Over Easter weekend my fiancée Rachel visited me here in Altoona and allowed me to give her a tour of some of the sites in Blair County. Rachel (and not I) is the scientist, however for the past month I have been teaching fourth graders about acid mine drainage and water pollution as a volunteer for the Blair County Conservation District, which has given me a unique opportunity to learn about local environmental issues. Here we are at Glenwhite Run, a stream leading into the Horseshoe Curve Reservoir--a reservoir containing much of the water that local Altoonians drink.

ABOUT A.M.D.

In a nutshell, Pennsylvania has enjoyed large seams of coal: soft bituminous in the west, and harder and more efficient anthracite in the east. Much of Pennsylvania's coalmines were (and are) located so far under the ground that they actually passed the water table, necessitating the water to be pumped out for coal extraction. Well. Under all of this coal are layers of pyrite, better known to a layman like me as "fool's gold," and when water and air hit this pyrite, it oxidized, causing iron oxide to precipitate out of the water and the pH level of the water to increase. Iron oxide is essentially “rust.” Humans, fish, and most aquatic insects like the pH of their water to be right around 7 (which is neutral), however this Acid Mine Drainage (sometimes referred to as "Abandoned Mine Drainage") can take the water level to around 4. The increased acidity kills many of the macroinvertebrates (spineless bugs), a valuable part of the food chain.

We in PA are blessed with loads of freshwater: 86,000 stream-miles, to be exact. About 6,000 miles of our streams have been turned to rust because of AMD, and the water is not cheap to cleanup. At Glenwhite Run a few different systems are being used to clean out the iron oxide metal from the water and neutralize the pH level--some of them on a "trial and error" basis.

Wetlands are constructed in order to cultivate special bacteria which filter out the water and neutralize the pH. The construction of wetlands can be expensive, however once these environments are in place they are considered to be “passive” forms of AMD-reclamation--that is, they require little maintenance.

In order to save money, the systems are "vertical," meaning that they run from one section to another by way of gravity. Utilizing gravity instead of pumps to move the water around saves money.

Another way money is saved is by oxygenating the water with a large basin with holes in it. Again, no electricity required! This little pond should be a passive reclamation project requiring very little upkeep, however the iron oxide gunk backs up in the transfer pipes so quickly that specialists must come at least once a month in order to clean them out.

A second way to oxygenate water is to increase the surface area of the water in contact with the atmosphere. Here, small pools were created with logs to achieve that effect. Water running over the logs also creates ripples which help to add oxygen.

The little pond in the background is filled with calcium carbonate (limestone) chips. Limestone is a base which will help to neutralize the AMD-caused acidic water, however the iron oxide often falls out of the water onto the chips, rendering them ineffective.

This iron oxide sludge can be harvested (by evaporation) to make rust-colored pigment. This is the pigment I use with the fourth-graders when we tie-dye a piece of fabric during the hands-on part of the lesson!

This rusty water is flowing directly into the Horseshoe Curve Reservoir!

Right now it is 2:07 am, and I am sitting alone in a mostly wrecked common-room inside a dingy Nürnberger youth hostel. I couldn't sleep well in the 12-bed schlafsaal with the numerous others snoring and--for a little while--moaning, so I went outside to smoke. Fortuitously, a computer was open, so I decided to catch up with people on FaceBook and renew my blog.

The month of December has been a momentous one for me. On the fifth, I said goodbye to my homestay family and left my Peace Corps site in Lesotho for the last time. Seven days later I turned in the last of my paperwork, had an interview with the Country Director, and then officially became a "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer" (RPCV). More importantly, on that day I asked my girlfriend Rachel to marry me, and she said YES. After spending two-and-a-half days in Melville in Johannesburg, my new fiancee and I flew to Munich, where we stayed for 11 days with her Aunt Cathy. (Well, in Rosenheim to be exact.) During our stay we "climbed a mountain" in Kufstein, Austria; drank plenty of Glühwein and Feuerzangenbowle; made excursions to Munich, Wasserburg, and Münsing; saw a brass-band concert; and spent hours chatting, cooking, and drinking with Rachel's aunt, uncle, and two cousins.

