Hello from Lesotho! After last month's Antarctic chill its a pleasure to report that with the lengthening days comes warmer weather. We have a peach tree in full blossom on the Farmer Training Center grounds and daffodils and tulips are pushing for an early Spring. Warm afternoons this week at 6200 ft, are allowing Lynn and her coworker 'M'e Tato, along with their gardening students, to prune fruit trees and cultivate and fertilize around rose bushes that they planted last fall. They're working toward a handsome new landscaping look for the center with lots of juniper type shrubs planted too. This should be a good year for gardening at the farm. Kilos of chicken manure have been wheelbarrowed up from the hen house and worked into the student and schools gardens. This is also the time we find out about the many strawberry starts that were set out last fall. Fresh strawberries. Now there's a pleasing thought for breakfast in the mountains of southern Africa...

We hear on the radio from South Africa about terrible fires across the American West. This is the time of year that the Basotho start fires to burn off the previous season's grass. There's often smoke in the air lately and many fires are burning in South Africa as well. Whole mountains are blackened around Qacha's Nek. Occasionally a hut is burned but mostly these traditional fires don't seem to cause damage beyond their original intent. We were told by a friend at the nearby South African border post that the fires are set to drive away the wild animals, so they won't compete with domestic stock when the rains bring new grass. How odd? All the wildlife in our area was killed off 50 to 100 years ago. I mean all of it. What creatures of habit we are as humans. Don't we Americans send all the children home for June, July and August from school. Why? Because eons ago they were needed to work on the farms and ranches of our growing country. We're pretty resistant to change, too. Actually, the burned off areas in Lesotho will sprout new pasture quickly once the rains come, hopefully in October, but often later. We don't have the clay laterite soil here that saw burned to hardpan as a PCV in Burkina Faso. The air pollution may be more of a hazard than the damage done to the soil. I'm not really sure.

I had to take a vehicle to Sehlabathebe National Park where two Peace Corps biologists are assigned a couple of weeks back. I was the bearer of a semi-urgent message from our Maseru office. Along the way there was a Frank Sinatra tape playing on the tape deck. I can't tell you what fabulous counterpoint it was to glide through traditional African villages, men, women and children waving and flashing those dazzling smiles while Old Blue Eyes scrolled through his catalog of Vegas. standards. There's something in the American psyche that just needs to get out on the road from time to time and unwind... As Lynn and I begin our second year in Lesotho life looks good.