Don't Drink the Water...

The moral of the story of living in Africa turns out to be: Don't drink the water. Although we have been careful to drink only bottled water or boiled water, apparently boiling isn't enough around these parts during the rainy season, and we've both been sick for weeks and weeks. It's been quite a damper on our time.

We ended up learning about South African health care in our quest to get better. A few interesting things about doctors here:
1) Your appointment actually starts that the time they say
2) The doctor meets you and takes you to his/her office where he/she talks to you directly and then examines you on the bed in his/her office -- no waiting; no one except the doctor. It's crazy.
3) A doctors visit without insurance costs $40, and prescriptions are similarly priced. Thus an entire experience without insurance costs less than $100. *wow*

While we were in Ladybrand getting better, we also had time to stop by the post office there and sign up for a post office box. We have discovered that Lesotho doesn't quite have a functioning mail service. Apparently you're supposed to consult your crystal ball to know if you have a package, and even then you have to go hunting for it around the post office and pay for them to give it to you. We've heard better things about South African service, so we're hopeful. We'll let you know if our efforts yield any results. To be safe, we're suggesting I-Tunes e-mail gift certificates to anyone who asks us what we would like for Birthday/Christmas. Internet may not be fast, but it is reliable.

In other news, it's the end of first trimester at AISL. The kids are presenting student-led conferences next week, and we've been trying to do the impossible: get a group of 17 teenagers organized. We'll both be up to our eyeballs in grading for the next week or two, but luckily we have a long weekend coming up for Thanksgiving, so we'll have some extra time. (Don't worry. They import turkeys and we'll be sure to get our fill of that too!).

To round up this short, but long over-due post, I'll give you a picture of the little rodent friend who lives in the rocks outside our home office window. As best we can tell he's a Sloggett's Vlei Rat. The name doesn't do him justice. He's really cute.

That's all for now. 'Till next time!
~S&J

Happy Halloween!

Hi All,

We hope you’re having a lovely Halloween. Before we get to that, though, a few more pictures from the conference in Kenya. First off, this is a pic of the largest swimming pool in Africa, which happens to be located at the Safari Park Hotel, where the conference was held. It is actually a string of pools that are attached to one another. This is just one of them. As you can see, it is quite showy.

This is the group of conference goers on the last night of the conference at the gala dinner. We wore Basotho blankets – it was my first experience with that! We had a good time, but we were all exhausted. It was a long week, and we were glad to return “home” last Friday.

My advice on Nairobi: Stay away for a few more years until they’re done with construction of the huge highway leading out of the city. It’s hard to get anywhere in the city right now, and thus one feels stuck at his/her hotel most of the time. Do feel free to fly into Nairobi on your way to beautiful things like safaris and Mt. Kilimanjaro (which I saw through the window of our plane on the way out!). It was too bad that we didn’t have time for a real Kenyan experience while there.

Okay, on to current matters! It’s a beautiful Sunday Halloween here in Maseru. It’s about 80 degrees out and feels a lot like Monzanillo, Mexico did last February (except there’s no beautiful beach to go to). Unfortunately, Jay has been under the weather, so we didn’t do much adult celebrating, but we did have fun at school with an extensive day of festivities on Friday. There was a parade and then a circuit of activities. Here’s us in our outfits:

It is the first Halloween in our lives where we’ve gotten sun burnt. We didn’t see that one coming! Definitely need to remember the sunscreen next year…

In the evening, we threw a dance party for the 6-9^th graders. It was their first school dance ever, and it was a huge success. One family even donated use of a dance lights and fog machine from their lighting store. It made for a very festive atmosphere. Here are some pictures from the evening:

It was nice to chaperone a middle school dance in which

A) The kids actually danced (as opposed to going to a girls’ corner and a boys’ corner as can sometimes happen at a middle school dance) and

B) There were no public displays of affection or skirts sneaking higher and higher as girls and boys dance waaaaaaaay too closely.

I actually enjoyed being a chaperone….and I don’t say that very often. Anyway, Mr. Mott has promised them another dance before Christmas, and they are all very excited.

People here don’t really go trick-or-treating. It’s not a part of their culture, and it’s not safe to be outside walking around after dark, so tonight will be another quiet night in. Hope you are well and enjoying your Halloween festivities. Would love to hear from you soon!

