Peggi Tabor’s Original Letters while a PCV
6/19/2004 – 7/31/2004 – 9/24/2004 – 9/26/2004 – 10/14/2004 – 11/2/2004 – 11/14/2004 – 11/28/2004 – 12/11/2004
1/21/2005 – 3/6/2005 – 4/8/2005 – 5/11/2005 – 5/29/2005 – 6/9/2005 – 6/25/2005 – 7/20/2005 – 8/21/2005
10/5/2005 – 10/27/2005 – 11/6/2005 – 12/14/2005 – 1/8/2006 – 2/11/2006 – 2/24/2006 – 3/27/2006 – 4/26/2006
6/19/04
Peace Corps Training
Dear Friends and family:
This is my first shot at an Internet connection since I arrived in Africa and my hands are shaking. There is so much to say and so little time.
I arrived here in Lesotho late on June 2nd. We were met at the Bloemfontein airport by a group of PC staff and our Peace Corps country director, Jean McGrath Thomas. They sang a traditional African welcome and loaded our bedraggled group into vans for the 30 km trip to Mazenod, Lesotho, the site for our first two and final three weeks of training. This training site is an old Catholic monastery that has been converted into a conference center. We each have tiny rooms, formerly monk’s cells. Everything is quite basic; there is no central heat but small space heaters to warm our classrooms. The bathrooms are indoors (a real luxury in these parts), unheated and communal. The food is simple, quite strange and plentiful – more about food later if I don’t lose this connection.
A little about this group of volunteers; there are 28 of us divided into two general groups, Community Health advisors and Community Economic Development advisors. Community Health advisors include volunteers with backgrounds in Permaculture, Nutrition and HIV/AIDS. There are 15 in this general CH group. I am in the Community Economic Development group. We are divided into Community Development Advisors, Youth Development Advisors and Business Management Advisors. I am a Business Management Advisor. The credentials of both groups are varied and impressive. We have fresh out of college volunteers with degrees ranging from furniture design and crafts to nutrition to third world diseases. There are seasoned executives and health care workers, two lawyers and several PhD’s. Our ages range from 23 to 75. Our 75 year old is an energetic female entomologist. This is her forth trip to Africa as a medical / health volunteer. She is inspiring all of us.
Our training is both interesting and intense. It is divided into four sections: language, culture, health and safety and technical training. We start each morning by singing both the Lesotho and American national anthems. The Lesotho anthem is beautiful. It is sung in traditional African polyrhythmic harmonies with overlapping time signatures. You should have heard us at first. Our trainers, mostly native Basotho, were in stitches we sounded so bad. This music that comes so naturally to them is really tricky. We are, however, quite determined and getting better. Music in such an integral part of this culture. We have about 15 native Basotho trainers and they begin many sessions with high-spirited songs and dances that pertain to whatever it is we are about to learn. Really, they could professional entertainers – they are great. Their performances always produce wild applause and whistles from us – we love it!
We spend hours every day trying to learn this inscrutable (so far) language. We are in very small groups for language classes – four students to one teacher. They switch us around depending on our progress. We are all finding it very difficult.
Our health and safety classes are facilitated either by one of the two doctors on the PC staff or by the PC national security officer. The national security officer is an ex-marine whose previous post was security officer for six US embassies. He really knows his stuff. Basically, we are learning survival, evasion and escape. In addition to personal safety we’ve been taught an Emergency Action Plan that coordinates our activities in case things go really bad. PC volunteers have been evacuated from Lesotho twice in the past. The record for the safety of PC volunteers is excellent and it is due, to a great part, to the training we receive.
If it sounds like I am pleased with this training, believe it – I am. The Peace Corps is not scrimping on the quality of either the trainers or the training program. I feel that I am in very good hands and learning what I need to know to be both safe and effective in the assignment I will soon be given.
The culture classes are, perhaps the most fascinating of all. This culture is so different from ours. The list of do’s and don’ts seems almost endless. For instance, all washing is done by hand and it is absolutely forbidden to wash dishes in the same basin in which you wash clothes. Also, everything is dried outside but you must never hang underwear outside. If you do hang it on the line you must put a towel over it so no one can see it.
The plight of women in this country is dreadful, at least by our American standards. In this patriarchal society women are treated as commodities and have few rights. Women are legal minors under the law and cannot negotiate credit, buy or own land, have bank accounts etc. without their husband’s consent. Unmarried or widowed women fall under the control of a male guardian, a brother – in –law or uncle. Women are sold into marriage. The bride price, or lobola is paid by the husband’s family and often has dreadful ramifications for the women. Often fathers-in-law feel they have the right to have sex with their son’s wife – after all, he paid for her. Women’s sexuality should be completely invisible. They are taught to never initiate sex. They are to be submissive, passive and respecting to their husbands. Women are told nothing of sex before their marriage. Men, on the other hand, prove their manhood through sex. They are expected to have multiple partners and in this HIV/AIDS ridden nation the gift many grooms bring to their brides is a death sentence. 55% of the infection rate is among women.
We are receiving extensive training on the HIV/AIDS issue and I hope to send out a future email on that topic alone.
On a more positive note, we had a delightful surprise at the end of our first week of training. U.S. Ambassador Robert Loftis invited us all to his house for a welcoming party. It was wonderful. He was charming, informative and a gracious host. His home was beautiful; filled with treasures he and his wife (who unfortunately was in the hospital and could not attend) had collected during their 24 years in the Foreign Service. We were all completely impressed, made to feel quite important to our country’s efforts in this country and left the party elated and encouraged.
Did I mention this isn’t exactly easy? Getting around is difficult. Communications are difficult. We are surrounded by poverty and death and the problems seem almost insurmountable. No matter what we do it will be a tiny drop in a huge bucket of woes. But we can’t just give up. This country really wants our help. Last week representatives from the villages, organizations and ministries that have requested volunteers visited the training center. There were sadly more of them than there are of us to fill positions. And all the positions are so in need of help. There were three different jobs that really appealed to me. I wish I could do them all. One was to help a group of women who have started a weaving cooperative market their products. They have few business skills but incredible weaving skills. Their products are beautiful. Another man and women represented an organization of a group of diverse individual businesses called the Matible Business cooperative. They want, in effect, to have a chamber of commerce but don’t know how to organize it. They also all need training in basic business management, pricing and record keeping. There were also several villages represented by people that want to attract tourists. This country has some incredibly beautiful and interesting areas that offer prime opportunities for eco-tourism. So much to do so few volunteers is the reality of the situation here.
I am now at the end of our third week of training and am living in a small village called Bokone. It is a very poor but picturesque place without electricity, central heat of running water. I live with a family in a seperate small room that has a two burner gas stove fueled by a big, scary gas cylinder. I am trying very hard not to blow myself up (-: The cylinder also fuels a gas heater that we have been warned to never run at night. Getting out of my sleeping bag in the morning is always the biggeat challenge of the day – it is cold here at night but beautiful, sunny and dry during the day. During my first week here the M’e (mother) taught me how to cook some of the locally available foods like steamed bread (delicious) and lesheleshele(a sorgum gruel-very nutritious)and the local vegetables. I am now on my own and am in the city of Maseru today to buy food supplies for the coming week. This Internet cafe was a sight for sore eyes. It is my first stop.
I really like life in the village. It is simple and wholesome. The villagers are delighted to have PCV’s staying there-there are 11 of us, all Community Economic Development volunteers in Bokone. We bring in much needed income. In the morning we all walk from our various homes to the chief’s house for classes. The language classes are conducted in Sesotho and no one in my home speaks English so the only Engilsh I hear is in the technical, cultural, safety and health classes. The language is coming slowly but it is coming.
There is so much more to tell but my time is running out so that’s it for now.
Stay well, stay safe and please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
Snail mail is great so please don’t hesitate to write(-:
Peggi
7/31/04 My New Job
Dear Friends and Family;
All is well here in Lesotho. The “total immersion” phase of my training is over. I left the Village of Bokone five days ago and went directly to the village where I will be working for the next two years. I just returned from there to the monastery in Mazenod for the last ten days of training and the much anticipated and feared LANGUAGE EXAM. It is next Saturday. These last few days are intense language study as our trainers try to prepare us for the test.
It’s been an eventful few weeks and I want to tell you everything.
We left Bokone in grand style. The village threw a great Feast for us. The Peace Corps provided all the food. Preparing food for 500 people without refrigeration, running water or electricity is quite a trick and the women of Bokone really knew how to pull it off. I worked with the M’e’s(Mothers) on the food prep mostly because they are all my buddies now and also because I wanted to see how they did it. The day before the feast we peeled, chopped and shredded several hundred pounds of vegetables which were stored in big tubs overnight. Early the next morning the cooking began. Great black cast iron cauldrons were filled with oil and set over wood fires outside. The chicken was cooked in these. In various buildings within the Chief’s compound we put together salads, cooked moroho (a vegetable mixture) and prepared baked beans.
The village men’s part in this was to put up the tent. There had been some serious joala brewing going on all the previous week – joala is a strong sour tasting brew made from sorghum and yeast. The guys started dipping into this at about 7:30 a.m. It took 30 men 5 hours to get the 20×30 foot tent up. They were having a great time.
When the feast began we, the 11 PCV’s, were brought to the three-sided tent and seated with the chief and some other PC dignitaries. The villagers sat on the ground in a huge semi-circle in front of the tent. Festivities began with native dances by the village maidens. They wore traditional string skirts. They were shy and beautiful and danced with both rhythm and grace. The program continued with marvelous Basotho music sung by various village groups and lots of speeches. About half way through the program we heard this low chanting coming from behind the tent. This was not on the program. The men had decided to go, put on some wild warrior-type costumes and entertain us with tribal war dances. They were, I must say, all skunk drunk. It was the best part of the program. They were leaping in the air, stomping their feet, brandishing spears (sticks, actually) and doing lots of fearsome war cries. Several of them kept falling down. The crowd loved it. Women would run out to them and do this “adoration dance” around them trilling that high uniquely African call. Then the food was served. We, as the guests of honor, ate first followed by all the men then the women and lastly the children. When we realized how the eating order would be we all felt bad. The children just stood patiently by with big hungry eyes waiting for their turn to eat. They waited for over an hour. Our PC directive is to not try to change the culture here but, I’ll tell you, some of the cultural realities here are very hard to standby and watch. There was no chicken left by the time the children ate. I saw some of them eating the bones from their mother’s plates! Late in the afternoon we all said fond goodbyes to our village families, returned to Mazenod for one night and were taken the next day to our job sites around the country.
O.K. so here’s the scoop on my job. Actually, I have two jobs. The first is to work with the Ministry of Tourism to develop a cultural village and tourist attraction at the site of the birthplace of the great Moshoeshoe I, the revered founder and father of Lesotho. He was born in the beautiful but remote Village of Menkhoaneng in the northern mountains of Lesotho. The second part of my job is to work with a group of farmers in the Village next to Menkhoaneng, Mate, to establish a commercial nursery cooperative. They grow fruit trees and want to expand their product line and have both a retail and wholesale operation. They need a business plan and training in basic business procedures.
Both of these opportunities are really exciting to me, especially the cultural center. So, with my job description in hand and the names of the village chiefs and some other contacts in both villages, I loaded my stuff into a PC Range Rovers and with one of our drivers, Ntate Majara, headed up north. The village of Menkoaneng is located in the mountains above the beautiful Hlotse Valley. We turned off the main road onto a dirt road that leads to Lesotho’s gorgeous Ts’ehlanyane National Park. About 21 km down this road we turned off the road altogether and simply started driving up the mountain. I had been told there was no road to the village but I was thinking no paved road. There is actually no road at all! It was the single most hair-raising four-wheel drive experience of my life. Majara was fearless. He took that vehicle through gullies and along ledges and up sheer rock faces that I would have sworn could not be done. He found my new home, a family compound pretty much carved out of the side of the mountain. It is beautiful up there. My house is a traditional Basotho rondavel. It is a round structure made of stones with a thatched roof. The inside walls are plastered in the traditional way with a mixture of mud and cow dung. They are painted a pretty blue. The building is 13 feet in diameter – it seemed quite large after my place in Bokone and the high conical thatched roof gives it a particularly open feeling. It has two small windows positioned to catch both the sunrise and the sunset. As I walk out my front door I’m greeted with a spectacular view of the valley below. It has absolutely no amenities but tons of ambience and I love it.
We arrived late and were greeted by several representatives of both the Ministry of Tourism and the Lesotho Highlands Development Association (LHDA). It was Friday so they, after giving me an overview of the project, said they would see me on Tuesday to take me back down to the road and show me how to catch the first of three buses to Mazenod. I was on my own.
The next morning two village elders visited me. These two old wizened men grilled me in Sesotho. When I answered them in Sesotho they would say”Bua Sesotho!” (Speak Sesotho). They are so unused to hearing any accent to their language that they couldn’t understand me even when I was speaking their language! After a pretty comical but exhausting two hours I think they were satisfied at least with my credentials if not with my mastery of their language. They reported back to the chief and a Pitso or village gathering was called for the next day to introduce me to the village. I stayed up almost all night preparing my talk. The M’e of the house speaks pretty good English and she helped me with both my pronunciation and grammar and let me practice on her until she could understand me.
The next morning we headed to the chief’s place. There were four chairs placed upon a little hill and about 150 people gathered in a big semi-circle at the foot of the hill. I sat between the chief and an elder who could speak English. There were some introductory remarks by the chief and elders then I spoke. I told them how happy I was to be here at this beautiful and historically important place, the “Bethlehem of Lesotho”. I told them that I came from America where we revere our forefathers just as they revere the great Moshoeshoe. I described the cultural village we would build together to honor their great king and to bring jobs and money to the village. I said the first phase of this project must be a road! (All of this information came from the approved plan of the Dept. of Tourism which I had received upon arrival) There was a lot of trilling and waving especially at the part about the road. Then I answered questions – this part I did in English with the English-speaking guy to my left translating. They told me to leave then. I went back to my rondavel wondering if I had really screwed up. The Pitso went on for several more hours. When the Pitso finally broke up people started stopping by to introduce themselves. I had said in my talk that I looked forward to meeting every one of them and they were taking me at my word. One of the most interesting people to stop by was the village witch doctor or “sangoma”. She, it turns out is my next-door neighbor. Her compound is about 100 yards down the mountain. I had heard beautiful eerie chanting and drums for the previous two nights and wondered where it was coming from. One of the children of my family said it was the “spirit people being called”. It was, of course, coming from her place. She took me to her compound and showed me her “clinic”. I felt like I had stepped into a scene from “Harry Potter”. It was in a beautiful rondavel and was filled with herbs and potions and magic things. There was a big owl that was like what a taxidermist would have just before it was stuffed. She put it on her arm like a puppet and said it was very powerful magic. There were black cast iron cauldrons and drums and skins of animals. Her potions and herbs were on shelves mostly stored in old snuff tins. It was fantastic in every sense of the word.
My dreams that night were very strange. The next morning I was sitting in front of my hut (yes, rondavels are referred to here as “huts”) admiring the view when my M’e came out of her house (cinderblock square buildings are referred to as “houses”) carrying a sledgehammer and a shovel. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “Today we build the road”. I grabbed my walking stick and followed her to where the entire village was gathered similarly equipped to begin carving a road out of the mountain. It had to be seen to be believed. Women with babies tied to their backs hacked away at the mountain, filled baskets with stones and moved them to fill in crevices. After I left the pitso it was decided to have a 15-day work project. From 8am till 1pm all the villagers that are not herding animals will work on the road. These people are incredible.
Ntate Setsomi, one of my original visiting elders and the chairman of the village cultural center committee, decided then that he should take me along with my M’e whose name is Matjeeka, to the next village, Mate, to meet the chief there. He said he would get his horse and meet us at our place. When I saw him coming with his horse, I went into my hut (I love saying “hut”J) and got a carrot for his horse. I handed it to him and he thanked me solemnly (he is a very solemn kind of guy) and began to eat it! I said “Would you like a little chocolate to go with that carrot?” and gave him half my chocolate bar. In perfect Basotho style, he mounted his horse and Matjeeka and I, like a couple of sqaws followed him on foot. Oh well, when in Rome….It was a long and very strenuous trek across the side of the mountain to the next village. At one point we were going through some tall grass and Matjeeka said, “You must watch for snakes here”. I said, “Are they dangerous snakes?” She turned very seriously to me and said, “You must not let that snake bite you. You must try to kill it with a rock.” Oh my God!!! The only rocks to hit any snake I see will be those kicked up by my boots as I run screaming in the other direction! To say I was on the lookout for snakes for the rest of the trek is a huge understatement. My eyes never left the area around my feet. My Leki walking stick was at the ready every step of the way to ward of the filthily beasts. It took almost two hours to get to the village, the site of my other “office”. I really need a horse. At one point we had to wade across the shallow part of a river. Once again Matjeeka said, “Watch for snakes here. They are very bad ones. They will squeeze you.” My mind flashed to the Tarzan film where the Lord of the jungle struggles with the giant python in a river. By the time we got to the chief’s place I was a wreck. Oh, and by the way, he wasn’t there! We met with a few elders, said we would stop by again (!!!) and made the long trek back home. My enthusiasm for my second job is seriously on the wane.
Well, my dears, once again I have gone on too long. I have a great fear that Internet opportunities are going to get even scarcer for me once I’m permanently up in those mountains but I will do my best to get to a computer once in a while. As soon as possible I am going to get a solar panel and battery set up so that at least I can use my laptop and charge a cell phone.
May this letter find you in good health and good spirits.
Love,
Peggi
9/24/04
Hi Everybody,
Well, first things first. Mother and baby are doing just fine. His head is still a little Nefertiti-looking but we took him to the clinic and the doctor said he’s fine. He is totally adorable. His name is Motlatsi. It means “helper”. All Basotho names have meanings. My name here, which was given to me when I lived in the village of Bokone is Nthabiseng. It means “rejoice with me”. It is also the custom here to take on the surname of the family with whom you live so my last name is Qualehang. The “Q” is pronounced with that famous Bantu “click”. Another culturally interesting thing about names in Lesotho is that they can change during your lifetime. Motlasti’s mom Madineo will now be known as Mamotlatsi or “mother of Motlasti. A woman is almost always named after her firstborn son. Perhaps my next email will focus on interesting cultural aspects of this country – there are many and some of them are really strange!
But today, I would rather cry on your shoulder about my Internet woes and apologize for not answering any of your wonderful responses to my emails – it has simply been impossible. Using AOL here has been a nightmare. I can get into it sometimes but cannot respond to your emails or send out new ones. I sent out letter #4 from the resource center in Hlotse on a landline but at $3.00 per minute, I had to make it quick. I’m in an Internet café now in South Africa and hope to send this on my new Hotmail account. The address this comes from (pjtpeacecorp@hotmail.com) will be the one I’ll use for the rest of my time here so please put me in your book (-: In fact, a quick reply to this will assure me you are getting this and that I’ve got your address correct. Another really unfortunate AOL happening is that I know some of you sent me notes in August. I saw them in there on one of my five minute connections but didn’t have a chance to open them. Today, when I got into AOL they were gone!)-: Just mail starting in September was in there soooo if you still have a note you sent in August in your “old mail” folder could you send it again? I almost cried when I realized I wouldn’t be able to get these wonderful messages from the home front. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear from you. Not only do your words of encouragement make me feel absolutely wonderful but your letters are my bridge to a reality that enables me to deal with so much that is so challenging and strange here.
So much has happened in the last few weeks it’s hard to decide what to tell you. The Cultural Village project is going well. The reconstruction of the original rondavel in which Moshoeshoe I, father and founder of Lesotho, was born is almost complete. I wish I could attach a photo to this letter. It looks so beautiful. Especially now that Spring has come to the valley. The graceful thatched structure sits on a hillside at the base of a beautiful pine forest overlooking a valley that is currently pink with peach blossoms. The villagers building it are so proud of what they are doing. They sing praises to their king as they work. Moshoeshoe is revered almost as a god here in Lesotho. He was a great leader. In a time of dreadful warfare he was a man of peace who brought under his protection all who wanted shelter. He established this mountain kingdom as a refuge for those fleeing the wrath of Shaka the Zulu during the time of what is called the difaqane (displacement). Using the diplomatic sophistication of missionaries as his advisors he was able to negotiate treaties, establish a government and create a country. The history of this country and of the village of Menkhoaneng is fascinating. I’ve just been given the assignment to write the eco-cultural tour guide scripts so I’ve been doing some interesting research. I’ve also been enjoying putting together marketing materials on the project, writing letters to international charities for funds to pay the workers, working with government ministers to give visibility to the project in parliament and just dealing with the complexities of living in this interesting and challenging country.