Yesterday morning we made the two-hour trip on a ICE train to Nuremberg, where we've toured the Kaiserburg, eaten authentic Nürnberger Wurstchen mit Sauerkraut, drunk a "meter of beer," seen the movie "Fly Me to the Moon" in 3d at an IMAX (mildly intoxicated from our meter of beer), visited the National Germanisches Musuem, eaten Döner, and just loved every minute of it. Tomorrow we are headed to Braunschweig to bring in the New Year with her friend Julia. My only misgiving will be not having seen the Albrecht Dürer Haus since they were closed both yesterday and today, but I got to see many of his paintings, and etchings at the national museum.

This is my homestay mother and her grandson, my little abuti, Mohapi. I will write more extensively about Mohapi in an upcoming blog-entry.

Surprise! Notice my pee-bucket and car battery. The red basin is for washing my handings, and my dutch oven is in the bottom left-hand corner.

Teresa (treadingtheforgottensky.com), Rachel (my girlfriend), and Koili discovered these ancient cavepaintings last weekend in the middle of nowhere thanks to these bo-abuti. (Their reward was a half of a peanutbutter sandwich each and some sour worms.) No one knows how old these paintings are, because no one has ever studied them. Notice the graffiti.

Before my little abuti scared one of the geese away there were two in my clothes-basin.

My buddy Fusi on left, gf Rachel on right. We didn't know the other 3 guys, but one got drunk and crawled into my tent at 1 am.

On the way to Semonkong I told this little boy to carry me across a puddle since he had gum-boots on. Somehow that didn't happen!

Earlier tonight I googled myself in order to make sure that nothing incriminating would be seen by potential grad school professors or reps. (..not that there should be!) Anyhow, I stumbled upon a newsletter by the Darien Book Aid from the Spring of this year. I had sent the DBA an email in March 2007 requesting books for 0ur budding library, at which point the school quickly found itself with a huge box of brand-new and near-new books, maps, and learning aids.

Because so many people helped out with the library-- the African Library Project (ALP), Biblionef South Africa, the DBA, a highly-motivated high school student named Ria Van Giessen who collected the 1,500 books for Tebellong's ALP-shipment, a group of volunteers on a missions trip from the UK who made bookshelves and decorated the library--I did my best to make a thank-you-CD for each of them with before and after photos of the library as well as a few videos. (Ria's and the four UK volunteers' cds are still forthcoming. Sorry!)

The newsletter (link #1) has three pictures and also quotes a letter which I included on the CD. Link #2 has a montage of videos. Enjoy!

link #1 dba.darien.org/Newsletter2008Spring.pdf

link #2 http://dba.darien.org/Lesotho.mov

Did I mention how much I thought that conductors where the sleaze of the earth in my last blog/notebook entry?

Today I arrived at my bus stop and was dismayed to find the taxi for Qacha’s Nek completely empty. I was heading back to the camptown for day number two of my COSC-marking-workshop, so I took out my novel and prepared to wait an hour or so for the taxi to fill. As I sat there, a few other travelers came and lingered about outside, finally boarding a taxi which was heading to the camptown from the opposite direction. As I mentioned, drivers are enraged if a person enters their taxi and then decides to travel with a different taxi, so I wasn’t yet determined to abandon ship. This time, however, the driver, an older man with a sparse beard and holes in his sleeves, apathetically nodded at me to go and board that taxi with the others as he sat and smoked a homemade cigarette on the roadside.

As I approached the other taxi, a man, presumably the conductor of the taxi I had been sitting in, grabbed my arm and told the driver to hurry and drive away before I could enter. I tried to shake him off and made a joke of saying “ko-ko” (literally, knock-knock), at the passenger side window. I wasn’t terribly afraid of the guy; after all, the Basotho are a lot more touchy-feely than Americans, not-to-mention men here aren’t exactly granite pillars of muscle. He held on to my wrist for another moment before finally relenting and telling me to pay him the fifteen maloti taxi-fare, which I did, because I had no way of knowing that he wasn’t working with the taxi which I was about to step into.