~S&J

Update from the Conference

Hello from Nairobi, Kenya!

It’s Sarah writing, and I’m delighted to report that Nairobi is a happening place to be, and is treating us quite well. The conference is at this amazing complex called “Safari Park”, which has a hotel, five restaurants, three swimming pools, and loads of other amenities. We were all impressed with how large it all was! Here is a picture of the elephant statue in the lobby. Quite a welcome, eh?

We were struck by the purple blossoms on the Jacaranda trees here. They’re everywhere, and they make the place so festive! I’m told that these trees are also in Pretoria, South Africa and Johannesburg, but this is the first I’ve seen. Here is a picture of one of them:

So far the conference has been interesting. Our key note speaker Sunday evening was Valerie Bloom, a Jamaican poet, who basically did an interactive poetry reading instead of talking at us. It was a wonderfully enriching and fun experience. I also took an all day session with her today, and came away with a lot of great ideas for helping students write creatively. I’ll definitely be putting those into action A.S.A.P.

Today for our key note we heard from John Joseph, and Australian educator who speaks about four “worlds of the mind” that we each have (identity, concrete, abstract, and future). He uses brain science to explain why it is important to develop each area of intelligence and how knowing about the intelligences can help students understand and take charge of their own learning. It was quite interesting, and he was funny.

Tomorrow I’m going to a workshop on student-led conferences, which is something we aim to implement at school this year, so I’m excited to have a good refresher/extender course to go on! Also, there are “dutch treat” dinners tomorrow evening where teachers from the International School of Kenya here in Nairobi are going to take us to some of their favorite places to eat in the city. I”m excited for that. I hope that it does not take as long as the dinner we had tonight at the Japanese restaurant here at Safari Park. I’ll spare you the details and summarize by saying that it took us four hours to complete the meal...and not by any choice of our own.

Okay, that’s all for now. More tomorrow!

All About Morija

Dumelang Bo-Me le Bo-Ntate! (Hello (plural) Ladies and Gentlemen!)

Sorry it’s been a bit since our last post. School became quite busy this week, and we were swamped. I (Sarah) will be writing from Nairobi, Kenya this week where I am attending a conference. For right now I’ll post this picture of these amazing storks that were in the trees right outside our hotel window this morning! More on Nairobi will come later.

What I wanted to write about today, is last weekend, which Jay and I spent at a Sesotho Language and Culture session in Morija, Lesotho, about 45 minutes Southwest of Maseru. Morija was the site of the first mission in Lesotho. Here is a picture of Jay standing on the porch of the Morija Guest House (a delightful stay, by the way!).

Morija was created in 1833 by French Protestant missionaries, who came at the bequest of the founder of Lesotho, Moshoeshoe (Moe-shway-shway) the first. Mosheoshoe realized that since he had fended off the Zulus AND the Xhosa AND the Boers AND the British to establish a nation, he now needed to establish ties with the outside world so that his nation would be strong. He was actually a very forward thinking kinda guy in that way -- willing to admit that he didn’t have all the knowledge and neither did his people, and anxious to gather knowledge from others. So anyway, he invited these missionaries, and they came and set up a mission right there in Morija. One of them, Cassalis, even came to be considered Moshoeshoe’s “foreign minister”.

While we did spend a lot of time learning Sesotho language during our weekend at Morija, we also had time to hike. Our first hike was up Thaba Bosiu, “the mountain that grows at night”. This is the mountain on top of which Moshoeshoe and his people established a village and staved off invasions. They basically rolled boulders down the hill to prevent the enemies from making it up. In this way, Moshoeshoe was actually defensive warrior and maybe even a passive resistor. He is famous for saying, “The only weapon is love.” The mountain itself was quite steep, and it was hard to imagine climbing it in warrior’s gear. At the top are the graves of Moshoeshoe 1, Moshoeshoe 2 (who died in 2006), and many other members of the royal family. Mosheoshoe the first had 150 wives, so you can imagine that there are a lot of graves up there!! There are also some wild horses who roam, which made for beautiful photographs. Here is a picture of the grave of Moshoeshoe the first as well as a picture of the mountain that inspired the Basotho hat (the mountain is viewable from atop Thaba Bosiu).




