After months of delay we finally got our layer chickens. The gardens of the community center have also really started to grow. The chickens are going to provide eggs for the orphans and needy of the village, along with vegetables from the gardens. We wanted to have free-range chickens and demonstrate how you can raise chickens without building an expensive concrete building. We built chicken tractors instead, enclosed chicken runs that are portable. After the chickens have eaten all the grubs and weed seeds on one spot we move the tractor/run to another spot and the previous one is fertilized and ready to be planted. Although the tractors/runs are pretty simple, it’s taken many, many hours to build six, we still have one to go. We got layer chickens from South Africa. The chickens are a couple of months old and have lived in cages their whole lives. They had never seen sun or had the freedom of running around, and apparently don’t know what to do with it. One mme (woman/mother) from the support group that we work with joked that the chickens were like us Americans here, since after four days they are all still clustered in the shaded ends of the runs, apparently afraid of the sun, rain, and not being in a tight pack. We paid a neighbor with a covered pick-up truck to drive us to town to pick up the chickens. The chickens arrived four hours late on a huge semi-truck, packed into metal crates more densely than I would have thought possible. There were customers ahead of us that we were getting hundreds of birds and we sat and waited as they grabbed the birds two and five at a time by their feet and flung them into the backs of pick-ups, cages and boxes. It was a real site. When we finally got our fifty chickens and were back in village it was almost dark and we still had a giant hill to climb carrying all fifty disgruntled birds. (There are no drivable roads that go up to the center.) But quickly a group gathered to help us, and the chickens were surprisingly complacent about being carried, I didn’t get scratched at all. We didn’t have time to prepare and put them in the runs, so we put them in our office for the night. We had a real mess to clean up the next day, but with the village support group’s help we managed to get all the runs in place, with the birds inside, fed and watered. I was very encouraged to see how the group took charge of taking care of the birds, taking turns every day to climb the hill to feed and check on the chickens. If only the chickens were as cooperative and would start laying some eggs.

I stayed in my village over the holidays this year. I think it would have been hard for me to do last year, to be away from home, family and friends over Christmas. But I don’t feel alone any more, I’m surrounded by my host family and friends, and no longer notice many of the cultural differences that used to separate us. It’s very odd having Christmas in the middle of summer (which is the case in the southern hemisphere). It’s been hot and rainy, with the temperature well into the eighties. It might seem strange to miss snow, but I haven’t seen snow on the ground for more than a couple hours since 2010, the winter before I left the U.S. Christmas carols and other things that make it feel like the holiday-time aren’t very common out here.

The typical Christmas in my village involves weeks of cleaning, moving everything out of the house and cleaning it till it shines. I was told not to bother holding any classes or workshops in December because everyone would be too busy cleaning. For all of December. On the 25th most of the day is spent cooking a special meal, although none of the dishes are the same as what I would usually have for a Christmas (or Hanukkah) meal back in the U.S. It usually consists of rice, carrot slaw, beetroots and chicken. Like most holidays it is celebrated with drinking, which can make towns not as safe over the holidays, but in my village it is fine, though everyone does seem in especially good spirits. How safe I feel despite all of the drinking is a testament to how warmhearted and protective my village and friends are here. Presents aren’t very common, but all the children get a new outfit on Christmas day, which they immediately put on and walk around in groups to show off. I spent the morning handing out donated clothes to the orphans at the community center, very fun. I have to say I have never seen my village or the kids looking so good.

While I do miss home, especially on Christmas, I am happy that I got to experience the holiday time here. It certainly was less exciting and festive than my previous Christmases have been in the U.S. But just spending the day with my host family and friends here meant so much to them, maybe something is missing in all the Christmas hype back in the U.S. Here it seems to be all about just sitting with each other and sharing the time together, it doesn’t seem to matter that there aren’t all the presents, decorations or festivities. Not a white (or even red and green) Christmas, but a good one all the same.

This week we had an opening celebration for the community center. And the following are excerpts from my journal.

The opening was a big success! Even though four organizations that RSVP-ed didn’t show. Kick4life brought four coaches and had great activities, teaching about AIDS and healthy living through sports. Almost everyone got involved in the games and had a really great time. We had about 200 people of all different ages come to the opening. And we didn’t run out of popcorn or fruit, and the drink mix was a surprisingly big hit and seemed to make up for the fact that there wasn’t any meat.

Before the opening I worked an American work schedule, 8 – 5 everyday, organizing the library, painting, and cutting, sealing and building the chicken tractors with the villagers. The design seems pretty simple, who would have thought they would turn out to be so much work? And we only finished one of the seven chicken tractors we have planned.

My home-life is going really well, I’ve had many little fun moments with my host family lately, like jumping rope with my host mom and sister and reading Where’s Waldo with my brother. Those every day little moments add up to so much. Also ausi Lebohang is back [in the village] and I spent a lovely afternoon with her, chatting and eating papa and meroho. She’s back on holiday from University, and is probably one of the few friends here that fully understands me and my American life. It’s great to have her back.

I just finished Daniel Deronda, my 57th book in Peace Corps, I’m not sure I’ll make it to 100 if I always pick such long books. And I’ve started running every morning again, now that both [my dog] Makoenya and I are back to being healthy. Although since it’s really hard to eat wholesomely here, I don’t consider myself as being really that healthy, but running at this altitude must help. And people have gotten used to my running and no longer stare in awe as I run past without an emergency or any particular destination.

The closer it gets for me to leave, less than seven months now, the less eager I am to go home. As different as it is, this has become my home. My life out here might be harder and certainly can be lonelier, but it has more purpose, more meaning, and more hard-earned joy. For some reason since happiness comes easier (at least for me) in the U.S., it seems less meaningful. But no matter where I am I know I can be happy. I’ll probably always miss or be nostalgic about some other time or place, but if I can focus on present joys and little fun moments, I know I can always be happy, not matter where I am.

I recently got some pretty severe blisters on both feet. And while not a serious injury, the blisters were bad enough that I couldn’t really walk, and was reduced to hobbling around painfully. Through my “injuries” I got to see a side of my village that was really beautiful. Word that I was “sick” (the Sesotho word kula applies for skin injuries as well as normal sicknesses) got around the village remarkably fast, everyone I passed asked how I was doing and if my feet were better or cured. It was heartwarming to have so many people concerned about my well-being. The village support group is a group of women in the village that assists orphans, elderly and sick people in the village, and who I have worked a lot with. Two member of the support group came by my house to check on me and see if there was anything they could do to help. My host mother brought me water so I wouldn’t have to carry buckets from the river. She also helped bandage my feet, while it may seem a bit strange and wasn’t really unnecessary, it was truly nice to feel so cared for. It made me feel like a real part of the community, being included in their system of caring for each other.

Since it’s only a week away from the opening of the community center, I had too much work to take time off for my feet to recover. For the first couple of days I couldn’t really walk, so I asked around to borrow a donkey. Every other family in the village has a donkey or two to carry grain to the local mill. Horses cost too much for me to rent as a Peace Corps volunteer, and if they aren’t trained well can be very difficult to ride. Falling of a donkey on the other hand is more comical than painful. I don’t think the guys I borrowed the donkey from trusted that I could stay on, on my own. And again, while unnecessary, it was very nice for them to escort me in case I should tip over and tumble off my little donkey. Admittedly, it’s not easy to ride without a saddle or reins (you steer a donkey by hitting it on either side of its neck with a stick). I’m teaching beginning English weekly at the community center, so more people try and greet me in English now, and called out to me “donkey transport!” It’s technically correct, but I didn’t really know how to respond, so I usually said something like “yes, I got a nice fat one today.”

After a week and a half, I am better enough that I can shuffle to work without needing a donkey. But the experience has allowed me to see how with such little resources the people of my village take care of each other. There may not be western medicine available to treat all their aliments, but there definitely will be a team of people there to help in any way they can and probably with some local remedy.

Living in Lesotho, in my village, has really changed me, which was something that seemed very scary when I first signed up. I don’t think I have necessarily become a “better person.” I’ve become very un-politically correct, am no longer horrified by corporeal punishment at the schools, nor am I necessarily a nicer person. If I see a man eagerly coming over to talk to me, my first response is to ignore him, then to be rude to get him to leave me alone. I’ve just had way too many experiences where I am treated like an object that someone wants, or as someone who has money to give away. I’ve also seen too many projects, great ideas not take shape because no one bothered to show up. I’m afraid I’m becoming cynical. And I am ashamed to admit: I have littered. Having said all that, I do truly love the people here, there is a friendliness and openness that I haven’t seen anywhere else. And they have helped change my perspective, for the better, about many things.

I think most of us that come here in Peace Corps do it just as much for personal adventure as to altruistically help a community. I hope I have helped (and will continue to help) my community, but it is nothing compared with what I’ve gotten from being a part of them. And that is the biggest change I’ve seen in myself – seeing the “reality” of how people live here and what really matters, it’s the people. Not the work, education or accomplishments, but the relationships you have with people and a real community that supports and entertains each other.

Peace Corps has given me a lot of time for self-reflection, I know myself better than I had ever hoped, or even really wanted to. I have a self-reproach/guilt that drives me, that I was only ever faintly aware of before. I have had such a happy, golden childhood and life, I’ve faced so little hardship and pain that it doesn’t really seem fair. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve the amazing family and friends that I was born into and the advantages I grew up with. While I am, in general, very happy, I have a subconscious drive to atone or make myself worthy of it all, which has unwittingly motivated me in so many of my decisions. Joining Peace Corps is one of the most obvious ones, but it hasn’t assuaged the guilt, in fact it has made me think that I am even luckier than I did before. I’ve struggled some while being here, it certainly hasn’t always been “golden”, but if anything it has motivated me more. I don’t think I can go back to what I was doing a couple of years ago.

I still have 8 more months left.

I have been recording the stories of a few of the oldest people in my village. It has been fascinating, especially the stories of one ntate moholo, who could not remember his age. He vividly recalled political fights, where he and other men of the village had to hide in the surrounding mountains. There were times when he was afraid to sleep. When he returned to the village, the women has stories of being threatened and forced to drink twenty liters of water as punishment. He said this went on for a whole year, though he can’t recall which year or even how old he was. The fighting ended when Basotho soldiers came to protect them and ended the political fights. Maybe he was 60, but no his wife was alive, maybe he was 30. He estimated that he’s in his 90s now (but claimed to be born in 1988…)

He talked about woven baskets, clay pots and animal skins that his family used to make and use, that have almost all disappeared now. Replaced by plastic buckets and cotton t-shirts.

