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!