Challenging in what way you ask? Well, working with my computer, printer and digital camera using solar power has stretched my technical acumen (or lack there of) to the limit. The solar panels I bought don’t work. I’ve made three trips to various towns trying to find one that will charge the car battery that makes my technology here happen. Let me tell you what a trip to town is like. Today was typical. I left my house at 7:00 am and hiked for an hour to a place where a bus does eventually come by. Today, for instance, I waited for two hours. Now these busses and taxis are not the air conditioned, luxury vehicles we enjoy in the States. No, the busses are ancient things than lumber slowly on these mountainous roads. They are always packed with Basotho, their luggage and occasionally livestock – especially chickens. Chickens are carried live in a plastic bag with just their heads sticking out. They stay amazingly calm. Today I sat next to a women on a seat meant for two people with her, her three children one of whom was tied by a blanket to her back and two of which were jammed in at our knees. And she had a live, plastic bagged chicken. I held the chicken for a while so she could nurse her youngest. It’s not that I mind any of this, the exercise walking to the bus stop is great and there are always interesting people along the way. Today on the bus ride into town I was also accompanied by several women from my village. One of them wants to set up a little shop. She was standing in the aisle next to me so we began discussing the idea of creating a business plan. Everyone within earshot who could understand our jumbled Sesotho/English added their two cents worth to the conversation. It was really fun. We decided that I should go with her to the bank to get a loan taking with us the business plan that we will create this weekend in my solar powered hut. This is exactly what I came here to do so I have no complaints. And, I love these people. They are so earnest in their desire to alliviate the poverty in which they are trapped. They work harder and longer than seems possible. It is such a privilege to be a small part of the solution here – I love it. Anyway, once in town it is a taxi to the border. A taxi is called a kombi or koloi. They are actually vans that don’t leave until they are filled to overflowing. If a taxi is meant to hold 12 it will leave when it has fifteen people crammed into it. The border, which is a bridged river, must be crossed on foot then it’s another kombi into the small South African town of Ficksburg. I came here today to meet my friend Lois (the PCV lawyer), to hook into the Internet and dump AOL and to see about getting a better solar panel. Lois is now involved in a “Women in Law” group in Lesotho and is preparing to take part in a test case to try to overturn the constitutional restrictions placed on women. I think I mentioned in a previous email that women here have few legal rights. They cannot own property or even open a bank account without a family male giving them written permission. They are treated legally as “minors”. This is hugely up Lois’s alley. Both times she presented cases in front of our US Supreme Court they dealt with civil rights. Anyway, lunch conversation was scintillating not just in content but also because it was in English and we got to use big words(-: After we leave this Internet café we will return to Hlotse where I will spend the night at the PCV resource center. Lois can get back to her place before dark but I can’t. It is simply not possible for me to go to town and get back up to my village in the same day. I tried it once and came very close to being stranded in the middle of nowhere at dark. I had missed the last kombi. On that occasion I did my first and, I hope, only hitchhiking. A nice old black man in a truck gave me a ride using a route new to me and dropped me at a place where I could see the mountain on which I live. I really didn’t look too far away. I headed cross country taking the “as the crow flies” route. I arrived home after dark, using my pen light flashlight to help me navigate the last 20 minutes of an extremely difficult trek (we’re talking narrow rock ledges here). It was really just too much. I won’t do it again but I certainly can’t complain about any lack of adventure in this assignment.
I’m still working on the horse issue. I’ve filled out the required PC paperwork and am waiting for a reply. Last Saturday a member of Parliament that lives in this valley stopped by my hut (now really, where else in the world would that happen?) to pick up some things I had written for him and asked if I would make some suggestions on where to situate rondavels for pony trekking trips between Menkhoaneng and the Ts’ehlanyane National Park. For that, I must have a horse – I jumped at the assignment and reported it immediately to the PC. I can almost hear the pitter patter of little hooves in my future.
Other news is that I now have a cell phone. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the only place where I can get a signal is on the other side of the valley. I do have voice mail, however, and hike over there to check my messages twice a week so feel free to give me a jingle.
Peggi Tabor
9/26/04 Basotho Cultural Practices
Dear friends and family,
Sometimes, except for the foreign language spoken here and the look of the village, this place seems quite similar to home. People go about their business, cook dinner, take care of their families and deal with normal every day issues. Then, out of the blue, I’ll find myself in a totally African cultural event and this place seems very strange indeed.
So, my friends, this email will focus one of the more unusual cultural practices I have witnessed here in Lesotho.
The subject is funerals. The entire ceremony surrounding funerals here is an interesting mix of tribal rituals and Christian practices. With the mortality rate at an all time high, there are funerals in this village every single weekend so I’ve had the opportunity to participate in many aspects of funeral and mourning practices.
Wakes are usually held of Fridays. It is proper to visit the house of the deceased, bringing a gift of food or a few rand and to pay ones respects. If it is a man who has died, his wife will be laying on the floor on a thin mattress covered in a blanket. She will only moan and cry. All close relatives to the deceased shave their heads – both male and female. You wouldn’t believe how many people walk around here with shaved heads. A male relative of her husband is the spokesperson. He receives the gifts and condolences inside the house. Outside, people will be drinking joala and acting pretty much like people do at an Irish wake – it’s a wee bit of a party outside the hut.
Traditionally, a cow or sheep is slaughtered, both for the funeral feast on Saturday and because in very traditional families the corpse will be wrapped in the skin for burial although in this era of increased poverty this practice in on the wane. The Basotho believe the cow or sheep’s hide keeps the deceased warm in the afterworld. They also believe that if they don’t do this the deceased will haunt them and cause them to have very bad luck. Ancestor worship is very big here. It is one of the reasons Catholicism has been so popular. The Basotho see the Saints as ancestors and the Devil as chief of the evil spirits for whom they are always on the look out. I’ve spoken to many very level headed people that truly believe their ancestors talk to them in their dreams and give them advice to which they are obliged by both custom and belief to follow. I’m told it is not uncommon to hear in court cases statements such as, “My evil old uncle Charlie, who died in ’89 told me to do it.”
Burials usually take place on Saturday. In the villages an ox-drawn cart takes the casket to the cemetery with the wife, supported by relatives, walking behind it. Everybody chants a sort of a dirge.
There is another big feast to celebrate the end of the mourning period. This used to take place six months to a year after death but with so many deaths these days it is often shortened to a month.
I attended one of these ceremonies last Sunday.
The man who died in this instance died about a month ago. Mourning is a serious commitment for the widow and must be followed to the letter. She must shave her head, wear the same dress and shoes everyday and sit only on the floor for the entire period of mourning. During the entire period of mourning, which could last up to a year, she must not leave her property or speak above a whisper. She must keep her eyes downcast and display utter grief – her reputation and future treatment by her in-laws depends on it. During the initial funeral rites the women of the family shave not just her head but take her into a room and shave her entire body. She is then dressed in her “widows weeds”. She seriously does have a lot to be unhappy about even if she couldn’t stand the guy she is mourning. All her husbands possessions now belong to his relatives. Even she is now legally a ward of her brothers-in-law. There are no poorer people in this country than widows.
Actually, I had been invited to part of the preparation for this feast on Thursday to watch the women make joala in preparation for Sunday’s party. They cooked it outside in huge metal drums over wood fires. They made gigantic amounts of it – maybe 50 gallons. And the stuff is strong! – or so they tell me(-: Anyway, on Sunday by the time I arrived to the end-of-mourning feast it had been going on for a long time. Many of the guests were seriously drunk. Moderation is not a long suit of the Basotho. The dearly departed’s two sisters led me, each holding onto one of my arms through a crowd of far too amorously inebriated men, several of whom planted dreadful sloppy kisses on my cheeks. All I could do was turn my head away so they couldn’t get near my mouth. They brought me to a rondavel from which was coming very rhythmic chanting accompanied by drums and whistles. They shoved me into the absolutely jammed packed room. I couldn’t see a thing at first but as my eyes adjusted to the dimness what I saw was extraordinary. There was no furniture in the simple, round, thatched roofed structure except a single chair. Women sat crammed together in two or three rows around the entire circumference on the room. There were plastic pails of joala strategically set about on the floor – I counted eight pails. On the lone chair sat the widow. She was stark naked. In a small open circle in the center of the room three beautiful, big women dressed in the traditional short stringed skirts were dancing very rhythmic, almost hypnotic dances while the seated women chanted and trilled, some beating drums. The costume the dancers wore was made of two parts. The underskirt is made entirely of strings of bottle caps, hundreds of them, that jingle as they dance. On top of the jingly “bustle” is a full skirt made entirely of white strips of the type of plastic of which cheerleader pom poms are made. The skirt doesn’t meet in the front. The dancers private parts are covered by a little fringed apron or in some cases a hankie. The skirts are cut to a length so that at the back the ladies cheeks are partially exposed. When I arrived, the dancers were wearing their bras on top but as the night progressed these were discarded – to enthusiastic trilling by the audience (all female). It had to be over 100 degrees in there. Sweat poured off the dancers who danced until they about dropped and were then replaced by others who threw off their “street clothes” and donned the little skirts. I had my camera and although it was dark I got some pretty good shots. I had been seated next to the chief (who, in this village is a woman – more on that later) who kept saying, “isn’t this nice?” I was having a little trouble breathing – no one seemed to be wearing either cologne or deodorant so the body order was rather overwhelming and there was little oxygen in this tightly sealed hut. The women passed around the buckets of joala and either sipped directly from the bucket or dipped in their big metal cups and slugged it down. Thinking only of bacteria, I was not tempted to taste it. Finally, a couple of women pulled me to my feet and said the men outside wanted to have their photos taken. I went outside and shot lots of photos. The posing that went on was priceless. These are some of my best shots yet. I decided to go home, download the photos and come back with my laptop to give a little slideshow. It was quite a hit. I’m sure many of the villagers present had never before seen themselves in a photo much less on a computer screen. Keeping them from touching the screen as they pointed, screaming with delight at their images was my biggest challenge. Oh, about the naked widow. Still inside the hut, she was dressed in all new clothes generously provided by her in-laws, total benefactors of her husband’s estate.
I went home shortly after showing the photos. People were getting really rowdy, pulling at my arms, grabbing at my computer and demanding that I take more photos. I hugged my laptop to my chest and made a hasty exit.
Now, about our female chief. How, in this very patriarchal society can there be female chiefs you may ask?
Well, the lineage of the village chiefdom must go thru the eldest son. If he dies, his wife (his first wife, polygamy is quite legal here) is chief until her eldest son comes of age. In the case of this village, not only has the male chief died but the eldest son has died as well. This means that when our current chief dies, her daughter-in-law will hold the title until her son, now 3, is old enough to rule.
Although the chief in this village is given a lot of respect, and is, if fact, a very fine woman, the village is actually run by a council of elders, all male. They treat the chief with great deference but they make all the decisions, head all the committees and pretty much run the show around here. I like our chief a lot. Her name is Masephoko Nthodi. I have spent enjoyable hours in her hut listening to her stories of the great Moshoeshoe, a direct ancestor of her late husband.
Her surviving sons attend my language classes. Did I tell you I’m teaching English classes now? I’ve decided that I have a better chance of teaching this entire village to speak English than I do of ever becoming fluent in Sesotho (-:
The language classes are great fun. We’re learning lots of good old American songs. The first one was “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” followed by the Doe, Ray, Me song from the “Sound of Music”. Both the village witch doctors attend my classes. I love looking at them with their tightly beaded hair and crazy teeth studiously writing down the verbs of the day.
At the request of some of the village women I’ve also just begun cooking classes. We had our first one two weeks ago and it was a disaster. We held it at a neighbor’s house whose kitchen is relatively large – relative to my two-burner gas hot plate tucked into a corner of my hut, anything is large. Anyway, I was in my element whipping up pasta primavera, talking about nutrition and hygiene, feeling for all the world like Africa’s answer to Julia Child and just waiting to hear the moans of delight as my audience of about twenty dug into the heaping plates of pasta primavera that I passed out to everyone.
There were no moans of delight; just a rather embarrassed silence and requests for more salt. They buried that pasta in salt. When I tasted it I was truly horrified. It was dreadful – bitter and spoiled tasting. I think some of the tomatoes were bad. I was mortified but actually didn’t say anything because once everyone added a teaspoon or so of salt to their plates they wolfed the horrible concoction down. Perhaps they thought this is what American food is supposed to taste like. Matjeeka admitted to me later that she threw up when she got home. I was sick too – pass the Pepto Bismol! How ironic that the first food sickness I get in this village is from my own cooking!
The second class was this past Tuesday. Except for two young women who follow me everywhere, no one came! I had made another pasta primavera just so they could sample what it was supposed to taste like and was planning on preparing French toast and omelets. My “girls” tasted the pasta, smiled knowingly at each other then went out and spread the word. Within a half hour the class was full. The food all turned out just fine. After class about five of the women walked me to my hut all singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” It was a good day.
Oh, oh. This letter is getting a bit longish, isn’t it? And I haven’t even told you about my horse(-: I found a beautiful chestnut stallion in the next village and rode him for the first time yesterday. It felt so great to be back in the saddle again. He was quite calm and didn’t do anything crazy but I’m going to ride him much more before making any deals with the owner. Currently, I’m just renting him by the hour for15 rand an hour. That’s $2.50 and is considered top rate here. The owner is thrilled. So am I.
Until next time, Khotso, Pula, Nala.
Peggi
10/14/04
Dear Family and Friends,
There is so much beauty here; it may be the beauty and peacefulness of this place that makes the tragedy bearable. Yesterday one of my English students died. She was seventeen and she was eight months pregnant. She was a beautiful girl. Her unborn child died with her. The Sangoma (traditional healer) had brought her to my house two weeks ago because her legs were swollen and she was feeling ill. I tell the villagers that I am not a doctor and know nothing of medicine but they come anyway. During training we were told not to even try to help in medical situations but that directive is difficult to follow – especially with my big black medical bag filled with things these people need a lot more than I do. In Mpheng’s case, the girl who died, I urged her to get to the clinic, told her to stop eating salt, drink lots of boiled water and to raise her feet up and rest. The terrible fact is that she could not go to the clinic because she had no money and no insurance. Now, of course, I wish I had given her the money. I wish I had taken her to the clinic myself. I’ve done it for others; why didn’t I do it for her? She was found unconscious in her hut and died as her family rushed her in the village’s one vehicle to the clinic. She was one of my advanced students. They have a writing assignment every week. The first assignment was to tell about themselves. Her story was typical. She was born in this village; she was now living with her mother for the last three months of pregnancy, as is the custom. She was excited and afraid about giving birth. She was looking forward to returning to her husband’s home to raise her child. She hoped someday to be able to return to school and become a nurse to help the people of Menkhoaneng. Hers was the third death in this village in the past two weeks. All these victims of poverty lack of medical care and dreadful hygiene were under 30 years of age. One of the deaths was definitely AIDS although this is never spoken of – there is great denial here.
Some of you have written and requested a viewpoint other than my normal rather Pollyanna one of life here in Africa. Today I am in the perfect mood to share some of the dark side.
Where to start? The drought, perhaps. This part of Africa is now in the forth year of drought. What was once a great flowing river through this valley, the Hlotse River, is now a trickle. For many people of lowland villages around here, this trickle is their only water source. They use this filthy water to bathe, wash their laundry, cook and drink. Water-born diseases are rampant. No one but me boils water. Boiling water is something I stress every chance I get but so far, no one has bought into the concept. Fuel is scarce and getting the papa cooked takes priority. Boiling water is seen as an unattainable luxury both in terms of fuel and time.
Until just today my family went up to a small natural spring near the summit of the mountain behind this homestead to get our cooking and drinking water. Matjeeka and I would take two mules and four 25 liter plastic containers and hike up. The spring is or rather was, about 3 feet in diameter and sat at the base of a big fissure in the mountain. The water was always scummy on top and grey in color. We would carefully fill the containers, seal them and then heft them, two tied together, onto the donkeys. After Matjeeka filled another 20-liter bucket to carry on her head (a still unbelievable feat to me), we would head back down to the house. It would take us a little over an hour to make the trip.
This morning Matjeeka told me that this spring too had dried up. The other option is much further but is still a spring rather than the filthy river. I offered to go with her today but she refused to let me. She is very protective of me, thinks I am terribly old, and knows I’ve been having problems with my knees. She brought me a bucket of very grey water about an hour ago. She had been gone a long time.
When I first arrived here, I tried to make a 20-liter bucket of water last two days. We were taught how to do this during our Village training. I can now stretch it to four days. You would be amazed how little water it takes to wash, do dishes, cook and bathe when you really concentrate on conservation.
Here is an example. When I do dishes I first rinse all food off the plates with about a cup of water. This water I take out and give to the dogs. Any water with nourishment in it is given to the animals. Then I put a tiny bit of my antibacterial dish soap on a sponge and with another cup of boiled water wash the dishes. I place them in an enamel pan and after they are washed carefully pour about two cups of boiling water over them rinsing off the soap. This water I usually use one more time to clean the floor or wipe down my spiffy plastic furniture. Then I take it out and pour in into the garden or on my compost heap. Anyway, you get the picture. All “grey” water is used for agriculture.
Food. Getting enough to eat is a problem for most of the villagers. I may have told you that we’ve arranged to pay the workers who are building the road and the Cultural Village with bags of rice and flour donated by the World Disaster Relief Fund. It has been a godsend. No child now goes hungry in the three participating villages. We use 70 workers at a time on the two projects. They work from 9am to 2 or 3 pm every day and for two weeks work they each get 25 kgs of wheat flour and 25 kgs of rice. The villagers rotate every two weeks so that everyone gets a chance to work. The project is actually feeding three villages.
I never really understood what subsistence living meant until coming here. Although I can say that starvation is on the decline, the reality is the people here eat the very same things every day. It is a simple flour or corn meal gruel and now with the work payments, rice. There are still a few cabbages and pumpkins available in some gardens, which are cooked in too much salt to add moroho (vegetables) to the diet. If a family doesn’t raise it or grow it they don’t get to eat it. Vitamin deficiency is evident in every child. My house is jammed packed with food – luxurious food like peanut butter, apples, oranges, canned meats anything I can tote back from my weekly visits to the camp towns. My “office hours” when I am here at the hut are 24/7 and I encourage students, workers just everybody to stop by. I always serve snacks. It makes me hugely happy to see these folks eat – especially the children. Watching their wide-eyed anticipation while they very politely hold out both hands to accept a peanut butter and jam sandwich is worth a lot.
The Basotho are a proud people. I have to always make this look like it’s not just handouts. “I was just going to eat and I’ve made too much” is my official line. As a result, I’m gaining weight! After dropping about 20-25 lbs in the first few of months here, I can tell now it’s coming back – damn. I cook large pots of food every chance I get so that there is always food prepared. This cooking and feeding is one of my very favorite parts of being here. I know it’s not “sustainable”, a PC requirement for our activities, but it sure makes me feel happy and fills a lot of empty bellies.
You’ve probably guessed that I don’t usually compose these letters while online. I write them at home and take them on a disc with me whenever I think I might get an Internet connection. It’s been a week now since Mpheng’s death. Life goes on. Her funeral was especially sad. No one even mentioned the baby. The custom here is to not acknowledge a child’s birth until it is a few months old. The infant mortality rate is so high that I think this is one of the customs that make reality bearable.
My current work focus it to get some crafts going here in the villages. The challenge is that these are farmers not artisans. Every time I get to a crafts shop I buy some examples of things I think we could possibly make to sell to the tourists that I very optimistically hope will visit the Cultural Village. So far the reproduction of these articles has been pretty lousy. I’m working on getting some good teachers in for a workshop. Once these folks know the techniques I think they will be able to make some saleable items.
Also we have no supplies, no capitalization, nothing. So here is my suggestion. Many of you have asked if there is anything you can do to help here. And some of you have spent fortunes in postage to send me wonderful things that I have distributed to schools and villagers and have made great use of myself, thank you, thank you, thank you. If you’ve done this please ignore the following. But, it you’re scratching your head thinking, “What can I possibly send her”, here is my suggestion.
The reality is that I can buy everything these people need right here. Things like English/Sesotho dictionaries, writing tablets, ringworm medicine, lice kits, vitamins the special needles needed for weaving grass, woodworking tools – the list is endless. I can hand people 100 rand ($17.00) that can get them to a clinic and maybe save their life. With very little capitalization, I can set up a crafts cooperative, teach local villagers how to run it and leave them with a sustainable way to make some money.
Now, again, if you’ve already sent things please ignore this request. And really, please feel no obligation to contribute to this. I can and will continue to do this the traditional Peace Corps way, which is to find resources within the villages to make good things happen. I can and will also continue to attempt to get aid through grants and just buy the things these folks need myself. A little bit of money goes a long way here. But being the ordinary American that I am, I want it all for these people and I want it now!
This won’t even be tax deductible. But if you want to contribute a few dollars, I can promise you it will be put to very pragmatic good use. Now, only if you really want to, you can send your contribution to:
Peggi Tabor
C/o Telia Fuller
28509 Eastbrook Court
Farmington Hills, MI 48334
If it is a check, please make it out to Telia. He can then deposit it to an account that I can access from here in the local currency. Please don’t send me any money. Clearing American checks is a nightmare and if there is cash in an envelope chances are it won’t be in it when it arrives. I will let you know what I spend the money on and will send photos when possible of whomever it is you help with a thank you note – from them if they are one of my English students.
Well this has sure been a hard letter to write. I hope no one is offended and really don’t feel at all pressured to send anything. We have been told by the Peace Corps that we are not here to play Santa Claus. It’s just that I have never seen so many empty stockings.
Love,
Peggi
11/2/04
It’s raining! It’s been raining off and on for several days. If you’d like to put music in your mind to accompany this letter, please make it the Halleluiah chorus form Handle’s “Messiah”.
The villagers have started seriously tilling fields. Up until now the ground in which maize and sorgum was planted last year has just been too hard to till although almost all the home gardens have been planted. Cultivating is done mostly by oxen-drawn ploughs or simply by hand with a hoe. Optimism is in the air. Of course, it’s too early to tell but if these nicely spaced, rain filled storms are signaling an end to the drought this is really big news.
So, not only is it actually raining but the villagers here are so excited about the contributions you’ve sent us. I don’t even know what to say about your generosity. Contributions in response to my last letter have been flowing in. I met with the village elders and sangomas and told them that my friends in America have sent money and asked for their ideas on how best to spend it. They agreed that transportation for the sickest and poorest in the village to the hospital is a priority. I’ve contracted with a very nice taxi driver in Butha Buthe to come to the village every Monday to take those that need it most to the hospital. Either one of the sangomas or I will accompany them. After everyone has seen a doctor (also paid for by you (-: ) the driver will bring them back to the village. The villagers think this is a real miracle. We’ve allocated about ¾ of the money for this program. I absolutely know that your generosity will be saving lives.