He talked about times of fighting and peace. Although we are currently in a time of peace, he preferred some of the old times. Now he doesn’t have cows for plowing fields. He still has fields but no one helps him hoe them by hand. In those good times he live4d in Nqobelle, on the steep mountains beyond my village. The chief came and moved them, the dozen families that lived in that small village because it was land designated only for cattle. He remembered being forced to move as a very sad time, and spoke about it with a husky voice. They had to leave their houses and build new ones, gathering all the thatch grasses, trees and mud for them. He remembers his old village as where life was good and noy hard. The cattle could graze next to the house. Now when the river is full he can no longer get to the mountains to graze his cattle (maybe he meant his relatives cattle).

Part of the reason I am doing these interviews is to see how life has changed with the recent developments in my village. He said getting electricity did not change his life, he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have money to pay for it, and he likes candles better anyway. He didn’t think the village had grown, he claimed it used to have more people, a lot have died. He thought the mill in the next village over was an improvement. Women used to grind maize on a large stone, using a smaller stone, and would take the whole morning. And if you wanted to have a celebration you would invite many bo-‘me (women) over to grind all of the maize meal, laid out on cow skins. He remembered mornings when his mother would grind maize meal then make papa. He would roll five balls of papa and take them with him out in the mountains to look after the cattle for the day with the other herd boys. None of them went to school.

They wore animal skins when he was young. The men wore cow skins and the women wore sheep skins. And shoes were made from the skin on face of the cow. He demonstrated how he wore the animal skins—wrapped around his middle and covering his upper thighs. Though he had nostalgia for the old traditional skin clothes, I noticed that he didn’t have any. He wore an old sweater and pants, and shoes with holes in the toes.

When I asked him about the new paved road, he told me about a time before there was even a dirt road. The people had to walk to Ha Khabo, 17km away to get to a dirt road that eventually led to town. People in the village would wake up at 2am to start the walk, or ride on a donkey if they could borrow one. If you couldn’t get to town and back in a day, you would stay in the thatched cattle posts overnight (normally built and used by herd boys). Having a donkey meant you were rich in the village. Even though the paved road now makes the trip to town only take an hour and a half, he rarely takes it. It costs money and there are small shops in the village now.

I was surprised by a lot of what he said, development did not seem to have touched his life as much as I had thought. He still lived in a couple of mud-thatched rondovels with his one remaining son. The modern concrete houses and electric radios sprouting up around him were bought by the younger families. He is one of the last of his generation, and in this rapidly developing village, it seems that some of the history, the stories and traditions may go with him.

Growing up in a liberal college town in the U.S., I never faced much discrimination based on my gender, at least that I perceived as affecting my life. Coming to live in a developing country, where women only gained the right to own land several years ago, I was in for a bit of a shock. In my life skills classes I teach a couple of sessions on gender, and some of the responses I have gotten have alarmed me and my liberal American upbringing. According to some of my students a woman’s place is in the home, raising children and obeying the man, the “head of the household.” And if she isn’t being a good wife (such as spending all day doing chores and doing anything the man wants) a few thought it was acceptable for him to beat her – “if you don’t beat your wife it means you don’t care, which is worse.” This was a pretty heated debate, surprisingly with boys and girls on both sides. Trying to introduce gender equality, I told my class that I had gone to school in the U.S. to learn how to design buildings, so could I help build one of the traditional houses here? There was no debate on this, it was unanimously no. That was work only for men, I could smear the mud on the finished hut. I’m not used to being forbidden from doing something because I’m a girl, and the list of things is pretty long here. Also the fact that I’m 24 and not married or have any children is looked at as a bit incredible here, and I don’t think they believe me half the time. I must have some children squirreled away somewhere.

The chauvinism can be seen in too many conversations I have with men here. Below is a typical conversation I have almost every time I leave my village, and which sadly, varies very little (I have not put my side of the conversation in since it does not seem to matter what I say, and it reflects how I’m treated as an object rather than a talking, thinking, equal human being.) :

-What is your name?

-Ah! Limpho, a Sesotho name! Where are you from?

-You stay in a village? No, really?

-Where are you originally from?

-America! I have a question I want to ask you.

-How can I go to America? How much does it cost to go to America?

-Ah, Limpho, that is too much! What can I do?

-How can I visit you?

-No I must visit you, I love you too much.

- Are you married?

-Ah, I am the one!

-Why not Limpho?

-No, but why? Why will you not marry me?

-Ah, I do know you, you are ausi Limpho from Tsehlanyane.

-What is your phone number?

-But how will I contact you? How can I come and visit you?

-Ah Limpho! Come on, I must have your number.

-Ah Limpho, come on. Fine, goodbye.

I once was proposed to by someone resting, hidden behind some bushes. It seemed as if the bushes were offering me its surrounding cattle to marry it and couldn’t understand why I said no.

While I have several friends that are men that treat me as an equal, with respect, it is not typical. But I have never felt myself in danger of any physical harm. While it can be a nuisance, these interactions are harmless. I guess I should consider myself lucky, but it’s hard to feel that way while I talking to some of these men. Maybe I’ve given some something to think about, a woman who refuses them always seems to baffle them. But with tv and radio programs, I have a feeling that times are a changing.

We are only a month away from opening the Ha Mali Community Center! The idea for its creation came from hearing all the different problems facing the families in my village when I went door-to-door for my household survey. My work at the schools didn’t seem to touch many of the problems the people in my village complained of: not having easy access to a clinic, not having jobs or training for them, the number of orphans living with elderly grandparent and sanitation issues. What seemed to be needed was a center for outreach and skills training within the village. World Vision recently built a pre-school, the only communally owned building in my village, and one that fit the outreach/ community center scheme perfectly. Maliba Lodge’s Community Development Trust was equally enthusiastic about the idea and agreed to help with the funding and applied for another Peace Corps volunteer to help make it a reality. The progress started pretty slowly. It was winter, not the right time to start gardens or to motivate people within the community. As spring arrived, so did our new volunteer, Maggie, who has extensive experience with eco-tourism and project management, and the project quickly got underway. As of this week, we have started 9 small garden plots, with 18 of the 30 orphans in the village. Chickens, and chicken tractors, are planned to arrive next month to provide eggs and protein for the orphans. Chicken tractors are a type of free-range chicken run, placed directly on top of the plots to fertilize them as well as removing grubs and weeds before they are planted. It seems pretty fun, we have a chicken tractor building session planned for the village next month, using locally found materials. There have definitely been set backs. The recent number of funerals in my village, five in the past month, reveal the real need for clinic outreach and HIV workshops. But culturally you cannot dig or touch soil when someone is being buried, which has been every weekend this month. The more funerals there are the more eager we are to get our program going, but the slower the progress actually is. However, we have been making progress. The building is starting to take shape after several repairs and coats of paint. Soon it should be ready to host after-school literacy and business classes, as well as a monthly clinic outreach program. There is so much that the center could potentially do, it’s very exciting! Whatever the current issues the people within my village see themselves facing, we now have a place to hear them and hopefully address them, or better yet—give them the skills to address those problems themselves.

I have an hour till class. I put down my book, I grab my worn, patched bag, I head out.

Down the slope, passing dry grass and old corn stalks, my shoes turning a brown to match the dirt.

I pass a baby goat, chewing sideways, showing its small pink tongue.

The wind blows at my skirt and I pass small children calling me. Where am I going, where is the candy, my name over, and over.

At the bottom, I stomp off some dust as I start down the paved road. My shoes crunching the uneven tarred gravel, dodging broken glass and manure scattered on the road.

Next I’m going up a steep hill, I hear the rush of white noise and turn to see a car, but it’s just the river, the wind carrying its sound up the hill.

Bo-‘me wearing blankets and carrying buckets, saying hello as they work to keep everything balanced on their heads.

I go on, passing mud and thatch houses, a glimpse of the fading past, then concrete and metal ones, attempts at an idea of modern life.

I pass some cows, rambling down the road, trailed by a tan, wrinkled calf and a whistling herdboy in oversized white boots.

I wave at a group of old women sitting, laying in the grass, soaking in the sun, wrapped in blankets to keep out the wind.

More houses, more children, more waving, greeting.

Going past mixtures of cows, goats, sheep, sometimes a dejected donkey with a load, all heading out to pastures in the mountains, followed by their herdboys and their tuneless songs.

I pass a couple of chickens pecking away at debris in the ditch beside a curve in the road. It’ll be full of water soon.

At the outskirts of the village, I pass the school, with children shouting, running, playing, in their matching black sweaters showing holes from wear.

Now it’s just me and the road, surrounded by mountains in varying shades of green, patched with narrow, dusty rows of corn stalks.

I can still hear distant cowbells and calls, but the wind blurs it and blows me along. I have to stop to fix my skirt again.

Around another curve, I step aside to let the speeding taxi-van pass me, its horn sliding into dissonance as it rushes past.

Up a gentle slope, my feet are tired from the pounding on the road, step after step after step.

Some bird, high above, soars past me, riding on warm wind pooling and rising between the mountains.

The last incline, the mast curve, and then I’m there. For a couple of hours of teaching, rephrasing, gesturing, drawing, trying to get them to understand.

Then it’s back out, down the road, everything in reverse but for the growing soreness in my feet and the number of children calling.

