As promised I'm doing my best to keep on the blog. I don't have much to mention this time, but I suppose I can just do a quick update on what's been going on.
DANCE~
Dance class is going great! The girls are still loving it! Now the students at the other primary school (Hlotsenyane) where I teach Life Skills are bugging me to dance with them. I don't know if I'll have time to do both. Especially since I have to split up my current class into two different days to accommodate the big age differences. I told the girls from Hlotsenyane just to come up and join the current dance class. We'll see if they actually do it. They'd have to walk about 20 minutes up hill to get there :( However, while teaching Life Skills at Hlotsenyane last week I honored Mr. T Maresco by playing some music for the students during and activity, and then allowing them to have a "one minute dance party". They really loved it!!! Tom said he did this with his students, which makes me laugh cause the kid couldn't dance for crap, but he was right when he said the students really enjoy it!
ECCD~
Early Childhood Care and Development, also known as my "primary assignment" here in Lesotho. My job is to train the teachers. This second year with my teachers has gotten off to a slow start. I feel frustrated because we're discussing all the stuff that I trained them on last year, all over again. I hoped to get passed "how to do a lesson plan" and onto more interactive ideas. I wanted to get into things like classroom management and specific activities they can do with their students. We touched on these things a little bit last year, but now they want to cover the same stuff all over again. I worry about what will happen when I leave. I was hoping to have laid a stronger foundation last year so that this year the Area Resource Teachers could work as the trainers. This way once I leave they'll still have someone who can teach them. We're off to a very slow start. I'm not giving up, but its clear that I've got my work cut out for me.
MOSHOESHOE'S DAY~
This Friday, March 11, is Moshoesheo's Day (pronounced Ma-shway-shway). This is a Lesotho holiday honoring King Moshoeshoe. Last year I went to some ECCD events. Basically I sat in the sun while the teachers and children did races and some traditional dances. This was fun for an hour or two, but by the end of it I was hot and tired. This year I decided to skip the events and use the long weekend to visit my friend Parker in Mokhotlong. Mokhotlong is the most northern district in Lesotho. Getting there is a long and uncomfortable taxi ride. But I've only gone once, and it was to deliver very tragic news, so I thought I should go back on a happier note. However, in the last couple of days I've caught a nasty little cold. I'm pretty sure I got it from my host family. They were all sick last week, and the kids spend A LOT of time hanging out in my house. Now I'm suffering from a soar throat, headache and constant runny nose. I'm not looking forward to feeling this way on a taxi ride up the mountains for 4 hours to get to Parker's site. I'm going to decide in the morning if its worth me making the trip, or if I should reschedule. We'll see.
THIS & THAT~
Not much else is really going on. I've got some beautiful sunflowers growing outside of my rondoval (I'll post a photo once I have a camera again). I would have a lot more flowers to go with them, but my family has been doing some renovations on the house next to mine, which lead to the destruction of my seedlings.
My family adopted a cat a few weeks back. We (fellow PCV's) named him Zygote, to go with the dog, Fetus. But we were calling him Ziggy. When I returned home last weekend after a visit to some friend's houses Ziggy was nowhere to be found. I asked the kids where he was and they said he either ran away or was eaten by dogs. Sad right? But animals tend to come and go here and no one thinks much of it. I don't like cats a whole lot, but I was pretty excited about Ziggy. He used to come sunbathe on my porch all day. He was a cutie :(
I planted a garden a while back and am now reaping the benefits. However, the benefits are few. As with my flowers, my family dug up my garden without realizing it. My Ntate (host father) went out to weed my plot one day. He didn't realize I'd planted on the whole thing, as he couldn't see anything sprouting up (this was only weeks after I'd planted the seeds), so he dug up most everything. He left the lettuce that was just beginning to sprout, but the peppers, cucumbers, and zucchinis were lost. I was disappointed, but I can buy all that stuff in town. I was left with TONS of delicious leafy green lettuce, which I cannot buy, so I guess its okay. I've been having some AMAZING salads, and those are hard to come by in Lesotho. My family has some tomatoes growing which they share with me. I buy onions at the shop and green beans in town. Add some American Ranch dressing and I'm one happy girl!
Well I suppose that's enough for one day. I hope everyone reading this is doing well. I miss you all very much. But I thank you for the letters, phone calls, packages, and blog comments. Like I've said before, you're an amazing support group! Miss you!
Hay
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Callling all Pitsos
First of all I should start this blog by wishing my older sister a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! I hope she reads this and feels special. Especially since I forgot to send her a bday card this year. Please forgive me, sister. I thought about you all day, and now you're getting an Internet birthday acknowledgement to try and make up for my slacker tendencies.
Now on with the day to day updates. The title of this post is "calling all pitsos". Many of you are probably wondering what a pitso is, so please allow me to explain. A pitso is basically a village meeting. The chief always attends a pitso and any everyone in the village is responsible to uphold any agreement made at a pitso, whether they were in attendance or not. These are pretty important meetings, and they have the potential to be great venues for getting things done.