The other 25% of the fund will be spent on other village priorities. How to Speak English books and dictionaries for our adult English classes are high on the priority list. I visited a very good school in a village quite far from here and got recommendations from the principle on what books to use to teach English. My students can hardly believe they are going to have books. First pencils now books! It just doesn’t get much better than this.
We’ve set up a fund called “Our Friends in America”. I want the villagers to run it just for the experience of managing money and learning simple balance book and cash flow statement procedures. Actually, I’m not turning the money over to anyone. This can be just too much temptation to these desperately poor people. But, I do want them to make the decisions on what the funds should be used for and I do want them to learn to keep records.
So, things are quite jolly here at the moment. Everyone is feeling so optimistic. The Cultural Village project goes well in spite of the fact that the food payments have been arbitrarily cut off. I’m headed for the capital, Maseru, tomorrow to once again plead our case at the Ministries. The villagers have been working on the project for over a month now for free. There is no reason at all for this – I thought our payment situation was set in stone – not so, it seems. The Ministries here are plagued with corruption and I have the unhappy feeling that the rice and flour payments are going into someone’s pocket. I think I now know whose. Tomorrow is my day to try to diplomatically uncover the fraud and get the food payments flowing again. I hope it works.
Well, for once this is a short letter. Every day I learn more things about this interesting culture that I want to share with you. Perhaps the next letter will be about more of the unusual cultural aspects of the Bantu tribe with whom I live.
Until then, say well and happy and please know that the wonderful contributions you sent are making a huge difference here.
Thank you, and love,
Peggi
11/14/04
Dear Family and Friends,
It’s hard to decide which are lovelier, the sunrises or the sunsets. This morning was particularly beautiful; soft pinks against the delicate blue sky and an air crisp and clean after a gentle rain shower during the night. I stood outside for a while and breathed in the pristine air while listening to the sounds of the village waking up.
It’s busy here at sunrise. The predawn hours are the noisiest of the day. Donkeys bray, cocks crow and dogs bark as people hustle about building the early morning fires to cook the day’s papa. It is prepared outside over wood and dung fires in large, black, three legged cast iron cauldrons. By dawn today, Tjeeka, this family’s only son, had already hitched up the two family oxen to go to a distant field to plough and plant maize and sorghum. By first light everybody is up and at it. M’e Matjeeka, after her papa is underway, sweeps all the dirt and grass in the courtyard. At first, I thought this was really strange but the reality is that since all the animals here are pretty much “free range” she is sweeping up dung of various kinds. This she meticulously adds to her gardens or, in the case of some of the cow dung saves for either burning or plastering walls and floors.
Let me try to describe the family compound in which I live. It is located on a wide ledge almost exactly half way up a small mountain. Many of the mountains here are quite distinctive. They look like almost prefect cones – this one is like that. It is part of the ancient Clarens sandstone deposits. We’re surrounded by much larger mountains, the Drakensberge or Maluti range and we overlook the beautiful Hlotse valley. The ledge upon which this homestead sits is perhaps 40 feet deep and 100 feet long. The buildings form a U shape around a central courtyard which overlooks the valley below. Just below this ledge is another upon which are built the round stone kraals for the donkeys and oxen. Below that is a third ledge that acts as a village “road”. It leads in one direction through a forest to the Cultural Village site and in the other into the main village area, to one of the schools where I teach and to the chief’s place. There are four buildings in this compound, a thatched roofed cooking hut, my rondavel, and two square cement block – metal roofed buildings in which the family lives. We all have million dollar views.
I keep my door open almost all the time. I have an additional metal burglar bar door (a PC requirement) that keeps the larger animals out and allows me to watch the activities in the courtyard while enjoying the view. We have five dogs, a mother and four puppies. Two of the puppies are hers. The other two just arrived last week. Their mother died. They can’t be more than 5 weeks old and still want to nurse. Our mother dog won’t let them near her so I am feeding them powered milk. They seem to think I am their mother now and want to be in my hut – a real no-no in the Basotho culture. Dogs simply don’t go inside houses. I’ve put up a barrier so they can’t get in but they stay exactly outside my door snuggled together on a little blanket waiting for their next meal. And truthfully, the tiniest runt is sleeping in my lap as I type this (-: Let’s just call it “cultural exchange”.
We also have a rooster, several hens and innumerable chicks all of which roam freely around the courtyard as well as a black baby pig who also looks longingly through the bars into my hut. The horse, oxen and donkeys go out to either work or graze every day but we have one baby donkey that stays home “mowing” the grassy areas of the courtyard or sleeping on one of the warm sandy patches. It’s all quite pastoral and peaceful.
The family vegetable garden is on a slope to the right of the compound just outside my east-facing window. The Basotho are incredible gardeners. There is not one square foot of tillable ground wasted. Although the pickings are a bit slim at the moment, a wonderful assortment of summer vegetables is sprouting in neat little rows. This garden receives all our “grey” water which is carefully applied to each plant by hand.
I love being here at the homestead but find myself heading into the capital, Maseru, almost every week to deal with project issues. It’s a long haul to get there. Depending on how lucky I am catching kolois the journey can take from six to 12 hours. Last week it took me 11 ½ hours to make the 125 km journey. By the time I reached the T. house I was frazzled. Oh, have I explained the T. house yet?
The T or transit house is a big, old rambling place just across from the American Embassy that belongs to the Peace Corps and is used by PCV’s who need to overnight in the city. It is surrounded by razor wire topped security fences, has 24/7 security guards and is a safe haven in a very dangerous city. It has a large communal kitchen, baths, hot water, six big bedrooms with bunk beds in them, a library full of wonderful books and videos, a TV with video player and more espirit de corps than you can shake a stick at. It’s a bit ramshackle and run down but it is home away from home to all of us here.
When I arrived there last Monday there were already several of my colleagues sitting around the kitchen chatting. I was in such a miserable mood. My trip in had been long, harrowing and I’d missed an important late afternoon meeting. At my last taxi change, I’d picked up two beers and a box of fried chicken. I headed straight into one of the wonderful indoor bathrooms, poured a deep hot bath and soaked eating chicken and drinking beer and coming to the conclusion that “It just doesn’t get much better than this.” Boy, have my standards changed!
What else can I tell you? Things are going quite well here. Everybody in the village is still so amazed about the “American friends of Menkhoaneng” fund. Sick people are getting to the hospital; this week I’ll purchase the school books and we’ve started a Youth Group whose first project will be to plant some apple trees and herb gardens. All these things are thanks to you and your generousity.
That’s it for now from the warm heart of Africa to you.
Love,
Peggi
11/28/04
Dear friends and family,
Today is Thanksgiving. I hope you are all enjoying this happy holiday in the company of friends, family and loved ones. It’s just 5:00 am here and after writing this I’m headed to a beautiful place called Semonkong where I’m meeting about 20 of my fellow PCV’s to celebrate the holiday. We’re staying for the whole weekend – it promises to be a fun little vacation. Semonkong is one of the more developed tourist areas in the country. There is a lodge there and the area boasts the highest waterfall in southern Africa. It is owned and operated by a very hospitable and charming white South African couple and they have even promised to have turkey for us. It is a bird unknown in these parts. Perhaps the best part of this trip is that I’m being driven there! Ntate Toti our “mercy wagon” driver is picking me up in about an hour. On the way we are making a stop at the bank where he will get a small business loan based on the business plan we’ve developed. I’m hoping he becomes the most successful taxi service in Lesotho – he sure deserves it. He is for sure the only one with a fully developed business plan(-: I love this job!
Driving our poor and sick to the clinic is not an easy task. This past Monday was typical. Ntate Toti’s only vehicle is a car so for the hospital trips he often borrows a van from a friend. Something always goes wrong! This week he could only manage a pickup truck. Three of our patients couldn’t walk and had to be carried from their huts to the truck. Our village is a tough place to get around in. There are just steep narrow paths between the homesteads. It took a couple of hours to get the seven patients aboard. One of our sangomas – the biggest and strongest one, Lefa, came along with me to get the patients through the rather long process of seeing a doctor or nurse. This is sad to say but having a white person along, especially a Peace Corps volunteer, really short cuts the process – I get extremely unfair but pragmatically helpful preferential treatment. It still takes all day. Our first stop is the clinic in a neighboring village. Two nurses run this small local medical facility. One of them is registered – the other is a wonderful but marginally qualified woman – they both deserve the Mother Theresa Award. There are always a hundred or so people waiting. Nurse Zim and I have an arrangement. She quickly sees our critical patients, gives them a referral to the hospital then Toti and I continue on to the hospital in Butha Buthe with them while Sangoma Lefa stays with the others at the clinic. Our slips from Nurse Zim guarantee that our people will get in to see the one resident doctor at the hospital. Of this weeks patients, four have full blown AIDS, two were suffering from extreme malnutrition simply because they are too weak to care for themselves – one of them is mentally challenged. One man, a sweet little man of about 40, had had a stroke and was paralyzed on his left side. I know that if these people had been taken to an American hospital six of the seven would have been admitted but here, with the lack of facilities, they were all released to home care. We’re trying to set up a better home care system in the village. Our Youth Committee may get involved in a “meals on wheels” without the wheels, of course, sort of food delivery service. Anyway we’re working on it. There is so much to do here.
Oh, just to continue with the “something always goes wrong” theme, on our way home after picking up Lefa and the clinic patients we were on the steepest part of the track to the village when the truck simply couldn’t do it. We all piled out and helped push the truck up the hill. Then the truck just quit! It was something electrical. Lefa and Toti got under the hood and miraculously fixed it! The rest of the ride home was joyous, we sang, laughed and talked about how lucky we are to have such brilliant mechanics with us. Toti and Lefa were beaming.
You may think from my descriptions of the problems here that this is a depressing place but it’s really not. The Basotho are such an up beat, happy lot. There is always singing, laughing and telling good stories going on. And, there is the natural beauty of the place. The mountains are green now and the valley below us is a patchwork of plowed and planted fields. The rains have been pretty good so far. We all have our fingers crossed that this year is a good harvest. We are approaching our summer months and it is getting hot! Now this is really starting to feel like the Africa I had expected. The temperature gets to 90 degrees even here in the mountains. But, as they say in Arizona, it’s a dry heat.
Did I tell you the Peace Corps finally let me get horse? He’s just wonderful, not the one I described previously but another stallion from a neighboring village. He’s white with a black mane and tail. He is the skinniest horse you can imagine. He looks like the horse often pictured with Don Quixote. I’m trying to decide what to name him. Does anyone know the name of Don Quixote’s horse? That would be perfect.
We’re feeding him a lot. This horse thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. I’m thrilled with him. He is gentle, does the famous Basotho Pony trippling gait and will be a beautiful animal when he has gained a few hundred pounds. My life is so much easier now. I ride him to the villages in which I teach and work. Usually some nice villager will watch him for me and let him graze while I teach or meet with elders. In fact, in the village of Mate, which I often visit, the chief has assigned an old man to be this horse’s guardian whenever I am there. Some villager will see me coming and put out the call. By the time I arrive the man will be there, take my horse, unbridle and unsaddle him and lead him to the juiciest patches of grass. This is the Lesotho anwer to executive parking (-: This job has some great perks!
On that happy note, I will wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Of the countless things for which I’m grateful you, my beloved friends and family, are right at the top. Your love, kindness, generosity and encouragement make me feel like the luckiest girl in the world.
I really love you guys.
Peggi
12/11/04
Dear Family and Friends:
The insects here are quite interesting. Two that immediately come to mind are the dung beetle and the thatch spider. I’ve been quite intimate with both.
The dung beetle is a beautiful insect. They get quite large here – it seems all insects here are super-sized. These beetles are shiny black. The ones I’ve seen get to about the size of a silver dollar. They have the same beautiful ancient markings as the scarabs I saw in Egypt except the dung beetles are perfectly round. Yesterday as I sat on a rock happily watching my horse graze on our lush spring grass (it was a slow day) I watched these critters deal with my horses’ dung. They are ambitious. They roll up a ball of it about five to ten times their size and roll it away for the family feast. What perfect recycling.
The thatch spiders are another story. I am at war with them. They live in my thatch roof and come in two varieties. The scarier looking ones are the big brown hairy leg monsters used in Hollywood jungle scenes to scare the living begeebers out of you. It sure works with me. These guys get as big as your fist. The interesting thing is that these spiders are harmless – not poisonous and they eat lots of other creepy critters that I would just as well do without. I now consider them my friends although when I see one every hair on my body rises and I have to go into my mantra about sentient beings. The spiders with whom I am engaged to the death are quite beautiful but poisonous. They have bodies about the size of a dime and long, graceful, non-hairy legs. They move incredibly fast. They are poisonous but not deadly. I’ve been bitten three times and I’ve killed four of them. I consider the score four for three. The first time I was bitten was pretty bad. They bite at night and this happened during the cold months so the only exposed part of my body outside of my mummy sleeping bag was my face and one hand. I was bitten on the wrist. My arm went numb for a few days and the area around the bite got ugly – like bad poison ivy. Since then either smaller spiders are biting me or I am developing immunity. I prefer to think the latter.
The reality is they do live up there in the thatch and I live down here and I do have my big brown furry friends to keep them under control. Whenever I see one of the furry ones I just wish them bon appetite – neighbors might think this is a blood curdling scream but it’s really just “bon appetite” – real loud!
Enough about bugs. We have been having fabulous rains. Crops are shooting out of the ground. Everybody is working furiously getting seeds planted – even me. I feel like Johnny Appleseed running around the village with my stash of herb and Colorado mountain wildflower seeds. I think we can grow the herbs, dry them and sell them to tourists as “herbs de Menkhoaneng” aka herbs de Provence.
The wildflowers are simply for esthetic effect. I don’t know if they are indigenous to the area, probably not, but can columbine, Indian brush etc. really hurt? There is lots of cosmos here and, frankly, not much of currently existing flora is Stone Age original. Next week I am meeting with an archeological paleontologist whose job it is to keep this place “pure”. I will follow his direction but I hope he will allow the wildflowers.
Everyone in the village, and in the country, is hoping that the current wonderful rains signal an end to the drought. They have been torrential. Today I taught English classes in Mate. There is a river to cross. Previously, my horse has had no problem walking through the little stream. Last week we went across up to his belly. This week everyone told me not to chance it. There is a narrow little footbridge further up the river that no self respecting Basotho pony will attempt (it’s metal and the sound of their hooves panics them). So, grudgingly, I walked the 18 km round trip. My advisors were right. The river was fearsome – a torrent of rushing, silt filled water. Rain here is both good and bad news. The good, of course, is that the crops have a chance of survival. The bad is the issue of erosion. For decades fields have been planted without proper attention to either terracing or to crop rotation. The result is a once fertile country whose face is now horribly scarred with erosion ditches called dongas. Donga reclamation is a national objective and certainly an issue in our attempt to revert this valley to its initial pristine beauty. It is a major challenge.
I will spend most of next week in Maseru in meetings with various Ministries. I don’t like to leave the beauty, safety and relative comfort of this village but the people who can make things happen are in the capital. Sometimes I feel like a lobbyist.
It’s difficult to believe that the Christmas holiday season is upon us. For one thing it is now summer here. And, although this is a Christian country, Christmas is not celebrated in anything close to the attention it is given in the US. It’s probably just the poverty. There is simply no money for toys or gifts. I plan to spend the holiday in the village. The tradition here is to visit friends and share food. You can imagine my cooking plans. Every time I get to a camp town I haul back as much as I can possibly carry. The last couple of trips I’ve taken a tall strong village girl with me to help. She loves the adventure – most villagers never go to town – the taxi fare is $1.50 – way beyond their means. And, of course, we do lunch, talk to lots of interesting people and shop ‘til we drop. It’s always fun.
The village knows I’ll be here for Christmas and I think everybody will be stopping over – there are about 500 people in this village –it should be an interesting day. I don’t know how many people from neighboring villages will stop by, lately while in other villages people stop me to say they will be celebrating Christmas with me – the day could get completely out of hand. I’ll let you know. I’m just hoping to keep from feeling too blue about being so far from all those I love. My heart will be firmly in America that day.
Happily, my reservations for a visit home are firmly set and I have my airline tickets in hand. I’ll be arriving in Michigan on February 14th and will stay until March 1st. I hope to see as many of you as possible although I will probably stay put in Michigan. However, please consider that time just one big “open house” and come on over!
May you enjoy the very happiest of holiday seasons.
Love, Peggi
11:45 pm Christmas 2004
Dear Family and Friends,
Let’s just say it wasn’t my best Christmas ever. Although it was certainly the most unusual.
Yesterday, Christmas eve, got off to a messy start. There was a huge storm during the night whose powerful winds drove rain and mud through the opening around the door of my hut and flooded the entire structure as I soundly slept. I awakened to find two inches of muddy water everywhere. Many of my books, which lay in neat stacks around the perimeter of this place, were ruined, as were most lots of the things stored in cardboard boxes under my cot. Oh well, its just stuff. Fortunately, I’d stored all of the Christmas gifts and goodies in the main house.
What was very nice was the quick mobilization of friends to help me out. A group of folks came over (and mind you this was 5:30 am) as soon as they heard and emptied my hut of every single thing and helped me clean it all up. I felt very taken care of. By noon I was cooking and preparing for the holiday celebration. In the late afternoon one of the sangomas came over and we packed my saddlebags with food, candy and toys which we delivered to families with children who were too sick to come to my Christmas party. I wished I’d had a pair of reindeer antlers to put on my horse but no one here would have gotten the joke. It was a nice way to end the day.
Christmas morning started out so much like home. Excited young ones were definitely the first up. Just before 5:00 at the very first light, I could hear voices of children outside my hut. I had spent the late evening blowing up balloons and decking my halls as best I could with holiday cheer. It really did look a bit like Santa’s workshop in here. The children were adorable. They formed a very polite long line outside my door. I brought them in a few at a time and let them choose their gift. Everybody got candy and cookies and some small gift. It was really fun. I asked them if they had been good and elicited promises of good study habits and perfect obedience to their parents for the year to come. I felt gently possessed by the spirit of our families favorite Santa, my beloved departed brother-in-law Bill Barnes.
By 8 am there was a pretty big crowd here. Ntate Nena, the father of this house, who was home from his job as a South African mine worker for the holiday asked me to take a photo of this beautiful sheep (ram actually) that was being led around the courtyard. I took several. It was a magnificent animal with graceful curling horns and a gentle face. Then there was a bit of a ceremony as the patriarch of this family said this sheep was for me to formally welcome me to their home and the village. It was a huge gift and I was overwhelmed. I thought, ‘gee, this is great. I’ve got a horse and now this beautiful sheep. I wonder what I should feed it.” There were two Sangomas there (formerly known as witch doctors) both of whom did a sort of a chant and prayer. Then they asked me to say a prayer. I know very few. I recited the Christian Science Statement of Being followed by the Lord’s Prayer. I was feeling very grateful.
Then four big guys took my sheep, pulled it up by it’s legs threw it upon the ground and suck a dull old knife into it’s neck. It was horrible. It made dreadful sounds as they sawed away at its throat. It took a long time to die. My tendency towards vegetarianism strengthened. I told myself that non-judgmental was the place to be and took photos. They are grisly.
The slaughtering process went on as I watched. Nothing is wasted. This was a very big celebration for this family. Nobody here gets to eat a lot of meat. With solemnity, they handed me, handed me!, the still warm liver. My ever-present tutor and cultural advisor M’e Matjeeka said it was now my honor to cook this for the assembled group. I took the bloody thing into my hut, set aside the mountain of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’d made and sliced and fried up these bits of my sheep. It really doesn’t do to get too attached to animals here.
From that point on it just didn’t seem like Christmas anymore. So much here is so strange. There was no recognizable music – just the incessant drumming. It was hot – almost stifling. Few words were spoken in English – I understand so little of what is going on around me. I longed for a real conversation, a Christmas carol, a twinkling light, a flake of snow, another white face.
Many wonderful friends and students from my classes and the project brought their entire families to visit. Some did traditional Basotho Christmas activities mostly centered on chanting prayers and singing. So many came, I really can’t say how many. It seemed like hundreds. I got so tired of it all. My hut was so crowded with sweating bodies – the body odor mixed with frying sheep got to be overwhelming. The children began to seem greedy as they snuck back into line for more presents. Some of them even changed their clothes to be in disguise. People I’d never met came to my house pretty much demanding gifts and food. Some were drunk; they asked for money; they didn’t get it. I did give away tons of stuff. I replenished my PB&J sandwich mountain several times. I cooked various disgusting parts of my sheep. I wished I were home. Twice during this long day I closed up my hut and headed for the mountain where I can get a phone signal but the connections were bad. I’m so happy today is behind me. By the end of the day I could feel myself morphing from the Christmas fairy to the Grinch.
I know I’ll never forget this Christmas but I’m trying to figure out what I’ve learned from it. Maybe nothing. Or perhaps something about how comfortable it is to be within our own culture and how easy it is to dislike that which is foreign to us. I really didn’t like some of these people today. These same Africans who have been so kind and warm and accepting of me today seemed strange and barbaric and seriously lacking in manners. But, being honest, they didn’t do anything that we don’t do. I’ve been to lots of crowded noisy parties that I loved –of course I could understand the language at those and most of the guests had recently bathed. Our kids are sometimes greedy, especially at this time of year. And who doesn’t enjoy a good rack of lamb now and again.
What was basically wrong with today was that it just wasn’t the way it is at home. So it would seem that viewpoint does indeed define our reality and is ultimately useless. It produces our prejudices. Without it we are all the same. So in the universal scheme of things maybe today wasn’t that bad.
I guess that’s just the Zen of it. Forgive this rambling. Tomorrow is another day. I’m hoping it will be a more enlightened one.