When I arrived in Qacha’s Nek, the driver told me that I was going to have to pay him another fifteen maloti. I politely indicated that there was no way I was going to pay a second time, but that I would help him get the measly sum back (less than two bucks), even go to the police station if necessary. In the end, I gave him my phone number and both my American and Sesotho names. Apparently the driver knows the man, so perhaps I’ll be receiving a call from the police at some point. Maybe it was a trick to hustle another fifteen maloti from an unsuspecting white guy? Anyway, if anything comes of it, I’ll be sure to write about it.

Disclaimer: This will probably be my most negative entry about my life here, however it’s something that’s close to my heart and truly deserves to be written about.

Maybe the worst part about living in Lesotho for an outsider is the inconvenience and occasional peril of public transportation. Right now I’m sitting in a taxi—here that means a 15-passenger van—waiting for a few more people to come so that we can be full and depart for the camptown. Normally I’d be in the classroom today, but I have to attend a workshop concerning how to mark the Cambridge Overseas Certificate Exam. (COSC) (The meeting is supposed to begin at nine o’clock, however I’ve been to two other such meetings that began a full 90-120 minutes late, so I intend to get some grocery shopping done beforehand.) I’d probably rather be at school, but we’ll see how it goes.

I usually wait anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes for either a taxi coming from another place to pick me up or for one waiting at my own bus-stop to become full so that it can depart. If an empty taxi is waiting at my bus stop, I am obligated to wait patiently inside of it even if five other taxis heading in the same direction drive by, and if I try to board one of the taxis which are driving past because I am in a hurry, the drivers and conductors of the empty taxi become incensed and hurl invectives at me in Sesotho which I mostly don’t understand anyhow. By the way, conductors are the people who gather potential passengers, let people in and out of the taxi, and accept the taxi fare.

At a larger taxi-rank, those dirty parking lots brimming with countless taxis, hockers, hookers (after dark), and general waylayers, conductors aggressively compete for passengers and aren’t the least bit kind about it. Aside from the one in Qacha’s Nek which is smaller, cleaner, and contains people who know me, I’ve never been to a taxi-rank where I haven’t been jostled, boxed in, or literally pushed by conductors wheezing hot beer breath in my face and grabbing at my bag. And unfortunately I usually travel with a large bag because of the difficulty of buying groceries at my site, so all the drivers and conductors believe that I am a tourist whose mind they can make up for him regarding which taxi to board.

At the Qacha’s Nek taxi rank the drivers normally hang out at one of the two bars there waiting and watching for their taxis to fill up as they slowly get plastered. Once on the road they blast music, overtake slow moving vehicles around blind curves, and even race other taxis. I’ve been in taxis where the 15-18 passengers crammed in the back have screamed as though they were on a rollercoaster. Some of the bo-‘m’e (women) shake their heads incredulously while muttering, “atch..hille,” but for the most part it seems the Basotho are like lambs to the slaughter when it comes to standing up for their rights and personal safety—especially when the aggressors are bo-ntate (men) empowered by the drink.

Besides being held hostage by drunk drivers, a major discomfort is the earsplitting volume at which traditional music is listened to. Traditional music here, as I was amazed to find out, involves an accordion, bass, African techno beats, and ranting bo-ntate singing as huskily and deeply as their manhood will allow. A local favorite involves a digitized crying baby, and sometimes a song is so beloved that the passengers are forced to listen to it on an endless cycle of repeat. The accordion, along with the word for candy which children and adults scream at me each time I leave my site (pongpong from “bonbon”) are influences from the French missionaries who arrived here many years ago. Bless them. The only thing that could have made the music worse would have been if Scottish missionaries had come here with bagpipes, my girlfriend once quipped. Anyhow, if I have to travel longer distances, such as west to the capital, I always carry earplugs. Quite a few people on such trips have asked me where they can acquire such ingenious devices, so I know that I’m not alone on this one.

My biggest tip to any first-timer who ventures onto public transport in Lesotho is to sit near the window, and there are numerous reasons for this. First off, taxis, buses, and sprinters (which are basically larger versions of the fifteen-seat van) are generally loaded beyond capacity with people, luggage, canisters of gasoline, huge sacks of flour, chickens and ducks, a sheep strapped to the roof occasionally—you name it. Sometimes to be able to put even an elbow out the window will allow a person enough space to sit with his or her back squarely against the seatback.