[An excerpt from my journal for these past couple weeks] Well I’ve been super busy, with 2-4 things to do every day for these past couple weeks. Today I had a meeting about the community center in the morning (and building a seed bed) and two lifeskills classes at different schools this afternoon. The community center is really coming along. We’ve dug beds for 10 plots, 19 out of the 30 orphans showed up last Saturday and worked so hard, digging the stiff, weedy soil. It just looks like mounds of dirt, but I’m proud of the kids. I wonder what motivates them. It’s nice to think they’re invested in this project, growing food. We’re planning on planting the seeds this Saturday. The cabbage seeds are already in the seed bed. Regular watering is going to be a challenge. And we’ll see it the schedule to fix up the building this week actually holds. Next week we’re getting the gardening tools. It will be nice not having to borrow and carry them around (my shoulders are soar from carrying all those spades yesterday). It’s warming up, I can sleep in normal pajamas and a single sleeping bag again. The peach trees are blossoming. It’s nice, still cool and the muddy rains haven’t started yet, I’m not looking forward to that. A ‘mme [woman] that is somehow related to my family is staying here for a month with her tiny newborn baby. [It’s a Basotho custom for a woman to go home to her mother’s house for a month to give birth and recover.] It’s a nice custom. And he is so cute and tiny, and hardly ever cries. I’ve been so busy, my garden has been on hold, but hopefully I’ll finish the last of the stick fence this weekend and plant the seeds next weekend (it’s reconnect and all-vol next week!). I’ll be staying at Lauren’s on Sunday night, and we’re going to watch a movie, make mimosas and shepard’s pie, yum! Life is really good. I feel settled, at home. It’ll be so weird leaving. These chapters of my life seem so disconnected, they don’t blend together like normal life changes. Coming here (and leaving) is such a drastic, abrupt change. My life here is so completely, utterly different. Different in every way I can think of, from how I brush my teeth and get a drink of water to how I get from place to place and what I consider a work. I really wish I didn’t have to choose one or the other, here or there. Makoenya [my dog] is lying beside me, stretching from her nap on the rug, it’s already too hot out in the sun. And at least she’s away from that pig. They fight all the time, usually over food, and then sleep cuddled up together on my doormat outside (giving Makoenya his fleas, I pulled six off her today), It’s so strange to raise a pig as part of your household for six months and then eat it. We have so much distance from our food in the US, although they certainly don’t cuddle with it before they eat it. Other volunteers refer to my village area as the Lesotho version of the American Appalachia. We eat pet cats (and mice) out here, skin them and then wear cat-fur hats. For some reason I’m proud of it, that we’re considered real earthy people. Though I don’t think I myself am integrated enough to eat the pet cat (but I’m looking forward to that pig). But I like to think of myself as part of a community that really knows what it means to get by, to survive.

The children are the best part of my life in the village. Even though many of them have very little, they have such a joy of life. Their toys are similar to what my grandparents played with: rolling tires with sticks, jacks (but with rocks), hopscotch, and ball. No tv, no board games and definitely no video or computer games. They often have to make their own toys, making little animals out of clay and playing house with old tin cans and milk containers. And yet they seem happier than many American children. I think part of it is because almost everyone here has the same things, the same handmade toys and clothes filled with holes. They don’t see all the many, many other toys, games and clothes that they don’t have, the ones that American children are constantly exposed to, designed to make them always want more. I myself feel this dissatisfaction in the US that I don’t feel here. It doesn’t matter if I have burn holes in my skirt (I sit too close to the fire in winter) or if I wear the same thing every day. There is a sense of wanting more here, but it seems more wistful dreaming and easily pushed out of mind. And there is even less of it in the children. You might want a tv, but you know you’re never going to get one, so why waste time pining for one?

Adults and children alike spend all day outside, chatting, doing laundry in the river, cooking on the outside fires, gardening, etc. People really only go inside at night and when it’s raining. And it’s the same with the children, playing all day outside. The kids here have a freedom to roam, to go anywhere. Parents usually don’t know where their kids are, but there isn’t much worry, they’ll come if you shout their names loud enough. I think this freedom, along with how much tougher life is here, make the children mature very fast. I don’t think there is a single whiny child in my village (certainly not the case with me growing up). A very common sight is to see a two year old baby tottling around alone without any pants on, holding a knife yelling the new word he’s learned “thipa!” (knife) (Boys especially don’t seem to wear pants regularly until at least five.)

Life is also hard for children. Boys are expected to spend all day herding animals in the mountains, often being expected to sacrifice going to school for it. And girls do so many chores, it seems endless. My host sister is 12, she takes care of me, helping me with laundry, washing my floor and getting water from the river. She does at least half the chores in her own house as well, after spending all day at school. One day I saw her playing with a doll and was shocked. She seems like a care-taker to me, it seemed so strange to see her acting like the young girl she actually is. But she also gets more joy out of a free apple or game of hopscotch than I think any American 12 year old could.

Children in the village can be the most frustrating part as well. A year later, they still like to come to my door and stare at me through the bars, all day long if I’d let them. They also are still constantly asking me for sweets or money. After a year of not giving out ANY candy or money, you’d think they’d give up hope, nope. The kids here have a hope for the future that they often sadly lose at the end of primary school when they see what their future most likely will really be. It’s a hard life here, but the children's continuous laughs and shouts give the village a contagious, joyous energy.

When I first for my Peace Corps assignment, all that I was told was that I’d be in Lesotho, working with communities on HIV/AIDS. I was very excited about living in Lesotho, but less so about working on the AIDS pandemic. It just seemed like such a monumental and depressing task. We were told that the official prevalence rate was 24% of people in Lesotho were infected with HIV. It sounds like a lot, but it is totally different to be in the middle of it, to see all the sickness and death. It’s everywhere and it effects everyone. It has decimated such a friendly, loving people. After being here for a year and seeing its terrible pervasive effects, I wouldn’t want to focus on anything else. Even though the average family has 3-4 children, there is still negative population growth, it’s that bad.

In my village there aren’t really any good figures on how many people are infected. There is a lot of stigma and prejudice about being HIV positive, so most people won’t talk about it (which is a big part of the problem). But in my village of 204 families, there are 85 children who have lost one parent, and 33 children who have lost both parents and are still in primary/elementary school.

Besides teaching about HIV in the schools, I am helping to start a community center in my village. One that focuses on orphans, a place where they can have a community garden and chicken coup, so they can have a regular source of healthy food. The center will also provide classes for out of school youth and a variety of workshops. The purpose of the center is to be a resource, to address whatever issues or needs the community thinks are the most important. HIV prevention and education are going to be a big part, and I really hope it helps. As one village woman said during my household survey, “the biggest problem in the village is that children keep dying.”

I left my freezing, sleepy village in Lesotho in the middle of winter for two weeks of summer back in the U.S. with friends and family. I can only imagine what I looked like in the airport when I arrived. After traveling for days and with dirt from the village still ground in, smiling and crying at everything. I hadn’t seen my family in a year. It doesn’t sound that long, but living in a rural village that did not have electricity, computers or TV, the pace was unbelievably slow. Since I was back where I had access to a car and a phone with almost unlimited minutes, I was able to fit practically an entire summer into two weeks. I went swimming, ice skating, to the movies, grilled burgers and had picnics. But the best part of being back in the U.S. was definitely being with my friends and family. I was really touched by how far some of my friends traveled and how they rearranged their schedules and lives for me. I was relieved to find that our relationships had not seemed to have changed. We had new stories and new jobs or schools, but we were still just us, excited to be catching up after so long.

I also met with my professors and did some research while I was in the U.S. I compiled all the data from my household survey and looked for correlations. I found some interesting relationships between gender and life satisfaction. Even though (or perhaps because of) all the domestic work that women do, the many hours a day they spend doing chores, they generally claimed to have a higher level of life satisfaction. My village very recently got electricity, and it will be interesting to see how it changes their lives. Electrification potentially may impact women more because of all the time intensive chores that would change. And possibly, women will not spend as many hours together socializing during chores and electricity may negatively impact their social ties in a way that it doesn’t for men. It will be interesting to actually see the relationship and changes between gender equity and development in my village.

After being gone for a year, several things about the U.S. surprised me. How green and leafy everything was. Also how dependent everyone seemed on their phones, which seem to be getting alarmingly smart. And how much of people’s lives were online now, updating everything on Facebook. It seemed to me that we in the U.S. are so wrapped up in our electronics and our digital lives that there must be so much that we are missing. The pace of life in the U.S. was alarming, it felt almost uncontrollably fast. I think that impression came from being away from it all for 13 months, but also that things have actually gotten faster. So many things are instantly available. I miss my friends and family immensely, I also often miss the access and ability to get things done so quickly, but I’m a little scared of returning to that accelerating pace and way of life. Luckily for me, I’m back in Lesotho for another entire year.

Last week I visited a sangoma, a traditional doctor, in the neighboring village. Traditional doctors get a lot of respect and have a lot of power in Basotho culture. Not just political power, but actual magical power. They can see the future and talk to ancient ancestors, even the recent dead. They can cure people of bad luck and curses, as well as place curses on people. It is generally thought that only the “evil” traditional doctors, called witches, will curse people. Some curses can even kill the victims, lightning strike is a very popular method I’ve been told. Luckily, there are no evil witches by my village, but there are several sangomas that do a good business in curing curses, illnesses (often caused by curses) and getting rid of bad spirits.I was excited to meet and have my fortune read by one of these powerful Basotho. The sangoma was a older woman, with a shaved head and wearing a lot of red and white beads. She was very friendly, and we chatted for a bit before she led me into her hut designated for her sangoma work. There were animal skins on the ground, which we sat on, and little bottles filled with medicines lining the walls. There must have been hundreds of them, all different sizes, the medicines were mostly roots and powders in old paint bottles (which took away from the mysteriousness). The sangoma lit a candle and chanted into a hollow pipe, then held it to her ear to hear the ancestors or spirits’ reply. She then shook some bones (with a domino and dice with them) and read my fortune from how they landed on the animal skin. I did not grow up believing in the magic of traditional doctors, so I remain skeptical, but I do not doubt her insight and great ability to understand people. Some of what she told me I am supposed to keep a secret, but she did make one prediction that I especially liked: my grandfather that died long ago is looking after me and keeping me safe. She also warned me that a small dark woman (which describes just about every other person here) is jealous of me and sent a Tokolose (a cheeky spirit, often in the shape of a tiny bearded man, that is always up to mischief) to sneak into my house at night and bewitch me. And if I returned for another visit (and paid more money) she could remove the Tokolose and give me a protective charm against this woman. After the fortune reading there was a ceremony to commemorate the four months of mourning one sangoma finished after the death of her daughter. All the family members got their heads shaved and all their clothes washed and one of their largest goats was slaughtered. The goat’s neck was slit and the blood was poured into a hole dug in the middle of the yard. All the sangomas in the area gathered together to sing and dance. It was a traditional dance from Swaziland, and very different from what I’ve seen here in Lesotho. The dance involved a lot of quick steps and feet movement accompanied by many people playing the drums and singing.It was a very interesting experience, the traditional clothes and dancing were beautiful, and the fortune reading gave me goose bumps, but I don’t think I’ll be back for that charm, I think my dog can take care of any Tokolose.

