I should have written this report last quarter while still in Lesotho, but the last weeks were busy, closing up the school year, recording marks, cleaning the house, packing and preparing for travel over the summer holidays. We had days of meetings at the very end to discuss promotions - which students, even if they received failing marks, should be recommended to the next level - and to make a general assessment of the year. I had mixed feelings about promotions. Somewhere between a third to half of most classes failed. While I am glad that many of these students will be promoted, I think it's odd that A. simply such a lard percentage of students is failing and B. students are receiving the message on their reports that even though they're not being forced to repeat, they still failed academically
Which leads me to the year-end assessment meeting, in which we spent an entire day discussing this year's accomplishments and failures, but came up with very few next steps. At a break early in the day, I eagerly asked a more senior teacher ho she thought the assessment was going so far. "Ach" she said, "they say the same thing every year. I want to go home." Assessment this year included a 20 minute discussion of whether or not students should be allowed to wear berets (not, as had been decided at an earlier parents meeting), as well as an in-depth explanation of why students who wear sweaters over their uniforms have darker tops than skirts (sun-fading). Teacher turn-over rate and staff absenteeism were issues left entirely untouched.
And then, while I wasn't paying attention, all of a sudden the year was over, everyone was gone, and Liz, Rachel and I were left standing alone in the classroom.
That night, after seven weeks without power, the electricity came on after nine p.m. and stayed on for one hour. The next noon, we loaded into the back of the clinic pick-up truck and rode with Sr. Armelina to the boarder, where she paid-off someone to lead us to the front of the line, and we crossed out of Lesotho.
Now, after some weeks of travel throughout southern Africa, it's difficult to remember what being a teacher in Lesotho was like. Lesotho is surprisingly distant from even its nearest neighbors, at least it feels so. Not only one of the smallest, but one of the poorest and least developed of the SADC (Southern African Development Community), states Lesotho receives little recognition. My Zimbabwean bus driver asked me, "Lesotho? Isn't that the capital of Swaziland?" and he and his friend proceeded to have a discussion on whether or not Lesotho is actually a country. And I'm starting to wonder how Lesotho really does manage to be a country. It's not just the small population - at 3 million, Lesotho is well over a million people larger that Botswana. But at least Botswana has diamonds with which to support itself. Lesotho's only natural resource is water, and the big 5 dams pipe off water to South Africa, at cheap rates, and don't even produce electricity for Lesotho. Which couldn't use the power, even if they did, because the national grid is tiny, and expanding it into the mountains to spread-out villages would be prohibitively expensive. The nation is struggling to be self-sufficient when just about everything is imported, and the subsistence agriculture and extensive grazing are exhausting the land to the point where it will barely have any productivity left.
I am unsure as to what the St. Rodrigue to which I am returning will be like. The day we left Lesotho, Sr. Amelina told us that the night before, the women in the medical clinic heard someone on the roof, but were too frightened to investigate. That morning, they found that the clinic solar panel had been stolen, to be sold in Maseru or elsewhere. I can understand why we, as Americans, have been the target of some theft and frequent request for money, because there is relative truth to the stereotype of the rich American. But I had thought that the clinic, run by one of the nuns, was, kind of untouchable. Apparently not so.
I am already missing Liz and Rachel, and I am not looking forward to long staff meetings without being able to exchange sympathetic looks with them. There will be no one to give me book recommendations, or to tell me which of the minibus taxi drivers are crazy drunks, or to direct me to where to get a good cup of coffee in Maseru. I am not ready to become the expert on Lesotho, the one who should know the bus schedule, and can gracefully navigate school politics. Liz and Rachel immediately made me feel welcome and at home, and I am nervous to face Lesotho and life at St. Rodrigue without them. However, I am anxiously anticipating Leslie's arrival, and I expect that she will be able to help me, with her experience as a student teacher, as much or more than I will be able to help her. I hope that she finds Lesotho new, exciting, and beautiful, and I am looking forward to all of the possibilities of a new academic year.
Since writing the first part of this report, I have returned to Lesotho with my parents, for a last few days of vacation before the start of the school year. It had been almost six weeks since I locked our house, and I returned to find it dusty and inhabited by a new batch of mice, who welcomed be by leaving mouse turds in my bed. Seeing Lesotho with my parents and my younger brother made me remember how beautiful this country is, and how excited I am to be here. Their surprise at repeated requests for money and candy, and the harassment by some boys on the bus, made me remember how frustrated this place can make me as well. Sr. Monica, my co-librarian and my closest Basotho friend has been re-assigned to Maseru, and will be leaving tomorrow morning, as I writer this. We will begin the school year with a shortage of teachers, and I already have a full course lad without full responsibility for the library. My garden is overgrown with weeds, and my stunted bean plants have produced only one pod each. But Fraser's truck stop now carries cheese in the refrigerator, and there is a new movie theatre open in Maseru, which is currently playing the movie about Jodie Foster in the airplane. The peaches on the trees are getting big, and 'Me' Augustina, our across the street neighbor, enthusiastically welcomed us this morning. I am ready for a new year.
