The Gym

I said I would never join. I hate gyms. People who know that I run ask me if I run at the gym. The gym doesn’t even have a track. Only treadmills. And if you run on the roads you know that we say people who run on the treadmills are (gasp!) not real runners. Sure, they’re putting one foot in front of the other, and unlike in walking, there is a point in each stride where two feet are off the ground, but we generally think if you have legs and you’re not an astronaut in outer space, your running should happen on the pavement, grass, dirt or track, not some soulless, mechanized strip of rubber rotating round and round in front of a television or mirror or other miserable gym-goers doing the same thing and going nowhere.


But I signed up for the Comrades Marathon. At 89 kilometers (about 56 miles) it is an “ultra marathon,” more than twice the distance of a standard marathon (ex: New York, Boston or London marathons). It’s between Durban and Pietermaritzburg in South Africa. The race switches direction every year, which matters because it’s hilly. This year is a “down” run. What I’ve heard this means is that for at least a while you have no idea you’re running mostly down, because there seems to be quite a bit of uphill as well. Later on, when you have dozens of kilometers on your legs, and all the fatigue and lactic acid that come with it, you really start to go down which apparently “rips your legs apart.”

I’ve been told by Mike, the elusive running god of Maseru, going to the gym once or twice a week will . . . well I don’t think he made any exact promises but something about the race destroying me less. He’s run the Comrades about 20 times, and although I have yet to meet him, I do whatever he tells me. Although in this case, I had to get a few people to translate his e-mail which was written in gym-speak, a dialect of English I had never come across before. (And I later found out it indicated I should be lifting weights).

Two teachers smugly drove me over with them (smug because of all the times I refused their offers to join them saying that gyms in general and treadmills in particular embody everything wrong with the modern world.)

When I arrived at the gym, I asked reception something apparently very stupid, which was could I try the gym for a day and then sign up (pay)? In a way it was a silly request because I had already decided to join the gym and there is really only one gym in Maseru, but this is standard procedure in US (which I only know because of how many free trials I rejected over the years). Well, they were pretty dumbfounded that I wanted to enter the gym without paying, so I meekly insisted on at least a tour. Then when I tried to pay with a debit card they said they didn’t have the facilities to accept payment with a card. I asked them where the nearest ATM is and they told me to just pay another day (which was what I had asked to do in the first place- pay after my first day- but I didn’t remind them of that).

The gym is pristine and modern in a way that for a moment made me forget entirely that I am in Africa. This inspired a short-lived feeling of unbelievable relief followed by immediate guilt. The membership card was one of the aspects that most transported me back to America. It’s like a Charlie card (for those of you who frequent Boston public transportation), you don’t even have to swipe, just tap against the turnstile (without even removing it from your wallet). So when I enter the gym, at least I can pretend I’m descending into the Porter Square station with a bagel in hand (Massachusetts are stale, tasteless, ring-shaped rocks in comparison to New York, but at this point I’d take it gladly).

Once I got away without paying, they were displeased at my lack of lock (for the locker room) and sweat towel. My colleagues offered to share and then I was left with the task of tying up my long hair with no elastic or clip (and I couldn’t find anyone with a spare). I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal but I have a lot of hair and I ended up using a strapless bra (colleagues confirmed that worn in the hair, it no longer appears to be an undergarment). So I was off. They told me I couldn’t use the gym for my first three times without a trainer to show me how to use the machines. This was good because

1. All the machines look identical.
2. Most of the machines resemble torture devices (the kind that crush you to death or tear your                limbs apart) and I was naturally terrified.
3. I couldn’t figure out what on earth to do with most of them despite the illustrated instructions.