ONE YEAR. I have now been in Lesotho, the Mountain Kingdom, for an entire year. It feels brief and incredibly long at the same time. And it’s only half over! I now have seen all of Lesotho’s seasons – one of the few countries in Africa that has four distinct seasons. To get a better taste of what my life has been like throughout these seasons, I’ve written a brief description of each season (which is the opposite of those back in the U.S.) : Spring – It’s finally warming up and I can take off the extra layer of socks and long underwear. Everything is super dusty and people talk about rain coming to start the seeds growing and settle the dust a bit. There are baby animals everywhere, little goat kids and piglets at the house down the hill. The peach trees start to blossom and cover all the hills in pink (though the peaches won’t be ready for four more months) Summer – The rains finally come, and it rains almost every day for several months. Rain turns everything green, grasses grow where there were just dirt fields and slopes, more grass than the animals can graze. The rain also means crazy lightning storms with hail pretty regularly. And my least favorite part – the mud. It makes me wonder why I ever wished for rain to settle the dust. Mud is much worse, it becomes very difficult to stay clean for more than an hour, and I am continually slipping down my muddy slope to the road. I remember waking up one night to the sound of a full river and a newly formed waterfall, just after the first rains of summer had begun. Fall – Everything is in bloom, there are clematis flowers everywhere and ripe maize (which means roasted maize, as much as I can eat!). The rains finally stop, or at least become much less frequent, and things begin to dry up. I have to go to the river again to get my water because there isn’t rain to fill the barrel behind my house. I spend at least an hour everyday pulling thistles and burs off my dog or myself, they’re everywhere. There is a chill in the air that feels nice after the summer heat, and an early frost that kills off my promising tomato plants. Winter – You can almost tell the exact day winter begins, the sky is cloudless and the air has a bite to it. People sit (and nap) out in the sun during the day, soaking up the warmth. At night I wear long underwear, a sweatshirt, two pairs of wool socks, and am still cold underneath my sleeping bag and two blankets. It’s not Michigan cold, it only snows occasionally here, but without heated buildings it’s a bitter cold that gets into your bones. The days are also shorter, and I’m sequestered in my house for three more hours of darkness every day. But this winter, in July, it also means a trip home to the U.S. where it’s summer, with swimming in Lake Michigan and picnics in grassy parks!

There are certain signs and oddities that remind me I’m in Lesotho, and make America seem like a distant dream-like world. Here are just a few:

-Towels are actually very nice skirts to wear around the village, -Calamine lotion is used as a face-mask and sunblock in one. -It takes over an hour to get a plate in the “fast food” hut. -Why carry a small Tupperware container when you can carry it on your head? Suitcases too. -A woman wearing gum boots is laughable, but fuzzy toe socks with flip-flops is very nice. -KFC is fine dining, people will do almost anything for a piece of that special recipe chicken. -A mouse, donkey, chicken intestine – if it’s meat my family will roast it up and eat it. -MSG is a delicious spice, sprinkled on the top of any dish. -Previous homework is actually free toilet paper, math seems to be the most popular in my family. -Dogs are used for protection and definitely are not your best friend. Cows perhaps. While these things may appear strange and often comical to me, I am sure that there is a much longer list the Basotho in my village could write about me. And yet, regardless of my oddities or accidental faux-pas, I am constantly greeted, accepted and loved by these remarkably friendly people.

It’s taken 40-some hours and over eight weeks, but I have now finished surveying all 210 households in my village. In the survey I go door to door, visiting and talking with every family in the village. I ask twenty questions – about what animals they have, if they have a bank account, what fuels they use, what their problems are, etc., etc. I’m doing Peace Corps as part of my master’s research in international development planning, and hopefully writing a draft of my thesis while I’m here. Then after my two years in Lesotho, going back to Cornell to finish my masters.

I can be a pretty shy person, and probably would not have taken the initiative to go door to door and talk with all the families in my village if it hadn’t been necessary for my research. But it was probably the best, most eye-opening thing I’ve done in Peace Corps. I talked with widowed HIV positive mothers, with women who were abused by drunken husbands, with a polygamous man whose wives lived right next to each other, and with many excited children yelling “good morn” no matter what time of the day it was. I have certainly learned all the names for animals in Sesotho really well. I have yet to compile the data, but some basic trends I noticed are:

Both the poorest and richest households said they were unsatisfied with their lives. The poorest because of lack of food or sicknesses, and the richest because there was always something more they wanted – a bigger house, a tv, a car, etc. It was those in the middle that claimed to be the happiest, especially those who were more religious.

Basically everyone in my village cooks and heats with wood fires, wood from the endangered cheche trees that grow around the park.

The only time men were recorded as contributing to getting the wood was when I talked with a man and a woman was not present (which I don’t think is a coincidence).

Families that stated that they felt unsafe tended to be ones where there wasn’t a man in the household.

And the only people who confided in me that they were HIV positive were older women, almost all widows. The statistics say that the actual rate of HIV positive people in my village is closer to 24%, I’m not sure whether people do not know their status or just didn’t feel comfortable telling me. But there are definitely a lot more HIV positive people in my village than I have recorded. The number of orphans and widows provide proof.

One of the saddest moments was when I was talking with a family with a little girl around 4 years old who had legions on her face, a sign of full-blown AIDS, and I wondered if her mother even knew. There were some sad moments, many rather boring ones, and some really fun ones that involved dancing, singing or food (or if I got really lucky, all three!).

My survey was intended to see what the cultural and social impacts are from getting electricity. I predict that it will negatively affect the social ties that are so important in my village. This also means that I’m going to be doing another survey a year from now, after we get our electricity officially turned on. I learned so much more, less quantifiable aspects of people’s lives which I didn’t anticipate when I started out eight weeks ago. It has definitely been one of my best experiences in Lesotho.

I’ve had some people ask about the projects that I’m working on here in Lesotho. It’s a bit difficult to explain since I'm involved in many things, so I’ve attached below the summary I submitted to Peace Corps about the work that I’d done by February. It has changed a bit, but hopefully this makes things a bit more clear. I am working to incorporate the benefits of Maliba Lodge into the larger community. I, with another PCV, linked GRO local artisans to the lodge, where they are now selling their jewelry very successfully. I also helped establish an internship program with local schools and the local agricultural training center, where the ag students get valuable experience working on projects and small ag businesses, while the schools get ag experts to help them with their projects. I helped set up 5 agricultural projects at local schools, funded by Maliba Community Trust. The projects combine small business and environmental teachings into the schools' gardens. I also teach lifeskills at 4 local schools, one to two times a week each. Lifeskills cover topics of health, HIV/AIDS and gender issues. I also lead bi-weekly teacher workshops on lifeskills, classroom management, lesson planning, etc. I am currently working on an application for the Maliba Community Trust, so that the schools and the broader local community can apply for aid, get what they request and need, and make maintenance of previous donations part of the process. Hopefully the recipients will take more ownership in what they receive and maintain it. I am also about to begin research for my master’s thesis, conducting door-to-door household surveys.

For the past month I have been living on a dollar a day, which is below the international poverty line. A friend and I decided we wanted to see what it was like to live like most of the world who live in poverty, or as close to it as we can get. I calculated the cost of all the food, candles, propane, everything, even soap. The first week was by far the hardest—I craved sweet things, and was hungry all the time. I noticed a trend with my mood according to if I was hungry or full. When I was hungry it was hard to think about other things. As part of our experiment, Adam and I agreed that we could not ask for free food. But I never turned down any food that someone offered me! It didn’t matter what it was or if I was hungry, if someone offered food, I ate it. I lived almost entirely on lesheleshele (sorghum porridge) and roasted maize for the first week. After twelve days Adam dropped out, he said it making him really tired and not able to concentrate at work. His quitting made me less motivated, but I stuck with it. Although I no longer counted transport costs if it was for work purposes, I didn’t want it to affect my work. I also took two days off for Peace Corps get-togethers.

By the second week I was getting jealous of my host family’s food. A definite change from before, I did not really like papa, which is the staple food. Papa is bland, has almost no flavor and no nutritional value. But my perception of food changed, taste and nutrition no longer were my main concerns, but how filling and cheap a food was, and papa is both. I started eating the same foods, cooked the same way, as basically everyone in my village. By the end of the month, I thought that I could keep doing this, no problem, if I wasn’t worried about nutrition and getting so little protein (and could include chocolate!).

In the end I averaged how much I spent per day, and I came in under a dollar, just 84 cents a day. Though I don’t pretend that I truly know what it is like to live on the poverty line, I was just testing myself, I still had the option to stop and it was only a month. But afterwards I did find myself really missing the traditional foods, the papa and meroho (chopped and cooked cabbage), foods I didn’t really like before. Eating together with my neighbors, and sharing their food, creates a kind of closeness or bond that’s hard to describe. But I feel much closer to my host family and neighbors, sharing food with them and understanding their lives a little better.

I recently got back from a Tanzanian safari with my parents. My parents very rarely travel outside of North America, so coming to Africa was a big leap. The trip was also a big deal for me , although for other reasons. It meant going on an airplane – I cannot really express how huge the contrast is between my rural village and an airport –everything is so well built, so seamless, so busy, so clean, so removed from the dirt beneath it, it was a bit overwhelming.

The goal of most of the people in our safari group was to see “the big five” or as many African animals as possible. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I was just as thrilled with the all-you-can-eat buffets and hot showers. But we did see more animals that I had ever expected. And we met some really wonderful people in our group. We went to Lake Manyara, the Serengetti and Ngorongoro Crater, and saw elephants crossing the road right behind us, cheetahs eating a zebra, a lion even brushed up against our jeep. And we saw the great migration—wildebeests and zebras stretching as far as you can see (with binoculars), the vastness was incredible. But I think my favorite “siting” or moment was when a flock of wild lovebirds flew over our jeep on the way to Ngorongoro Crater. I’d only seen lovebirds in pet store cages before, and thought of them as purely domestic. To see them flying freely in the wild, the flashes of green, yellow and red was breathtaking.

It did bother me a bit that we were able to get so close to all the animals because of their familiarity and comfort around people (or at least our jeeps). We were in some of the largest protected parks in Africa , but people were everywhere is seemed. Is there no where left where we haven’t made an impact? While it did bother me, it did not stop me from being as enthusiastic as anyone else in out jeep to see the next yet unseen animal.

