Dear Friends of Lesotho,

Hello from Lesotho As you've been noticing on CNN etc., this is a provident moment to be living on the "roof of Africa". Mainly, water flows down hill, so while Lesotho is having a wet rainy season the results are mostly beneficial. The maize and garden crops are looking far better than anyone could have hoped for back in December after a lengthy drought. Lesotho seems to be well south of the cyclones that have clobbered Mozambique and Mpumalanga Province (including Kruger Park) in South Africa. We are still, in the high Drackensberg, getting regular downpours but not washing out to sea. We had another thrilling lightening storm two nights ago with strikes close to the house. We've noted in the South African media (literate public radio SAFM) lots of attention being paid to the South African Air Force's heroic role is rescuing 12,000 refugees from rooftops and treetops, in the early days of the floods, with helicopters. This week RSA President Thabo M'Beki showered praise on these white flight crews at a ceremony, but the most poignant moment was to hear an Africaaner pilot respond about the crews pleasure in showing a different face to their "Mozambique brothers" than the era of Apartheid bombing raids of the recent past. These are heroes: crews hung upside down from rescue lines to pluck people out of the raging Limpopo. The reconciliation process in southern Africa is slow, erratic, but apparent in many small gestures.

Lynn and I are just returned from our first vacation after eight months in country. We traveled a circuit from Bloomfontein down to the Garden Route (Knysna) through Addo Elephant Park and then back through Eastern Cape. We caught a glimpse of Nelson Mandela's retirement home near Umtata and stayed two nights on the Wild Coast at Dweesa Nature Reserve. There are next to no tourists where we traveled in Eastern Cape, but what a wonderful sense of the "real" Africa travelers hope to discover. We passed mile after mile of rondeval villages and traditional compounds as the highway wound deep into gorges and up mountain slopes. We were warned about security problems, but found every wave from our car returned with a wave and those beautiful African smiles! Every simple gesture of respect (a wave, a greeting, eye contact) with the most impoverished African farmer was returned in kind. We stayed at a small Wild Coast resort at the end of 75 kilometers of muddy dirt road We were the only customers. Just us the African staff and a few dozen zebra and wildebeast grazing around our lodging. Earlier, we were surrounded one morning at a water hole in Addo Park by fifty elephants. Elephants so tightly grouped around our vehicle that we couldn't help but hear the monumental rumblings of elephant bellies and see the delicate , trunked inspection of a new calf's eyes, ears and mouth by its wild, vigilant mother a perfect Peace Corps vacation.

All best wishes
Eric & Lynn
Qacha's Nek, Lesotho