Here is a sampling of what I was introduced to that first day:

1. The leg press: you lie on your back with the weights attached to a platform you hold up with your toes directly over your face (with no safety catch, say a few inches above where your head is). I asked what happens if your feet slip off the far end of the platform and the trainer said, “Hospital!”
2. Some chairs identical to the ones in my gynecologist’s office but with weights instead of speculums.
3. Abdominal things (I’m pretty sure they are not machines because they have no moving parts) that I am obviously too short for and that left me dangling precariously upside down gripping on with the tips of my toes like a sloth.
4. The scale. They scale is actually at the reception desk, not the locker room. In my experience (and my experience of gyms as you know is limited), weighing is something people generally like to do privately. So my gym machine tutorial awkwardly included the scale (because I don’t know my weight in kilograms which I was told I would have to enter on the bike). I don’t mind if people know what I weigh, I mind if they know that I care. (And I haven’t used the scale since my tutorial so I either really don’t care what I weigh or really mind that people think that I do and I can’t decide which).

I went home that first day irritable and with unbelievably sore armpits. Actually, I didn’t go home. I went with the teachers to one of their houses for their post gym ritual of “shredding.” (following a workout video horribly named The Shred*, you know that feel the burn, no pain no gain sort of crap led by women with impossible abs wearing technicolor spandex). I tried to keep a straight face but I totally lost it when the head instructor said, “Now jump rope!” I turned to my friends and said, “I don’t have a jump rope,” and they said you don’t need one. Apparently I was supposed to swing my arms around and jump up and down with no actual rope. In the process of my flailing and laughing, the bra flew out of my hair and I kicked it under a piece of furniture. I momentarily disappeared and I scrambled around looking for it with a sense of urgency; one of the teachers is the daughter of the U.S. ambassador, and we were “shredding” in front of the TV in his bedroom.

My second trip back to the gym was rather unpleasant. I was first chastised by security for walking through the vehicle gate instead of the adjacent (and camouflaged) pedestrian gate, then by the receptionist for being five minutes late, and finally by the trainer for not remembering how to use the tricep machine. When I was finally on my own though, I couldn’t remember how to use most of the machines, or how to adjust them to my height. When I did figure out how to adjust them, I didn’t feel strong enough to actually pull out the pins and turn the screws, let alone use those machines to lift large amounts of weight. So I wandered around a bit aimlessly and picked out a guy who seemed to be doing the same stuff as me and watched him carefully so I could use the machines after him. Of course he was taller than me, so after he vacatred a machine, I tried to not forget what I was supposed to do as I struggled to compress the machines to their minimum size. At one point, I went to get a manager to help me adjust a machine and I noticed there were more working than usual and they were dressed in suits rather than the usual workout clothes. I started to approach one but he was so standoffish I turned around and headed to a foolproof machine I wouldn’t need help with. Later my neighbor told me that those “managers” were the king’s bodyguards, and that guy I was following around (or stalking as the bodyguards may have interpreted) was the King of Lesotho.

*Apparently this was really popular in the US about a year ago, but being here, I only ever heard of it a couple weeks ago.

A Different Kind of Culture Shock

Last week, I went for the first time to the school librarian’s house. She is a good colleague and friend. We share many of the same incompetencies (swimming, driving, whistling) and one great passion (books). And other than swapping book recommendations and bad day stories, our interactions generally revolve around her trying to feed me or find me a “suitable boy” (She even lent me a book by the title, followed by Born Confused about an Indian girl from Jersey who falls in love with an NYU boy- what she was suggesting, I have no idea . . .when her husband heard of her plans he made me a fictitious J Date profile which initially inspired my anger and then a good laugh). While the afternoon early childhood program (my baby) at the school gets off to a glacial start, I head into the library after lunch and assist her in her various duties. So I spend a lot of time with her. Her husband has frequently acted as a default chauffeur, a task he gladly undertakes for the pleasure of watching me (and capturing on film) struggle to open the sliding minivan door against the steep slope of my driveway. I also taught her niece, and frequently take yoga class with her father-in-law. I have been the recipient of many plastic containers of Indian food left over from family gatherings and Indian clothes that she thinks I’ll fit into. But oddly, I have never been inside her house, where she lives in addition to her husband and baby, her in-laws and the niece who spends so much time there she might as well live there.
Last week the niece moved with her mother to Malawi and I wanted to say goodbye to if not a favorite student, certainly one of my biggest fans. This happened to coincide with a night I was meeting her neighbor, to discuss plans to travel to Namibia later this month. I thought it would be fairly simple to pop in, say hello, say goodbye and head next door to pore over Lonely Planet guides.

