Because We All Love Little African Children

Every year Lesotho has a Cultural Festival held in a small community outside of Maseru called Morija.  There's dancing, singing, food, and art.  Last year I went with my school who was competing at the festival.  This year I decided to stay the whole weekend to see the festivities.

On Sunday, September 29th the festival program was the likonyana (di-kon-ya-na), or pre-schoolers', dance competition (Saturday was the high school competition, Friday the primary schools).  My friends and I laughed imagining little Basotho kids "dancing;" crying, picking their nose, just standing in place instead of dancing.  Boy, were we wrong.

The dances were spectacular, the discipline of the kids exceeded the high school students' and there was no fear on their faces.  We took videos and stayed for the whole event.

I wanted to share these videos with you all.  I've spoken about traditional Basotho dances before but these are just so adorable!  After all, who doesn't want to watch cute, little, African children shaking their boo-tays?

Ndlamo
Ndlamo is a male dance with a lot of kicking.  To be honest I have seen better Ndlamo dancers (granted they were done my adult men who are professionals) but it's still sweet to watch these boys try so hard.

Mohobelo
This is another dance done by males.  This was the last dance of the day and these boys were tired from rolling around on the dirt the whole morning.  I've seen this dance done with sticks with reflective surfaces and it's amazing to watch.

Litolobonya
I've uploaded a video of this dance in a previous post but these guys were so good (especially the tiny girl in front).   Besides, I've always felt this dance is a little girl's dance.

Mokhibo
I showed this video to my colleagues are they were shocked at their co-ordination and poise.  This group was my favorite the whole day.

 

A little history on these dances.  Back in the day women would never perform these dances in public; they were done behind closed doors when women would get together for some fun.  In fact, my teachers tell me, that if they caught a man trying to sneak a peak, they would catch him and strip him naked (traditionally these dances would be done topless).

I am Not My Hair...or am I?

For those who have not heard (which I would think are very few of you), I shaved my head in January 2012.  I had always wanted to do it; ever since I heard India Aire’s I am not my hair on the radio, I felt inspired to truly get rid of the damn thing.  That’s right, I have not been on good terms with my hair.  In fact, it took me a long time to accept that I wasn’t going to have the stick straight hair that I saw on TV and that the hairstyles I wanted were just not going to work out.  And once I accepted my curly hair fate I still struggled to just figure my hair out.  Some of you may understand this story, and some of you may not.  But when I heard India Arie belting out how she struggled with her own hair I felt a connection and all I wanted to do was to get rid of it.

But as we all know wanting to do something is quite a bit different from actually doing something and it didn’t really happen.  To be honest, I didn’t want people to get the wrong idea for the reasons I was hairless.  But when I came to Africa where shaving your head was acceptable and common I knew I had to do it or I’d have missed my chance.

And so I did.  A fellow PCV who had shaved her head a while back cut my long locks and I went to a little tin hut of a barber shop to get it all evened out.

And It. Was. Amazing.

I felt so free.

That didn’t mean there weren’t times where I desperately missed my hair.  Not having hair, I learned, made me feel naked and exposed.  I couldn’t hide behind my previously long, thick, locks anymore.  And a part of me felt insecure and less feminine since I couldn’t spend 30 minutes dressing my hair up.  And while many of my friends told me how I “rocked the look” I had to get over my insecurities and flaunt my head proudly.

Now, my hair is longer than when I left for Africa.  A part of me wants to shave it off again; a shaved head is so much easier to manage.  But I love having hair, I love spending time on it, and I love styling it however I want.  So, at the end of this journey I’m not sure if I can proudly scream out that “I am not my hair” but it was still fun.

So let's start at the begining:

This was my hair when I first got to Lesotho.

January 2012: This was my hair after I first shaved it.  I didn't want to shave it completely off since I'm pretty sure the top of my head is bright white and, with the Lesotho sun, is a perfect recipe for a bad sun burn.   This is the last time my hair touched a pair of scissors or any cutting instrument.