I requested to have a block of time in the next village pitso about a month ago. The reason I asked is because my wonderful friend Elissa donated hundreds of toothbrushes and other dental care items to me for the people in my village (Thanks!!!!). I could easily give these things away in one of my life skills classes, or to the teachers at a workshop. However, I decided I would try and disperse them amongst the most needy people in the village...the orphans. When I asked to have time at the pitso to do this I explained the plan. The chief told me he would call the orphans to the pitso and I could discuss whatever I wanted with them at that time. The first pitso was to be held three weeks ago. When that fated Sunday morning came I was told there would be no pitso. WHY!?!? Well, it seems that the chief of the village had been arrested. Since the chief is needed to have the pitso, it was going to be postponed. Okay fine. We rescheduled for two weeks later.
Two weeks later came, and I had declined an invitation to poker night with a bunch of fellow volunteers. This was a real bummer cause I'd been wanting to play poker since I got here! But I had an obligation to my friend Elissa and the orphans. I woke up early Sunday morning and was told that the pitso would not be at the chief's place this time, but in a donga down at the bottom of the village. For all of you American readers, a donga is basically a big ditch. They're not known for their cleanliness....teenagers go to dongas to get into trouble. I thought it was quite strange that the pitso would be at the donga, but I went with it.
I was unsure which donga they were speaking of, so I used my limited Sesotho skills to ask a young boy to help me find the pitso. The poor kid wondered up and down the village with me asking around for half an hour. No one seemed to know anything about this meeting. I was getting very frustrated, hot, and mad that I'd missed poker night for this! After speaking with a few more people the boy left me at the side of a donga, just standing on the dirt road with two bags of toothbrushes. He said, "You should wait here, and the people will come". I couldn't believe it. I was now at least a half hour late, yet there was no one around, and I was literally sitting at the edge of a ditch! After a few minutes b0-ntate (3 men) offered me a chair and told me to sit on a small cement platform. I sat there, in the scorching morning sun for 2 hours. There was not an orphan in site! After a while some women and men gathered, but still no chief and no orphans. The assistant chief came, greeted me, and tried to call the chief but there was no answer. We continued to wait. Just when I was trying to decide which Sesotho phrases I could string together in order to gracefully avoid sitting here for the rest of the day the assistant chief approached me again. He simply said that the chief was unavailable, and that we should re-schedule....AGAIN. I agreed, as I'd already waisted a good portion of my day doing nothing. However, we decided that since Sunday pitsos had failed us twice now, maybe this time we'd try for something during the week. I'll keep you posted!
Now on with the day to day updates. The title of this post is "calling all pitsos". Many of you are probably wondering what a pitso is, so please allow me to explain. A pitso is basically a village meeting. The chief always attends a pitso and any everyone in the village is responsible to uphold any agreement made at a pitso, whether they were in attendance or not. These are pretty important meetings, and they have the potential to be great venues for getting things done.
I requested to have a block of time in the next village pitso about a month ago. The reason I asked is because my wonderful friend Elissa donated hundreds of toothbrushes and other dental care items to me for the people in my village (Thanks!!!!). I could easily give these things away in one of my life skills classes, or to the teachers at a workshop. However, I decided I would try and disperse them amongst the most needy people in the village...the orphans. When I asked to have time at the pitso to do this I explained the plan. The chief told me he would call the orphans to the pitso and I could discuss whatever I wanted with them at that time. The first pitso was to be held three weeks ago. When that fated Sunday morning came I was told there would be no pitso. WHY!?!? Well, it seems that the chief of the village had been arrested. Since the chief is needed to have the pitso, it was going to be postponed. Okay fine. We rescheduled for two weeks later.
Two weeks later came, and I had declined an invitation to poker night with a bunch of fellow volunteers. This was a real bummer cause I'd been wanting to play poker since I got here! But I had an obligation to my friend Elissa and the orphans. I woke up early Sunday morning and was told that the pitso would not be at the chief's place this time, but in a donga down at the bottom of the village. For all of you American readers, a donga is basically a big ditch. They're not known for their cleanliness....teenagers go to dongas to get into trouble. I thought it was quite strange that the pitso would be at the donga, but I went with it.
I was unsure which donga they were speaking of, so I used my limited Sesotho skills to ask a young boy to help me find the pitso. The poor kid wondered up and down the village with me asking around for half an hour. No one seemed to know anything about this meeting. I was getting very frustrated, hot, and mad that I'd missed poker night for this! After speaking with a few more people the boy left me at the side of a donga, just standing on the dirt road with two bags of toothbrushes. He said, "You should wait here, and the people will come". I couldn't believe it. I was now at least a half hour late, yet there was no one around, and I was literally sitting at the edge of a ditch! After a few minutes b0-ntate (3 men) offered me a chair and told me to sit on a small cement platform. I sat there, in the scorching morning sun for 2 hours. There was not an orphan in site! After a while some women and men gathered, but still no chief and no orphans. The assistant chief came, greeted me, and tried to call the chief but there was no answer. We continued to wait. Just when I was trying to decide which Sesotho phrases I could string together in order to gracefully avoid sitting here for the rest of the day the assistant chief approached me again. He simply said that the chief was unavailable, and that we should re-schedule....AGAIN. I agreed, as I'd already waisted a good portion of my day doing nothing. However, we decided that since Sunday pitsos had failed us twice now, maybe this time we'd try for something during the week. I'll keep you posted!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)