It was dark and raining, there were no streetlights and the taxi had no headlights. My homemade map was fairly useless under these conditions, but once the driver realized that I figured out he had no clue where we were going and that he didn’t understand a word I was saying, he grabbed my map, and while steering the index finger of his left hand studied it upside down, nodding and swerving all over the road. I snatched my map back from him and he drove me to Leseli Flats, a compound inhabited mainly by expats. This was not my destination and I started saying “dirt road” over and over again. I pointed at the road we were on “good road, good road,” and “Please, I want a bad road. With dirt and rocks.” Miraculously we got there, and their dog didn’t eat me as I ran up the rain-soaked driveway.

I told them I could only stay about ten minutes, which was more than enough time to rile up the 2 year old daughter and 4 year old niece by doing absolutely nothing but being there. Of course, the first thing I was asked as I got in the door was if I ate dinner. It was about 9 o’ clock, so of course I had. I emphasized that this dinner was very big and recently consumed when I saw the food-pushing gleam in the eyes of the women of the house. “Good,” I was told as various cookies and crackers were shoved at me. When I gathered my things at the predetermined 10 minutes after arrival, I was told, “We are making you some vegetarian food. It will be ready in about 15 minutes.”

At this point, I was very late for my next meeting. And the women kept going back and forth to the kitchen doing something that looked elaborate. So I continued to rile up the children and fret about the time. The husband, sensing my White Rabbit of Wonderland anxiety, suggested we call the neighbor over to eat with me but the women stamped their feet and said there would not be enough food. He agreed and turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, he’s Indian, he’ll understand that we have to feed you before we let you go.” And before I knew what was happening, he had called him up and asked for my impending lateness to be excused. The phone was handed to me and a voice not at all amused on the other end asked how much longer I’d be. I posed this question to my captors and as a chorus of “15 minutes” rang out, I cupped the receiver and said, “Ten minutes. Max.” At last the tablecloth on the coffee table was changed, the table shoved toward me and bowls and pots and plates of food were carried out. There were dosas and chutneys, some bread that looked like Ethiopian injera, various vegetables and an entire melon. Twelve different dishes in all. They looked at me expectantly. As I waited for the others to sit down, they said, “Eat, eat!” “I’ll wait for you,” I told them. They shook their heads at me and cast identical looks my way that said, “Poor, dumb American.” “We have already eaten.”

Up For Grabs

The first time my three-year-old neighbor Tamar grabbed my breast and said, “mine,” I thought it was just an extension of our typical conversations (she grabs hold of my necklace, glasses, headphones, etc and says, "mine.") But recently, she’s gotten a bit bolder, and recently managed to cram her chubby arm down the high, snug neck of my t-shirt. As I struggled to extract it without tearing my top or dislocating her shoulder, I said, “What are you doing in there?!” “Eat it!” she replied, “eat it!”

I assured Tamar that I am not a vending machine, a cow or her mother. “I have no milk,” I told her. “There is nothing in there for you.” She regarded me suspiciously. Betty, her mother assured me that she no longer breastfeeds, but then added that, “Sometimes Tamar sneaks it.” For goodness sakes, it’s not a cookie, it’s your flesh! How can someone sneakily suck fluid from your body? Well, breastfeeding here is not like being served in a restaurant, it’s more like a buffet and as soon as the babies are old enough to grasp, they help themselves.

Then Betty says, “I tell her, ‘Don’t drink that, you will get sick!’” “‘Sick?’ I asked her. “No, breast milk is good for children.” So Betty explains to me that since she doesn’t breast feed regularly, she's afraid the milk gets sour inside her body. Although I have no personal experience to draw from, I told her that sounds pretty impossible. But we were getting off topic so I just asked her to please reiterate to Tamar that I don’t have milk on tap.