March 2012: My hair was definitely growing and it was in the "can't do anything even if you wanted to" stage.  A friend saw this picture and said I looked like Halle Berry; and so I call this the "Halle Berry" stage.

 June 2012: This was probably the most awkward stage of my hair: mullet hair.  It was long enough to keep my head warm in winter but not long enough to style.  The nice thing was that I was beginning to get my curls back!

July 2012: By July my hair was long enough to be styled Basotho style.  Basotho call this styling technique "braiding with yarn" but it's not actually braiding.  My host sister spent hours wrapping portions of my hair in black yarn and then connecting them to make a design.  This hair style lasted about 4 days.

October 2012: By this point my hair was curly and long enough to put some product in.  To be honest I miss my hair at this length.  Easy to manage yet looked pretty good.

November 2012: Getting a little longer and curlier (this was my visa photo for my South African visa).

 December 2012: In Capetown and my hair was long enough to blow in the wind!  It was also long enough to do french braid pig-tails.

March 2013: At this length my hair could once again become ridiculously messy (though still relatively easy to de-tangle).  I could also put into a ponytail.

April 2013: At this length my hair styled in to very pretty cascading curls.  This photo was taken at a school event in town.

July 2013: By July my curls loosened up a bit to give me more length.  The nice thing about shaving a curly head is that curly hair looks great in layers and that's exactly how my hair is now, tons of tiny layers.

October 2013: My hair is now longer than when I shaved it.  I can style it tons of different ways though with the limited water (which means I wash my hair once a week) I usually put it up in a ponytail or two french braids (which is nice when it's windy).

Novemebr 2013: My latest hair-do.  I wanted to look as Mosotho as possible my last few weeks at site but unfortunately this only lasted a week (my hair is just too silky).  This hair took about 2 hours to do and it was VERY painful.  I have a lot of admiration for Basotho women who do this every month (it's also not a lot of fun to sleep on though I guess you get used to it.)  When in Africa, do as an African women do.

Recap

The countdown is now at 1 week and the last time I was so nervous was in October 2011, when I about to leave for Peace Corps.  The past few weeks have been filled with reflection; the times that I’ll never forget, the times I wish I could, the emotions; it all rushes back as I get ready to leave Lesotho.

I’ve done my best to preserve the memories I’ve made here through photographs.  I’ve taken over 4,000 photos in Lesotho, most of them of students, and I wanted to share some of my favorites.

Cali the Cat: If I haven’t said it before, being a PCV is hard and one of the biggest challenges for me  (and most others) is the loneliness.  During your interview they warn you about it but no one can really understand how isolating being a PCV is until they're in a foreign land, in a foreign home, and foreign culture, and they are the only ones like themselves in that area.  I got Cali almost as soon as I moved in to my site and she’s been my constant.  She’s the one I hold when all I want to do is cry, she’s the one I yell at when I’m angry; she’s the one I cuddle with in winter, and take summer naps with when it’s unbearably hot.  It’s been so much fun to watch her grow up from a tiny baby to the mother of now seven other cats.

Always thinking by the window

So this isn't actually Cali but one of her kittens.

My ‘M’e (Mother):  There are many days that I don’t actually speak to anyone.  Sure, I say hello and I teach, but very few days do actually have a conversation with someone.  It’s not that people are rude; they are just always speaking Sesotho and about people and things that I don’t know about.  The only person who always makes an effort to ask me how my day was is my ‘M’e.  Almost everyday she asks me how school was, shares with me stories about her own family (whether I know about them or not) her concerns about the new generation, and that I am getting fat.  She’s the person who’s made me feel a part of the Mokote family and I know I’m going to miss her so much.

My 'M'e is a proud, church going woman.  Here she's wearing her church uniform.

Dancing bo-‘m’e (women): My host mother and some of her friends co-ordinate a meal for the OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) in our village.  On this Sunday the group of women were cooking and feeding the children and asked me to take some pictures.  After the children were fed they burst out in song and dance (which always go together).