Secondly, taxis and so forth can become very, very hot, and condensation from people’s sweat and breath makes a long ride exceedingly oppressive as well as unhealthy. I don’t want to condemn the Basotho, but they haven’t realized that what makes a person sick doesn’t come from outside of that taxi (aka proper ventilation) but from inside. After over a year here and some very sticky situations, I feel empowered to say that the Basotho have a pathological complex which forces them to wear way too many layers of clothing and refuse to allow a simple window to be open even as much as a crack. Poor sweating babies are swathed in layer after layer of clothing on warm days, and their mothers complain if a nearby window is open the least bit. Don’t listen to them. “Kea kula” is how you say “I am sick,” and just stick with that.

Last week I was traveling on a bus through the pouring rain to a place called Semonkong, and condensation was literally running down the walls and forming precariously hanging droplets on the ceiling. Of course my window didn’t open, and my girlfriend and I were sitting beside two men who were completely obliterated and blasting traditional music on their very own 80s-style boom box. (note: I can’t stress this enough: not all Basotho are alcoholics!) Another volunteer, an exceptionally hard-working person who just extended her contract in order to stay in-country for a third year, was exposed to TB some months ago and has since been undergoing a lengthy regimen of special medicine. Coincidence?

Finally, many of the taxis here are old and poorly maintained. Not only does a traveler have to deal with fumes emanating from jugs of gas and kerosene wafting around these mobile death-traps, but carbon-monoxide and other noxious exhaust fumes come choking in from the engines which drivers love to keep idling even when the taxis are nearly empty and show no sign of departing in the near future. Don’t be a hero. Open the window no matter what the people say.

To conclude, I thought it was pretty bad-ass when I arrived in Lesotho and found out that most volunteers hitchhike on a regular basis. Now I’m pretty sure that those of us who don’t hitchhike are the real intrepid ones.

Lesotho has two large public holidays: King Letsie III’s birthday and Moshoeshoe’s Day, a day commemorating the first real king of the Basotho who pacified both the Boers to the west and the Zulus to the east by giving away half of his people’s cattle. (Strangely to me, it seems Independence Day isn’t a big deal.)

This year Tebellong High School, the school where I work, took charge of hosting the entire March 12th celebration for the district of Qacha’s Nek. The festivities consisted of three parts: speeches made my government ministers helicoptered in from the capital, Maseru; a traditional dancing competition for primary and high school students; and the mass feeding of hundreds of spectators who braved public transportation and crossed the mighty Senqu River on a small row-boat in order to celebrate the nation’s forebearer.

Our preparation for the event began six-weeks prior when we started training five groups of kids to perform a particular traditional dance and song. At the expense of afternoon study, this happened everyday after school from 3:30-4:30 as long as we weren’t having track.

Last Monday the second phase of preparation kicked in: lessons were cancelled, and 219 students got to work scraping paint of the floors; cleaning the windows with chalk-water and newspapers; moving dozens of chairs; pruning; using branches to sweep the dirt in front of the school into very agreeable little patterns; sweeping, mopping, and polishing all of the floors in the classroom; and finally, using shovels to remove all of the vegetation from around the place where the speeches and dances would be held. All of this work could have happened very quickly, but the school didn’t have enough cleaning supplies to keep everyone busy. Most of the kids lingered about singing or kicking a home-made soccer ball while waiting for somebody to hand them a broom or a shovel, something which I thought was very nice. In a country with massive soil-erosion problems like Lesotho, I found it a little disturbing that the kids were removing all of the vegetation from a small field, but in the end I couldn’t really blame them; the people of my community are proud, and it was important to them that the grounds looked tidy for the government ministers—people you could liken to member of the presidential cabinet in the US.

So cleaning took place on Monday. There would be no school on that Tuesday, of course, because of Moshoeshoe’s Day. The coming Wednesday and Friday were only half-days, because that is just the way it is, and on Saturday 104 students would be traveling two hours away to the camptown in order to watch the district finals for track. (Our school had five students taking part.) Final exams would be taking place on the following Monday, and after a long quarter, I was very afraid that we shouldn’t be wasting so much time when the students needed to be reviewing—especially since students don’t study or do homework at home, a place where only housework or labor in the fields is done.