Here is Lesotho, children breastfeed until a much older age than they do in the states. I think (for HIV negative mothers) this is a good thing. It’s free, nutritious and comforting. In Lesotho where formula is unaffordable for many, HIV positive mothers are recommended to breastfeed babies until they are 6 months old provided that they don’t give the babies any other food or drink. For some reason, exclusive breastfeeding is a much lower risk than breastfeeding along with giving other food and drink for HIV transmission.

When a mother no longer has milk, the nipple is employed as a sort of a pacifier. In fact, any woman’s nipples, mother or not, are fair game for this purpose. I learned this fairly early in my Lesotho teaching career. When Basotho students cried, I would pick them up and they would immediately go for it, their little white teeth shining like vampire fangs. Hence, “Don’t do that” was one of the first Sesotho phrases that I learned.

So one day, I’m walking around campus, the rest of my body preceded by my milkless communal pacifiers, and a girl in another class asked me if I would like a sticker. She had brought them to school to celebrate her 7th birthday. I said, “of course.” She then asked me if I would like two, and if she should put them on me. I regrettably answered in the affirmative to both questions. I should have known better. The precision and symmetry of her sticker placement could not have been more unfortunate, and the stickers themselves were starbursts emblazoned with the word, “PARTY!”

And I wore them the entire day.

There's Something On Your Floor

Last night the yogi (who holds free sessions in my classroom) walked in and said, "There's something on your floor." He said it like some pieces of trash fell on the floor and randomly arranged themselves into geometrical figures. Nope, I'm just trying to address one of our math learning targets with good ole masking tape. I believe we are only responsible for teaching circle (the one shape I failed to create with tape), square and triangle, but I figured we might as well throw down a rectangle, diamond, trapezoid and hexagon since these shapes routinely crop up in our toys.

Anyway, I say "I believe" that is the learning target because when I arrived at the school, my curriculum was about three lines long that contained bullet points so random that more cohesion could have been achieved had the entries been picked out of a hat.

This was fine with me, since I don't like cookie-cutter themes (pumpkins in October, snowflakes in January). I mean, I don't like them anyway, but especially when we use northern hemisphere guides in Southern Africa (if it's gonna snow, it certainly won't snow in January). I don't like drilling animal sounds into kids' heads (Do pigs really say oink?! Really?!). Who decides three-year olds need to memorize made-up sounds of farm animals?

So last year, we did class projects on topics the children were interested in: insects, cars, ocean life, gardening and construction. And the literacy and math and motor skills fit in in the contexts of these explorations and the normal routine.

Then the Middle States Association scrutinized our school for accreditation and decided that we needed to rewrite the curriculum. So in a blur of head aches and more salt water than I'd like to admit, my colleagues and I pumped out a cumbersome, hurried document. And for the most part, it has been totally useless to me.

Now, in a more reflective and methodical way, we are rewriting the curriculum again, to make it something we (gasp!) actuall use! In fact, the students are going home early today to give us some more time for writing in the afternoon.

But for now, here's what we've been up to. After the children settled in, we did Around the World with Preschool, which involved jumping in paint and leaving our footprints on our home countries on the class map, Basotho dancing, Dutch Christmas cookies, Indian sweets, Chinese spring rolls, German songs and fairytales, Maori music, learning Swahili words, singing Woody Guthrie, making lots of flags and, as always, reading lots of books. We concluded by reading How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World, and of course made our own pie.

