also get monthly and remember, $1 US = roughly 7 Maluti), so we will end up with a lot of bills to find hiding spots for! Oh yeah! AND you can ONLY go to the branch of the bank to which your institution belongs. So, while there is a branch of the Standard Bank of Lesotho in the mall that is right near to school, we have to go downtown to cash our checks! It’s quite a process!

5) You need a light bulb? What kind of lightbulb? There are several types of lightbulbs that are commonly used in Lesotho. There’s a “regular” screw-in kind (not very popular), a “pin” kind (very popular), and a long florescent (also popular), so before you go to the store to buy lightbulbs you have to investigate which kind of bulb you need. If you don’t get the right kind, you’re out of luck!

6) Termite mounds galore! While driving along in Lesotho and South Africa, one commonly sees whole fields full of termite mounds. There are so many, in such patterns, that it looks as if someone planted them. It’s quite odd, and it explains why they build everything in cement here! Sorry we don’t have any pictures. We usually see them when we’re speeding down the “wrong” way of the highway, and I’m far too pre-occupied to get out the camera!

7) Beware the Tokoloshe! Basotho are a bit superstitious, especially the under-educated. The thing they fear most is a mythical creature called the Tokoloshe (Toe-kah-low-she), which is sort of like a gremlin that supposedly lives in this area. Tokoloshe can bring destruction, and you don’t want them to jump out and attack you, so the best thing to do, according to the Southern Africans, is to put your bed on risers so they can’t get you and cover any gaps under your doors. Our favorite thing to do is to blame small disruptions in our day (of which there seem to be many!) on the Tokoloshe. We’ll try not to bring any back with us when we come, but you might want to invest in some risers just in case!

8) Iceskating in Africa?! The little mall that we have here, which is quite impressive for a middle-of-nowhere type place like this, has brought in an “ice rink” as a special feature for a few weeks. For those of you who haven't been paying attention, it is the start of spring here and it gets quite chilly (read: 30's and 40's Fahrenheit), so people are in the winter mood. Here is a picture of said “ice rink”. The kids who were skating were having a lot of fun, but we were in hysterics at the sorry impression of an ice rink with which they will be left! To us, the rink looked like a linoleum floor with a thin layer of ice on top. :) We can’t wait to see the “ski resort” that is open in the winter (that’s right, Afriski!)

9) On African time, using the Basotho process, which varies depending on who you ask! The effort to acquire a work permit in Lesotho is quite involved. Luckily, our friends, colleagues, and neighbors, the Powells from South Carolina, arrived in Lesotho about a week before we did and got started on the process, so now the school has a better idea of what the exact steps are! To start, we had to get chest x-rays at the private hospital (just to confirm that we did not enter the country carrying TB), a loooong process that involved a lot of waiting and a lot of forms with signatures and stamps.

The next step was to get copies of our passports, certificates, and marriage license certified at the police station. They were closed the first time we went (the hours aren’t posted, but apparently they only certify from 8-11 and 2-3 or something), and when we returned we had to stand in line for quite a while! Once we made it inside, they barely glanced at the actual documents before signing and stamping the copies. One guy did the signing part, while another did the stamping. It’s all very official.

Next we’ll go to the certification office. We were meant to go on Friday, but they apparently were closed and said that we would need an appointment, so we’ll have to look into that next week. Apparently, they don’t like American teaching certificates because they have expiration dates, which Lesotho ones do not, so Dwight (our director) wrote a long letter explaining the expiration dates and he attached descriptors from the Maine Department of Ed. He’s hoping the amount of text alone will intimidate them into just stamping our Lesotho certifications. The thing is that there is a shortage of teachers here, so it really shouldn’t be this hard. It’s all part of the Basotho line of thinking -- things must be done “properly”, but that means something different to each person. You could go one day and get one answer, and go the next day and get a different answer!

Luckily, we have a wonderful “fixer”, the school’s secretary, Vivian, who is assertive and speaks with confidence in Sesotho to all of these officials. That’s her in the picture! She also knows a lot of people in various positions of importance. We are very appreciative of her!!


10) Living a Guarded life. Although Maseru is certainly not a hub for major crime, petty crimes are quite common and ex-pats are, of course, a prime target. Thus we have a guard at our house 24-7, our house is gated, and we were advised to keep all doors locked at all times. The school is also gated and guarded. We were advised that if we were out and got uncomfortable about where we were or what to do, we should go back to school and ask the guards.

While the guards are more for show than for might (they are not armed), it is strange to be guarded. One is never really alone here. It would take effort for someone to not know where you are. We also have to learn all of the customs that go with having a guard. Our ex-pat informant, Donnette, who is from Maine (*HOOT!*) and has lived overseas for years and years, has been our main source for information about this matter. Just so you know, guards are expected to bring their own food, but it is appropriate to provide them with a kettle, coffee, tea, and sugar since it is in your best interest that they stay awake! When the guard stand out front of our house is done (maybe Monday?!), it will have power, and we have purchased the above items for our guards. The primary day guard is our favorite (we can’t pronounce his name yet, but we’ll keep working on it!), and he is quite excited to have that stand done and get his kettle!