In addition to the hike up Thaba Bosiu, we also climbed right behind the Morijah guest house to see some dinosaur footprints. They were small, three pronged prints that didn’t look very impressive, but we’re told that they have actually been certified as coming from the Jurassic age and were preserved because the rocks in that area are sandstone, which keeps prints well. Apparently there are other prints elsewhere in the country, and paleontologists have even discovered a dinosaur that is called the Lesothosaurus! Who knew we were in such an active area for paleontology?

All-in-all, we had a lovely weekend full of learning, great people, good hiking, fresh air, and good food. We headed back to Maseru feeling rested, but rushed to prepare for the coming week. Then on Monday we got an extra day off when there was no water at school. An extra day to prep! It was just like a snowday, except we had no clue that it was coming at all! What a blessing!

Okay, that’s all for now. Next time: an update from Kenya. Stay tuned!!

Goldengate National Park -- a beautiful adevnture

This weekend is a long weekend in Lesotho (Monday is the 4th of October -- Lesotho independence day). We decided to stay local for the holiday since we wanted a few days to catch up on work and get to know the area nearby a little better. Several people recommended that we visit Clarens, a small South African town with many artists and specialty shoppes about 2.5 hours from Maseru. Here's a map for those of you who are geographically inclined (Maseru is just south of Ladybrand):Anyway, so we set out very bright and early Saturday morning in an attempt to beat the boarder rush and set ourselves up for a lot of time in Clarens. The boarder beating didn't go so well since it's a holiday weekend and a lot of people were headed out. What was worse was that the drive-through tent to check in to South Africa wasn't open yet, so everyone had to get out and go to the standing que. We aren't quite sure why it takes so much longer to get through the boarder here than other places we've been. Given: we only spent about 30 minutes at the boarder this time, which is comparable to times when we've crossed from the U.S. to Canada. However, when you go from the U.S. to Canada they actually ask you questions and investigate your car. Going into South Africa you are literally waiting for a stamp, which they give you after spending about 30 seconds with your passport. We aren't quite sure of the point. Also, one is required to check out of Lesotho and then check in to South Africa and vice versa every time. As if something spectacular is going to happen in the 50 feet between the two immigration stations...

Once we had finished at the boarder, we headed east toward Clarens and arrived around 10:00AM. We had breakfast at one of the multiple, quaint little cafes there and then wandered the town a bit to check out the art shops and specialty tourist shops. Here's a picture of the main drag:

We put it akin to Bigfork, MT; Santa Fe, NM; or Bar Harbor, ME. It was nice, but it also felt a little fake, especially since one drives through the local shanty town in order to arrive at this village full of well-to-do white people.

After wandering for several hours, we were feeling the itch, so we opted to head out to the national park that we heard was just 17 kilometers away. We had no idea what to expect, but we figured that we'd give it a try and turn around if there wasn't much to see. Were we ever delighted when this met us at the entrance to Goldengate National Park:

We spent time driving through the park on the main road (me taking tons of pictures, and Jay trying to help the car handle the steep uphill climbs) until we arrived at the Basotho village they have set up as a tourist attraction at the far end. We'd read that the village was staged (the Coke sign at the entrance was a dead give away!), and we're set to go to a real Basotho village next weekend, so we weren't disappointed when there was a wedding being held and tourist activities were basically suspended for the day.

On our way back we decided to stop and get out for a while, but then it started to rain, so we got back in the car and did the driving loops that are laid out for sight seers. The views were amazing! Plus we saw lots of exciting wildlife! Here are pics to prove it! We saw monkeys:

Zebras:

White-tailed wildebeests:

Springboks:

And cranes:

We also saw other types of birds, but they were far too fast for us to capture on film! Many of the birds have amazing coloring, and they really catch your eye when they flutter past. All-in-all, it was an impressive array of wildlife!

Having hung out in the park for several hours and not having any sense of what sorts of hiking was available or how long the trails were (the check-in station was not quite as tourist-friendly as it could have been, but we also didn't get charged to go in, so we weren't that upset!), we decided to head back home.