After that, we focused on feelings and emotions and I learned many interesting facts about my students, like Charlie gets sad when a dinosaur bites him and Isabella is happy when she smells cake. This sort of fizzled out, or rather became an on-going project and we are now becoming storytellers and puppeteers. In between donning sock and paper bag puppets on our hands and performing many an Eric Carle tale on a make-shift stage, we have been experimenting with color-mixing. I first tried to do this by dying water and oil (ex: making red water and blue oil). I figured when shaken together in a jar, the new color would form, and then the colors would separate out again so the children could repeatedly see how the primary colors combine to make other colors. This didn't work out so well because dyes that are soluble in water are not in oil. I tried several times, but all I succeeded in doing was coating my skin in yellow food coloring which made me look jaundiced. I settled for dealing only with colored water and have resigned myself to the fact that I will be mixing batch after batch of colored water until my little scientists get bored.

This, is necessary preparation for the annual tie-dye project, the day (when after a week of rubber-banding t-shirts) children squat around vats of steaming dye in their underwear, dipping in their white shirts to create hippie-esque materpieces and go home with their skin stained all the colors of the rainbow.

On Being Thankful, and Then a Little Less Thankful

This was my first African Thanksgiving. I don’t count last year, because I did nothing remotely Thanksgiving-y. No orange vegetables or pie or Turkey Trot or seeing people you haven’t seen in a while or a parade of any sort. This year, I was invited to a small dinner at the U.S. ambassador’s house: he and his wife, their daughter (my colleague), the ambassador’s brother (who happens to be the ambassador to Botswana), his wife, and two single diplomats.
I had my first feast of the day at a café over the border with the school librarian and her family (including her niece, my former student). I had a huge glass of a fuchsia berry juice and a delicious breakfast of warm bread and good-smelling things and green things and then the five of us crowded around a fat slice of chocolate truffle cake. I bought my own loaf of bread on the way out the door, which I tore off chunks of throughout the afternoon, while baking a sugar-dusted nectarine tart and goopy brownies (spraying powdered sugar and liquid chocolate on shirts I changed in quick succession after ruining for the night, three in total).

I was unprepared how very weird it is to have Thanksgiving with someone else’s family. No matter how wonderful they are, everything they do just seems wrong. (What is this cranberry sauce that appears to contain actual whole cranberries? Why isn't it a gelatinous cylinder that maintans this perfect shape after sliding out of the can? Where are all the noisy children and sullen teenagers and uncles who drop things and old ladies who down handfuls fo pills with sparkling grape juice? How can you have a white tablecloth? You should settle for a more practical and pessimestic burgundy to anticipate red wine spills. Why isn't anyone fighting? And where is my dad's yams with technicolor marshamallows depicting pilgrim scenes and my mom's laugh rattling the dishes in the china closet? It was wonderful, but not the same as being home.

The post-meal food coma was at least the same.  I had a nice refresher at the bathroom sink though, when I turned on the faucet, and unprepared for the splendid water pressure at diplomatic residences, thoroughly doused my chest. The water splotches were so dramatic that when I arrived back at the table I felt compelled to interrupt the conversation and explain my appearance, which was quickly one-upped by an embassy security person enthralling us with tales of assisting autopsies, being bombed, her new taser and vivid descriptions of executions. Direct Thanksgiving Table Quote: “What you couldn’t see on the televised version was that they actually shot him before they beheaded him. So, like, he was already dead when they started to cut the head off. And that gurgling sound you could hear--”

She was cut-off at this point by a more weak-stomached dinner guest and the topic of conversation changed abruptly (to gallstones, if you’re interested), much like I’m going to do right now.

I spent the majority of the next three days in the Chinese internet café. I had planned to hole myself up in my classroom for the break, to tackle pages of to-do lists full of stressful entries, things related to grad school, licensure, jobs, and words like transcript, Praxis, International Baccalaureate, Krakow and Kampala were crashing around in my head, when I realized the entire school had no internet.

And so, I ambled to the internet café, stopping en route to purchase some chocolate. I am not a fan of this establishment, namely because of the hostility of everyone working there. Secondly, I don’t like how the computers put weird things on my flash drive. Don’t ask me what these things are. And if you know, please don’t tell me. Thirdly, I don’t like paying for things that come free with my job; they can’t give us health care, but they sure don’t mind if we want to work weekends! I don’t even like computers to begin with and I especially don’t like a room full of them and stressed out people tapping away on them.