To make a long story short, at the tail-end of a long day of cleaning on Monday, all of the students were at the grounds clearing away all of the precious plant-life. It was 4:30 PM. Just then the skies opened up and chaos ensued. The students who had shovels dropped them, and 200 students stampeded 150 meters to their respective classrooms. Impeccably shining floors were smeared with mud. Watermarks were left on the windows. The toothsome patterns in the dirt in front of the school were blotted out. A whole day’s worth of work was destroyed, but the students were laughing and singing, and we teachers could only shrug. After arriving at school at 7AM, I left twelve hours later. The same thing happened the next day, and on Wednesday the students spent most of the morning cleaning up the mess instead of having lessons.

As I write this blog entry out long-hand, fifty form A, B, and C students are sitting around a small classroom apathetically writing one of their final exams. Some are cheating, and I’ll have to walk over to them and put my hand on their shoulder. Some won’t stop looking at me which either tells me that they are going to bomb or they have a cheat-sheet stashed nearby. The air is heavy with sighs and the sound of the female students popping paper in their mouths like chewing gum. (How do they do that?) One boy named Mafa is sitting on his bench as though he were riding a horse and looking at the people around him—a small act of defiance because he will probably fail this one. Several young ladies are not sitting like young ladies, but in a moment I’ll find my seat beside a student in the back of the room. I never know if it’s proper to make them aware of that sort of thing anyhow. The door is shut, but the room is well ventilated because all of the windows are broken. Our winter exams in June will be terribly cold, but the minute that the school fixes the windows, the students will find a way to break them again. We’ve fixed them before.

My name is Todd Ellick, and I just decided to start a blog.

I am a 24-year-old Peace Corps volunteer serving in the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. For seventeen months now I’ve been working as an English teacher in a remote village in the district of Qacha’s Nek located on the south-eastern side of the country. For security reasons I’m not allowed to say where I live on a blog (PC rules), but if ever you arrived in Qacha’s Nek and wanted to find me, just ask the nearest Mosotho where Ntate Todd lives. You can say: Lumela! Ke kopa ho kopana ho Ntate Todd. O Kae? Invariably the person will guide you to one of the Cuban doctors or white Clinton Foundation, GDZ, or Peace Corps people (since we all look similar to the Basotho), and that person will help you find me.

As I mentioned, I arrived here a little less than a year-and-a-half ago as part of a group of 24 other resource and secondary education volunteers. Tentacles of American foreign policy we may be, there is a gaping teacher shortage in this country because of the ravages of HIV/AIDS, and most of us are very proud of the jobs that we are doing. (I always feel the need to get that off my chest early.) Anyhow, after two months of tedious training including a six-week home-stay and 90-hours of Sesotho language instruction I arrived at my site starry-eyed and ready to save the world. Naturally I haven’t saved the world, but my presence in a small, tight-knit African community has been personally enriching as well as edifying to those people whom I serve. Hopefully during my remaining time in-country with my scant internet access I will be able to convey just that by means of this blog.

If I write this blog well and the least bit comprehensively you’ll get to read much about:

-my incredible students

-the tribulations of traversing point A to point B: public transportation

-Moshoeshoe, the founder of the Basotho nation and other historical/cultural tidbits

-Moshoeshoe’s Revenge: anecdotes involving the verb “scurry”

-some of the projects we’re doing

-interesting people, my family, co-workers

-anecdotes

-more anecdotes

Part of the reason why I’m starting this blog now (and not 17-months ago) is because some of the experiences I’ve enjoyed or suffered deserve to be not only remembered but memorialized. I was somewhat of a bitter, unhappy person during my first year of service, and I didn’t want to write negative things home. Now I’m much more comfortable in my role here. My negative moments have had time to breath, and I feel detached enough to write a proper blog. Time will tell, I suppose.

Khotso. Pula. Nala. (Peace. Rain. Prosperity)

Todd Ellick (aka. Khotso Nthako)