We finished out vacation with a trip to Zanzibar. I love the old, winding streets of Stonetown, the capital city. It had beautiful Arabic architecture and a tropical, beachy feel. I went snorkeling and was fish I had only seen in aquariums. And had an incredible meal at a spics farm, with all local tropical fruits and fish (although my mom thinks she might have gotten a parasite from the water there…). Zanzibar felt magical. It also seemed much better off than Lesotho, the lodge close by me also felt magical when I stayed there with my parents, but it’s much harder to find places like that in Lesotho. The tourism industry is tiny compared to Zanzibar’s. Although the people of Lesotho, to me, seem much friendlier, or at least they have much better teeth and smile more. The trip was truly amazing, it helped re-energize me, and it was it was long enough that I was really ready to my site and my life here.

I have recently begun to see my village in a new light. Going on vacation, spending time with people who’ve never lived in a developing country (basically me nine months ago), made me realize how much Lesotho has changed me. I think Peace Corps changes everyone. Scott one of my friends back home, told me before I left that I could come back a different person, and the idea terrified me. Living in completely new place, with my surroundings changing drastically was not nearly as scary a thought as myself changing. But with one-third of my service done, I think it’s been very good for me. I’m not afraid of many things that I used to be, like spiders and poverty. I’m much more patient and stronger. Sometimes I worry that I’m becoming hard-hearted. People here live off the land and have very hard lives. They’ve become accustom to seeing people all around them die from AIDS. I have to let my students out early on Fridays because it’s funeral day. When I get upset with witnessing something cruel or tragic, it’s a comfort to know that I haven’t become numb to it. Hauling water up a hill and walking up to seven miles a day aren’t easy, but the physical hardships are minor compared to the mental ones, adjusting to life in an entirely different culture and language. As with any culture there are inspiring and frustrating aspects. And often I get caught up on the frustrating ones. Like my lack of privacy, even when I’m at home. A friend recently visited me and commented on how much everyone smiles here. I had stopped noticing. Almost everyone I meet smiles and greets me, and I had stopped noticing how wonderful it is. When I first got here, I was happy that the Basotho are such a clean people. Lately I had become annoyed that I’m expected to keep everything so clean, while nothing remains clean for long. I just can’t bring myself to mop the floor every day. I happily did when I first arrived, I guess I’ve just become dirtier, like the Peace Corps stereotype. Being in Lesotho has given me a new perspective. Many of the people here are happier than the average person back in the states. While they still often want material things that are beyond their reach, the culture is mostly based on community ties and socializing. When my parents visited in February, our car got stuck in the mud. Neighbors in that village, who I had never met before, took off their shoes, rolled up their pants and helped dig us out. (They don’t have toeing services in rural Lesotho – just neighbors). And when my roof needed rethatching before the rains started, a neighbor climbed on my roof and sewed new thatch on it for me. This social capital that makes up village life here, seems more valuable than any material capital we have back in the US. In a much more independently minded and materialistic America, I think we’ve lost something. It makes me nervous about going back home in a year and a half. I can now see why most volunteers have a hard time readjusting when they return home. That and I can’t seem to keep my shoes on in public places anymore.

My parents came to visit me in Lesotho a week ago. I tried to talk them into staying in my hut without electricity or running water with me, to see what my life was like. But when they heard I had bedbugs they decided the local five star lodge sounded a bit better. I go to the lodge for work twice a month, where I get internet access and to see my friends that work there. Even though I only go twice a month I have gotten close to many of the staff. It’s much easier to form close friendships when people can speak English and understand me. I am still learning Sesotho, but can’t have deep or meaningful conversations yet. My lodge days are always very happy days. But getting to be “a guest” while my parents were staying there was a real treat. I not only got to see my friends for four days straight, I also got to take long hot showers and eat maybe the most delicious food I’ve ever had. Maliba Lodge is only an hour walk from my village hut but the contrast between the two is very dramatic. Only five kilometers from my village and I had gotten completely away to a beautiful mountain sanctuary.

After eight months in Lesotho, having not left the tiny country except for a couple day trips to South Africa, I was more than ready for a vacation. Volunteers in Lesotho are in an unusual position of living in a developing country that is entirely surrounded by a developed country. And the contrast between Lesotho and South Africa can be pretty drastic. The Lesotho landscape is made up of small traditional thatched houses with small gardens and farming plots. There are animals, goats, cattle, chickens, wandering around the villages in search of green grass and grubs. Shortly after crossing the border to South Africa the landscape changes, it looks a lot more like America. There are large plantations with mechanized agriculture and concrete houses in rows in towns. In Lesotho small houses constantly dot the landscape. The areas I passed through in South Africa all had electricity, which is definitely not the case in Lesotho. But it also meant that the cooking fires and laundry lines drying clothes were missing. The public taxis were much newer, and with the stricter law enforcement, they were never over packed. We went to Durban, a large beach city. I was thrilled to eat out and take hot showers, two things I had really been missing in my village. There were beaches, a waterpark, shops, restaurants and bars, and for those four days I felt anonymous and America. We went to a huge mall, big even by American standards, and it was a bit overwhelming after living in a rural area for so long. I tried to imagine what it would be like for someone from my village to be in that mall. Most of them have never been in a mall of any kind, and it just felt worlds away. While it was a wonderful trip, and really great to get away, it did not feel like home, even though it felt much more American. My little village in Lesotho, while not always being an easy life has definitely become home.

I haven’t written in a while because schools are closed, so my work which had really started to get going, has mainly been put on hold until schools resume at the end of January. So most of my time now is taken up with gardening, reading and playing with neighbor kids, while it’s been a lot of fun, it’s not very interesting to write about. So I’ll talk about one of my stranger experiences that happened to me a couple of weeks after arriving to site.

The second Sunday after arriving in my village my host mom and her friend asked me to go to church with them. I thought it would be a great way to meet more of the community, so I agreed. I asked where it was and she pointed to the road beside an abandoned metal shack, which I took to meant that we would need to take a taxi to get there. It turns out that the metal shack, with one small boarded up window, was the church. My host mom and sister then got out capes (not cloak-like capes, but super-hero-style capes) and puffy chef hats with crosses on them, and put them on. It was pretty strange. My host mom said it was a “universalist” Christian church, which sounded pretty broad, probably with a wide scope of followers. But at the point when my host family put on their capes and puffy hats, I started to become skeptical.

When we entered the metal shack, the room was almost completely dark except for one candle in the middle of the dirt floor and many people standing along the walls singing and wearing the same capes and hats. It didn’t feel like any church I had ever been to. Once the singing started back up, someone from the crowd started running in circles around the candle, their cape flying behind them. They were joined by a couple of other people running around the candle. My experience just kept getting stranger and stranger.

For the two hours I was there almost everyone ran around the candle. The point seemed to be to get really dizzy and stumble back to your spot on the wall. A couple of times a person got so dizzy they fainted, which got the whole room really excited. The man that was wearing a special leopard cape and hat seemed to be in charge, and when someone fainted he would put his cape over their head and blow whistles in their ears until they were revived. One girl that was not revived by this was taken outside, while people continued to run in circles around the candle.

Sometimes they would splatter water around the candle. I believe this was symbolically asking for rain. And they once read from a book – I assume the Bible – in Sesotho. It was the only Christian tradition that I was familiar with that occurred while I was in the church. When I got too hot and tried from standing (and weirded out) I left with my host sister. The service, with everyone standing, singing and running around the candle lasted five hours. It felt much more like traditional African beliefs and religious practices, with a bit of Bible and Christianity thrown in. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, although it did not bring rain for another month and a half. I want to go back, but it has taken several months for me to recover from my initial culture/church-shock to really want to go back. In a country that has lost so many of its cultural traditions to modernization it was encouraging to see some still thriving.

Many of the problems that I have had living at site for the past six and a half months, seemed to happen again within the past week and a half. I got bed bugs again, but much worse, my legs look like I got come kind of pox. They should be easy enough to get rid of once it stops raining for long enough that I can take all my bedding outside. About a month after getting to site I had stuff go missing from my house, mainly cash and cookies, but I had a long talk in Sesotho about it with my host mother and it seemed like it had gotten resolved. But last week stuff started going missing again, fruit and cookies and my radio had been turned on. Nothing major (and I no longer keep cash in my room) but it still is a terrible feeling that someone is coming into my room and going through my things. And my host mother under the impression that we will soon be getting electricity (I’m very skeptical that it’ll be anytime soon) dug up a large part of my garden to put the electric pole. Hours and hours of work and all my little onion and carrot seedlings were destroyed. She seemed to think this was a necessary sacrifice for electricity, and was surprised that I was not excited at the prospect. All these issues are something that I am perfectly capable of dealing with, but when they come all at once it’s overwhelming. I did have a couple really good moments when I received Christmas packages from home along with a couple unexpected letters! And the upside to this difficult week is that I will soon be on vacation on the beaches of Durban for new years!

I’ve been surprisingly lucky that I’ve gone six months in rural Africa without so much as a cold. But a couple of weeks ago I caught a stomach virus that was going around the peace corps volunteers. I started throwing up and couldn’t stop. It was after dark, so there wasn’t any more transportation to the nearest town or hospital. I called the lodge and they came and picked me up and drove me to the hospital, but not before I had thrown up eleven times in two hours. I’ve had food poisoning and the stomach flu before, but this seemed worse. I am so lucky that I have a host organization like Maliba Lodge that was so easy to contact and helpful in getting me to the hospital. The hospital was in the camptown closest to my village, Butha-Buthe. Even though it was after hours nurses were there and they gave me a charcoal drink and a shot to stop the stomach pains (though there was no alcohol swab or bandaid with the shot). I felt a lot better almost instantly, but was too weak to leave. Throughout the night I kept asking for water, and the nurses told me there was none. Finally they turned on the tap to show me that it was dry and there was no running water. So I had no water (I did have an IV though) until another volunteer came and visited me the next day and brought me some. I also needed to go to the bathroom after 2 IVs , but they were all closed because of the lack of running water. I asked the nurse what I should do, I stayed for over 16 hours and really had to pee, she said she did not know. I eventually got a bed pan. I have to admit the lack of water was not the hospitals fault, but the idea that a hospital could lose their running water and nothing would be done about it for days shocked me. Besides that, it was actually pretty nice, there weren’t many people there at all (hospitals are expensive to stay in overnight) and the food was much better than what I’ve had in American hospitals. I probably got more attention than I would have in a hospital at home too. But I almost was made to stay for another night when the accounts office closed at 3pm. The staff wanted to keep me another night (and pay for it) because I could not settle my bill while the accounts office was closed. With the help of Lauren, the volunteer visiting me, we convinced them that I could leave a deposit and settle the account with Peace Corps the next day. While I never would want to go to the hospital here again, I was pleasantly surprised with my experience there, and I left a little weak, but cured.