Love,
Peggi
1/21/05
Dear Friends and Family,
When I realized this is letter # 13 I almost changed it to # 14. That’s pretty silly isn’t it? But it rather illustrates what I wanted to tell you about in this letter, which are the superstitions, strange beliefs (strange to us, that is) and unusual tribal customs of the Basotho.
But first, a personal update. I’m living in the lap of luxury at the moment in our T. house in Maseru. I had a bit of an accident and so I’m here under the watchful eyes of our top rate PC doctors. It is nothing serious. A horse, not my wonderful horse but a nasty brute that has, actually, kicked me before kicked me for the second time. It’s a long and boring story but let’s just say I couldn’t get out of the way in time and he got me in the lower leg. His hoof made a pretty deep gash, which I took care of as best I could in the village. Unfortunately, it festered. I came into Maseru to have it looked at and was taken to the hospital for a bit of unpleasant surgery. My leg is now stitched up, propped up and doing fine. I feel like a princess. If I need to get anywhere I call for a car and driver. I had fresh brewed coffee, chilled watermelon and a tasty sweet roll for breakfast. My laptop is plugged into an actual wall socket. There is a phone at my right hand, a bathroom down the hall and several other PCV’s staying here at the moment that love to play Scrabble!! I love the Peace Corps!
Now, back to Basotho superstitions. I haven’t met anyone here who doesn’t believe in witchcraft. The most educated intelligent people believe in the power of the witch doctors to cast spells. There are lots of witch doctors here. They are not the traditional healers (Sangomas) I’ve spoken of in previous letters who focus on native herbal medicines. These men and women deal only in the occult. They take bizarre things like snakes blood and “eye of newt” and make magic potions. They deal only in curses and spells. Everyone fears them and their powers. Here’s an example. The man I’m working with to help start a taxi service to remote mountain villages, Ntate Toti, lost his infant daughter two months ago. When I asked him if he knew what she died of he said matter-of-factly, “Witchcraft”. He went on to explain that someone who must have been envious of he and his beautiful wife put a spell on his wife’s breast milk and it poisoned the child.
As I’ve mentioned, this is a very Christian country. That fact, doesn’t in any way, interfere with widely held superstitions. In fact, Christian beliefs have been intermixed with ancient tribal beliefs into the very interesting and unique current culture. Two of the sangomas I work closely with in our village are very good Catholics. When they are treating patients they give them herbal remedies all the time chanting to the Christian God, the ancestors of the patients, and any appropriate Christian saints whom they also consider as ancestors and intermediaries to the big ”Chief”.
I attend meetings of community health care workers in our area. These wonderful, local and mostly uneducated women are the only caregivers to the hundreds of homebound sick many of whom are at the hospice point of their illnesses. Nurse Zim gives them some training in how to recognize and treat various illnesses, nutritional information and encouragement. After this “technical” session the meeting turns into an almost revival religious meeting. Women will stand up and sway and chant and pray for some specific patient using the force of everyone’s positive thinking to affect a cure. It goes on for hours. In the absence of medical supplies, nutritious food and even the most basic sanitation who knows, perhaps it helps. It certainly seems to give everyone a psychological lift.
Here’s another example of cultural beliefs. You’ll remember my description of the birth of little Moklatsi my first night on the job. Well, his head came out really elongated from his long stint in the birth canal. M’e Matjeeka, after we’d cut the cord etc. ran outside and got a gourd that was the shape of a perfectly formed skull. She rubbed it all over Moklatsi’s tiny head explaining to me that this practice would make his head go into the perfect shape of the gourd in no time! The afterbirth was wrapped in a blanket and buried in the family ash pit. This assured that the spirit of this child would always be a protected part of this family and would not wander to the “dark side”.
This letter could go on for too long but I must tell you one more event that greatly affected the Peace Corps. The last group of trainees who arrived in October was just finishing their village training on December 2nd. This is storm season here and the electrical storms are incredible. Anyway, it wasn’t storming just hot and muggy and there were some storm-looking clouds far off in the horizon. Some of the group was sitting under a tree. The rest were inside the school classrooms – which have the typical metal roofs. Two of the trainers were sitting on a metal box under the tree. Well, a bolt of lightening came out of nowhere, went through the three rooms of the building, knocked everybody down and seriously injured six people. The two trainers sitting on the metal box were the most affected – one paralyzed from the waist down. Many people had strange burns – like a burn on the back of the neck and on the bottoms of the feet. Everybody I’ve spoken to said it felt like a bomb going off.
Well, the villagers were sure it was Witchcraft. All the Peace Corps trainers and volunteers had to leave the village immediately. They were scheduled to have the big, happy farewell feast in a few days. It was canceled. Witchdoctors were brought into the village to cleanse and appease the evil spirits that had caused it. It is doubtful if Peace Corps will ever be able to use this village again for immersion training.
The other thing I really want to tell you about is the circumcision schools but that will have to wait for another time.
This might be the last letter before my trip home. I’m counting the days! – 23 to go. I’m bringing tons of photos and lots of stories of this interesting sojourn in Africa. I hope to see you then.
Love,
Peggi
3/6/05
Dear Family and Friends:
I’m back in Lesotho after a fun and fabulous two weeks in the good old USA. In my heart I am singing “God Bless America”. What an incredibly wonderful country we live in. Huge Thank-you’s are due to so many of you – for the parties, the breakfast, lunch and dinner extravaganzas, the contributions to the American friends of Menkhoaneng fund, the wonderful way you all let me talk about my exploits non-stop in English- it was great! Snail mail thank you notes are on the way. Actually, I’ve had plenty of time to write them. The airlines lost my luggage so I’m still at the T. house in Maseru waiting for word. It doesn’t look good. It seems to have disappeared into thin air if you’ll excuse the pun.
In the meantime, I’ve had three full days to meet with members of parliament, government ministers and UN representatives about the cultural village project as well as my latest idea for our village. The latter is the main subject of this email.
Just before I left the village for my trip, I met with the council of elders who are in charge of deciding how the money in the fund should be spent. They asked if I thought our American friends would mind if they bought food with it. So far, we’ve been spending it on medical transport, hospital costs, medical supplies for the poorest of the villagers and books for my English classes. The program to date is a huge success. I know many lives have been saved and many more made more bearable. There is a new sense of hopefulness in the village. However, I may have mentioned that the disaster relief food shipments the village was receiving have been cut off. Not only did we have a problem with a dishonest official redirecting our food supplies for private gain but also the terrible tsunami disaster has redirected international donations to that very deserving part of the world. The Disaster Management food warehouses in Maseru are empty. Both the UN and the DMA are looking for new ideas on how to deal with the food shortage problem.
So here is the idea I’m going to present to the village council upon my return to Menkhoaneng tomorrow. Both the MP in charge of our area as well as the UN official I discussed it with gave it a thumbs up. But, of course, unless the villagers embrace it as their own it won’t work.
I’ve noticed while traveling around the village that several of the farming families who are still healthy are able to produce more corn, sorghum or beans than their family needs. There is no viable market for this excess. I’d like to start a program in which we form a Village Cooperative that buys the excess production and distributes it to hut-bound sick people, especially HIV/AIDS sufferers as well as the workers who will be building the toilets for the school (more on that later), and volunteers who work in our “meals without wheels” program. We may even be able to start a school lunch program.
My hope is to develop and implement this program and document the process in such a way that it becomes a model for the UN disaster relief people to use as part of their focus on sustainable nourishment enhancement. They told me that if our village can get this to work and I can show on paper how much it costs and what positive effect it has on the community I can write a grant for the program to continue for years after I’ve left. I’m hugely excited about this.
So all of you who so generously contributed to the fund during my visit will be making this program a reality. I’ll set up separate books for the community cooperative committee to manage. The villagers who manage their fields well and have excess food to sell will be able to earn actual cash. I think it will be an incentive for all those able to work to work very hard and perhaps practice some of the crop improvement programs my permaculture PCV colleagues are promoting. It will address the big controversy about disaster relief grain shipments lowering the price of South African produce and it will save many in our village from starvation. It’s a terrible thing but we’ve had at least three villagers that I know of die of starvation since my arrival.
The other project I started working on before I left was getting toilets and water for our village school. This school is just awful. There are 270 students, only three very underpaid teachers ($60.00 per month!), no toilet facilities at all, no water available anywhere nearby, no desks or chairs – just wooden benches – it’s really sad. The principal came to me some time ago to ask for help. I found a resource to which I can submit a grant for the money for the bricks and cement to build latrines and buy a water catching tank (the school has a metal roof). The villagers will do all the work – the grant source will not pay for the labor but your contributions will. We’ll pay them in food from the cooperative.
There is so much to do and so little time. We are also having our big Moshoeshoe Day celebration on March 11th. I left a lot of organizational tools behind but word has it that the planning for this event is in a state of chaos. I’ll be stopping in the camp town of Hlotse on my way to the village tomorrow to meet with the district planning committee for this event.
And so, here I sit waiting for the airlines to find my luggage – it even has the power cord for this computer in it – damn! Oh well. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that it arrives. The South African Airlines official I spoke to this morning said cheerfully that only 1 out of 10 of the misdirected bags are never recovered!
On that note, I’ll sign off. May good health and happiness be with you always.
Love from the heart of Africa,
Peggi
4/8/05
Dear Family and Friends,
It’s been raining for four days – torrentially. The rain so defines our activities around here. On the first day of downpour Matjeeka and I ran around outside putting pails and basins under every stream coming from the roof to catch and store as much water as possible. We soon filled every available container. On day two there was a break between storms so we gaily started washing everything is sight –blankets, rugs our hair – you name it we washed it. We played like children splashing our wealth of water at each other. The next storm overtook our efforts so much of our well rinsed stuff is still in a soggy heap – Oh well, one thing’s for sure, the sun will shine again in the beautiful mountain kingdom of Lesotho.
Today I’m cooking. I was supposed to go to a meeting of the Boselee Association in Mate to help them work on their business plan but the river is much too deep for Lance (my horse) to cross and the paths are running torrents of rain and silt. I have a cadre of children who are happy to act as runners for me for a few coins. They have no problem traveling in this weather, in fact, they enjoy it. I sent several out this morning in various directions to deliver messages for me and request people I need to meet with to call on me today.
Also, we just harvested a bunch of pumpkins. They are delicious! Yesterday I made pumpkin bread that we enjoyed in Matjeeka’s house last night at a Community Coop Committee meeting. Today I’m making pumpkin soup, pumpkin scones, pumpkin soufflé and roasted pumpkin seeds. Have I told you how I bake? There is, of course, no oven here but I bought a very large heavy cast aluminum pot. It’s 15” in diameter and 11” tall. I set an empty tuna can in the bottom of it and then a 13” diameter tempered glass plate on top of the can. It makes an amazingly efficient stovetop oven. Just now there is a nice pumpkin roasting in it. The focus of this weeks cooking class is, you guessed it – the incredible edible pumpkin.
Fall is in the air. Nights are getting chilly –in the low 50’s. We’ll soon start harvesting maize and sorghum. I went with some farmers to harvest wheat last week just before the rains started. What a job! I couldn’t believe how much effort goes into filling a 50 kg bag of wheat kernels. It’s a very organized process. Everyone knows what he or she is supposed to do. Men use scythes to cut down the wheat. Women follow them and gather it into big bundles. These bundles are carried over to a rocky place where women take small bunches and whack it against the rocks to make the kernels come off. The kernels are poured from one basket to another so the breeze can blow away the chaff. Finally, the precious kernels are poured into woven sacks to be taken to the mill or to be taken home and ground into flour on a grinding rock. I worked with the women gathering the bundles for a while and then tried my hand at whacking the wheat on the rocks. I didn’t last very long – probably worked three hours at the most – it was exhausting. The men and women I was with worked from sun up to sunset. Their endurance is quite humbling.
The experience gave me a whole new respect for the flour I used to bake that pumpkin bread yesterday. This organically grown, stone ground, whole-wheat flour is, by the way, delicious.
Oh, my luggage was finally found. I was able to pick it up at the Maseru airport. That’s the good news. The bad news was that some customs inspector along the way decided to open the big can of Bear Creek Farms powdered cheddar cheese soup I’d bought at Sam’s Club – seal and all – and didn’t bother to put the lid back on. There was powdered cheddar cheese in every tiny crevice of every item in that suitcase. Fortunately, I was staying at the T. house so I dumped everything into the big bathtub and sent down the drain huge batches of weak soup. Even now my beautiful Briggs and Riley suitcase has a slight cheesy smell. Oh well. At least it was good for some cheesy humor from my fellow PCV’s at the T. house. And, I’m thrilled to have all the treasures that were in that bag. The grandmother of the little orphan girl who got one of the winter coats said she slept in it! She refuses to take it off. My visitors this week have been fed tuna salad sandwiches with real mayo. And, of course, all that beef jerky – what can I say? This is really living!
Well, I think the pumpkin is done and it needs to cool before being turned into scones etc. It smells great in here. I’m expecting lots of visitors today to discuss the toilet and water tank project for the Primary school and want to have lots of snacks for them. We’re going to build the toilets in traditional Basotho style. They’ll be rondavels circa 1785 – the time of Moshoeshoe’s birth. The idea of this project in addition to providing the school with sanitary latrines and water is to teach the young people in the village the various building crafts they will need to be skilled workers on the Cultural Village project. Today some of our old master craftsmen and women are stopping by so we can schedule training sessions in rope weaving, thatching and stonecutting. We’re going to pay them in food from the village coop. Also, the treasurer of the committee is coming over so we can set up the books for the project. I’ve really got to get busy.
I truly love this job. Everyday is interesting and different and challenging. I hope some of you will give a thought to doing a stint in the Peace Corps. Only I know the incredible pool of talent, generosity and endless capabilities this letter reaches in its distribution. Think about it. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is fascinating, fun and a great adventure. You might really love it and at least from where I sit it sure seems that the world could use a few more PCVs.
With love from the warm heart of Africa,
Peggi
5/11/05
Dear Family and Friends;
It’s hard for me to believe I’ve been here almost a year. I arrived in Africa on June 1, 2004 and figured in my heart of hearts I’d last about three weeks. Actually, my ultimate goal was to stick it out for a year. I figured then I’d be able to return home not in complete disgrace.
It doesn’t seem like I’ve gotten much done in the past twelve months – my list of unfinished projects is very long – I guess I’ll just have to stay a wee bit longer (-:
There is so much that I love about being here and so much else that makes me want to turn tail and catch the next flight out.
Here are some of the things I love about this experience:
· Serving in the US Peace Corps has been both an honor and a privilege. I love the organization – both it’ purpose and its ideals. I am impressed and inspired by my fellow PCVs and the good work they are doing here. And I enjoy a very gratifying sense of making my own, if very small, contribution to world peace and shared prosperity.
· The Basotho are in many ways a wonderful people – especially the Villagers. In a country challenged by extreme poverty and pandemic HIV/AIDS they carry on with their lives in a cheerful, positive way that demonstrates to me every day that it is not what we have in this life that counts but how we use it. They have taught me much and many have become my friends.
· And, of course, this is a beautiful place. The Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho is rugged and wild. The air is clean, the skies are brilliant blue and the nightly expanse of stars – horizon to horizon – opens my mind to the universe.
· My horse. Don’t laugh. Having my faithful Basotho pony just outside my door ready to take me daily through these mountains has been wonderful. He is gentle, sure footed and responds to the smallest cue. He no longer looks like Don Quixote’s emaciated mount. He’s gained a lot of weight and muscle and both looks and behaves like a proud, if gentle, Basotho stallion.
· My small projects are going very well. The American Friends of Menkhoaneng Fund has made a big difference in a lot of lives and the residents of at least a few African villages look to Americans as kind, caring and peace-loving people.
So, what’s not to like you may ask? Plenty.
· I miss my family every day – and the delightful company of friends. I so look forward to once again holding my grandchildren and watching them grow. Falling back into my comfortable, luxurious American social life is going to be heavenly.
· There are aspects of the tribal culture that make me heart sick. Corporal punishment is the norm here. It is considered quite appropriate for men to beat their wives, parents and teachers to beat their children and for everyone to beat any available animal. And, we are instructed not to interfere. We are not here to change the culture. Regardless of that dictum, I preach against it and try to demonstrate a different way.
· The government and ministries here are to a discouraging extent both corrupt and ineffective. I really don’t know why this is so. It’s a very complex issue involving the fact that Lesotho has become almost a welfare state. The country can’t support itself on the subsidence farming and the few industries that make up its GNP. Of course, this state of dependence was imposed upon this once prosperous nation by the Imperialism of both the British and the Boers. It has depended on help from other nations for so long that it seems to have lost both the concept of self-reliance and the desire to reach that state. Government employees have no productivity standards. Getting things done just doesn’t count for much. Ministries are nepotistic and job qualifications mean nothing. Jobs are given to relatives and are essentially for life. Incompetence is rampant. I work with dozens of these people. They’re nice folks – they just never seem to get things done. Meetings are like social hours. No one takes notes. I use my old Xerox meeting management techniques to no avail. Action items are ignored, communication of meeting results to stakeholders is non-existent and worst of all, monies are continually misappropriated. It makes me crazy and I haven’t been able to do one damn thing to change it.
· My own inability to master this language is both frustrating and isolating. When I’m in government meetings the conversations are mostly in English, Lesotho’s second language and definitely it’s professional tongue. However, in the villages only Sesotho is spoken. And, visiting and chatting are what’s done here – all day, everyday. There is no TV or radio and reading is not a part of this culture. I only understand about 10% – 15% of what’s being said around me. It makes me feel very lonely, isolated and frustrated with my ignorance. Some of the younger PCVs are acquiring an enviable fluency but none of us “old folks” are doing very well in the language. Don’t get me wrong. Most of us can chat in the stores, know all the forms of greetings and can talk about our projects but to really converse and comprehend, to understand the humor or innuendo is just not happening.
· And, of course, it’s heartbreaking to be so personally involved in so much poverty and death. A few weeks ago I attended a PC sponsored two-day seminar at the US Embassy focused on grief and grieving. It was helpful in giving us some perspective on the sense of hopelessness that is a constant mental threat. But believe me, seeing the things we see here is not easy.
So that’s about it – not exactly A year in Provence but definitely one that I think I’ll always cherish. And, who knows, I could even last the whole 27 months. I’ve sure got enough to do.
That’s about it from me. Please don’t hesitate to respond to this note. I’ll be in Maseru for the next few days with hours of available Internet time and would love updates what’s happening in your life.
Love,
Peggi
5/29/05
Dear Family and Friends;
I’ve been thinking a lot about the incredible luxury of central heating lately. Autumn is here and the days are filled with warm sunshine, temperatures climbing to the pleasant 60’s & 70’s. The fields are a sepia palette of rust and gold as sorghum and maize continue to ripen and dry for harvesting. But the nights bring on icy winds. On many mornings light frost is everywhere.
I think I told you about my heating arrangements. I have propane gas tanks; two of them. They’re huge. They look like the bombs that E. Pickens rode down to global destruction in “Dr. Strangelove”. During training I made about every mistake one can make with these potential bombs including leaving both the tank valve open and a hotplate burner on – unlit – while I visited the latrine. Upon returning, not only was my room filled with gas but also the entire house to which it was attached was primed to ignite. The mother of the family with whom I was living ran out, advised me of the peril we were all in and proceeded to turn off my tank and fumigate the place. She saved the day and a lesson was learned.
I now have an almost anal procedure that I follow to light both my cooking burner and the heater – and to turn them off. So far, so good. My current issue with my heating and cooking system is refilling the darn gas tanks. The tanks, even empty, weigh a ton. They can only be refilled in town – way down the mountain. Here’s the current procedure. A herd boy and I hitch up the oxen and load the empty tank into a cart. We take this to a point where it can be off loaded to a pickup truck. I have arrangements with several pickup owners in the valley. In town we exchange the empty tank for a full one and return to a prearranged ox-cart pickup. It’s a hassle to say the least. As a result I’ve become very frugal about heat. I find myself hanging around cooking fires outside at night listening to long stories told in a language I understand only minimally then scurrying into my hut, jumping into my sleeping bag resplendent in my mittens and stocking cap.
Can this, I ask myself, really be Africa? This Mountain Kingdom has a ski resort that I definitely plan to visit this winter and will report upon to you. I’ll just bet there rental gear is circa long ago – we’ll see.
In many ways living here is what life must have been like in rural America in the early 1900’s – without the propane tanks. To the villagers, my hut is very luxurious. Clean, gas heat is considered hugely extravagant. On cold days I always turn on the heat for visitors and they love it. They sit huddled around my gas heater, munching PB&J’s, sipping tea and trying to think of reasons to stay all day. Most huts are heated with wood and dung fires – inside. It’s terrible. The roofs theoretically absorb the smoke but they don’t really. People sit inside breathing in dense smoke. In bad weather women cook over these indoor fires with babes wrapped to their backs – their tiny lungs filling with particulate matter. Lung and breathing problems are very common here.
In rereading this letter, I think I’m a little depressed. It’s been a lousy week. The food shipments that were supposed to come from the UN Food for Work Program didn’t arrive. The local distribution official, after a month of assurances that she would put our village on her areas’ distribution list, decided that we really belonged to another district. I wanted to strangle her. It means starting all over again with proposals, justifications – mountains of paperwork. In the meantime we continue to bury heartbreakingly bone thin corpses.