Day two I was there, a Mosotho couple was seated at the monitor next to me. Their baby was at another computer nearby, sliding a mouse back and forth across the table, hypnotizing herself with the psychedelic swirls the cursor made across the Facebook homepage. Her parents were doing something else, or not doing something else, much to their frustration. They called over one of the men who works there and the following conversation, which eventually escalated to shouting ensued.

Computer Confused Man: Can you help me [fill in the blank, I sort of missed this part].
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No, you should know how to use a computer.
Computer Confused Man: Yeah, but can you please show me how to [fill in the blank]
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: No I’m busy!
Computer Confused Man: You are too busy to run your business?!
Man Who Works in the Internet Cafe: IT’S NOT MY JOB TO HELP YOU!!!

Computer Confused Man’s wife started begging the guy to help her husband, which he eventually conceded to do with a great deal of audible sighing and banging on the keyboard and mouse.

At least my eavesdropping prepared me for a quieter but equally unhelpful experience I was about to have.

Me: What are your hours tomorrow?
Girl at the Desk: Today or yesterday?
Me: No, tomorrow.
Girl at the Desk: TO-DAY or YES-TER-DAY?
Me: Um . . .
Girl at the Desk: Today?
Me: No.
Girl at the Desk: Yesterday?
Me: Sure.
[A long conversation in Chinese ensues between Girl at the Desk and another woman across the room].
Girl at the Desk: 8-6:30.
Me: Great, thanks.

I arrived the next day shortly after noon and asked for two hours on a computer.

Different Girl at the Desk: No.
Me: . . .
Different Girl at the Desk: We close at 1:00. You can have 45 minutes.
Me: [arrrrrrgggggggg]

So the Girl at the Desk really was telling me the hours for the day before, but I didn’t think she could possibly believe that someone would actually ask, “What are your hours yesterday?”

Back at work now, where the internet is obviously working again.

A Few Pictures

Sean, age 3, hands this drawing to me and says, “Here is a crocodile opening its mouth and eating you. You are in the picture and those are little red dots of your blood.”

A couple weeks ago, the school librarian asked me to design a display stand and storage container for the Big Books (you know, those massive picture books meant to be read to read to a large class of antsy little ones). For the display stand, I suggested an easel that can be folded flat when not in use. I found the request to design the storage container a little puzzling though. It should really be just a big box, and so long as the builder knows the size of the biggest book, and how many we have/intend to have, I didn’t think I could offer any special insight in terms of design. I explained this, but the librarian and the builder both insisted that I make a sketch. I drew what I thought indicated a box with an open top, with dimensions that enable it to hold the books standing upright. (See drawing).

However, the builder interpreted the diagonal lines of my attempt at perspective as a request for a crooked box. And blatantly ignoring the written label, he understood the indication that the books stand upright inside the box as a request for a plank of wood serving no function whatsoever nailed to the bottom of the box. (See photo).

It's the Time of Year For. . .

...Spring? Over the past couple of months, pouring rains have rinsed the dusty city revealing a brighter, greener place. Gardens flourished (my assistant teacher asked me if I wanted some spinach from her yard and when I answered in the affirmative, delivered it to me in a bag so enormous it was like being handed a sack of trash) and were then ruined by the hail that followed. The hail stripped the evergreen trees of their needles and for once, the school campus, which never seems to get green no matter how much it rains, appeared to have a lawn. For days, the gardeners did nothing but collect these clumps of needles in their wheelbarrows, slowly restoring the natural beige and removing the intoxicating smell of wet pine. There were several thunderstorms, so rhythmic they lulled me to sleep, and a few that had me jumping out of my skin in accordance with my relatively new fear of lightening (getting struck by lightening is more common in Lesotho than in most places and my neighbor can attest to this fact from personal experience). Then we had a string of several breezy, sun burnt days, the kind of days that are perfect for hanging laundry to dry. I had my classroom heaters put in storage yesterday, and replaced with a fan just in time for cold, gray rains. In complete denial, I braved the day with no jacket and no umbrella and then, for the second time as of late, ended up having to go to the library to strip and lay my clothes out to dry. (I use the library for this purpose because it is really the only place on campus without generous windows and because the librarian doesn’t get startled when I say, “Can I take my pants off in here?”)