I’ve now been in Lesotho for almost six months, and in my village for three and a half. It’s taken a while, but I finally feel at home. My work has developed, so that I have two tasks to do everyday. Being busy and productive has made a big difference on how content I feel. On an average day I’m woken up by my host family calling to each other and getting ready as early as 6am, but I don’t get up till 7. I then spend a little time cleaning and then an hour or two working in the garden. Usually I get dirty enough that I have to take a bucket bath. But since it’s hot it is a lot more pleasant than it was in the winter. I then read a bit and review my lesson plan for then day before walking for an hour or so to school. I teach lifeskills for one period and then meet with the agriculture group. Lately we’ve been planting, but before that we spent most meetings planning, writing needs assessments, and developing a seasonal calendar. I believe I am making a difference in my lifeskills classes, most of the kids had a very limited knowledge of HIV/AIDS. But in the agriculture clubs, I can actually see the difference, and see the plants grow, it has been very rewarding.

As I settle into a routine with work I’ve also become much better at filling my free time. Without electricity, tv and computers I used to spend a lot of time just sitting and looking at the mountains, which was pleasant but pretty boring. Now I’ve taken up knitting and have started a garden, which has been a lot of fun. I’m trying to grow greens that you can’t get in Lesotho, they don’t have uncooked salads here. I can’t wait to have a nice green salad! One of my favorite parts about my village are the children, they come and visit me almost everyday, I have gotten some colored pencils and now they sit outside my door and color, much nicer than just standing there and staring at me. And the rains have started, so everything is green. The peaches on the peach trees have started to ripen. And a waterfall that wasn’t there in the winter, started up a couple of weeks ago. I woke up to the sound of new waterfalls and a very full river, at first I thought my fan was one, then I realized I have no fan, and no electricity to run a fan. And it’s gotten hot here, my house is on a hillside and gets a nice breeze, but the walk to the schools is very sweaty. The weather here in summer is very dramatic, it hails on a weekly basis and I have twice seen lightening strike a nearby mountain and set it on fire.

While I still have my frustrating moments, I’m very happy here and feel settled. Two years still sounds like a long time, but not as frighteningly long as it did before. One of my frustrating moments happened two weeks ago when was trying to handle two six-week old puppies in my purse on a bus. They were being a handful and a woman who I’d never seen before came up to me and told me to give her my puppy. I said no, not unless she gave me one of her cattle. She was quiet for a while after that, then saw that I had two puppies, and said that I needed to give her one since I had two. My patience in Lesotho has been surprisingly good, a lot better than at home, I think it’s because I get so much sleep. But I ran out of patience at that moment and just ignored her. It’s a cultural difference, here you don’t say “please can you lend me,” you say “I’m asking for” or “give me,” I’m still getting used to it. I think politeness is a cultural subtlety that is very difficult to grasp. I probably have been impolite myself without realizing it.

Last week I got a radio! Its screen might not work and it only gets a few stations, but it has been wonderful. I spent a very pleasant evening last week sitting watching the sunset behind the mountains with my host sister listening to old American r&b.

I’ve been teaching and working at the schools for six weeks now, walking up to seven miles a day while rotating between the schools. Teaching has been going very well, but at first it was overwhelming. The first class I taught had over 120 students in it, the principal wanted grades 4 through 7 to attend the first class. I had not prepared for that many students and had to improvise my lesson. I talked to the principal after class and we agreed that I would just teach lifeskills to 6th and 7th grades, still close to 50 students, but much more manageable. The kids are very receptive and ask a lot of questions. The younger students have trouble with English, but luckily at the two primary schools at least one teacher attends my class and is able to translate (while at the same time learning how to teach lifeskills themselves). At the secondary school the teachers are much less involved, but the students are more advanced and have been really great. Lifeskills covers the topics of HIV/AIDS, self-empowerment, gender, reproductive health, etc. I often sound like a cliché after school special, overly simplifying everything so that the students can understand. One of my classes was on self-esteem, for the next week kids in my village would come up to me and say “I love myself!” I’m not sure if they understood, but it was nice to hear. I think the most progress I’ve made is with the anonymous question box. In it students admit to not understanding a concept from class or ask questions about AIDS. Some of the questions are really tough and heartbreaking. I got one this week where a girl said when she told her boyfriend/husband that she was HIV positive he beat her and asked what she should do. I feel like I am helping these kids, but there is a big difference between teaching them to know what they should do and actually having them do it.

I’ve had mixed results with my teachers’ workshops. Probably the most frustrating week I’ve had so far was after leading two teacher workshops where only half the teachers showed up (even though they were all on school grounds) and only one out of three or five paid any attention. These teachers are in the best position to help the students and it was upsetting to feel like they just didn’t care. But I had one amazing teachers’ workshop where all but one of the teachers showed up, not only did they pay attention they actually took notes and asked questions. This was at the school where the teachers seem to care the most, but ironically also beat the most. While I was explaining the lifeskills no-beating, positive reinforcement strategies the teachers asked if it would work in all of their classes as well. They are going to try not beating and using the lifeskills classroom management techniques. It might take a while to actually work, but it was really exciting to be a part of such a positive change.

It looks like it’s snowing again at Maliba Lodge, but its in the 80s F. Three are constant flurries of ash falling from a huge wildfire that burned on and off for the past week. It’s depressing to look at the mountains that were green and covered with trees are now charred and in some places still smoldering. It’s the end of the dry season, so a small fire quickly caught and spread until entire mountains were on fire. I was not at the lodge for the first couple of days, when the fires were the worst. The staff, with many people helping from my village, fought the fires without sleeping or resting for three days. It burned down three staff houses and got alarmingly close to the lodge. In some places the thatch roof caught fire, but was quickly put out. Some of the patios of the guest houses burned. It was very lucky that the lodge didn’t burn down. They say that the fires are out now, but there are still many spots on the mountains where smoke is still rising, a week after the fires first started. IT burned most of Maliba’s land and a lot of Tsehlanyane national park. It even spread to the mountain beside my village. I was told that the fire was too hard to reach up in the mountain to fight. I was scared and ready to evacuate, but none of the villagers seemed worried though.

The first news I had of the fire was when I was getting back from a grocery trip to the closest town. My host sister came running up to me and said “the buildings of Maliba burn!” I looked in the direction of Maliba Lodge, over 5km away and blocked by several mountains, but I could still see huge clouds of smoke and large flames on one of the further mountains. It was shocking and really sad. In some places the only green things left are the firebreaks that the fire easily leapt over. And in a national park where some of the plants are only found in these mountains, it is especially depressing. But nobody was hurt, and it could have been much, much worse. What we need is some rain, to finally and completely put the fire out, and to help start things regrowing and to turn the mountains green again.

My village has a kind of rhythm and sound that has begun to sound and feel like home. It is made up of cowbells, distant women singing, children shouting and crying, dogs barking, sheep bleating, metal pots clanking and sometimes an unusual birdsong. It might be because my village is on a steep hillside facing a mountain, but all the noises echo off the mountains and blur into a type of music. It’s always changing and makes the village feel alive. At dusk when everything is settling down it seems beautiful and peaceful. About half an hour after dark all the noises stop except for some insects. It is an eerie quiet and makes me miss the village sounds until half an hour before dawn when it all starts back up again, usually children right outside my door shouting my name, then I wish I could turn it back off.

After living in Lesotho for a couple months I have come to believe that the real difference between developed and developing countries is education. Solely based on the fact that we’ve had American educations, my fellow volunteers and I, after a few weeks of training by Peace Corps, are qualified to teach and lead workshops on business, nutrition, lifeskills, HIV/AIDS, sustainable farming, etc. and serve as mentors and counselors in Lesotho. All we need is some books. Not only do they lack resources, such as good textbooks here, there is also a lack of people who know how to use them as resources. While most of the teachers at my schools are working hard to educate the students, there is just a different attitude towards the education system. Most classes are merely copying things from the board, memorizing without understanding. And teachers often don’t come to class at all, and there are no substitutes. Students either study on their own or go home; it seems to be a weekly occurrence. One day last week only 2 of the 7 teachers where there. Beating students is a normal, everyday occurrence here. Besides being harmful for the students physically and mentally, it creates a horrible learning environment. There are several teachers that seem interested in learning alternatives classroom management techniques, which I’m really excited about, I’m going to lead a workshop on it soon. I’ve started teaching the teachers about lifeskills and HIV/AIDS. Its alarming the misconceptions that even some of the educated people here have about AIDS. Many thought that you couldn’t get AIDS id you were white, or that it is a problem in Lesotho but not in their village.

Education is a way out of poverty. But it’s nearly impossible to learn what you’re not taught. I believe that America has one of the best education systems in the world. Just imagine what these kids could do and would become if they received our educations. The education system is what makes America great. And the abundance of cold drinks. It’s become summer here and it is hot. I’ve started making cool tea, since there is no ice for ice tea. I think America might use more ice than any other country in the world. It might just be frozen water, but it is so good. Warm lemonade just isn’t the same.

A couple of weeks ago a Peace Corps volunteer was shot and killed in Lesotho. He and another volunteer were walking back to the Peace Corps training center from a close-of-service party at a hotel a few blocks away. They were mugged at gun point and Tom got shot. He died before he reached the hospital. While incidents like this happen in large cities around the world, it is made more tragic by the fact that Tom was a volunteer here to help the country. And Tom was one of the best of us. Few have become so loved and integrated into their communities here. The memorial service held for him here in Lesotho made it evident how loved and important he was to the Peace Corps volunteers and staff. The memorial service was very moving and healing. His friends and those close to him gave speeches and told many stories of Tom's remarkable achievements and some of his more mischievous adventures. It gave those of us that had arrived to Lesotho recently and did not know him well a vivid impression of the man he was and the man, the doctor, husband and father he should have been able to become. The intense emotion shown by those who had been close to him was proof to how fiercely loved he had been and how deeply and painfully he is being missed. His closest friends are home receiving counseling and being with family.

In Peace Corps you're thrown into a new world, where the language, customs and daily way of life are so different from what you've known. You cling to other volunteers. They become your support, your bit of home and sometimes your sanity. We really do become a family. The cruelly pointless and sudden manner of Tom's death blew a hole in our Peace Corps family that I doubt will ever fully heal. We are slowly and painfully returning to our sites and jobs, deemed safe by Peace Corps Washington. Hopefully carrying on helping Lesotho as tom would have. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones back home.