Meeting Desmond Tutu:  I thought when I was coming to Africa I’d meet celebrities.  I have not really succeeded. But, I did get a chance to take a photo with Desmond Tutu.  The Anglican schools in Mohale’s Hoek celebrate their best performing students every year and the first year I was here the celebration was especially grand with a special guest from South Africa.  I didn’t recognize him at first but my co-worker did and she insisted we get a picture of him.  So I keep this photo in my phone and whenever I meet someone I want to impress I show them the only celebrity I’ve met in Lesotho.

Desmond Tutu is the one in the middle

Stormy, Windy Lesotho: Lesotho has the worst weather of any place I know of.  For an African country it actually gets cold in winter, it’s always windy which means dust flying everywhere, and when it rains, everything gets muddy.  The weather is unpredictable too.  Every website I check has a completely different forecast for the day and even when a sky is cloudless in the morning, by afternoon it can be pouring.

  

Beautiful and Peaceful Lesotho: There’s something about living somewhere touched so little by technology and development.  Beauty is all about you and it’s untamed; no manicured lawns that are always green and trimmed rose bushes.  Lesotho just is, and it’s so beautiful because of it.  Whether it be the bright light of the full moon, or the sparkle of the stars when there is none; the vibrant colors of a sun set, or the green you see after the first good rain, I appreciate the beauty of the world so much more.

 

Peach Blossoms: The end of winter is always marked by the blossoming of the peach trees.  The dry, yellow grass contrasting with the almost black bark with light pink flowers; I love peach blossoms.  Not to mention that means that there will be all-you-can-eat peaches soon.

   

Motaung (a member of the lion clan):  The area I live in is called Taung.  It means the area of the lion clan.  That means I am Motaung, and I live with Bataung (mo- is for a single person, ba- is for multiple people).  While clans are a very small part of Lesotho these days there’s still a sense of pride in Qhalasi about being Bataung.  Our chiefs can trace their lineage back to the creators of our clan and every year we celebrate them.

This picture was taken at the state funeral of a prominent Taung chief and the Minister of Development

The Modern Women of Lesotho:  I absolutely love my co-workers.  They challenged everything I thought I knew about African women and yet they maintain their African identity and culture proudly.  Their lives are so hard, from husband problems, single motherhood, to finding a baby sitter for their kids. And yet they surprise me with their strength and resolve to keep their families together, their fashion sense, and the way they have taken me in.

My Fellow PCVs:  I have to admit that I actually don’t like this picture very much.  It’s the first group picture I took with some of my fellow PCVs.  It was windy, we had a long day with our first day in training, and the person taking the picture was giving us a hard time.  But it reminds me how far I’ve come and how far we’ve come as a group.  I have so many photos and memories of times with other PCVs that it was impossible to pick a favorite.  While coming to Lesotho challenged my view of third world countries, my fellow PCVs challenged my view of America and I learned so much more about being an American from them.  I'll never look at my country the same way.

Welcome to Southern Africa

I've already posted about the places I've seen in Lesotho so I would now like to take the time to post a bit about some of the places I've seen outside of Lesotho.
Africa is a great place to travel because once you get here, everything else is ridiculously cheap.  I have not spent more that $400 on a vacation here and that includes transport, accommodations, souvenirs, and food.  I have rarely paid more than $12 a night for clean accommodations with a hot shower and a decent communal kitchen (that being said I probably have very low standards).
I highly encourage people to visit Southern Africa.  It seems that people have this idea that Africa is filled with starving children, malaria, and vast desserts; and yes this is sometimes true but Africa also has some amazing tourist sites.

South Africa

South Africa...enough said.  After the World Cup, South Africa has made a place for its self outside of the "oppressive regime" category.  I've seen Capetown (really more like America), Durban (like India but cleaner), Pretoria (a very pretty suburb outside of Johannesburg), and Clarenes (which you have never heard off).

