Hello from Lesotho! Chilly but sunny this morning. We'll take it! The rainy season which starts in October normally ends about now. We've had a week of brilliant sunshine and warm easy days to bring in the dry season. It feels good even if I'm wearing a fleece vest for a few hours each day.

Lynn and I have been forced to realize that our two year stint in the Peace Corps is quickly coming to an end. Ouch! We have about forty days left and will be busy with our projects down to the wire. Last week we drove with four other Volunteers in a rented taxi to Maseru for our close of service conference. The Peace Corps put us up at the Maseru Sun Hotel for three days and nights of, well, decompression. This is an up-end lodging and we all overate the breakfast lunch and dinner buffets - day after day. The rooms had tubs with hot water (not the dip and pour bathing we know so well!) and carpets and TV and views over the hotel's manicured gardens and pool. What a treat! I didn't hear anyone say "We don't deserve this!" It was fun and perhaps more importantly, a necessary first step in letting go of this exotic life we've been immersed in. After almost two years, we're all different peoples. My own life has changed again, a process that was first started thirty-three years ago as a PCV in Burkina Faso, then again, in the '80's, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines with my wife, Lynn. Now our travel and environmental interests are calling us to spend further time in Africa, perhaps making videos. This idea hadn't even crossed our minds twentythree months ago. Every COSing Volunteer is also wrestling with a new view of life and new dreams for the future. It's an exciting time for us all and we talked about it last week for hours!

The Letter from Lesotho began as a project to give incoming Peace Corps trainees a sense of what day to day life was like for Volunteers in Lesotho. I thought I might conclude my letter writing tenure with some brief thoughts on surviving, and flourishing for two years in the developing world:

1. Make a life, and a home, at your site! This seems obvious, but we regularly see Volunteers trying to escape this necessity with relentless trips back and forth to Maseru and/or overindulgence in Peace Corps' too generous committee/meeting schedule. Lynn and I have spent 90% of our time at our sites. Our home and friends and students are all here in Qacha's Nek. We've made some good friends, too, in South Africa, through business relationships. Lynn pitched in early and made a terrific flower and vegetable garden. We've had fresh produce on our table daily since (we built a cold frame for winter) and fresh-cut flowers for the FTC offices as well Fun!

2. follows from 1) Build a routine! We get up at 5:30 every morning, listen to South African public radio (excellent!), the BBC (outstanding!) or VOA (mediocre!) to check up on the world and have a leisurely cup of filter coffee. Then we run or walk three miles on the Qacha's Nek airport runway (you need to exercise!). We prepare to teach our classes in small business, English, computers and cabinetmaking and we try never to miss a class (we've missed a few, but with good reason). For several hours a day we read, write letters, make grant proposals, entertain visitors, work in the yard, do laundry, buy groceries, cook, play with our cat Deekausi ( Socks), but we always are trying to make it a full day. After supper, we ritually have tea or coffee and a piece of South Africa's to-die-for dark chocolate with almonds. We usually turn in about the same time each night - 9:30 PM. This may seem like irrelevant, even boring(!) information, but it keeps morale up and prevents huge holes in the day which can mess up your mind ... sitting, brooding, far from the States.

3. I hate buzzwords, but be pro-active! If there were an eight hour a day job waiting for you, we wouldn't need the Peace Corps, right? Plan to make things happen. Join the struggle against AIDS; it's enormously important and Peace Corps will show you how build a solar cooker, help start small businesses (we love this part!), start cooperatives, plant trees, get grants to build small schools or libraries (local people will help you along), teach an English class, raise poultry, teach your favorite hobby there's so many things to do in Lesotho and yet, we've seen Volunteers declare there wasn't a job and go back to the States, unhappy. Assert yourself! That's what Americans are famous for, isn't it?

4. Learn who you are! Peace Corps is a golden opportunity to test yourself, to see life differently, to live simply without TV or bullshit consumerism or traffic jams, to take pleasure in simple conversations, to slow down (!), to drink in the stunning natural beauty of Lesotho and southern Africa. There are thousands of new plants and animals to stimulate your curiosity! Take a deep breath. You're living in Africa. If you can do this and enjoy the experience, then you can you anything you want with you life! Amen.

Just as everything was rolling smoothly along, I chanced to happen on a bad pick-up truck accident across the road from our Farmer Training Centre on Sunday afternoon. The seven occupants were the majority of our youthful Chinese business community, including a baby. They speak little English and some were unconscious. Everyone was in shock and bleeding. I stopped a pick-up truck and, with help, loaded people inside for the run to our local hospital, Machabeng. There, I found one of our capable Nigerian doctors coming out of surgery. Without missing a beat, he set to work with a Basotho nurse cleaning, treating and stabilizing his very distraught patients. Other hospital workers arrived I stood in the middle of this controlled frenzy for some minutes I saw that even in their distress the Chinese women were still so beautiful with full red cheeks across their broad faces. Africans took charge. There was no racism in that emergency room, I thought to myself, I belong here. There's a uniqueness to my life and always some small way to help. I realized I will miss this life in the mountains of Lesotho very, very much ...

Always and ever, best wishes.,
Eric Thomson, PCV, Qacha's Nek, Lesotho