A year past...

On October 14th I will celebrate my one year anniversary since stepping in Lesotho.  This day commemorates the day I reduced my life in to 2 suitcases and a camping backpack and started my "once in a lifetime journey."  It's hard to condense the emotions, the challenges, the ups and the downs, in to a few nicely worded sentences.  One thing I can say for sure is that I didn't picture life to be quite as it is right now.  When I heard I was going to Africa I imagined living among the lions and tigers with native tribes doing all those things national geographic tells us Africa is about.  No, Lesotho is definitely not the Africa the media shows us.

I never saw myself having a pet ever in my life but I have to say that it is one of the best decisions I have made here.  Life here can be very lonely especially when you are the only person like you in your village.  After spending my whole day surrounded by kids I just want to come to some peace and quite and a cat is perfect company for that.

I never imagined being able to live without running water and electricity.  I always knew it was a possibility but I was always doubtful whether I would really be able to do it.  And here I am, bucket bathing and candle lighting my days away.

I'm surprised by my ability to endure.  There are days where I have no idea what I am doing here and if I am just wasting my time trying to help out.  Sometimes I just want to pick up the phone, call Peace Corps, and tell them to take me home.  But every time I just make a packet of instant noodles (or mac n' cheese if I have cheese and milk), watch some tv on my computer, go to bed, and without doubt the next day I feel a lot better.

It's the little things that make me so happy to be in Lesotho.  Like how my favorite day of the week is Sunday where I connect my ipod to my speakers, blast my music while washing my clothes and cleaning my house, sit down with a cup of coffee as the water for my bath is boiling knowing that I have absolutely nothing to do that day but read and day dream.  Or full moon nights; I've always read in books about heroes or heroines being guided by the light of the full moon but you can't know how bright that moon really is until you blow out your candles and it still as bright as if there were stadium lights outside.

And while it's impossible to know the future I'm looking forward to my second year here.  I'm not sure what to expect now that I've been here for so long but I'm looking forward to the new challenges that come my way, knowing that I can overcome them.  I know it's not going to get any easier but I didn't join the Peace Corps to do something easy.  When it comes down to it the longer I'm here the more I know that I made the right decision to join Peace Corps.

Aparna

Happy Birthday King Letsie III

 On July 17th 2012 King Letsie III turned 49 years old.  Every year a different district hosts the king's birthday celebration and this year it was in Mohale's Hoek.  I wanted to share a few pictures I took of the celebration.  To be honest the celebration was not mind blowing but we still had a good time.

When we got there we saw these colorful streams of gas in the air.  As they came closer to the ground we saw that at the end of each one was a parachutist.

 Most of them landed in the middle of the crowd where the performances were being held but one was a little off on his aim and landed behind a mountain (I hope he made it home safe).

A few of us decided to wear our seshoeshoes though a lot of people there were just wearing casual clothes. On the left is Nancy, and on the right is Janelle (and if you can't figure out which one I am I would suggest using process of elimination).  There was a special seshoeshoe fabric and basotho blanket created for the event.  The blanket had a picture of a dog on it since that is the name of the Mohale's Hoek soccer team (unfortunately I don't have a picture of it).

A few helicopters flew by with Lesotho flags hanging from them.

After the celebration (or rather when we started getting hungry and bored) we went to the local hotel for food.  The hotel is the best place to get more "Western" styled food.  The menu includes sandwiches, burgers (they have an amazing veggie burger), pizzas (the pizzas here have no tomato sauce), and other dishes.  This is a picture with one of my friends who works at the hotel.  Mohale's Hoek's seshoeshoe color is red so everyone in the hotel was wearing a red seshoeshoe.

We had left before they served food (which was free and a major attraction for many people to join the celebration).  Unfortunately the concept of trash cans is still a developing idea in Lesotho and most of the trash from lunch ended up on the ground.  The next morning I did see people cleaning up the area but it was still a sad site to see.