Capetown has some awesome wineries and wine tours including ones with cheese!

I'll say a little about Clarens.  Clarens calls itself, the jewel of the Freestate, and it's a quaint little place right outside of the Lesotho border.  It's actually a nice place to see if you are visiting Lesotho.  The contrast between the two places is shocking.  It's also a good place to get some Basotho crafts and some good food lacking in Lesotho.

The beautiful Maluti Mountains (in Lesotho)

Clarens has a cute little brewery where you can taste all the beers for free before making your order

The brewery even makes a few ciders: apple, pineapple, cherry, and a seasonal berry.

Hmmm...cheesecake

Basotho crafts!

Mozambique

I found Mozambique to be very different from the other Southern African countries I have visited.  For one, they speak Portuguese!  All the other countries I visited people will be speaking the local, African languages so hearing Portuguese is so disorienting.  On top of that very few people speak English.  That being said Mozambique was one of my favorite trips because it was so different from Lesotho; tropical, the ocean, and different food.

 Beautiful beach and beautiful weather for the middle of winter

Sugar cane everywhere

An apple was ridiculously expensive but tropical fruits like papaya and coconut were very cheap

Swaziland

Swaziland, the other tiny country in Southern Africa.  On the border of Mozambique it shares a lot with that country and with South Africa.  We stayed at a nature reserve and did a horse back tour of the park.

Another tropical country

My horse did not like me

The animals are surprisingly calm when you drive past them

Traditional Swazi clothing

Botswana

Botswana is a large country and I was only able to see its capital.  Without access to a private car I wasn't able to see the true sites of the country found at the Northern most end.  I've heard that some of these reserves are so exclusive that they advertise their prices in US dollars not in Pula, the local currency.  We stayed close to Mokolodi Nature Reserve and had a chance to see a few animals.

If I remember correctly this a male and female khudu

Warthogs; did you know that when they run their tails go up?

The zebras in Botswana have brown stripes on their behinds

A very rare site, this mother and baby rhino came very close to our tour

Because of the food they eat, these male giraffes get darker the older they are (from the sun)

It's a Jungle Out There

These past few weeks I've been counting down, 8 weeks, 6, 1 month....now I'm at 3 weeks left in Lesotho.
Leaving Lesotho was a hard decision to make and it still is.  Peace Corps doesn't just kick you out after 2 years; you have options to extend and flexibility on where and what you would be doing.  It was a very attractive option for me and there were a lot of reasons I could think of staying.
At the end the decision to leave was 60/40 and at different times the ratio changes.  Lesotho has been my home for the past two years and I've known little else during that time.  I've gotten used to the way of life, the people, my host family, my colleagues, and above all my fellow PCVs.  As a volunteer you are open to opportunities you could never have as a working person.  I considered using another year in Peace Corps to get experience for my career.  But at the end my decision to leave rested on two main things: I was tired of being a volunteer with the rules and policies I had to abide by and I missed home. I knew it was time to go back and move on with life.
You might think going home is the easy part but it's actually not.  Peace Corps spends so much time, materials, and effort preparing you to come to a new country; they spend two days on preparing you to go back home.  I imagine my homecoming to be little like Mogli's discovery of modern civilization in The Jungle Book but more like Tom Hank's return home in Castaway.  I know things have changed, people have changed, and while I can remember exactly what life was like in October 2011, I doubt most of you reading this post can.  There's actually a technical term for readjusting to coming back home: reverse homesickness.
So here's a warning to all my well wishing friends and family who can't wait to see me, ask me about how Africa is, what I ate for two years, why I didn't lose weight, and any other well wishing conversations you might wish have with me: be gentle with me, because while I can't wait to see you all I'm also figuring out my place in a world that hasn't seen me in two years.  I ask for you forgiveness now for all the times I may just shut down 'cause I'm tired of talking about a time that most of you could never understand.  And above all I ask for your patience as I play catch up on the past two years both on your lives and the rest of the world.  It'll take some time to fully readjust but I'm jumping back in to America with both feet.  I might have a little trouble remembering how to swim but with all of your love and support I know I won't be drowning.