On the bright side, the cooperative is doing well and I’m working with another PCV to initiate HIV/AIDS training for 54 home health care workers, 9 sangomas and 7 community leaders. HIV/AIDS and poverty go so hand in hand here. If we can in any way initiate the behavioral interventions necessary to stop the spread of this disease we will be taking a positive step. I’m excited about the training program and will spend most of next week in Maseru lining up speakers, resources and funding. I also just spent a most enjoyable day writing a constitution with the executive committee from the newly formed Menkhoaneng Community Development Association. This will be the umbrella group that directs the Co-operative, the construction group that builds the toilets for the school and the workers who are being trained in traditional building methods for the Cultural Village project. We will register this new constitution (which is very much like a business plan) with the central government and become an official CBO (Community Based Organization). Hopefully, this will allow this association to run effectively for many years after I leave. The meeting, which took place in my hut today for nine hours, was a joy. We had both of my laptops going full blast, the constitution being written in both English (by me with much serious input by community leaders) then translated into Sesotho (by a brilliant local teacher). I was able to serve wonderful food – Bear Creek Farms minestrone soup, steamed bread, chocolate bars and cans of soft drinks – it gave us all a feeling of affluence. The group left just as the sun was setting into a colorful sky graced with a bright full moon.
I just read an excerpt from Jeffery Sachs book, ”The End of Poverty” and was hugely inspired. My sister sent it to me from the March 14th issue of Time. Sachs runs the UN Millennium Fund and has stunningly brilliant ideas on how to end world poverty. It would just take 0.7% of the GNP of donor countries to halve poverty by 2015 – sure sounds good to me.
Tomorrow is going to be really fun. I’m going to the Cultural Village Project to take photos of all the volunteer workers. They’ve been primed to show up spiffy. We’re going to make official badges for everybody. They’ll say,” Moshoeshoe I Cultural Village Volunteer”. We’re hoping they will be worn as a badge of honor.
With love from the currently quite chilly heart of Africa,
Peggi
6/9/05
Dear Friends and Family,
In so many ways my life here is getting easier and easier. A couple of weeks ago the father of the family I live with returned from his job in the mines of South Africa with a huge package strapped to his back. It was a dismantled telephone antenna. Matjeeka and the herd boys installed in on a tall pole by the house and so we now have telephone reception right here! I had little hope that we would actually get a signal but we do. So now, instead of climbing up a mountain on the other side of the valley to make phone calls, I just walk next door. It’s simply bloody marvelous.
And then there is my house-cleaning situation. I think I mentioned that it is very culturally appropriate for me to hire help for housekeeping and laundry. The Peace Corps also encourages us to do so. The first young woman who was helping me with both chores was able to save enough money to go back to school – she is a brilliant, beautiful girl of 20 and is now, with a little extra financial help from you and me attending nursing school. When she left I decided to split up her job so that two young women could be employed – one for housekeeping and one for laundry. The young lady who got the housekeeping part of the job is Matseliso Nti. She wanted to learn how to keep house for a “lokhooa”(white person) so she could go get a full time job in South Africa. She was fabulous. She cleaned for me twice a week and my hut sparkled. Her big chance came with some visiting relatives who said she could go with them to SA and they would find her a full time position. She was thrilled and I was happy for her sending her off with a letter of reference and an extra bit of money. We arranged for a third young woman to take her place.
I guess I should mention that working for me is the only employment opportunity available in this village. It is a hotly contested position. These, pronounced Thaysee, started just before I left for Maseru last week. She too was just great – responsible, honest and thorough. I returned from Maseru last night to a cozy, spotless hut smelling of lavender floor wax (yes, my cement floor is waxed and polished to a dangerously slippery sheen – I walk in socks at my own peril).
This morning, first thing, Matseliso was at my door in tears. The job in South Africa fell through. These was standing behind Matseliso also crying. Was she going to lose her job? Would Matseliso get her old job back? What a quandary. I decided to get the girls together with their mothers and try to work it out.
So now, my friends, I have help every day! These is to come every morning for just a half hour and do my dishes and sweep the floor. Matseliso is to come on Saturdays and do a “complete” cleaning job. These started this morning and instead of just working a half hour cleaned the whole place. When I returned from teaching English in a neighboring village I found she had done everything except shine my shoes. Matseliso will do that on Saturday.
So, would you like to retire to a third world country where you can live like royalty on your social security check? Come to Lesotho. I pay these young women what is considered high wages. These gets 5 rand per day (85 cents). Matseliso gets 20 rand for working 3-4 hours on Saturday (about $3.30). Both of these positions are considered “cushy” jobs. A laborer who works in the fields all day (sunrise to sunset) hand hoeing or harvesting is paid about 15 rand. My rent for this rondavel is 150 rand per month – about $25.00. I also employ a full time herd boy to look after Lance when I am not riding him or when I am traveling to Maseru. He takes Lance to places that have good grass and watches him eat. In good weather he also takes Lance to the river to bathe him. I pay this herd boy a regular full time herd boy salary (150 rand per month) plus benefits (housing in the cooking hut of our compound, food, candy and anything I think he would like that I can buy for him in Maseru). He takes absolutely wonderful care of my horse and he is taking very seriously my “gentle” approach to animals. He knows Lance must not be beaten. In fact, last week I saw him berate another herd boy who kicked a dog. I brought him into my hut, congratulated him and gave him a 20 rand tip.
However, as easy as my life in the village is getting, doing my actual job of community economic development is becoming more difficult. This past week I visited every NGO (non-governmental organization) headquarters in Maseru trying to get funding for both the HIV/AIDS training program needed in the villages in my district as well as food for work for the construction projects we have going on. Currently the American Friends of Menkhoaneng fund (your money and mine) is covering all costs but I’m looking for sustainable funding sources to take over. According to the mission statements of the NGO’s I visited the projects I am asking for help with are right in line with what they are supposed to be doing. However, they all said they have no funds. I can’t tell you how obvious it is that a huge part of the money international donors give to third world countries goes to setting up the organizations but does not go to actually helping the people the funds are meant for. I left well equipped and fully staffed offices whose parking lots were filled with brand new “agency” vehicles with the same answer –“We have no funds available for your projects”. The only glimmer of hope I got was from World Vision who said they would “partner” with us in getting some of the PACT money that will come into Lesotho in July from the US. That means that I will write the proposal grants and they will submit them to PACT along with grants for other monies they are asking for. I’m going to do it, of course, but I’m worried that the money will come to World Vision and somehow not find it’s way to the villagers for which it is meant. This happened to me before with a grant I wrote for funding from World Bank through the ministry of Tourism and the whole thing went into a boondoogle for government employees. It made me so angry I got physically ill.
The other ‘good guys” in my opinion are the UN World Food Program people. They have accepted and approved my proposal for food for our workers but just now most world food help is still going to tsunami victims. I know it will come eventually but patience has not yet become a long suit of mine. And, I am emptying our American Friends coffers just buying basic meal for gruel. We should be able to get food help from NGO programs. I like to use our money for the small things, like getting the sick to hospitals, buying medicines etc.
The challenge is to not give up. This past week while I was in Maseru at the T. house several of the volunteers from my group were heading home. No one blames them and the Peace Corps staff is wonderful about making their transition out of service fast and painless. Usually when someone says they want to leave they are out of the country within 72 hours. My meetings in Maseru were so discouraging that I was looking at these fine people with a certain degree of envy. However, now that I’m back in the village and once again with these wonderful people who are trying so hard just to survive I want to stay and try to help them. They really deserve a better life than that which fate and circumstance has given them. There is not much that can be done about fate but maybe circumstance? Tomorrow I’ll begin writing the World Vision proposal – we’ll see.
It’s now a several days later – sometimes these letters are written over time between visits to Maseru. Today was wonderful, a true African experience.
Setsomi Seeiso, our head village elder, came to my hut this morning to invite me to an ancient traditional ceremony that was taking place at his family compound today. I grabbed my camera and we headed for his place.
Ancestor worship is a very important part of the religious beliefs within all the Bantu tribal cultures. Burial rites are ritualistic, ceremonial and very tribal. An important part of the ancient beliefs is to bury the deceased in a cowhide. This keeps them warm in the afterlife and prevents them from coming back to their children in dreams and balling them out – even putting curses on them – for their lack of concern. Today at Setsomi’s place three hides were being prepared for this use. The cows had been killed for the funeral feasts and their hides staked out to dry. Today they were to be scraped and pounded into softness by the men of the family. There were many Sangomas there and about 30 men. The men knelt around the hides and either scraped away at them or rhythmically lifted and squeezed them pounding them into the ground. It takes a lot of pounding to soften up these hides. While they scraped and pounded they chanted repetitive prayer-type songs to the ancestors. Their voices were wonderful – deep and strong. A lead chanter gave the one-line refrain and the chorus repeated it over and over. It was quite hypnotic.
The few women present (just family members – this is a man’s ceremony)joined in the music with the high pitched trilling ululation that signifies pleasure for what the men were doing. Delicious food simmered in large three legged black cauldrons that sat over wood fires tended by the women in the family. The food was the traditional feast fare – papa(maize meal), moroho(green vegetables), mokopu(pumpkin) and nama (chicken). I was given a large plate of food and led into the dining room of the “best” house in the compound; a cinderblock structure with a corrugated metal roof. I was seated at their table. I said, “Can I eat outside?” Setsomi’s wife said, “No, you are our special guest. You must eat here.” They obviously thought it was more polite to seat me on a chair alone in the dining room than for me to sit on the ground outside with everybody else. I ate fast and rejoined the party. Pails of joala, the home brew, had made their appearance and the men were getting into their cups. When the largest hide was finished it was ceremoniously draped around Setsomi and the men began a series of very warrior- like dances and songs. They brandished sticks and looked fierce. Dagga (marijuana) is also a big part of this culture. Although it is technically illegal one of the side gardens of this house was full of it and the sweet aroma drifted over the party. The dances got wilder and wilder. Setsomi came over to me thanked me for coming and pretty much told me it was time for me to leave. He takes very seriously his responsibility for my welfare in this village and I think he wanted me safely home before the party got too rowdy. I was thinking the same thing myself and was quite ready to say my farewells and high tail it to the safety of my hut. I was escorted home by two Sangomas neither of whom was completely sober but both of whom were the soul of politeness.
Days like this make it all worthwhile. I love these good people.
We’re going to have our first group of American “tourists” visit the cultural village site on June 22nd. They are actually the new group of Community Economic Development volunteers and a visit to my site is part of their training. Tomorrow our Community Committee will meet here to put together an eco-cultural program for them. The whole village is hugely excited about having all these American visitors. This will be the most white people many of them have ever seen at one time. I’m hoping we can give them a day they will long remember.
This letter really got too long – sorry.
Love,
Peggi
6/25/05
Dear Family and Friends,
This is such a good news/bad news letter that I’m having trouble deciding which to tell you first.
Heck, let’s start with the good news. My various projects are going so well. Just after complaining to you that I couldn’t get funding for the HIV/AIDS training program – Voila! Along comes a letter from Jeff Jenks, president of the Southeast Michigan Returned PCV’s, and they are offering to fund the whole program. Thank you SEMIRPCV’s!!! Another excellent International group, PSI, is providing all the trainers and people to do the counseling and HIV testing. This program is going to make a very significant difference in the level of HIV/AIDS awareness in the remote villages I serve.
And things are finally starting to move on the Cultural Village Project. On June 15th we had a large group of VIP’s from both local and national government visit the site. They brought TV cameras and lots of hullabaloo. The minister to the Prime Minister, the second most powerful person in government voiced his commitment to the project. The speech made by the Minister of Tourism Environment and Culture was televised and as the camera spanned the crowd many of the Villagers, some who have never even seen a TV were on television. We had a Pitso (Village Meeting) the day after the event and when I told them they’d been on TV the enthusiasm was overwhelming. The ministers all had lunch at my place. I told the top dog Minister about my problem getting food for our workers. He asked for a copy of my proposal. I just happened to have a copy along with a list of every workers name (-: He said he would give it his personal attention.
Then, this past Wednesday, we had our first ever group of “tourists”. O.K. sure, they were new PCV’s and this was a part of their training but to our Village they were Americans coming to see the holy place where the great Moshoeshoe I was born. The Village put on a show I think the PCV’s will never forget. Everyone was decked out in traditional tribal clothes. Many had painted their bodies with a mixture of sheep fat and red ochre pigment. The Sangomas did wild dances, their naked bodies covered with bells and animal skins. A group of elders and young strong men took us up into the caves where Moshoeshoe first hid his people during the terrible Lifanqane wars. The handsome young warriors accompanying us up the mountain to the caves practically carried the young female PVC’s up the difficult parts. Everybody loved it. The food was all the ancient things Moshoeshoe would have eaten at a tribal feast – it was delicious. I had notified the newspapers and three reporters and cameramen came. The Public Eve is going to do a special insert on Menkhoaneng. The minister of tourism told me she has finally gotten an empowered executive committee together with whom I can begin serious work on the development of a business plan for the project. I am stoked!
Everything is so wonderful except what happened just this morning. This is the bad news. I think I mentioned we have a lot of dogs – six to be exact, three of whom are 4 month old puppies. I just love these puppies. Early every morning I let them into my hut for a big bowl of warm milk, oatmeal, dog chunks and whatever food I didn’t eat from last night’s supper. This morning there were some chunks of grizzle from some unidentified meat the family gave me. I hadn’t touched it – a donkey died recently and I was very suspicious.
Anyway, one of the puppies got a piece of it stuck in his throat. I tried to get it out giving him sort of Hiemlich, I tried to get my fingers into his throat. The poor little thing bit me several times with his sharp little teeth. I called for help and one of the daughters in the family came running. We tried to hold his mouth open and get the big chunk out – she was bitten too. Our hands got pretty bloody. The poor darling little dog died. When it was over, I poured liquid disinfectant over our hands and it wasn’t until we were washing our hands together in a basin that I realized my big mistake. We were mixing our blood.
I called our Peace Corps doctor immediately – woke him up, in fact. He told me to come to Maseru immediately. When I got here he began rabies shots and started me on a drug called Lamivudine/zidovudine. It’s a PEP treatment. That stands for post exposure prophylaxis. I take two tablets a day for 30 days – the side effect is nausea. I have to stay in Maseru until Tuesday for the last rabies shot.
When I return to the village I’m going to ask the young women who helped me if she will go into the clinic for a HIV test. I’ll take her, I’ll hold her hand, I’ll pay her if necessary. As Dr. Johnson pointed out the chances statistically are one in three that she is positive.
The PEP treatment if started within 24 hours of exposure is very effective but it sure would be great to know that she’s negative. Over the next few weeks and months my blood will be tested frequently. I feel certain that I’m not infected but the next few weeks are going to be a bit nerve-racking.
So that’s the bad news. It’s probably nothing. My exposure was slight and the medical response quick.
So that’s it – the good, the bad and the bloody. I will, of course, let you know the minute I get the ”all clear”.
Now I’m thinking I should have started with the bad news – this is not a very upbeat note on which to end this letter. Please read the first few paragraphs again – life is good here, I am happy and all is well.
Love,
Peggi
7/20/05
Dear Family and Friends,
I’ve been wanting to write you a letter to describe some of the stranger customs and beliefs here in the Mountain Kingdom. This lazy Sunday morning seems to be the perfect time to do so especially since recently it seems that I’ve been immersed in situations ruled by the Basotho culture.
One of them has to do with my horse, Lance. As you know he is a stallion. Gentle as he is there is not a thing wrong with any of his hormonal instincts and when the herd boys have him out grazing with the cattle if there is a mare in season anywhere in the area he leads them a merry (excuse the pun) chase. Last week he completely succeeded in eluding capture until after he’d coupled with a lovely white mare.
This caused quite a stir. The owner of the mare, if she dropped a foal, would be indebted to me as owner of the stud. Also, unpre-arranged mating of animals is seen as very bad form and put my herd boy in the position of not doing his job.
I entered the situation when my herd boy, Mokabitso, arrived home leading Lance and followed by a rather large group of interested villagers. Mokabitso explained to me that to insure that Lance had not impregnated the mare he must now ride him at a full gallop until he is drenched in sweat and completely exhausted. I said, “Makabitso, the deed is done. Nothing we do to Lance will make any difference in whether that mare is pregnant.” He looked at me with the pity one gives to one who is blatantly uninformed or just plain stupid. The growing crowd of villagers enthusiastically backed his position. Matjeeka, who is a qualified home-health worker agreed – it must be done.
I seldom allow anyone to ride Lance. I said, ”O.K. I’ll get the saddle and ride him.” This was met by gasps of horror. Lance had to be ridden bareback by a virile male or, of course, the cure wouldn’t work. The villagers were shaking their heads in disbelief – how could this educated Lekhooa (white person) be so stupid?
Lance was ridden until he could hardly walk. It took me an hour to just cool him down enough to put him in for the night.
I took this situation to my English class the next day to see if I could find a voice of reason among the very intelligent people in that class. Not one of them doubted the efficacy of this method of birth control. I drew a diagram – we talked about how the mating process works – the class evolved into biology and sex ed. I could not convince a single person to accept my viewpoint. The closest thing I got to any agreement was a statement that what I said may be true in other parts of the world but here in Lesotho this is how it works.
Here’s another bit of animal husbandry I’ll bet you didn’t know. Did you know that here in Lesotho if you mate your pig and she becomes pregnant the sow who seeded her must not be slaughtered until the piglets are born? If he is, all the piglets will die.
Just one more. Two nights ago one of our cows dropped a beautiful little calf. Matjeeka and I were out dealing with this situation – actually, Matjeeka was dealing with it; I was just holding the flashlight and making helpful comments like, “Holy Cow!”. Anyway, when the afterbirth came out we had to scoop it up with a stick and hang it in a tree! By now, of course, I know better than to argue. I just said, “Is this branch high enough?” The placenta carries the spirit of the animal and hanging it in the tree assures the off spring will grow strong and healthy and not get lost!?.
Everything is going quite well here. Our HIV/AIDS training last week was a resounding success. Over 100 people got tested for the virus – this is a bit of a record in this country where fear and denial rule in the area of HIV awareness. The caps I had printed with “I know My Status. Do You?” on them were so popular I’m convinced this should be a National Campaign. The trainers told their packed audiences that it means the same as saying “I’m smart and want to live. Do you?”
My own situation is still unclear. The woman with whom I could possibly have mixed blood in the dog bite incident tested positive for the virus so I am still taking the post exposure medication. The good news is that it is very effective and my exposure risk was small to begin with – but to say I don’t want to take any chances is a huge under statement. The medicine is quite dreadful. I feel sick all the time but there are only 7 days left of taking what I now term my “nasty pills”.
The great news is that two of my wonderful sisters, Patty and Pam, are arriving here on July 27th. I should be 100% again by then and we’re planning a really nice vacation beginning here in the village and ending in Capetown, South Africa. You will, of course, get a full report.
That’s about it from here. I hope your summer is passing pleasantly and that this letter finds you well and happy.
With love from the heart of Africa,
Peggi
8/21/05
Dear Family and Friends,
It’s been a wonderful few weeks since I last wrote to you. My sisters came, saw and conquered the hearts of the Basotho. I’m feeling perfectly well with no lingering bad effects of the nasty pills and our various Village projects are coming along nicely.
Patty and Pam were a huge hit in the Village. Not only did they arrive with suitcases full of gifts for the villagers (and me(-: ) but they immediately put their talents to work. We visited the primary school and after the children sang and danced for us they sang for them. Pam, a talented ESL teacher, held an impromptu language class for a group of little ones in front of my hut and from that point on was surrounded by adoring children. Patty, our very own Boswell, spent much time chronicling what was going on in a journal. Patty is both a writer and an artist and the illustrations she drew in her journal fascinated our many visitors. She’d also brought a Polaroid camera – she was a very popular lady.
We had a party on Saturday. I’d invited about a hundred people but about two hundred came. The villagers went all out to welcome Patty and Pam. There were speeches, lots of traditional tribal singing and dancing – the sangomas came all painted in red ocher – everyone wanted to show our visitors the Basotho cultural of which they are so proud.
On Sunday we headed out. First driving through the beautiful Maluti Mountains to stay at a lovely, quite remote mountain resort called Semonkong. The road through this high mountain region is scenic but treacherous. We put the 4×4 we’d rented through its paces – we even had a flat tire along the way, which was changed for us by some village boys. Patty gave them a 100 rand tip thus soundly establishing herself as a legend in that tiny mountain community. They’ll be talking about the fabulously rich Lekhooa for years.
We left Lesotho and headed down to the Cape. The difference between Lesotho and South Africa is evident as soon as you cross the border. For one thing there are lots of white people over there and real stores, restaurants and fabulous guesthouses and hotels. It is definitely not a third world country. In the years since the end of apartide South Africa has gone through many changes. I think the transition and establishment of an integrated middle class is going well. There are still shockingly poor townships and slums sitting next to beautiful, prosperous towns. The human and economic scars of that dreadful era are everywhere but much is being done to ease them. The government of South Africa has the strongest and most ubiquitous affirmative action program I’ve ever seen. We spent one night at a private game reserve that has been owned by the same white South African family for five generations. After a great safari during which we saw all the beautiful animals we could have wished for at amazingly close range, we sat around a blazing fire talking to several young men. Their families had lived in SA for generations and apartied ended when they were small children. None seemed particularly bitter but it was clear that a young white male in this country has no hope at all of gainful employment unless his family owns the business. It’s a complex issue that deserves much more than this brief reference – perhaps a later letter – but now I want to tell you more about the trip.
The southern coast of Africa is simply breathtakingly beautiful – soaring cliffs, verdant valleys and a sparkling blue ocean. We followed what is called the “Garden route” all the way from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town staying in beautiful seaside villages along the way. The hospitality of our South African hosts at the luxurious B&B’s we stayed in was uniformly excellent, the towns were quaint, the shopping and restaurants fun and fattening. The narrow but well-paved, winding road we followed was perfect for whale watching. This is the mating season of the southern right whale and we saw many spouts highlighted when one magnificent creature breached not 50 yards from our car as we approached Cape Town. We pulled over and stopped to watch it perform this amazing feat several times.