On our way back we noticed that there was a lot of smoke coming from an area close to the road not too far up ahead, and when we arrived at the area it turned out that there was a large fire burning right near a medium-sized town! While there seemed to be some people hanging around a house that was very, very close to the fire, the road was not blocked and there were pedestrians walking right past! We were shocked! Jay drove quickly while I thought of what we would do if our car caught fire as we drove...it was bonkers! Here's a picture:

The fence posts are about 5 feet from the road, and this was just one part of the fire, which stretched for a good 3-4 miles. The best we could tell, it must have been set by lightening (it was a stormy day), and this must happen every once in a while since people didn't seem very concerned. It reminded me why we need to keep bugging the woman who helps us with household needs to replace the fire extinguisher in our kitchen (which expired in 1989)...

Also on our way back, we got stopped by South African policemen who were upset that our license plates weren't attached. Funny that they should have time to stop people whose license plates aren't attached when there's a large fire burning not far away!! We explained that we have no way to drill holes in the plates to get them attached, but that we intended to ask the maintenance guys at school to help us. They asked Jay for his driver's license and laughed at the weight and height numbers (they think in metric here, so a number over 100 is a real shocker). They asked us several times where we were from (they were baffled when we said that we were living in Maseru), and then sent us on our way with a warning. We were surprised that we didn't have to pay them a bribe, since that is the norm in this area, but we were glad that the meeting was very uneventful. We're quite certain that our skin color, nationality, and job descriptions went a long way right in that moment...

So that's the story of yesterday! We're glad to have a few more days off (school's back on Tuesday), and we're excited to be going to Morija for Sesotho culture and language weekend on Friday. We'll let you know how it goes! Until then...

One more audience request -- Termite mounds!

Ted from Cape Elizabeth, Maine requested a picture of the termite mounds that I wrote about before, so I thought I would post that today. This is one picture of the hundreds I could have taken. The fields in South Africa are full of these things!

In the picture you'll notice that the ground looks charred. That's because it is -- they burn instead of mowing. You can imagine what that does for the air quality...

They also build everything out of cement or brick, and you can see why. It actually ends up making the architecture look a lot like the American Southwest or Mexico. We were surprised at that.

So there's the share for today. The trip to Bloem went wonderfully yesterday. We ended up getting a computer charger to replace the one we fried, all the supplies for the lizard, a bunch of kid-requested books (they're reading fiends!!), and yoga mats (we found a free class Monday-Thursday that we're really liking a lot!). We also saw two zebras as we were driving along! I couldn't get to the camera fast enough, but it was very cool.

'Til next time
~S

Introducing "Monkey" the Wonderlizard!

So we were given a bearded dragon for our classroom. It came with many accessories and a lot of good stories. It did not come with a user guide. We are learning as we go.

In terms of pets we wanted, this was not one of them. The family that owned it was moving to Kenya suddenly, though, and they were desperate. However, he is growing on us a bit. Bearded dragons are friendly like puppies (but not as soft), and he’s really cute when he runs (he sorta waddles) and when he eats (he has a slimy pink tongue).
Having a school pet is kinda cool, and we’re working on lots of activities for the kids such as having them learn about bearded dragons so that they can give informational talks to elementary classes.

There are some difficulties to this new acquisition. First of all, the dragon requires U.V. light to be able to digest, but the U.V. light in its tank is burnt out, and the closest place one can get one is Bloemfontain (1.5 hours away). It also requires play sand for its tank, which is another item that can only be acquired in Bloem. Until we get the U.V. light, we are stuck coming in every day to make sure it gets outside into the sun. Technically it’s supposed to be getting 12-14 hours of U.V. -- we are currently giving it about 1 on a good day, which makes us feel horrible, but it’s the best we can do. We are planning a trip to Bloem tomorrow to pick up the needed accessories. What will we do over vacations? Not sure yet. We’ll see. Maybe we can find a nice maintenance person who would be willing to help, or a family that is willing to take him home for a few weeks.

Anyway, so that’s the news here: we moved to Lesotho, Africa and got a Bearded Lizard *lol*. Here’s a picture of the little guy. We choose “Monkey” as his name because we think it’s funny to have a lizard named Monkey. His previous name was “Dragon”, so we felt like we had some leeway for a re-name.