Videos from Swearing In

Before leaving the USA I received a Flip with the instruction to record some cultural events during my stay here.  For swearing in we had three performances which I was able to record and (with much trouble) am now able to share.

But first a little about music in Lesotho.  The Basotho are amazingly talented when it comes to singing. And where there is singing there is always dancing (as you will see in these videos); you can't have one with out the other.  There is also very little instrumentation.  I have seen the use of whistles and some percussion instruments but nothing fancy and nothing melodic.  The only instrument that is very common in Lesotho is a type of accordion instrument that is commonly heard in Famu music, a specific form of music only found in Lesotho.  There is a cult culture associated with this music.  From what I've heard, a singer (I've only heard males) uses the accordion as an accompaniment to his singing.  I've heard that the various artists are very competitive with the popularity of their music.  You can hear this music everywhere, in taxis, walking around town, and shops in the village.  But as popular as this music is, I, personally, am not a huge fan of this music.

But the lack of instrumental accompaniment doesn't stop the Basotho from sounding amazing for they are master harmonizers.  Basotho can harmonize in their sleep and they sound amazing all together.  I've seen instances where people just start singing and, with no prior practice, people will just join in and harmonize according to their vocal range.

Now the music in these videos are on the more traditional side but contemporary R&B has a prominent presence in the younger generations.  Kids here love Beyonce, R. Kelly (or Robert Kelly), Alicia Keyes, Jay Z, and I've heard some Adele on the radio (Shakira's popular for her one song...guess which one would make her popular in Southern Africa).  But what's interesting is that while these artists are beloved by everyone, only a few songs make it to Lesotho and they are known for those few songs.  So I'll be talking to kids and say, "I love this song by Beyonce," and they'll shake their heads and break out in "Single Ladies" (which everyone knows).

The first video is of the Berea High School choir.  This was the school I taught at during training to practice teaching.  I was in the back row and they were performing to the important people in front but I hope you can hear how good they are.

The second video is a mokhibo dance group from one of the other villages.

The final video is a litolobonya dance.

The Chicken Project

Sometime this July one of my PCV friends emailed me.  She said a guy from an international NGO had asked about me and wanted to talk to me about a project and she wanted my permission before forwarding him my contacts.  I gave her the go ahead curious what this project was.

This NGO is a well known organization in Lesotho.  It’s American funded and concentrates on helping OVC (orphaned and vulnerable children) and others affected by HIV/AIDS.  They used to have a presence in my area but I had heard that they had stopped soon after I had arrived.  Needless to say, I was six months away from leaving Lesotho and I wasn’t very interested in getting involved with a large project but I figured I’d stay minimally involved.

A few days later my contact came to see me in the village to talk about the details of the project.  He told me that the organization had some money (actually a lot of money) to do an agricultural project in this community and it had to benefit OVCs especially those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Now, I have very limited contact with my community and have never even attempted to do a project with them.  I have my reasons; one, I’m always busy at school. Two, the community doesn’t really seem to need anything that I could help them with (they want electricity, a community center, and a clinic in the village).  But above all I have no interest working with the chief who is a drunk or the elected official in the area who I have heard is also good for nothing.  So when World Vision wanted to do a project with the community I told him straight up that I had very little idea what was possible in this community but I could tell him anything he wanted about the school.  After telling him what the school was doing he decided to work with them.