I've been in Lesotho for ninety days! At first moving to village after a pampered week at the lodge was tough. But adjusting to a new way of life I guess is never easy. I'm happy to be back in a village again, and couldn't have a more beautiful site. But no one in my village speaks english! I'm able to get across all my needs, but I need to learn a lot more Sesotho before I can have a meaningful conversation with any of my neighbors. I thought I had learned a lot of Sesotho in the two weeks that I've been here, but yesterday I realized I'm just getting more fluent in hand gestures.

I absolutely love my host mom, she's very understanding and helpful, and always smiling. She makes me smile even when I have no idea what she's saying. I think she's going to be one of my best friends out here. I like my host brother and sister too, but they don't understand personal space. In Lesotho mothers get renamed after their oldest son or sometimes daughter. So my host mom's name is 'me mampho, my host brother's name is Impho and mine is Limpho. All diffrerent variations on the word gift, we are a family full of gifts. My host sister's name is Matsiliso, and I have no idea what that means.

I'm slowling adapting to village life and its slow pace. I spent an entire day watchign a roof get rebuilt with some bo-'me. It was really interesting. Their traditional houses are so much better insulated and sustainable than the modern concrete ones, I realy hope they don't lose hat knowledge and tradition. I alos spent one day walkign to the shop and back and then mending some clothes. I've already started to dress like a Mosotho, flannel shirts with skirts. My host mom told me it looks very nice, I think I'll bring it back to the states. They often wear blankets and towels over pants, instead of skirts, and are always tryign to get me to put on my towel, but I haven't gone that far yet. I've also been having fun building things for my little hut, and making it feel like home.

I'm excited for next week when I actually start working! I've never been very good at not havign anything to do. Next week I start working at three of the closest schools, two are still an hours walk away. I'll be teaching lifeskills four times a week, leading a teachers workshope once a week (so they'll be able to teach lifeskills themselves once I've left) and an environment club twice a week. The club is supposed to teach environmental conservation and sustainable farming, its also so I can manage the tree and garden projects sponsored by the lodge at the schools. I hope to lead a monthly workshop for the lodge employees and their families also. I'll be doing consulting and workshops in my village too, but I need a translator to help me talk with the village chief before I can set that up. I'm excited to be busy, and hopefully productive.

I've been able to visit the closest volunteer about once a week (and speak english!) which has been amazing. Peace Corps purposefully places volunteers close to eachother for support, and I got really lucky with the married couple I'm close to. I can only come to the lodge every 14 days and have internet access, ad that is a little less than how long it takes to get mail here. I now have a PO Box (the address is posted on facebook), so pelase write me letters! They're so precious out here. I want to end with a happy picture - how I spend most mornings, sitting on my family's stoop reading in the sun and looking out at the mountains covered in peach blossoms (hopefully my brother won't come and sit right next to me, watching me read and ruining my happy little picture).

Leaving Mokhethoaneng was much sadder than I had anticipated, I've gotten really close to my host sisters. We had a village feast to celebrate our completing training and leaving the village that's been our homes for the past ten weeks. My host sisters never showed up, so I ran around trying to find them. Turns out they went to church instead. I would have liked to say goodbye, but it made it much easier to leave. After the feast we all attended a two day workshop with our counterparts to help establish our relationships and prepare work plans, etc. My counterpart never showed up, so the workshop was especially boring. I had already met my supervisor and was really impressed with him and his dedication to the lodge and helping the surrounding villages. However he was on vacation. Peace Corps had to drive me to my site, they were worried about me, but this is Lesotho, people just don't show up, so I wasn't too worried. I had already seen my site and knew I was going to be fine.

I'm staying at the Lodge for a couple of days while they finish my house and latrine. I'm getting a brand new latrine! The lodge and park are absolutely beautiful, I can't believe I'm going to live here, it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Staying at the lodge has been like an amazing vacation that I don't really feel like I deserve. Taking a hot shower and using a flush toilet made me feel like I was in a spa, I didn't appreciate showers enough before. I also get food from a gourmet kitchen. I spend most of my time in the kitchen chatting with staff. I can eat anything out of the fridge I want, it might be the best food I have ever eaten. I also went on a hike though the park yesterday, walking through the mountains was so serene and beautiful. Even though it's the dry season there were still waterfalls. Some parts were frozen though since its still winter and this is a colder part of the country. Hanging around the hotel has been amazing, but it feels very weird. After being in a village and part of a community it doesn't feel right to be in a luxury hotel that has everything, especially when the closest villages (where I will be living) have almost nothing. But I'm trying to appreciate all the amenities while I can. The best part of the lodge is the unlimited internet. I will come and check in with the lodge every ten days after I move to my real site, so I'll get regular internet!

I visited my site and host family earlier today. My little hut sits on a steep hill overlooking the mountains in the park and a river valley. It looks like something out of Jurassic Park. My hut is next to my host family's house, and has a thatched roof with no electricity or running water. I am supposed to have a water tap close to my house, but somehow that's gotten overlooked. The water comes from a river about a kilometer away. You literally dip a bucket in a river to get water. There are several very steep hills to get back up to my house from the river, so I'm going to try to pay some neighbor to get my water for me. My host family is great, I think I got really lucky. My host mother is one of the nicest people I've met in Lesotho. I have two host sisters, still no brothers. The older one was away, but the younger one was there, named Matsiliso. She's 12 and carried four buckets of water on her head up the hills to the house while I was there. The older daughter is named Impho, which is the singular version of my name, very confusing. My family doesn't speak English, so I had to really rely on my Sesotho for the first time. I'm much better than I thought and was able to get across all my points, although the grammar was probably all wrong. I had some trouble understanding them, they speak so fast. I can tell that I'm going to get very close to my new host family and probably never want to leave.

When I visited my new village, it was very similar to when I arrived in Mokhethoaneng. I was surrounded by kids, who followed me everywhere and wanted to play cards. I have played so so many hours of crazy-eights at my last home, that I decided just to watch. The girls all wanted to sit in my lap and play with my hair. I don't think they've ever touched a white person's hair before. One little boy kept calling me Lehooa, which means white person, and I kept correcting him telling him to call me by my name, but I think I'm always going to be Lehooa to him. Its hard to tell the girls from the boys here. They all have to shave their heads for school, and you can't always tell by their clothes. Girls often wear pants and boys often wear girls clothes. One little boy today had a groovy angels sequin shirt on. My host mother and neighbor were asking me what foods I like, and they brought me out a huge bowl of lesheleshele that I had said I liked. But this wasn't the sweet sorghum porridge that I was used to, it was the fermented, sour leshelshele. It tasted like barbecue sauce with vinegar in porridge, it was so gross. I tried to drink the whole bowl but couldn't and told them I was too full. I tried not to make faces while I was drinking it, but I think they could tell I didn't find it as limonate (delicious) as I said it was. I hungout and chatted for a couple of hours, talking about my family back home and if I had a husband or boyfriend, they seemed very skeptical when I said no. Everyone has a boyfriend, sometimes multiple ones. They were surprised that I didn't have children either, I am old, I should have a couple by now. After talking for a while, I walked back to the lodge, it took over an hour and was pretty steep. Peace Corps said they are going to either provide me with a horse or a bike since I'm not that close to the Lodge or the schools that I'll also be working with. I'm pushing for the horse. I have an unbelievable site, I can't have imagine anything more beautiful or that fits with my background and interests better, and I'm really excited to move into my hut and be part of a community again.

We found out our site assignments, where we will be going for the next two years last Friday. For the first time in Peace Corps Lesotho, we got to write essays stating our preferences on which sites we'd like to receive, which was really nice. I had a hard time deciding which sites to put as my top choices, there were so many that had a great job, or were in a great site, but looking for a site that has potential for my master's research really limited my choices. I ended up getting one of my top choices, the Maliba lodge ecotourism site! I am so excited, the site and job sound amazing. I get to work with youth, the local villages and on environmental conservation. I will be coordinating between local schools and villages to incorporate them into the benefits of lodge and tourism. I'll be working with schools on vegetable and fruit tree planting, to sell as produce to the lodge, and with the local communities to sell their crafts in the lodge gift store. I big part of my job will be promoting environmental conservation since it's in the T'sehlanyane National Park, spreading awareness on conservation management in the local schools and communities. I'll probably teach environmental conservation in the schools, which I think will be a lot of fun. I've missed teaching this past year. And I have so many different tasks/jobs that if one is going slowly or not working out there are a lot of other things I can work on. And there is definitely research potential, ecotourism and connecting the benefits of tourism to local communities (which will basically be what my job is) is really big in international development planning right now.

I'm going to live in a traditional round mud hut without running water or electricity! I'm going to get a real rural Africa Peace Corps experience. And the village by the lodge that I'll be living in is in a national forest in the mountains, it's supposed to be really beautiful. (And is one of the nicest places to stay in Lesotho if anyone wants to come to visit!) And the lodge where I will work has internet, so I can stay in touch mush better! I'll only be a 45 minute taxi ride away from two volunteers (a married couple) in our group that are really great, it'll be nice being that close to some other Americans. I can't wait to move in, I am definitely ready to be done with training. I like classes back home, but its hard to be in class from 8:30-4 everyday again like in high school. I like Sesotho class, I'm learning a lot but there is so much about the language that I still need to learn. Training is only another 2 weeks, then we spend a week in the training center before moving to site. So in mid-August I'll move to T'sehlanyane National Park!

The last couple of weeks have been really good. I've started focusing on the things here that I love rather than what or who I miss from home, and I've found that I've stopped missing a lot of material things. Not having electricity or running water was definitely a difficult adjustment at first, but now I find it kind of satisfying having to do everything by hand. Though I wouldn't kind skipping laundry. I also am really enjoying cooking things from scratch, I've gotten really good at baking bread. And knowing exactly where all my food has come from is a great change. I've almost become a vegetarian, meat is just so hard to get and keep. My room is as cold as a refrigerator (I can make jello by leaving it out in my room!) but I don't trust storing meat there. But eating meat only once every two weeks isn't that big a switch for me, I like eggs and milk better anyways.

My favorite time of day is now at sunrise. I used to hate getting up early, but without electricity my life revolves around the sun and daylight a lot more. Sunsets mean that I have to hurry up and get home to lock myself in my room for the rest of the night. But sunrises are beautiful, everything is so calm and the animals are all starting to wake up. I love hearing the cowbells at sunrise and sunset as they go to and from grazing fields. I'm not as big a fan of the roosters, they not only crow at sunrise but all day and usually in the middle of the night.