In Cape Town we got rid of the car and let friendly tour guides show us the sites. The best was, perhaps, the wine tour. This is the off season so we luckily had the very knowledgeable owner of a tour company take us on a private tour of what he considered the best of the wine country. I don’t remember much of what we saw or tasted after about 3:00 but the food and wine we had was great and the scenery beautiful. We bought a carload of wine and continued our wine tasting in our stunning, oceanfront suite at the Peninsula resort all the rest of the week.
Patty said that the only thing she could compare our tour of Robbens Island to is a tour she had taken at Pearl Harbor. Both were quite somber experiences. All the guides at Robbens are former prisoners. We saw the cell where Nelson Mandela spent so many years and heard very sad stories.
It was all over way too soon. My wonderful sisters headed back to the US and I headed back to Lesotho. It took me longer to get back to my village than it took them to go the 10,000 miles to Michigan and to tell the truth I was in a bit of a moody funk for a couple of days – lonely and longing for indoor plumbing. Now, however, I’m back at work, feeling great and looking forward to my next vacation. Most of my PCV colleagues have traveled a lot more than I have since arriving here. Now I know why. This is a fascinating part of the world; I’d like to see it all.
It’s just about time for a meeting of our chicken farm volunteers so I must close. Did I tell you we got a grant from World Vision to start a chicken farm the proceeds from which are for our orphans? In ten days 200 layers are arriving ready to start laying eggs. We are working frantically getting the house they will live in ready for them.
As I watch the peach trees begin to blossom here as the first sign of spring appear, I think of the autumn you are about to enjoy and wish you all Khotso, Pula, Nala. (Peace, Rain, Prosperity.)
Love,
Peggi
10/5/05
Dear Family and Friends,
So much has happened here since I last wrote to you. Nothing earth shattering and so I’ve just been pouring it into my journal-which is now pushing 300 pages. But I love keeping in touch and sharing a bit about life as a PCV in Africa. It’s been another period of good news and bad news events.
On the positive side we have little Motlatsi back. He is the beautiful baby boy I had the privilege of helping into this world my first night on the job here in the village. I think I told you about the lobola issue. Tjeeka, Motlatsi’s father and the son of the family with whom I live, “stole” his wife. That is he took her from her home and kept her away in hiding for several days. According to tribal custom they were then legally married but there was still the question of the lobola or bride price to be paid. Malineo, now known as Mamotlatsi (mother of Motlatsi), is a beautiful, gentle, obedient girl from a good family in a neighboring village -her Dad figured she was worth a lot. The lobola negotiations did not go well. Then she had a son. This increased her bride price considerably. As soon as little Motlatsi was deemed old enough to travel – three months by tribal custom, her family came en mass and took mother and child away. There were absolutely no visiting rights. Nena, the father of this family, has been sending every dime he can home from his job in the South African mines for the past year to buy back his daughter-in-law and grandson. Last month we were finally able to get them back. I chipped in two cows.
The celebration party went on for days. It was mostly a women and girls thing but there were plenty of men here as well – we made 55 gallons of joala (beer)! We started cooking and bringing precious water from distant wells several days before the actual homecoming. We slaughtered two sheep and countless chickens. On the day of the homecoming dozens of women from Bethe Bethe (Mamotlasti’s village) came in a singing and dancing procession carrying all the brides possession on their heads – it was like a dowry – plates, blankets everything presented for all to admire. All the young women and girls from the village were here dancing, chanting and doing a lot of ritualistic bathing. The chanting and praying went on all night and throughout all of the next day. I don’t know how they do it. All night celebrations are much the norm here. I was totally exhausted and I, unlike any of the family, could escape for moments of repose in my hut. Anyway, the party lasted from start to finish – meaning when all the joala was gone – five days!
Now we have mom and baby here and they are a joy. Little Motlatsi crawls around bare-bottomed and charms us all. He picks up language so quickly. The first words he learned from me were “No, no, no”. For a while he was calling me “No,no.” He crawls into my hut and pees on the floor – oh well.
The worst recent news is that Lance had an accident and is now lame. We have a new herd boy named Liphapang who is in serious trouble with me. He did a dreadful thing to Lance. I’ve mentioned previously that Lance chased mares. Well, Liphapang decided the thing to do was to hobble him so he couldn’t run away! Not only that but he didn’t undo the hobbling ropes before sending Lance up a torturous mountain path. Lance took a bad fall and has sprained or torn muscles in his rear legs. He can hardly walk.
This happened in the evening two weeks ago. I was in my hut cooking when Matjeeka came running in saying, “Come quick, Lance very hurt.” I dropped everything and took off at a run with Matjeeka at my heels. If I’d realized how far away Lance was I would have at least changed shoes. I was wearing a cotton dress and my house clogs. Lance was on a narrow ledge of a particularly difficult path down the back of the mountain we live on. Two herd boys were with him – both looking very guilty. It took us a quite a while to get down to him. His back legs simply wouldn’t hold his weight he kept falling – it was horrible. It was also getting dark and a nasty lightening storm was engulfing us on the mountainside. The lightening was terrifying Lance. We managed to get him to a broader ledge where he could lie down and I told Matjeeka to please go get my raincoat and blanket so I could spend the night with Lance and figure out how to get him home in the morning. She refused. We had our first big altercation. She said she was in charge of my safety, it was too dangerous, and the chiefs would punish her if anything happened to me. I said I wasn’t leaving Lance on that ledge; he would panic and fall again. We were both crying. Finally, it was decided the herd boys, who were willing to do anything to make up for this bad accident, would take turns staying with Lance. By then it was pitch dark. We found our way back up the mountain by waiting for lightening flashes to see where we were. We actually had to crawl part of the way and arrived home soaking wet, covered in mud and pretty scratched up. At home I gathered up all my flashlights, blankets and rainwear and sent it with one of the herd boys back to Lance. Word spreads fast in this village – even in storms. Lots of herd boys got involved in rescuing Lance. I really don’t know how they did it but at dawn Lance, looking much the worse for wear, was home.
It just happened that I was having a council meeting at my house that morning. The first elder to arrive has a horse and had the “perfect” remedy for Lance. You won’t want to believe this but this is a “modern” traditional Basotho remedy for injured animals. He took a dry cell battery apart, scraped out some of the black powder inside of it, ground it on our grinding stone, mixed it with water and gave it, mixed with some wheat-germ porridge, to Lance to drink. As other elders arrived they all sagely agreed with this remedy. All I can say is it didn’t kill him. I’ve since talked to a vet – I can’t get one to come to the village, they simply don’t come here but he told me to just rest Lance and hope for the best.
It’s now been two weeks. He’s still lame but seems to be getting better each day. He is living the life of Riley. I keep bringing him more food and water and grooming him. He whinnies when he sees me coming. I just wonder if I’ll ever be able to ride him again.
Once again this letter is getting too long. And I want to tell you about our new, income-generating village chicken farm. It will have to wait for next time. All I can say, having just returned from an inspection of the noisy, smelly nasty birds, is (in the voice of Willie Nelson) “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be chicken farmers.”
With love, from the heart of Africa,
Peggi
10/27/05
Dear Family and Friends,
Can you stand another letter about our farm animals? I’ll try to keep it brief.
You may recall that one of our cows had a calf a month or so ago –I assisted with a flashlight – remember? Well, our other cow, I call her Bessie, was brought home from the fields last Tuesday because she was about to give birth. I don’t know how many of you have seen this but it’s pretty amazing. The calf’s feet and head came out first then it’s body. Most of this happened while Bessie was calmly munching on a pile of grass but just before actually dropping the calf she walked around in a circle. She then licked the little one clean and the baby was on its feet within less than an hour looking under its mother for some milk. This all went just fine but the afterbirth didn’t come out. It didn’t come out Tuesday or Wednesday in spite of a rash of bazaar cultural potions being administered to poor Bessie. Matjeeka was really worried so on Thursday I traveled to the closest town that has a vet. We had a long talk. He told me that the problem could be solved with a pill. Well, not a pill exactly, a suppository. He gave me the soap cake sized suppository, a plastic glove that went from my hand to my armpit and very exact instruction on what to do. I said, “Please tell me you’re kidding.” He wasn’t.
Now wouldn’t you think one of these professional herd boys would offer to do the deed? Not on your life. They looked at me like I was crazy. No way were they going to stick their arm you-know-where. They did, however, put ropes around Bessie’s legs and bring her to the ground. She was not at all impressed with this latest remedy and struggled so much that it took me several tries to get my arm in deep enough. I’ll admit that this was mostly because I was so nervous and at first pulled out when she struggled. When I finally got my hand in to the right place to leave the pill she made a huge heave and I got knocked onto my back into a pile of very fresh dung.
The doctor said it could take some hours for the pill to work so we kept a vigil on Bessie throughout the night. By morning only some of the placenta had come out so we had to go to step two which was a repeat of the first procedure with the difference that this time I pulled the thing out.
You know, when I get home I want to live a very quiet life. I want my animal husbandry to not extend beyond taking Peepers for his morning walks. But that’s not for another ten months. In the meantime, Lance is still lame but doing better. I’m giving him good medicine (phenylbutazone), massaging his legs twice a day with something called Deep Ice and keeping him quietly in the corral. We have nine new puppies and more chickens than I care to think about. I spend my evenings sipping tea and reading about poultry production, water harvesting methods and any trash novel I can get my hands on.
The countryside gets more beautiful each day as summer approaches. We’ve had two storms so soon the villagers will start plowing fields for planting. I’m trying to get a big herb garden started by our newly formed youth committee but so far I’m doing all the work, which is a Peace Corps no-no. We are supposed to be transferring skills here. When I focus on the sustainability of some of my projects I get depressed.
It is Saturday so, of course, I’m going to a funeral. It seems impossible that so many people are dying – it’s almost always AIDS. Traditionally, funerals are on Saturdays but lately there have been so many that they’ve been on other weekdays as well. In the past two weeks I’ve been to five. I no longer go for the complete service – it takes 4 – 5 hours. I either show up the night before the actual burial to pay my respects and leave a gift of money or I go to the home of the deceased the day of the funeral just before the village carries the casket to the burial grounds and walk with the mourners to and from the burial site. Funerals are very pragmatic here. The villagers dig the grave, lower the body and then the men take turns filling it in as the women chant and pray. Afterwards there is always food all prepared by friends and family of the deceased. Frequently on the day after the funeral people will come to the bereaves house and help out in any way possible. Last Sunday I visited a woman who had just lost her only son. I felt so badly for her. The number of deaths here does not in any way lessen the intensity of the pain. Losing a child causes the same agonizing grief here as it does in our culture. Many women were there. Some were gathering up all the clothes and blankets in the house and taking them to the river to wash. Some were mixing cow dung with sand and water to re-mud the floor of her house. They had taken everything outside. The mother was on a mattress outside under a blanket in heavy grief. I helped with the floor – there were many tears mixed with the mud that day.
I’ll try to think of something cheerier to write about next time. In the meantime be safe, be well and be grateful that you live in the good old USA.
Love,
Peggi
11/6/05
Dear Friends and Family:
The rainy season is upon us. The Village mood is happy with the expectation of a good growing season. So far it’s rained every day for the last five days. It’s been perfect rain, gentle and frequent. Matjeeka has been sorting out her seeds from last year’s crops to begin planting and her son, Tjeeka, has returned from his job in South Africa to help. There is excitement and optimism in the air. I’ve been using our watery abundance to wash everything I own. For the last few months my clothes have been washed in filthy, parasite-infested donga water. Now, when I put even the “clean” items into our fresh rainwater it immediately becomes dirty.
It is no wonder that summer storms are met with an almost reverential awe here in Lesotho. They pass through with such powerful grandeur. We don’t get “socked in” with the flat gray skies of my home State, Michigan. Instead, magnificent storms with dark billowy clouds rumble through sending flashes of lightening in their wake and dousing us with blessed rain. They leave us with air that is fresh and delicious and few hours of sunshine before the next great storm rolls through.
Actually, I’ve just returned form a weekend of R&R. I went to a lovely, quiet resort just over the border in South Africa with a delightful group of friends. Our group consisted of another PCV, Elizabeth Cohen, who is working in an AIDS clinic in Butha Buthe, Dr. Edith Semone a truly wonderful OBGYN from Switzerland who is working in a hospital far up in the mountains, her mother, currently visiting from Switzerland to help with the children and Edith’s two beautiful little children ages 3 and 5.
The resort we visited, Wyndford, has a spectacular mountain location with expansive views and many perfectly tended English-style perennial gardens. The property is quite large although the maximum capacity is 30 guests. The same family has owned Wyndford for 25 years. They are descended from some of the earliest English settlers in South Africa. We rented a large chalet and wallowed in the luxury of satellite TV (mostly tuned to the cartoon network for the little ones), endless games of Scrabble played in both English and French and delicious meals prepared by our very hospitable hosts and served with great style on linen clad tables complete with fresh flower bouquets and crystal. I was in heaven – I think we all were. It was raining for much of the weekend but between gentle storms we went on long, beautiful hikes, the little ones keeping up with amazing Swiss agility and stamina. The area is home to some stone age San wall paintings as well as some historically interesting Boer dwellings tucked into sandstone caves that were used as hiding places during the Boer wars of 1899-1902.
The two little one made me so hungry for my own beautiful grandchildren. To Edith’s delight I courted them outrageously and before our weekend was over they were snuggled in with me laughing at my accent as I read to them from their French story books.
I returned home Sunday feeling completely relaxed and refreshed and have been doing laundry and cooking big pots of food for my continual stream of visitors ever since.
So much is going on with our various projects. I’ve been working with some great folks from the Maluti Drakensberg Transfrontier Project (MDTP) and it looks as thought we may finally make some progress on the Cultural Village Project. World Bank finances MDTP and we are planning a two-day workshop next month to get all the stakeholders together and try to streamline and combine our efforts. My fingers are crossed.
We also have a new country director, Hill Denham. He and his family are from Evergreen Colorado, have extensive previous Peace Corps experience, and have already won the hearts of all of us volunteers. Hill actually visited my site for a whole day. Not only did he visit but because of some car and driver complications he came with me on public transport from the closest camp town, Butha Buthe. This meant he waited two hours in the hot sun with me for a koloi, squeezed into the small van with 18 other passengers to bump along the lousy roads then walked the last seven kms to the village. He visited all our village projects saying just the right things to the workers. He was a big hit and I am delighted that this empathetic, intelligent and completely supportive man is running the PCV program here.
So, at the moment, I haven’t a single complaint. It’s 4:30 am just now. I can hear the family preparing the oxen, cart etc. to go to the fields to plant. I want to join them for a while so must run. Life is good.
I hope this letter finds you content, healthy and enjoying all the good things this life has to offer.
With love from the quite damp but warm heart of Africa.
Peggi
12/14/05
Dear Friends and Family;
Things are rather somber just now in Menkhoaneng. We’ve had an event that has shocked and disturbed everyone. A week ago Sunday a so-far unidentified group of vandals set fire to our beautiful Cultural Village and it burnt to the ground.
The primary suspects are a group of boys from an initiation school high in the mountains behind the village. These initiation schools are controversial in so many ways. On the one hand, they preserve many aspects of ancient Basotho culture. The boys learn the traditional roles and responsibilities of men. The experience inspires a love of their culture and gives many of them a membership into an exclusive society that they cherish – perhaps a bit like what the masons of our culture must experience. What goes on at these schools is very secret. We all know that the boys are circumcised on about the third day and learn things about herding animals, sex, warfare (i.e. fighting with sticks and spears) and lots of traditional songs and dances which only the initiated are ever allowed to perform. On the negative side this is often an opportunity for the rampant spread of AIDS. Sangomas often use the same razor on each boy. The sangoma who accompanied the boys from our village, a good friend of mine, took over 100 new blades – a gift from the American Friends of Menkhoaneng. I’ve heard that this is very tough training with powerful male bonding and testosterone levels can get very high. The two schools involved in the fire had been attacking each other far beyond what is acceptable in the simulated “warfare” that is a part of the training. Lots of threats were made about burning down each others villages. The police and most of the villagers here believe that our beautiful Cultural Village was the victim of this animosity.
I’ve just returned from almost a week in Maseru meeting with various ministers and stakeholders in the Cultural Village project. The amount of national high-level concern over this event is amazing seeing how much trouble I’ve had getting any of these stakeholders to put their money where their mouths are regarding coughing up funding for the Project.
Anyway, the king is upset, the parliament is hotly debating the whole initiation school issue, everyone with clout is sending their own investigators to the village and the question on whether we will proceed with building a Cultural Village at this site is very much up in the air. The site is considered holy ground by many Basotho and there is a growing contingent that feel it should remain untouched. Even the archeological group that was here working on excavating some of the ruins has been sent packing.
I’ve been accompanying investigators around the village on their interviews. I feel like a not too bright Jessica Fletcher.
Officials from the Peace Corps were here this morning just to satisfy themselves that I am in no danger. I’m sure I am not. They did advise me, however, to take off my Jessica Fletcher hat and step as far away from the investigation as possible. I agreed to do so. Actually, the investigation is pretty much over and during the primary interviews I traveled for a day with a very sharp female detective who said she will tell me everything on my next trip to Butha Buthe. I gave her a whole bag of detective novels featuring female detectives. I think we’re going to be friends.
Christmas is around the corner. It doesn’t feel much like the holiday season here – no TV flaunting the latest gift ideas, weather that feels like summer (it is summer here) and not a decoration in sight – but it will be a nice time of families getting together sharing whatever they have with friends and many church services. My daughter, Elizabeth, is arriving on Christmas Day with her husband Andrew. I am counting the days and have planned a rather whirlwind tour of Lesotho for them. They can only stay a week but I know it will be a memorable one for all of us.
I hope each of you has a wonderful Christmas filled with all the people you love and things you like to do. May your every Christmas dream come true.
Love,
Peggi
1/8/06
Dear Family and Friends;
I hope your holidays were wonderful. Christmas here in Africa was simply grand this year. My daughter, Elizabeth, arrived at the Jo-burg airport on Christmas morning. Having her walk through the customs gate into my welcoming arms was the finest gift imaginable. Her good husband, Andrew, couldn’t come with her due to some last minute complications and we really missed him but we had a mother/daughter holiday that I will always treasure.
Don’t want these letters to turn into travelogs but Liz and I experienced a few things that I hope you might find interesting. One was our guided tour of Soweto. Frankly, it’s a place that wasn’t high on my “must see” list. I had visions of a horribly dangerous, unattractive slum. Elizabeth, however, had spent a great deal of her time as a student at UC Berkeley protesting against apartheid and for the freeing of Mandela so I thought she might enjoy seeing where the whole thing started. I’d heard about this guy, Jabu, who was born and raised in Soweto and now has a little tour company. I’d had several phone conversations with him beforehand and arranged for a private tour of his stomping grounds on December 26th. He picked us up at the guesthouse we were staying in and I was delighted to see he was a giant of a man – a Zulu weighing in at around 300 pounds. He told us it was all muscle (it wasn’t) (-: He had been born in the poorest area of the huge township of Soweto and had made his way comfortably into the middle class. That was one of the surprises of this place. There are areas of Soweto where the houses are valued in the millions of rand. There are other areas called unofficial settlements where the shacks are made of tin, sticks, plastic and anything else the residents can scrounge up. Over 3.5 million call Soweto home. What surprised us the most was the sense of pride and hope about the place. The residents are proud of the part they played in attaining freedom for their people and have a hopeful confidence that the new government will do it’s job in providing both economic stability and educational opportunities. At one point Jabu let us out of the car in a very poor area. He turned us over to a “local” guide assuring us we would be perfectly safe as we walked into the bowels of this destitute area. I say destitute because of the lack of any plumbing, electricity and the shanty construction. Toilets were porta-potties each one shared by at least 90 families. But all along the way were perfectly tended little gardens. We saw signs that said, ”Make someone smile today.” Children greeted us politely and with big smiles. We went into one corrugated-iron shack and met the family. The man was obviously suffering from TB maybe AIDS, the floor was dirt, and they had literally nothing. Our guide invited us to ask questions and they told us of their plight but expressed hope for the future. We gave them a small gift of money and left.
Jabu lived through and fully participated those terrible years beginning with the riots of 1976 and he gave us a riveting historical tour. We went into a church riddled with bullet holes where residents had tried to flee from the armed and shooting police. We saw the homes of Nelson Mandela (modest), Desmond Tutu (elegant) and the notorious Winnie Mandela (a Palace). The current government has made lots of promises to those living in the worst slums and has built a huge area of modest little subsidized three-room homes that can be purchased for about 16,000 rand ($2,500). There is an impossibly long waiting list that has many politicians very nervous.
We left the place with a great sense of hope for the people of South Africa. They have the most democratic constitution of the face of the earth. They went through a transition from Apartheid to Democracy that is termed by most of the South Africans I talk to as “miraculous”. There was certainly bloodshed but there was not the civil war so many feared. One of the most impressive traits of the black South African is their capacity for forgiveness. The feeling I’ve gotten since being here is that they just want to move on. They are well on their way.
Of course, we spent a couple of days in my village. Elizabeth met everyone. I’d let it be known that I was not having a party but I’d asked many of those I work closest with to stop by and meet Liz. One young man who is involved in our cultural dance group asked if I’d like him to stop by with a few male dancers to show Liz some of the cultural dances. I said, ”fine” expecting four or five of them to come by. We were making sandwiches for our expected guests when we heard deep rhythmic chanting. Matjeeka poked her head into my hut and said, “Your dancers are coming.” About forty men and boys, all brandishing sticks topped with shredded plastic danced into the yard in tight formation. They entertained us all afternoon and, of course, many villagers joined the ad hoc party. Liz and I kept excusing ourselves to make more sandwiches. Fortunately, we had two watermelons and many cases of sodas. Everyone got a little something.