Okay, that’s all the odd that will fit in one post! Tune in next time for an update on how school is starting off and pictures of our classrooms. Jay’s first day as an official teacher is Monday, so send him good wishes via e-mail if you would! We have internet at home now, so we’re able to keep up with our on-line communicate a bit better and we would love to hear from you all!!

Malealea Lodge: An introduction to Lesotho and AISL

Dumela All! (Doom–AY-lah = hello!)

We’re back from what is sure to be one of several trips to the lovely Melealea lodge where the mountains are beautiful, the air is crisp, the ponies are tame, the rondavelles are warm, and the spirit is high. The lodge is owned by Europeans, but manned by many Basotho from the nearby village. It was quite well maintained, and they even gave us “conference” facilities with linen-lined tables, a powerpoint station, and waters for each person. We were impressed.

While there are many activities at Malealea, we mostly ate (and ate and ate) wonderful Basotho (bah-sue-too = the people of Lesotho) cuisine, which included a lot of lamb, rice, and epapa (cornmeal paste). While the epapa was not our favorite, it was good to try it, and it goes well with the lovely array of sauces and meats that the Basotho women seem to have such a knack for putting together. We certainly will not starve in Lesotho.

In addition, we saw a Basotho choir and a band! The choir was a bit like a church choir with Sesotho words (they also sang in Zulu apparently...I couldn't tell the difference!). The band, however, played on instruments constructed of found materials like tin cans, and they came with dancers who were amazing! I tried uploading a video to youtube, but it was going to take 43 minutes and eat up most of my internet time, so I'll try to do it later when I'm at school and have a bit more freedom to wait around for it. Look for that soon.

Sesotho lessons were also on the agenda for the weekend. The foreigners were taking notes like crazy and attempting to mimic the young Sesotho teachers, while the Basotho members of our staff sat on the other side of the circle laughing at us and making jokes in Sesotho. I’m sure they had a good time of it. Mostly we came away overwhelmed. We did, however, learn a few phrases and some basic concepts of the language. Today when we said “thank you” (phonetically it’s “KAY ah lah BOW ha”) to the check-out person at the grocery store, she said “Oh, you speak Sesotho?!” I laughed and laughed!

One of the other highlights of the weekend was the pony trek. It was awesome. The ponies are well trained to follow each other in a line and navigate the sometimes steep paths, so it was quite fun to just enjoy the view and the ride. Here are a few pictures from our time!



The hat in that last picture is a traditional Basotho (pronounced Bah Sue Too) hat that we bought at the local arts market. We were delighted to have one (we've seen tons of pictures!) and happy to be supporting the local economy. We also bought two wool wall hangings, and have one happily hung here in our living room. They're quite amazing!

The most important part of the weekend was getting to know our colleagues. There are 17 teachers and 5 assistants along with office personnel and, our personal favorite, the bus driver, Ntate Fred (Ntate = father, but you use it as “Sir” to show respect to elders). Our group divides up into teams of Early Ed., Lower School, and Upper School, and the Upper School team seems like an especially wonderful crew. We had a great experience getting to know everyone and asking tons of questions about life in Lesotho and teaching at AISL. It is sure to be a year of first attempts and team efforts. We’re excited.

When we got home it was off to the store and then home to laundry. Here is a picture of our first load!

That’s right, it’s all done by hand until we get a machine, which will require them to build a room off the side of our house. Seeing as how the guard stand that was going to be done on Saturday is still unfinished tonight (Thursday), I have a feeling it will be a while before our laundry room is finished! We will be getting some household help (it’s the norm, and it’s a great way to support the local community), so we won’t have to do it all ourselves, but things move slow here, so we’ll be patient and do a load each night until then. Hand washing of course means line drying and ironing, so we’ll be honing those skills. If you have any tips for making things really clean or really unwrinkled, we’ll take ‘em!!

Okay, that’s all we have time for today! We hope you are well and would love to hear from you via e-mail! We hope to have internet at home by the end of the week, but until then we’ll be at school regularly, so we’ll have access.

Hello from Lesotho!

Okay! Okay! We'll write an update already! :)

We made it!! It was a veeeeeeeery loooooooong trip, but we're here now and happy of it!

South African airlines is a lovely airline. They have great food (as you can see in the picture) and the seats were adequately sized. We had an empty seat beside us, so we switched off having the seat next to the empty so that we could spread out a little more. We did do lots of walking and stretching, but apparently not enough since my (Sarah) ankles were HUGE when I arrived in Jo-burg. We watched a few movies on the plane including Endgame (about the end of apartheid in S. Af.) and Date Night (hilarious! We were afraid we were waking people up because we were laughing so much!). All-in-all a great flight except that it was 15 and a half hours long.