Probably the scariest thing that has happened to me so far was when I saw this giant insect with pinchers. I showed my eight-year old sister and she told me to kills it, I was wearing slippers so I told her to kill it, but when we looked back it had disappeared. It turns out it was a scorpion and we have no idea where it went. Now I always shake out my shoes before putting them on. At least I don't have rats like some of the other volunteers. (And dad, there are no poisonous snakes in Lesotho). I feel very safe here, although my host family has made me afraid to go out after dark, but they also believe that there are invisible men that hide in corners of houses (it's why traditional houses are round). The only thing to be scared of is the dogs they use for protection, at night they get really aggressive, one volunteer has already gotten bitten. I've definitely gotten a bit tougher skinned since I first got here. Last week my host father was butchering one of our pigs that he had just killed, next to me as I was doing laundry and I wasn't grossed out at all, I was only worried about getting bits of pig in my clean laundry. And it turned out to be the best pork I've ever tasted.

This weekend we visited current volunteers to see what their lives and jobs are like. I visited Erin who has been living in Quthing in the south of Lesotho. It's in the Senqu River Valley in the highlands, so its very different from where we are in training. She is surrounded by mountains, but it's only a ten minute walk to a little town Mountmoorosi. Getting here was tricky, but not as bad as I expected. The taxi ranks are where you find buses and taxi in the cities and towns. They are packed with people and cars, and all lined with vendors selling produce, cigarettes and clothing from little metal and cardboard shacks. They make delicious donut things called fat cakes that I have can't pass up anytime I'm in a taxi rank. We took a 20 person van with 25 people in it from Maseru (the capital city), we were really packed in there, you just have to be ok with having no personal space. Mike (the other trainee I went with) and I were literally sat on for most of the trip. In a little over four hours we got to a camptown where we transferred to a smaller van that was even more crowded. I'm a little taller than the average Basotho, but apparently am too tall for some of the vans and had to duck down for the last taxi ride, luckily it was only an hour. The Basotho think that a breeze from an open window will make you sick, so they all close the windows and it gets really hot and stuffy with people coughing and sneezing. It was a constant battle for me to keep my window open, as soon as I moved my arm out of the window someone would close it. But with the window open the trip wasn't that unpleasant. The driver blasted music, but with earplugs in it was a normal volume. The entire trip took abut 6 hours, which seems to be a good distance from Maseru, I don't think I would want to be much more remote. But it was definitely worth the trip.

Mountmoorosi is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. We climbed up the mountain the first day, at the top there are ruins from where a local chief went to escape the Boer invasion, and you are completely surrounded by views of other mountains and the river valley. The second day we visited the youth center that Erin has set up, it's really amazing what she has done in only a year. Her initial project of starting an aloe farm wasn't really working out, so she put her efforts into a youth center that the chief of the town had approached her about. She already has a building and has covered in murals and started a library and youth peer advisory panel. She has really made a home here and seems like she's making difference in people's lives, it was very inspiring. The trip was amazing, and a good example of how a motivated volunteer has been able to make a difference despite all the challenges. We don't find out our actual site placements for another 3 weeks, but this trip has gotten me really excited to see where I might go.

This week it got cold. Cold enough for snow, on my way to school in the morning there was frost and ice on the fur of the donkeys and cows. It's not as cold as Michigan winters, it freezes at night but got up to 50F during the day this week. But the difference here is you can't go inside to warm up, it might not be as windy inside, but it isn't any warmer unless you're 5 feet from a gas heater. I thought I could stand cold pretty well, but this week I was really put to the test. My heater ran out of propane a couple of days ago, it was the coldest night of my life, the cold seemed to get into my bones. I don't know how the Basotho people deal with this cold, most of them don't have heaters. In the morning I decided that the hot water that my host mom brought me for my bath would warm me up, big mistake. It felt good for about 30 seconds before I became painfully cold. I looked at the thermometer afterwards and it was 34F in my room. When my host mom came into give me breakfast she asked me (in Sesotho) why my heater wasn't on, and I told her it wasn't working. Within half an hour someone from the Peace Corps had come to look at my heater, and when I got back from school the propane tank had been refilled.

I've learned that cold means unhappy, warm means happy. I can't believe Africa is this cold. The rest of the week, after I'd warmed up, has been much better. Though mornings before my room has heated up are still not fun. I've been learning how to cook from my host sisters. Yesterday I learned how to cook leqebekoane (steamed bread) and lesheleshele (sorghum porridge) my favorites. It's been so nice having my host mom and sisters make all my meals for me, they always serve me the best food. But starting next week I'm supposed to cook for myself. although my host sisters said they'll help me. I really like hanging out with my host sisters while we cook, they're always laughing and singing, it's really fun. Last night I helped them with their math homework. they're very bright but don't seem to have been taught very well. There are four of them at home since it's winter break, they get two months of because of the cold. Which seemed really silly when I first heard about it, but I understand now, there is no way you can be productive at anything when you're really cold. Anyways, its been really nice having them all here. We've also been watching the World Cup soccer matches together.

All the other American PC volunteers that live in my village (there are 8 of us) came over for both of the USA games, because my family is one of the very few that has a tv (run by a generator). My family is very well off, we have 3 donkeys, 2 pigs and 9 cows, which is pretty impressive. And they grow almost all of their own food. The canned peaches they make from their peach trees are amazing, my host sister said she's going to give me an entire jar. Even though the people here have so little they are very generous, I'm going to get fat with all the food they've been giving me. But fat here is beautiful, it means you're healthy and is extra insulation against the cold. The best part of the soccer matches is the dance parties afterwards. Once most of the people leave, my sisters and some neighbors put on American and South African music videos and dance. They were shocked to hear that Beyonce was American, they think all the black singers are from Africa. There was no dance party after the South Africa team lost, all of Lesotho cheers for them. It's a weird mixture of traditional village life and modern western music and styles.

When we first got off the bus in Mokhethoaneng, the village that I will be living in for the next ten weeks for cultural training, we were greeted by our host mothers or 'me (pronounced m'may) wearing blankets and singing. The Basotho are a singing people, any event is cause for a song. And there singing is amazing, there is no way of describing so I will try to post a audio clip soon.

Our language and cultural trainer called our names and our new host mother's. My host mother hugged me and gave me a Sesotho name Limpho (pronounced Dimpo) which means many gifts. She then took my bag that weighs almost 40lbs and put it on her head an carried it to our house. There are some rondovels (traditional thatched huts) but we live in a concrete block house, very nice by Lesotho standards, and so clean!

I was followed to my new house by dozen children. My 'me showed me my room and sat there smiling at me , and the children stood in the doorway just staring and smiling at me. Some tried to talk to me in Sesotho, but it we'd only been in Lesotho three days and I only could say hello. The volunteers normally have three weeks language training before their village stay, so some of the people expected us to know more Sesotho. After a while of just staring at each other I got out some cards, and the kids definitely know how to play cards. I spent the next three hours playing crazy-eights with thirteen children in my room. Eventually I was served dinner and the kids all left except for my host sisters, Mammuso (who is 21) and Itumeleng (who is 8). My host mom and sisters smiled at me and watched me eat. The Basotho have a different notion of privacy than we do in the US. Being alone means you must be lonely, so I almost always have some member of the family with me in my room. I really like my host family, I got really lucky having them, but I do miss having some time to myself.

The food is really good, it reminds me of Ethiopian food from home. A lot of rice, mirhoha (a kind of lettuce), and chicken. They do eat a lot more salt than I like, but I expected that.

When they told us we shouldn't go out at night, I thought it was just advisory. But they're serious about it, my host family won't let me go outside even to use the latrine after dark, and it gets dark at 5pm. They gave us a bucket to pee in instead. I thought whatever I can hold it, I'm not going to use a bucket. But that didn't even last the first night, and it turns out peeing in a bucket is pretty nice. Much nicer than going outside where it is pitch black and your guard dogs try to attack you. The dogs aren't let inside here, and no one seems to like them. While all the farm animals are fat, the dogs look like they're about to die of starvation. I'm woken up a couple of times a night from dogs fighting or roosters crowing.

While the pee bucket is great, I'm not so sure of the bucket showers. I have seven different buckets for everything. It's not that cold for winter, but the insulation in the houses is basically non-existent, so it gets very very cold at night. It was in the 40s F when my 'me woke me up and brought me a kettle full of hot water to bathe with. It's a pattern of being freezing then burning myself with hot water. I'm getting better at it, but I'm still not a fan.

I can't believe its only been a week, it feels more like a month. I'm already missing foods from home, or anything unsalted. I haven't gotten sick from the food yet. And there is very little disease in Lesotho apart from AIDS, and we're an hour away from really good South African hospitals, I got really lucky in my location. But I will not have much contact with people back home while we are in our village for language and cultural training for the next few months, and that is hard. What I wouldn't do for some news from home and some oreos!

Lesotho's landscape seems like the African version of the American Southwest. It's dry with cold nights (in the 30s F) but it gets up to 70F during the day with a hot sun an no clouds for days. But this is winter, my host sister says the summers are hot, but we'll see. It's very dry and hard to grow anything here, with serious erosion problems and dust everywhere, I already have it covering all of my shoes.

I am really lucky that I got Lesotho for my Peace Corps assignment, not only is it beautiful but the people here are amazing. They are the most friendly people I've ever met, everyone's always smiling and greeting you. They're also very into hugs and seem like a very loving people. They do so much with the very very little they have, but are still positive and kind. Another plus is that they are an extremely clean people. Not only do they bathe (or bucket shower) once or twice a day they all wear deodorant and smell good! Not at all what I expected in the Peace Corps. The houses are meticulously clean (although not well built and really drafty) , even the dirt paths in their gardens seem perfectly swept. There is a lot of trash and dung on the roads though.

I expected a more simple, traditional huts made out of stone with thatched roofs, there are some, but only the poorest people in my village live in them, and they are often not well maintained. The main building materials here for anyone who can afford it are concrete blocks and a corrugated metal roof. Even without electricity and running water the people live a pretty modern life. While many people herd animals or farm for a living, they have cell phones and maybe even a tv run my a generator or solar panels for a couple of hours a day. Their lives my be more modern, but almost everybody is very poor. The poorest people I have ever seen.