Two of my favorite Sangomas showed up and performed the trance-inducing dance they use for their healings. One of them, Majone, took us to her house to show Elizabeth her “clinic” with its wall of snuff cans filled with herbs.
Really, every minute of Elizabeth’s visit was fun. We visited a game park that raises the rare white lions. They raise them to be completely comfortable with people. We walked into the lounge of this beautiful African lodge and saw a playpen in the corner. I thought someone had brought their baby but when we looked inside there were two darling little snowy white lion cubs. The owners said we could play with them! And play with them we did. Playing with those lion cubs while listening to the roar of their full-grown relatives in the distance was a thrill. There was also a little “house” meerkat that would not get out of Liz’s lap. We went on a couple of game drives and got up close to many beautiful African animals.
It made me so happy to have Elizabeth see and experience why I love South Africa and Lesotho so much. These are wonderful people I live with – kind, hospitable and generous. Don’t get me wrong; I’m counting the months till I return to the US (seven!) but I will certainly leave a bit of my heart here in the Mountain Kingdom.
Wishing you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2006,
Khotso, Pula, Nala (Peace, Rain, Prosperity),
Love,
Peggi
2/11/06
Dear Family and Friends,
I really think the drought is over. It’s been raining pretty steadily since November; the crops look great, the rivers are full and the cows look fat and healthy. I read somewhere that the drought cycles in this part of Africa often last around 7 years and are followed by a like number of years of average to above average rainfall. Hopefully we are now in the later cycle.
A lot has been happening around here. I’m feeling a huge sense of urgency to get all our village projects up, running and self-sustaining. We’re starting over again with the Cultural Village project – just now the workers are leveling out the area, removing ash and saving as many stones as possible. In addition, we’ve started one last and large community agriculture project. It’s a five-year program beginning with a big (three hectares) community vegetable garden. We’re combining everything we know about nutrition for children and AIDS patients, permaculture and water harvesting into a project to grow food for our village orphans and housebound sick people while at the same time employing the maximum number of volunteers in a UN food for work program. The UN has already approved phase one of this four-phased project. We’ve been able to add 20 more families to the monthly food distribution. These families will be responsible for maintaining the garden. In phase two we can add 30 more families who will contribute workers to build a water retention dam in the village. Phase three of the program will involve cultivating another 6 hectares with all the grains we need to feed the chickens in our community chicken farm. This eliminates the cost of feed for the chickens and keeps all our volunteer workers on the UNWFP program. The final phase of the project is to build a community greenhouse. Each phase of this new project requires lots of training and coordination not to mention writing the grants to get the financial aid necessary to fund the project. The UN provides food only – all funds for seeds, building materials etc. have to come from elsewhere – I’m flooding NGO’s with grant proposals.
I can’t tell you how pleased I am with the Menkhoaneng Community Development Association (MCDA). Our newly elected executive committee is taking real responsibility in following through on everything that needs to be done on our various projects. I find my job is to act as an advocate for these people with the various NGO’s and government ministries, create written proposals and grants and act as an advisor at all the meetings. I leave for Maseru tomorrow to try to drum up some support for the dam project. We need an unbelievable amount of cement.
Also, I just returned from another very fun trip around South Africa with two good friends from the US, Karen Fitt and Joyce Virnich. We visited one of the finest game reserves in SA called Shamwari. We hadn’t pulled fifty yards into the reserve when a very large Cape cobra slithered across the road directly in front of our car. When the screaming subsided (just kidding) we forged onward. I’ll only speak of one of the many wonderful animal encounters we enjoyed at Shamwari. It involved elephants – lots of them. We toured the reserve in a completely open Land Rover with our handsome, knowledgeable guide. We were on a narrow dirt road driving through a big grove of prickly pear cactus when we spotted some elephants headed directly towards us. We stopped the car and just sat there as a whole herd of the huge pachyderms, all females and their many baby, toddler and adolescent offspring surrounded our car. They had come to picnic on prickly pear. The toddlers played “I can push you off the road” with their age mates butting heads and entwining trunks. One little fellow practiced his charging technique on our car flaring out his ears, raising his trunk and charging us while his mother looked benignly on. It felt like a real family picnic. Our guide said it was the finest elephant encounter he’d had in years. We stayed a long time taking photos and just enjoying being so up close and personal with these beautiful animals.
My friends flew home from Cape Town and I took a train back. The train, which ran on electric wires, broke down nine times. I had a sleeper compartment that I shared with an Indian woman and her beautiful three-year-old daughter so I was perfectly comfortable during the two full days it took to get back to this area. I got off the train in Bethlehem, a small town about three hours from Lesotho. There I rented a truck to get myself and a lot of stuff up to Menkhoaneng. I had a long list of supplies needed for our projects not to mention 50 kg bags food for Lance and the dogs. Although it had rained a few days previously, I was able to get the truck to the village. My plan was to return the truck to Bethlehem the next day and return to the village by public transport and on foot. The downpour began just an hour after I got to the village. It rained all night. I’d also made arrangements to take a bunch of our AIDS patients who are now on ARV’s to the hospital for their monthly supply of drugs on my way to Bethlehem. We all stood around the truck in the morning wondering what to do. Finally with a whole team of volunteers armed with shovels and a serious “can do” attitude we headed down the mountain. It’s nine kilometers to the road and although we’ve been working on this access “road” for the whole two years I’ve been here it is a long way from being complete. Add to this the erosion and damage done by the recent storms and anyone in their right mind would say it was impassable. None of us were in our right minds. It was a wonderful, muddy, wet, tiring and totally heart-warming experience. We had sangomas, herd boys, women and children literally building a road under the wheels of the truck. I went down to the hubcaps in muck several times. The workers shoveled paths behind and in front of the wheels, filled the paths with stones and all pushed. I drove that truck like a maniac. When we finally got to a point where I knew the truck could make it on it’s own we had an ad hoc celebration singing songs, dancing and having the sangomas say prayers of gratitude. It took almost all day but everybody who needed to got to the hospital and I got the truck returned to Bethlehem. Matjeeka went with me all the way so I wouldn’t be walking back up the mountain alone in the dark. It was not an easy day but it was one during which I felt completely surrounded by love. It was a perfect Peace Corps day.
I’ll sign off now. It’s Friday and the brother of one of our most dedicated volunteers died this week. Tomorrow is his funeral, which I’ll miss because of the Maseru trip so I’m going over to her house tonight to help prepare food for the funeral and take some small gifts – candles, matches, peanut butter, bread and tea. I really love this woman; her English is a bad as my Sesotho and we always try to tell each other jokes. When I don’t get what she’s saying she just yells it out louder – so do I. It’s become a regular thing with us – it’s pretty funny. But I’m sure there will be only tears tonight. Her brother was just 32 years old and beloved by all – a fine man with five sisters, a wife, mother and two children left to grieve for him. We got him on ARV’s but too late.
Wishing you all a very happy Valentines Day from the warm, if saddened, heart of Africa,
Love,
Peggi
2/24/06
Dear Family and Friends,
Some of the lessons I’m learning in this Peace Corps assignment are very difficult to accept. Perhaps the most challenging one is that “different” does not necessarily mean “wrong”.
Let me tell you the story of one of our family’s donkeys.
I called this little donkey “Sweetheart”. She was the oldest of our three donkeys and the one I always used to fetch water. She was so patient. She would stand motionless at the side of the high mountain spring while I carefully filled the two containers hung over her back. I never filled them all the way – they were so heavy and she was so small. Sweetheart would then lead me back down the steep mountain trail to the house where I would transfer the precious water to my storage containers. She often followed me around like a puppy. I always gave her special treats – apples and an occasional watermelon rind.
The family and villagers considered my gentle treatment of this animal very odd. Donkeys are beasts of burden here and are beaten more frequently than any other animal. I’ve seen donkeys loaded down with enormous burdens beaten until their knees buckle for not walking fast enough.
At any rate, last week Sweetheart was taken with the other family donkeys to fetch long grass from a distant field to feed the cows. On the way back, burdened with a load taller than she was, she fell off a ledge and either broke or dislocated her leg. The herd boys somehow got her home and placed her lying on her side by my hut. Matjeeka said they would probably have to slaughter her. I begged her to give me a day or two to see if there was anything I could do. I gave her some of the painkiller I had left over from Lance’s accident, petted and brushed her, fed her apples and sweet grass and hoped for the best. By the next day, Friday, she could stand although the leg was obviously badly damaged. She could put no weight on it at all but she could hobble around a bit on three legs before falling over.
By Saturday she could hobble around for a few hours then would get as close to my hut as possible and collapse.
During all this time we were visited by many of the men of the village. They all gave their opinion that this was now a useless animal and should be slaughtered. I knew they were right about the useless part. By Sunday, her fate was sealed. Five very somber men came with the tools of slaughter. My brother Tjeeka came to me and said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” I went into my hut, closed the door, curtained the windows and cried. I cursed these people for their “cruelty”.
By Monday morning I’d gained enough composure to once again join in the family activities. My first sight upon coming outside my hut was several of our dogs gnawing on Sweethearts sawed off legs. One of the puppies was swinging her tail around like a toy. Sweetheart’s hide was stretched and drying in the sun. Her severed head lay beside the largest cooking cauldron ready to be boiled and her flayed body lay covered with flies by the cooking hut. I rushed back to the seclusion of my hut but threw up before I could get inside.
Later that day my friend and village elder, Setsomi, came to visit. He is a very wise man. The news that I was upset and perhaps ill had spread. In our now quite effective part English, part Sesotho conversational style we discussed our different cultures. While we were having this conversation Matjeeka brought him, as is the custom here, a large plate of food. It was papa (maize meal) and donkey. She asked if I wanted to eat. I said, “No thank you.” Setsomi said, “But this is meat – a great gift from your friend (meaning Sweetheart)”.
Although there is no way in this lifetime that I could eat this meat, I knew he was right. Sweetheart was providing her final gift – much needed protein to many villagers. The men who slaughtered her had the privilege of eating the brain. When they came to do this later that evening they made a little ceremony of it. They said, ”This donkey was old like M’e Ntabby (that’s me), and M’e Ntabby loved her. We thank her for her kindness to this animal.”
Although this was in no way any apology for slaughtering the animal I know this was their way of acknowledging my relationship with her and trying, in the way of their culture, to help me feel better about it. These are very good and kind people. They are trying as hard to understand me as I am them and they are giving me the benefit of the doubt.
Not one morsel of this fine animal was wasted. For two days we had a continual stream of visitors – many orphans and the poorest of the village came to dine on this precious meat. Sharing with the underprivileged is such an engrained part of this culture that it is never questioned.
The clearest message I’ve gotten from this cross-cultural experience is that there can really be only one life. The key for each of us is to live the sliver we’ve been given to the very best of our ability. I know Sweetheart did.
With love from the strange but beautiful heart of Africa,
Peggi
3/27/06
Dear Family and Friends,
This part Southern Africa just can’t seem to get a break. The rains simply won’t stop. Everyone here says they have never seen this much rain in their lives. In Church last week the congregation was praying for the rain to stop! This is unprecedented. At every service I’ve been to for the past two years the prayers have been for rain. “Be careful what you wish for”, has gained a whole new significance.
The road (if you could call it a road – a track really) to this village is now entirely washed out. Not even 4x4s can get within several kilometers of the village. I’ve had to do a lot of village to village traveling these last few weeks and every trip has been a very wet adventure. There is one area that is a series of sandstone rocks that has to be climbed either up or down to get to and from a neighboring village. It is now a waterfall that must be scaled. To say I’ve been getting wet is such an understatement.
Yesterday I rode Lance to a meeting in Mate. We had to cross a river. I gave him his head and balanced with my feet up on the saddle. The water came over his stomach but my brave horse kept his footing and we didn’t have to swim. Just my trailing skirt got wet. The ever-watching villagers ululated and clapped when we reached the other side. Sometimes this job is really fun!
But the rain is exacting a terrible toll on the fragile economy here. Some crops are rotting in the fields. It’s time for the corn and sorghum to be drying out for harvest but it just keeps raining. Our winter vegetable fields, which lie in lowland close to the river, were completely washed out just after planting. We lost every seed and every seedling and had to spend valuable resources replanting. At the moment they are OK.
Here’s the worst part. The group that determines where the UNWFP food will be delivered –a totally corrupt group of officials collectively called the DMC (disaster management committee) just issued the edict that because northern Lesotho has been getting such wonderful rain, we have no more need for food deliveries – they are diverting our food elsewhere. My guess is into somebody’s pocket. Without even visiting our projects to determine the consequences of this decision they gave us 30 days notice. This is such a disaster for our projects. The 95 families that are fed by the UNWFP work projects are the poorest of the poor. Either they don’t have fields to plant or they didn’t have money to buy seeds for their fields or they are too old or sick to do the grueling labor that farming their land requires. We have an additional 57 families that are caring for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) that we’ve finally, after months of negotiations been able to get onto a UNWFP program for food aid and they too are now cut off. This DMC decision spells potential starvation for many of these good people.
I’ve just sent a letter to the head of the UNWFP protesting this decision. I wrote it but it was signed by the Member of Parliament for this area, the chairman of the Menkhoaneng Community Development Association and several chiefs. I’m hoping it will make a difference. As Peace Corps volunteers we are supposed to avoid any political involvement but this situation is testing my resolve to remain politically neutral. I have good friends at the newspapers that I would like to ask to write an expose on the DMC. We’ll see. The DMC is the same group that allowed 400 50kgt bags of cornmeal to rot in a warehouse because they had spent the funds for delivery on “workshops” at a posh resort in South Africa. This was during the time that we were pleading for help and being told there was no food available –a time when we were burying adult corpses weighing 80 pounds.
On the positive side, what we’re doing in face of these recent challenges is planting winter vegetables like mad. There are still lots of good fields. We’ve ceased work on the cultural village and every able-bodied man, woman and child is working on expanding our community-cooperative gardens. If the winter is mild we should have cabbage, swiss chard, beets and a type of spinach that is tough and resilient to cold. We are also buying all the excess corn and sorghum from those lucky farmers who’ve escaped the floods to help get the poorest of the poor through the coming winter months. We’ve received some generous contributions to the American Friends Fund lately and the Association is doing an admirable and intelligent job is allocating the money wisely. No one has starved to death in this or the surrounding villages for over a year now and our goal is to maintain that record. The steely determination of these good villagers to protect those in need in their community is very inspiring. It spurs my efforts to bang on the doors of those in power.
The Village Association has applied for another PCV to replace me when I leave in July. I’m so hoping they get one. There are so many more applicants than there are volunteers. Really, the Peace Corps should be a much bigger organization. Do you know the annual budget for the entire global operation is somewhere around $350 million? We spend that in less than a week in Iraq.
I recently attended an all-volunteer conference in Maseru. The session on “best practices” made me so proud to be an American. The work that my fellow PCVs are doing here is making a real difference. You’d be astounded and proud of their accomplishments – computer labs, orphanages, traveling puppet shows to teach children about AIDS, income generating projects like pig farms and craft shops – it’s just wonderful. In this little country, where the Peace Corps has been active for almost 40 years, everyone loves Americans. They see us as helpful and generous and peaceful. In many ways this is a very comfortable place to be.
And on that note I’ll close with love from the quite soggy heart of Africa,
Peggi
4/26/06
Dear Family and Friends;
So much has been happening lately that it’s hard to decide what to tell you about. We had our COS (close of service) conference and our country director said the only thing harder than getting into the Peace Corps is getting out. Seeing the pile of paperwork I have to complete not to mention the projects that need to be left self-sustaining, I can easily believe it.
The various agencies and ministries I work with also seem to realize I’m leaving soon and meetings I’ve been requesting for months are now scheduled. Actually, I’m loving it – lots to do. It’s making the time fly.
Although we still haven’t gotten the UN food for work program to restart, we’ve planted lots of fields in winter wheat and cabbage. Also, a couple of friends from two different newspapers wrote (actually, I wrote but they published) scathing articles about the foolishness of cutting off food supplies to Northern Lesotho because of rains that actually have ruined rather than enhanced this years crops. One paper ran photos of the rotting beans and corn. Various agencies were heavily criticized as well as certain culpable officials. Neither my name nor the Peace Corps were mentioned. I danced a jig when I read the articles.
I spent a long Easter weekend in the very fascinating country of Swaziland. They’re doing the tourist thing just right there. They have a fascinating culture beautifully displayed at their Cultural Village; they’ve developed first class crafts and have much to offer the international tourists. Lesotho can learn a lot from the Swazis. But, I just want to tell you about one highlight of the trip.
I traveled with three of my PCV friends. We’d rented a car. We were leaving the country on Easter Sunday and while driving towards the Capital saw crowds of brightly dressed Swazis all headed towards a large coliseum. We decided to follow them. It was their huge Easter celebration in which all the churches dressed in their finest, brightly colored flowing costumes get together for an ecumenical “pray in” (it was also a “sing and dance in”). There had to be at least fifty thousand enthusiastic participants. The gathering had the feel of a Super Bowl of worship. The Swazis take their religions very seriously.
Of the fifty thousand we, and a group of 10 highly- invited Germans, were the only white people in attendance. The Germans were the special guests of the king. We teamed up with them and were led to a box on the “40 yard line” just next to the royal box.
It was a memorable spectacle. Various religious groups filled the field (this National Coliseum is also used for soccer games). They sang and danced with a religious fervor appropriate to the Easter celebration (Christ has risen!!!!) but with a lot more rhythm than I’ve ever before seen.
They were, however, just the warm up act for the arrival of the king and his wives.
The king of Swaziland is quite the guy. He’s young, handsome and has at this point 14 wives. Since his coronation he’s chosen a new one each year at a festival called the Reed dance. Since his grandfather had over 100 wives and 600 children, his father only a slightly fewer you can imagine the size of the royal family. One of our Swazi PCVs lives with a princess and attended the Reed dance last season. Many hundreds of young maidens dance. They are naked except for beads and a sort of bikini fringe. She said the ones that really want to be chosen dance at the front. There are no unwilling wives to the king.
I’ll say one thing – they are all gorgeous. They each arrived in her own limo and walked up a red carpet to her place in the royal box. The queen mother followed the wives. Four siren-blaring motorcycles preceded her limo and a group of women wearing flowing snow-white robes lined each side of the red carpet to escort her to her place on a throne beside her son, the king.
The king’s arrival was spectacular. Twenty motorcycles were followed by a stream of BMWs escorting his very long stretch limo. The band played the national anthem, the crowds roared. Two lines of traditionally dressed warriors lined each side of the red carpet leading to his throne. We snapped photos frantically. He beamed happily at everyone – a happy man in his happy kingdom.
We slipped out at a moment of religious fervor when everyone was on their feet screaming and dancing. Outside the stadium we found crowds of worshippers who couldn’t get into the packed stadium. Many vendors had set up stands and were cooking maize, yams and chicken. We had an ad hoc lunch and headed home to Lesotho.
O.K. so I know this letter is getting a little long but there is one more thing I want to tell you about.
A few weeks ago a young man called to me as I was riding Lance to a distant village. He said he came from HaPeete a village not far from Menkhoaneng and that there were some hidden waterfalls inside a mountain that would be a great tourist attraction. We made a plan for him to meet me at my hut and take me there. The meeting was yesterday.
He arrived right on time and we headed for his village – a beautiful place located high in the mountains at the foot of a huge sandstone cliff. The sandstone structure rises perhaps 800 feet above the village and has the girth of several city blocks. The thing about sandstone is that over the eons it splits and is carved out in the most interesting ways by both winds and water. This little mountain was just full of passageways and caves.
Before approaching the caves we presented ourselves to the village chief. I know this fine man quite well. He is one of the more educated of the chiefs I’ve met, speaks perfect English and has traveled extensively in both Europe and South America. He’s president of a businessmen’s association for whom I’ve helped developed a business plan.
When I said we were going to see the hidden falls I thought I detected a twinkle in his eye. He said he wanted me to have a couple more escorts and sent for them. Two very buff-looking young men joined us. I asked if he wouldn’t join us but he declined. I left Lance in his care, noticed he was chuckling, and we headed up the mountain.
We entered the caves by a small passageway and crawled up, always up, for quite some time through tunnels and crevices. Because of the recent rains it was really wet in there. Within about 30 seconds I was miserable. Spelunking is quite new to me and I was feeling uncomfortably claustrophobic. My thoughts focused on seismic stability.
After what seemed to be a very long, knee-bruising time we came out upon a type of open-air grotto. It was a hole in the mountain. The sun shone down on a fifty-foot waterfall tumbling into a crystal-clear pool and lined with delicate ferns and moss. The sunlight made the waterfall look like cascading diamonds. It was breathtakingly beautiful. My enjoyment was marred only by the thought “How the heck are we going to get out of here?”
The answer was way more strenuous than I would have imagined. With an enormous amount of help from my guides we climbed up the mountain from the inside. We scaled thirty-foot rocks. I would climb up on one fellows shoulders then be hauled up by the guy on top like a sack of flour. We squeezed through tight crevices. We had to do two chimneys. Do you know what those are? They are like tall narrow passageways that you have to shimmy up. Let me tell you this 61-year-old grandmother doesn’t shimmy up anything! My guides, however, were serious shimmyers. All I had to do was brace myself. I would put my feet on someones shoulders. The guy above would pull me up a bit and I would brace my feet against the opposite wall. Then the guy below would shimmy up so I could once again use him to push up a bit more.
When we finally emerged out of a hole at the top of the mountain every muscle in my body was shaking. We walked down a very reasonable path back to the village. I tipped my three companions lavishly, promised photos, left a rather terse note for the chief, mounted Lance and rode home to three Advils and bed.