Arrival in Jo-burg was pretty uneventful. We had shrink wrapped our luggage and zip tied the zippers for protection (see picture), but we don't think that we really needed to. Most of the other bags were not protected as such. Dwight, the director, was right at the other side to meet us and swept us off to the parking lot where some "helpful" S. Africans put our bags in the car (quite illegally, but we figured that three of us could take them if we had to and the bags were shrink wrapped anyway...).

From Jo-burg we headed south to Maseru. We stopped a few times to get out and walk around. The ride was terrifying at points (driving at break-neck speeds on the "wrong" side of the road!), but also fascinating. It actually looked a lot like Eastern Montana prairie land. If you have been there, you can definitely see what I mean from the picture below. However, at several points we went through towns where there was an African shanty-town on one side of the road and beautiful houses where white Africans lived on the other side of the road. I've included a picture of one a shanty-town below. It's not the best picture, since I was unprepared to take a photo in the first shanty-town we passed through, which was much closer. This was the best I could do. The white houses off to the right of this on a hill. It was a painful reminder of how deeply apartheid affected this area. It has definitely not yet recovered in full. Will it ever? We keep hope.

Customs in Lesotho was a little different than that in Jo-burg. They made us get out of the car to go into a building to have a person stamp our passports on two different occasions. I was unclear why we had to do that twice, but I guess that's how it always goes. Meanwhile we had 6 suitcases and all kids of carry-ons, but they didn't seem to care about checking. Dwight just said "We have nothing today. Just personal affects!" and we were good.

The border crossing is right at Maseru, and we came to the school direct from the crossing so that Dwight could grab us an extra blanket from the stash in his office. The school is beautiful! I've included some pictures here and there will be more in the weeks to come.

This first picture is our "house" where we both have our classrooms. The rooms are big. We'll send pictures once they're set up.

Here's Dwight (the director) with the new sign in front of the main office.

And to your right you will find a picture of the campus from the front porch of our "house". They have thatched picnic umbrellas over some tables in the commons. It's very beautiful!

After a brief stop at school, we headed to our houses, which are in the Thetsane neighborhood below the Pope stand (I'm sure you're all very clear on where that is!). The picture to the left shows the view of the Pope stand from our house. It's where the Pope came to speak when he came to Lesotho (when was that? I don't know...).

The house is in great condition and we have a lot of space. We went grocery shopping yesterday (600 rands = about 84 dollars, but we had some relatively expensive essentials to buy (ziplock bags, spices, oil), so it probably won't be that much every time) and going on Saturday to Bloomfontain to furnish it more thoroughly. They're building a guard stand in front of the house. There are many more construction workers than there probably need to be and there's always an overseer there who doesn't do much. We were shocked to learn that they plan to be done on Saturday. We doubt that will happen...


The kitchen has a nice sink, the all-important electric kettle (good for tea, oatmeal, and purifying water!), a good sized fridge and an "interesting" (read: very crooked burners that may or may not function) stove. There are no drawers and the "lazy susan" doesn't really turn, but we'll definitely be able to make it work. In fact, last night we made stir fry with rice, and it was delicious.

Thank you to Maureen and Brian (our neighbors and fellow teachers from South Carolina) who gave us a heads up to bring curtains and to my mom for pushing us to buy them. We have 24 hour security and a lot of windows, so we really needed those! The living room and dining area are looking pretty good. Now we'll just add some pictures and maybe a little area rug. We also get to redesign the area around the coal stove in the living room so that it looks a little nicer. You can't really see it here, but it's basically a stove on a sheet of metal nailed to the floor.

Interestingly, the toilet and the bathroom are two separate areas in our house. The toilet is currently running quite a bit, so we have a request in to get that fixed (the slogan here, however, is "when in Maseru, be patient!), and the bathroom needs some work to get a shower set up that doesn't require sitting in the tub. However, both are functional for now. We'll also have to purchase some mats for those rooms, because the floors are FREEZING in the morning (it's Spring here in mountainous Lesotho).

Beds in Lesotho are made with a bottom sheet and a covered duvet. Our duvet cover has African women on it, and is very cool. We did end up having to use that extra blanket that Dwight brought from the school, since it gets chilly here at night (in the 30ish degrees Fahrenheit), everything is made of cement, and there is no heating to speak of. We do have an electric heater in our room, but we've opted not to use it yet (we're told that May is particularly chilly, so we'll hold out). We are going to the mountains on a retreat this weekend with the staff, so we're going to bring our winter jackets and hats for that, since we can only imagine how chilly it will be at night up there!

Alright, that's all I have time for today. Next time I'll give you an overview of Maseru living and probably de-brief the retreat that we're headed on. Look for an update next week on Wednesday.

Till then! ~S&J