Hello from the roof of Africa! As we slip into the long pleasant days of Spring/Summer, our thoughts naturally turn to those of you destined to winter over in the northern hemisphere. My wife Lynn and I have finished training at Roma and are posted at the Farmer Training Center at Qacha's Nek. After our careers in innkeeping, furniture making and archeology, etc., we are delighted to be advisors in small business start-ups, carpentry, English as a second language and farmer education. This is a third Peace Corps stint for me and a second for Lynn (Burkina Faso 68-70, Phillipines together, 87-89). I thought I'd share a few early impressions after a month in the Drackensburg Mountains.

You were right. Lesotho is visually stunning, particularly now with the start of the rains (and thunder!). We seem to be getting good, soaking moisture once or twice a week in the last month. We're busy planting here at the model farm. Our students, both boys and girls, ages 16-22, used a team of oxen this week to plow gardens and fields here. After years of travelling the developing world, we are enthralled in Lesotho by the numbers of tractors and oxen teams practicing contour farming across the country. There is soil erosion. There are serious dongas (gullies), but there is also much to be hopeful about. We have peaches growing in our small front yard as do thousands of other village families in the mountain kingdom. It's the last thing we expected to see.

Despite a few concerns around the anniversary of the 1998 trouble, the country has been calm and Peace Corps is hard at work rebuilding it's program. We have a new country director, Carol Chappel, who arrived in June. She was a PCV in Russia (!) and was also country director in Ethiopia before the pull-out. She has been busy visiting volunteers at their sites (she pays us a visit next week) and is actively involved in training. Volunteer morale seems good. I might note that our female U.S. ambassador is also a former PCV. If you're a tea-leaf reader, it doesn't get much better than this. Many of us will be having Thanksgiving at the embassy. Another training group will be coming in-country about that time.

We had a thatched rondeval dinner party last night for the 10 or so vols in this district. We rolled tortillas with bottles and had a fabulous Mexican Peace Corps meal, minus the salsa, but with avacados. We ate by candlelight and paraffin lamps and traipsed down the hill to the outhouse through a rainy night. But what conversation and camaraderie. It's always remarkable to me to see how full life can be with so little.

I'll try to write from time to time, and should you want to post these messages on the Friends of Lesotho web site, that would be fine. Re thabile and best wishes,

Eric Thomson, Lesotho PCV