So that was my big adventure of the week. My shoulders still hurt – my arms feel like they’ve been pulled from their sockets, my knees are skinned and I have bruises in odd places – but the photos are great and I think I’m glad I went. One funny remark was from my original guide. He asked,” don’t you think tourists would love this?” I said. “Yes, but we just won’t target the senior citizen traveler.”
So that’s it for now, my friends.
From the challenging heart of Africa, with love,
Peggi
January 15, 2008
Dear Friends and Family,
As many of you know, I’ll be returning to Africa on February 5th with my sister, Patty Barnes. This will be a shorter trip – just six weeks but it has a wonderful purpose. We have made arrangements with a well contractor there to drill a bore hole in the village of Menkhoaneng that will bring clean drinking water for the first time ever to the men, women and children of the area. We think the well should service between 1,000 to 1,500 people.
Getting clean drinking water to the area was always on my list of “must do’s” while I was there as a Peace Corps volunteer but I just ran out of time before it could get done. It was a critical need then and is more so now. The area has suffered two more years of drought and crop failure. When the water is scarce it becomes even more highly infected with parasites but the people drink it anyway. There is neither the cultural imperative to boil drinking water nor is there the fuel necessary to make it a feasible option. Intestinal parasites and chronic diarrhea are endemic problems that cause tragic and unnecessary deaths.
A simple borehole operated by pump will solve this problem for many innocent and fine people. So that is what Patty and I are going over there to do.
Last week some dear friends in San Francisco hosted a fundraiser to help finance this project. They urged me to contact everyone who knew of my past efforts in Africa. We are still about $10,000 short of the funds needed for this project. Patty and I are committed to see that it is accomplished but if you would like to join us in this effort we will happily accept your help.
Other good friends who run a foundation called Rainbow Hope have offered to accept contributions on our behalf. Rainbow Hope is a 501c3 organization so your contribution would be completely tax-deductible.
If you would like to contribute please send a check to:
Rainbow Hope
5693 South Ashford Way
Ypsilanti, MI 48197
If you write Menkhoaneng Well on the check they will be sure to allocate the funds to our project.
Heartfelt thanks to all of you. We will be sending feedback as the project progresses. Please wish us luck.
Peggi
Menkhoaneng, south of Butha Buthe
Menkhoaneng, south of Butha Buthe
February 11, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
Being back in Lesotho is a tapestry of mixed emotions and images. In many ways it is as if I never left; the breath-taking mountains, the warm friendships, the laughter and joy of the villagers upon our arrival contrasting so gut-wrenchingly with the extreme poverty all around us.
Patty and I arrived in country on Friday night. That is one long plane ride – 23 hours. After customs we picked up our car, or rather, truck – a huge Toyota 4×4 that seats five in the cab and has a big truck bed in the back. We’d ordered a Nissan 4×4 SUV but what the heck. This monster has been serving us well. It is the rainy season here so the roads are terrible.
After stopping in Buthe Buthe, a typical noisy, crowed, dirty camp town to pick up a bunch of frozen chickens for gifts, we headed to the village of Mate, home of the head chief of this district, Morena Halejoetse Selebalo. An elder of the village joined us in the truck to direct us to the chief’s home. People here expect a truck to be able to get anywhere. I was skeptical. The paths were narrow and deep in mud as slick as glass. We made it to his place and had a very good meeting with him – he gave his blessing to the well project, thanked us and pledged his support. His wife was thrilled with the chickens. On the way out of the village we got horribly stuck in the mud. It took many villagers to get us out.
We were supposed to meet an important Community Council official, Ntate Molise Faratsi, on our way to Menkhoaneng but somehow missed him. We arrived in Menkhoaneng, the village where the well will be located, late in the afternoon. There is no actual road to the village. The way there is mostly either dirt path, rocks or mire with many deep dongas (erosion trenches) to navigate. There were times that it seemed our truck would surely tip over. On the way we’d picked up many passengers. The truck was jam-packed so at least we had traction – and encouragement and people to push. Our welcome in the village was wildly enthusiastic. Within moments of arriving we were surrounded by old friends, singing, dancing and ululating in welcome. We handed out the chickens to the chief and to M’e Matjeeka, the head of the family I’d lived with and had one chicken left. We gave it to the little woman who had the bizarre and tragic distinction of having been chosen as the sex partner for the boys in circumcision school. Have I told you about this unfortunate custom? Sex education is part of the training boys receive in circumcision school. The village chooses one woman, usually an older, impoverished widow to participate in this part of the training. The reward for her is that she will never starve to death. She can, for the rest of her life, visit any hut in the village and receive food. This sweet and I think psychologically damaged lady often visited my hut. She would sit on the floor and eat the huge bowl of food I had given her. Sometimes she was with me for days at a time – from morning ‘til night. She never spoke. When Patty and I arrived in the village she came up to us and kissed us – a very unusual behavior here. Patty immediately went to the car to give her the last chicken – she held the bag in the air and danced wildly as all the women sang an ad hoc rendition of “Aren’t we glad M’e Peggi’s back in town.”– it was quite joyous.
I held had a very quick meeting on the well project with chief and elders while Patty took photos with her digital camera and showed the villagers the immediate results. We had to tear ourselves away to get down the mountain before dark. It was a white-knuckle ride all the way – at times we were simply sliding – completely out of control. When we finally got to the place we’re staying for the next few days we drank a lot of wine.
On Sunday we had several objectives. One was to attend a church service at the Catholic Church in Mate. Although this is not at all a religious mission we’re on our sister Penny and her deacon –husband Jim had given us bags of beautiful rosaries made by retired nuns. They also gave us holy cards and many other gifts for the villagers. I can’t tell you the enthusiasm with which these gifts were received. The rosaries, in a plastic Meijer shopping bag were placed on the altar beside the chalice. Father Charles rejoiced, praising these “blessed gifts from our friends in America”. Everyone sang and danced and lined up to receive their rosaries. Patty and I, assisted by several women of the Altar Guild, passed them out while Father Charles put ashes on everyone’s foreheads to comemorate Lent. He told us they would all pray for us every day – it can’t hurt.
After the service we once again went to find Molise Feratsi. We located him at his home and had a very good discussion on the well project. Molise pledged to make sure all the government officials in the area are aware of and in support of the project. They are having their big monthly meeting on Tuesday and invited us to attend – we, of course, will.
Tomorrow, Monday, we can finally begin negotiations with the well-digging experts bidding on the job. The first person we’re hoping to see is a geologist who will help us locate the best place to drill.
As usual, this letter is too long. I’ll write again in a few days when, hopefully, we have some real progress to report.
It is great to be back in Lesotho!
Khotso, Pula, Nala! (peace, rain, prosperity)
Peggi
February 14, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
We made contact today with the geologist who will help us locate water for Menkhoaneng. His name is Dr. Gideon Groenewald. He’s a tall, gangling, redheaded, white South African who has been working on water projects in Lesotho for the past 35 years. In addition to being a water expert he is a self-proclaimed “dinosaur hunter”. There are many dinosaur artifacts in Lesotho – footprints in the sandstone cliffs, bones, and eggs with embryos still in them and Dr. Groenewald has them all in his rambling zoo-like home. There are animals everywhere – even a big collection of snakes!
As is true of many South Africans he has several jobs. For the last few years he’s been working with an international organization called the “Peace Parks Foundation” establishing parks throughout South Africa and Lesotho. In our initial meeting we found we know all the same people in the Lesotho Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Culture – swapping mutual contacts felt like old home week. His own business is called “Metsi Metseng” it means “water for the villages.” We think he’s perfect for the job.
Gideon is going to go with us to Menkhoaneng on Wednesday to look for potential well sites as well as to look at the possibility of piping water from one of the several natural springs that are high in the mountains behind the village. Piping the water may be the best alternative. We would cap the springs and pipe water to large storage tanks in the village. He said it would be as pure as bore hole water. He told us the equipment to dig a borehole weighs 14 tons and doesn’t like to tip going over roads. He is going to call the actual well-digger today and discuss logistics.
In the meantime, Patty and I will attend the Community Council session tomorrow in Mate. I now have a South African cell number. From the US it is 011 27 721277840. I’m so glad I saved the cell phone I had from my Peace Corps days – it still works!
Thursday
It has been an absolutely great few days. The meeting with the community council group on Tuesday was perfect. They gave us a huge Basotho welcome with dancing, singing and pledging their support to the project. I saw so many old friends. A few tears were shed. Molise Faratsi, the executive secretary of the council, will be our main contact for this project. He will handle clearing our activities with the myriad government agencies that need to be advised.
On Wednesday Dr. Gideon, his partner De Wet and I left early in the morning for Menkhoaneng. Patty stayed in town to write, read and rest. Our experts brought along lots of very technical-looking equipment. The chief, the two chief village elders and an interpreter met us in the village. After an initial explanation of the various potential solutions to the problem of bringing clean drinking water to the village we began an all day hike to every conceivable potential water source.
We made an important stop at the school to talk to the teachers about immediately adding to the school curriculum a focus on water. We decided that each child will write an essay on the importance of clean water. We distributed composition books and pens for each child for this purpose. The teachers will decide the top ten essays, which will be read aloud to the community at the feast celebrating the opening of the spigots, and each of those children will receive a cash reward. All of the children, 234 of them, will receive a beautiful medal to commemorate the event.
In this culture having the complete buy-in of the community is absolutely essential for the sustainability of any project. The purpose of the essay contest is to get information on the importance of drinking only clean water into the families through the children. The cash rewards guarantee that entire families will participate in helping their children with their essays thereby learning the importance of maintaining whatever system we put in. The medals will most likely become family treasures. We ordered them today. They will be 2-inch ovals in “gold” stamped with the image of Moshoeshoe I on the front. Around the circumference of the medal it will read. “Menkhoaneng, Water is Life”. They will be hung from green ribbons imprinted with “ Metsi Metseng” (i.e. water for the village) 2008. I can assure you none of these children has ever received a medal before – it will be a very big deal for them.
Wednesday was a long but totally satisfying day. We had intense discussions on what route to take to solve the problem but let me just cut to the chase. Here’s what we decided to do. We are going to tap three existing springs located in the mountains behind the village and pipe that pure water into three separate 15,000-liter storage tanks. The tanks will be located for easy access for all villagers. One is just by the school. The second is just by the chief’s house (a very politically correct position) and the third is more or less in the center of the village.
We are hiring villagers to do all the labor. Gideon’s team will act as project supervisors. He has a “bloke” on his team that speaks fluent Sesotho. That guy will direct the labor. Gideon is drawing up all the engineering plans. My next main job is to organize the big feast. We can expect at least 500-600 people. We will have traditional dancing, singing etc. We’re planning to have a community “walk” beginning at the spring that feeds the first storage tank, past the second tank and ending at the tank by the chief’s house where the feast will be held. At each tank the sangomas (traditional healers) will bless the water and the tanks. There will be lots of speeches. It will be an all day affair. The amount of food and cooking involved is daunting. We’ll hire at least ten village women to cook. The tentative date is March 14th.
The work has already begun. We have a team of 16 laborers cutting and hauling rocks to the spring sites. We’ve ordered all the pipes and fittings. They are to be installed next Thursday. Then the long pipes leading to the village must be installed – that’s the most difficult phase of the project.
I’m not expecting this project to run perfectly smoothly. We will certainly run into glitches. But I must say, so far, so good.
Tomorrow, Patty returns to the US. She is flying out of the Johannesburg airport at 7:00 pm and Telia is arriving at 5:20pm. She will pass the baton of friend and companion to Telia. He and I plan on taking a quick trip down to Cape Town but first we will spend a few days working on the project. I can’t wait to introduce Telia to everybody here and I’ll be especially thrilled to put the keys to our monster truck into his capable hands.
That’s it from this side of the world.
Khotso, Pula, Nala,
Peggi
February 23, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
The project proceeds. Here’s a quick update. Last Monday we held a big Pitso (community Meeting) in Menkhoaneng. We took both the recording secretary and the chairman of the greater community council with us. Picking them up at their “office” in the distant village of Ha Khabos was a typical Lesotho trek. Our truck crawled up a deeply rutted trail past crumbling rondavels and poor, sparsely productive fields of corn and sorghum. We reached the office of the greater community council – a small, concrete block structure with a tin roof. Our main contact here, Molise Faratsi, was in a quandary. He had planned on joining us at this important Pitso but one of the many Ministers he reports to was demanding his presence in Maseru. He gave us the head of his staff –the recording secretary- a charming woman fluent in English to act as our interpreter. The chairman also decided to join us.
The Pitso was both heart-warming and frustrating. It was great to see the way in which these small African villages make decisions that are important to all off them – true democracy in action. After I, with the help of my interpreter, explained the project to the community, it took hours for them to decide the criteria to be used to choose the workers for the project. It was finally decided that anyone who had earned any money in the past year would be ineligible to work. That still left a whole lot of folks. Then they decided, after I confirmed that there would be about 25 days of work available for about 20 workers – 16 men and 4 women (the women will chop rocks into gravel to fill the trenches that hold the pipe, This does not include the women who would prepare the big feast for the blessing and opening of the spigots – that every work-capable man would be given the opportunity to work for five days. At the end of this period a new crew will take over. Now, I realize that this may not be the most productive way to manage a project – there will be constant retraining involved, but aren’t you impressed with how fair it is? I was.
That’s what I like about Pitsos. With everything out in the open like that it usually takes a huge amount of time but ends up being in the best interest of the community at large.
So, with all that settled, Gideon and I decided how to best manage the project. We will have one guy living in the village for the 25 days of the project. This man is a native Basotho, has been working in the water industry for years and speaks not only English and Basotho fluently but also commands 5 additional languages. He is both intellectually and culturally impressive. He will live on the chief’s compound.
Another man who is a well-digger and is taking time out from several in-progress projects to help us with this one, will visit the village twice a week to monitor and direct progress. DeWett, Gideon’s partner, will handle the financial management of the project. We will pay all the village workers once per week in cash. We figured out the payments and I left a comically big bag of money with him along with little plastic bags into which will go each workers weekly wage. A committee of women and I drafted out the basic requirements for the feast. It will take four days to prepare.
Gideon is doing all the engineering drawings and hopefully will only spend five days on the project (his time is quite expensive).
Our target for completion is March 14th. I spent a day in Maseru contacting my contacts in the radio and news media and I think we’ll have a live radio broadcast of the opening as well as lots of newspaper coverage. The editor of Lesotho’s main paper committed to sending both a reporter and photographer to the opening event. All this hoopla is important because of the issue of sustainability. The Basotho people, as wonderful as they are, don’t normally place a heavy value on maintenance. Their cultural imperative is to use up and move on. So, for instance, if a pipe breaks they might not think to fix it. By making the place “holy” they will have an incentive to care for it. At the opening of the project each spring will be blessed by a group of sangomas from surrounding villages. The children of the village will begin a walk from the first spring, pass the second and at the third will receive their beautiful medals with the directive to protect and keep this water until the time of their grandchildren. The writers of the ten best essays will read them to the community. Then everyone will eat until they fall over – meat for everybody!! We also plan on making joala – the local traditional beer – so the celebration will go on until all the food and beer is gone.
With these plans laid, Telia and I turned in the monster truck for a normal little car and headed to Cape Town. I’ve been getting regular phone and email updates from the team and plan on getting back to the project for the final week of preparations for the big feast and opening.
With that said, the next letter will probable be a travel log. I really believe that we Americans are missing out on not considering South Africa as a top choice travel destination.
Until then, stay happy and please wish us well – no pun intended.
Happily,
Peggi
February 26, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
I’m sitting in a mountainside B&B in Hout Bay, just outside Cape Town, watching morning clouds burn off lush green mountains surrounding this idyllic village. The owners of this charming villa, the Hamilton’s, emigrated here from England ten years ago. Katherine, the wife, said they have never looked back. It’s difficult to suppress a small twinge of envy. This place, like so much of South Africa, is tranquil, beautiful and holds and exotic fascination not found anywhere else I’ve traveled.
Telia flew back to the US Sunday. He is a convert – already planning our next trip back. We spent far more time than scheduled in Lesotho working on the project so he actually only had a few days of seeing South Africa but they were very good days.
Here are a few highlights I would recommend to those of you heading this way.
Crossing into South Africa from Maseru, capital of Lesotho, we stayed in Bloemfontein at the Hobbit House. This exquisitely decorated boutique hotel is the birthplace of M. R. Tolkien. The talents of a resident French chef and a selection of the finest South African vintage wines perfectly enhanced the elegance of this historic gem.
From there it was a scenic drive through the great Karoo with a stop in Cradock. On the banks of the Great Fish River this rich farming town was originally established in 1813 as an English military outpost. The novelist Olive Schreiner lived here as a girl. Her home is now a museum and gives a good idea of what life was like in the Karoo of the mid-1800’s. We bought a copy of one of her most well-known works “Story of an African Farm” for T. to read on his flight back – it’s early mystical feminism, he’ll love it (-:
Another highlight of Cradock is Die Tuishuise Guesthouses. In a unique concept in tourist accommodations 18 cottages on one of Cradock’s oldest streets have been fully restored. We had our own quaint, enchanting cottage with a lounge, fireplace, kitchen and private garden. Staying there was like stepping back in time.
One absolutely cannot come to South Africa without experiencing a game park. We enjoyed an afternoon and evening game drive in Scotia getting close up and personal with everything from lions to wart hogs. Our open-air vehicle startled a big cape cobra that terrified us by spreading it’s head into a menacing hood before slithering into the deep grass. It was grand!
The next morning it was off to Addo Elephant Park. The third largest game preserve in South Africa, Addo is home to a huge number of elephants. It was a hot dry day and we spent several exhilarating hours watching families of these magnificent beasts play in waterholes, meander directly in front of our car and pretty much act as though they owned the place – just perfect!
At this point we’d completely run out of time and had to forge on to Cape Town in time for Telia to catch his plane.
Tonight my friend Lois Williams arrives. We served in the Peace Corp together and have become great friends. Lois, many of you may remember from my earlier letters, retired from a brilliant law career in Washington DC before joining the PC. She did great things in Lesotho working among other activities with a group called “Women in Law” to attempt to bring some justice into the currently very discriminatory practices against women. It will be great to see her. We plan on taking a train back up north where I will eventually rent another 4 x 4 and get back to work on the project.
The project, by the way is going amazingly well. I get daily reports from both Gideon and his “blokes” as well as from the villagers. Gideon says the enthusiasm of the village is truly exciting. Everyone is working with joy and determination – I can’t wait to get back into the thick of things.
Until then,
Khotos, Pula, Nala,
Peggi
March 15, 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
We did it!! Sparkling, clean drinking water is flowing into Menkhoaneng. There is a spirit of hopefulness and gratitude throughout the village that is difficult to describe. The villagers worked incredibly hard laying and burying hundreds of feet of pipes and building stone enclosures for each of the three springs involved. Altogether we had 28 villagers working on the project each day, 4 supervisors from Metsi Metseng one who lived in the village for the entire length of the project and 15 women who worked with me on the celebration feast. We had to increase our workforce to complete the project on time.
Yesterday was the big event. Both Radio Lesotho and Lesotho Television were on hand as well as reporters from two newspapers. I’d sent a press release out and it really took hold. Our timing was serendipitously perfect. This past Tuesday was Moshoeshoe Day, a national holiday celebrating the founder of Lesotho, Moshoeshoe I. Bringing water to the village of his birth was something worth reporting. This coming Monday morning there will be a two-hour broadcast on Radio Lesotho that was taped at the feast.
We are hoping that this project can be used as a model and benchmark for NGO’s and local government organizations applying for financing through the Millennium Fund. The MF has earmarked millions of rand for water projects in Lesotho. However, no one, to my knowledge, has yet successfully applied for funds to get small village water projects financed. I’m spending my last few days here working with the District Community Council roughing out a grant request for them to use. I meet with Gideon’s accountant on Monday to get a really accurate breakdown of costs figured out and published for the use of several organizations interested in cloning our project.
I just spent an hour or so going over my records and a pretty good SWAG of the total costs is 125,000 rand. That’s about $17,125.00 including the cost of the feast but not including any costs of having me involved in the project – except for the 4×4 rentals.
My heart felt thanks to all of you who so generously contributed to this project. I can absolutely assure you it is money well spent. I so wish you could have been with me at the celebratory feast yesterday. Your hearts would have swelled with joy as mine did hearing the speeches that thanked “our beloved friends in America”; listening to the songs that the school children sang which were written especially for the Day. Some of the lyrics said, “We love you, we thank you, God will bless you and all generations of your children for bringing us water.” I was teary eyed for most of the afternoon. The Sangomas (traditional healers) were great. They showed up dressed in the ancient fashion of animal skins and bells with their skin painted red. They danced, chanted and blessed the springs calling on the spirits of the mountain to protect and sustain these sources of precious water.
The ten children writing the best essays on water each received 20 rand. As we called their names their mothers rushed from the huge audience ululating, kissing their bright little darling and dancing around them. Sadly, more than half of the winners were orphans – I kissed and danced for them. Each child received a medal hung on a ribbon. The chief and I placed the medals over the heads of every child – 220 in all. All the adults wanted these medals. Happily I’d ordered quite a few extra so all the chiefs and dignitaries attending the ceremony got one as well.
We had huge amounts of food. For the last couple of days I’ve been delivering shipments to the village. The last thing I took up there was 400 lbs of frozen chicken the evening before the big event. It was pouring rain again but I must say my current 4×4, a Nissan SUV, is fabulous. It is brand new and nothing seems able to stop it from going though rushing streams, slippery mud and really steep rocky climbs.
I’m going to close now and head back up to the village to hand out a lot of things we brought from the US for the villagers and to do one last payroll for the women who worked on the feast.
Thank you all once again for making this great project possible.
With gratitude from many happy and now healthier folks in Lesotho,
Peggi