The other good thing about the hail stripping leaves of their foliage is that it restored the line of sight to my far off classroom and I got internet again!

Nice green campus. . .

…Harvesting stone fruits. Subsequently, the Cherry Festival (just a little ways over the border into South Africa) is taking place this weekend. It’s really just a mediocre fair in what is probably the dullest part of the country, and my determination to attend despite these facts is a true testament to the fact that I have been in Lesotho too long. My equally determined colleague agrees and our attempts to remain excited border on pathetic. She’ll say something about the food being good, and I’ll say, “yeah, if you don’t mind what it tastes like so long as it’s served on a stick.” Then I’ll say something about the quality of the crafts and she’ll call it boardwalk junk. Then I’ll mention two stands out of one hundred that had nice crafts (which I only remember because I bought things at them) before conceding that even those weren’t that nice. “Pony rides?” I’ll say, helpfully. “Cherry liquor?” she’ll reply in the same tone.

...Thanksgiving. This same teacher invited me to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family. I asked if they go around the table and make everyone say what they’re thankful for. She confirmed that they do not participate in this awkward ritual so I agreed to come bearing a stone fruit inspired dessert. Last year at this time when I was constantly stir-crazy, I had planned a long weekend at the beach for the Thanksgiving break. What should have been a five-hour ride on public transportation became a 36 hour string of zigzagging rides on public transportation to four different towns. In three of them, as I walked around, cars pulled up alongside me and two Afrikaaner and one Indian driver told me to get inside and that I was crazy to walk around. In one of these towns I ended up having to stay overnight, and my hotel room had accidentally been double-booked for a play pump-building (www.onedifference.org/water/projects/playpumps) South African who gave me quite a shock when he appeared in the doorway. I think I’m ready for a calmer, less mobile holiday this year.

…A new cohort of Peace Corps volunteers descends on the capital. This matters only to me as an elementary school friend I have not seen in more than a decade is among the freshly arrived. As you know, Peace Corps gave me a hard time about meeting up with her at first, but finally a friend in the office took pity on me and gave me a detailed list of instructions on how to find her. I have never before in Africa entered a roomful of white people and have them all turn around and stare. They had been locked up in the training center for five days and were seriously lacking contact with the outside world. We had a brief but joyous reunion that mostly consisted of us taking turns saying, “this is soooo crazy!” She was even more disoriented than I with the jet lag, culture shock and general confusion that results from newly moving overseas. A crowd of volunteers surrounded me and attempted to pump me for information about Lesotho but I kept my mouth shut, one of the conditions of being allowed to infiltrate the training session.

…Parent-Teacher Conferences. I have five hours to talk about 20 children with no breaks in between. And what do we talk about? Well, I am slightly concerned about the way one only child is approaching the impending birth of his first sibling, whom he has named named Spritzel (Spritzy for short) while in utero, and wants to christen Dino Ghost after birth. There is another parent who I can show no samples of student work (drawings, paintings, etc) except every available surface of the classroom that Refiloe took the liberty to scribble on. Then there is Isabella, with the most endearing quality of being attracted to expensive and/or dangerous appliances like a moth to a flame, until her curiosity was somewhat curbed recently when she peered at the book scanner in the library and accidentally scanned her own eyeball. I’m looking forward to a pounding headache and a parched throat by Wednesday evening. A far more experienced teacher than I told me that if parents ask an uncomfortable question about my teaching methods, I should tell them they should believe half of what their children say about school and I will believe half of what their children tell me about them!

I'll be thinking about all you far away people on Thursday. Watch out for the tofurkey. . .