Well, Lauren and I have been here for two months already. We haven't had to break out the duct tape to split the house in two, yet. However, if she keeps beating me at our nightly games of cribbage I might have to take drastic measures. Lauren is up by 3 games (but who's counting?)
Besides cribbage, our other major activity for the night is cooking dinner. Lauren and I are sure we will be gourmet chefs after a year here. Our dinner routing begins with reading our cookbook, "More with Less" (our Bible). The reading of the cookbook is followed by laughter at all the ingredients we are missing. After making the dinner we sit down and examine the dish in order to give it a proper name. The complicated formula for naming it calls for two adjectives followed by the word "surprise." The surprise is necessary because we have usually substituted most to all of the called for ingredients, and thus the finished product bears little resemblance to the description in the cookbook. For example, one might never guess that yellow foam surprise has any connection to rice pudding. Yes, dinner is often an adventure.
Teaching. There is another adventure. I am teaching Form A Language and Literature and Form B Literature and Math. Teaching here has been difficult, but this is true no matter where you are. Some of the specific challenges we face here are that our classes have around 50 students, the Form A's have no textbooks (a "small" oversight by the government), and--oh yes--there is the small, minor problem of the students not understanding English. On my first day with the Form A's I sent around a sheet for the students to write down their names. As an example I wrote "Brown" under surname, "Alison" under first name, and 'M'e Alison under what I prefer to be called. When I collected the paper at the end of the class I was surprised to find that in rural Africa I had happened to get a class of 49 Alison Browns who all, coincidentally, preferred to be called 'M'e Alison. What are the odds?
During the first week I was just a little worried when I found that I could still not communicate to some students what I meant by "first name" or "what should I call you?" Last week I was still finding that some of the names I was using from my seating chart were actually last names. I also gave one of the teachers a good laugh the other day when I asked her to look at my class list. Not only did I still have first and surnames reversed, but she also informed me that the reason why I had 56 names and 49 students is because some of them had kept switching between two names (but they mean the same thing?). Being laughed at and feeling clueless are things I experience on an almost hourly basis.
One important thing I have learned here is that no matter what some may say, there are bugs in Lesotho. I had been assured by Allison Groves, who accompanied us to Lesotho, that there were "really no bugs in Lesotho." Well, a week and a half after our arrival I started waking up each morning with over 70 bites that contradicted Ms.Groves' assurance. I recently have switched rooms and abandoned the suspicions blankets, and so thankfully, I am now doing much better in the bug department. However, I did have to consider breaking out the duct tape again last weekend when Lauren proudly showed me her first bug bite.
Besides learning about the existence of bugs in Lesotho, I have also been learning a lot about race and what it means to be white in Southern Africa. Lesotho is interesting because it was not under colonial rule for long so it has been far less influenced by whites than some of its neighboring countries, like South Africa. We sometimes stay in Ladybrand, the closest South African town to Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. It is strange to step into South Africa's polarized world of black and white. We walk around foreigners, Americans, not a part of the memory of apartheid and yet, because of the color or our skin we are sifted into the dichotomy and we fall on the side of the Afrikaners. We have had a few conversations with some Afrikaners where government and apartheid have come up. It is both upsetting and fascinating that they have talked to us as though we have some comradery in the "us-them" talk. And yet, we are foreigners. We barely know these people and we are living and teaching among the black Basotho, and yet because of our skin color they think we have an understanding. It is uncomfortable, but interesting.
It is so easy to get caught up in the challenges and difficulties of living here, but they are what make us laugh and keep things interesting. I find it amazing to think of how quickly we have adapted in some ways. When I first arrived here I saw Africa everywhere in the women washing clothes in the donga (river), in the herd boys galloping by our house, in the buckets that miraculously stay balanced on women's heads--everything reminded me of the Africa I have read about. But now I have been partially absorbed into the culture and these things just seem like a part of life. It is no longer the cows trampling our fence and eating our grass that startle me. Instead it is the sound of a vehicle's motor that sends me to the window, curious as to what strange sight might greet me. It is now the sight of a car or bus that seems foreign to me. I cannot imagine what I will find shocking in another 2 months.