School started in a few weeks and he came by to speak with the teachers on what projects we could do.  When I spoke to him in July he was thinking about a chicken projects (which we already do at the school as a practical project but he wanted to expand it), a piggery (which the school had but was having problems with so we slaughtered the pigs), and an orchard (which at that time I was working with Ministry of Forestry to get one at my school already so he suggested we just add more trees).  I also suggested getting rabbits (which one of my teachers had told me about and seemed like a good project).  When he came to the school and spoke to the teachers he insisted on doing a chicken project which the school was not interested in expanding.  Raising chickens takes a lot of work and they preferred a piggery where the NGO could help them build a proper home (which we did not have funds to do) and help us buy new pigs to start off with.  Pigs take much less work to take care of but since World Vision insisted on chickens the school reluctantly agreed; they weren’t going to argue on something that was coming for free.

The old and new chicken houses

And so my contact submitted his business plan for approval, hired locals to build a new chicken house, and started working on acquiring the chickens.  When he was planning the project he told me that to make a real profit the school needs to be able to raise 500 chickens at a time and our chicken house could only handle 100.  So I was under the impression that the new building would be very large yet at the end it was around the same size as the previous.

A few weeks later, on a Thursday, he came by to check on the progress.  On that day we were having our farewell for our Form E’s (saying good bye) but I left to see him to get an idea what was going on.  He told me that he would bring the chicken food on Friday and the chickens would be coming soon.  I warned him that on Friday the school ended at 1pm and the next week we had vacation.  He nodded his head as if it wasn’t a problem and I reported to the rest of my co-workers.

He didn’t come on Friday, he ended up coming on Saturday which, by chance, some students and teachers were there to go to a competition so we were able to store the food away before leaving.  Later that week, when we had no school, he came to drop off the chickens.  Since there was no one there to take care of them he took them to town to the deputy principal’s house to take care of them until school began.

The chickens with small feeders and drinkers

On Monday the chickens were transported to school and the next week I asked my co-worker minding the chickens when we were going to get them (no one had told me that they had already come).  It was only then she told me the story and mentioned that ever since they were delivered to my deputy, one chick had been dying each day.  Hoping it was due to shock from the transport they were waiting to see what would happen.

That Friday, since the chickens were still dying, they bought medicine and put it in their water hoping to stop the problem and my co-workers told me the whole story.  The new house was not built properly; it leaked and had no ventilation so they had to leave the door open which allowed animals, rats, and other unwanted animals to enter.  On top of that, since they had no warning when the chicks were arriving, they had no time to clean the house and there might be some mold or bacteria that could be making the chickens sick.  So that weekend my co-workers, with the help of some students, cleaned the old chicken house and moved the chickens in there hoping to see a change.  There was none.

The traditional medicine

A few days later, seeing that the medicine didn’t work, my co-workers did an autopsy on one of the dead chicks.  They saw that the liver was enlarged and there was a yellow coat around it.  They decided to try a traditional Basotho medicine to help the chickens.  They found the plant in the village and squeezed its juices in to the water.

There have been other problems with the project.  This project is supposed to benefit certain students yet World Vision has not spoken to us on how they would like us to identify these students or how it should help them.  While the school is more than capable of figuring this out ourselves a good project manager would make sure we have a process for this project to continue in to the longer term.  And we have no idea if and when he will bring the rest of the chickens he promised.

I spoke to some of my volunteer friends about this since I had expected this project to go more smoothly and be better managed.  They said they weren’t surprised.  When I was discussing this project with him, he said he wanted this project to be finished by September and I understand that he needed it to be done by the end of the fiscal year.  And I suspect that when reporting on the number of children helped by this project he will report “200” the size of my school, not the number of OVCs here since he never asked for such a report from us.  But I have heard that this is typical of NGOs here.

With adult feeders and drinkers

When I first spoke with the NGO I was told about the various projects he did in my village and how they all failed but now I can see why.  With such poor communication, no regard for what the actual needs of the organization are, and no plan for the future, it’s obvious to see how the results are all the same.  It makes me wonder if these organizations lack the skills and knowledge to understand this or they simply don’t want to put in the time.  I’ve spoken to many people who work for NGO’s and I’ve realized that for them this is just a job.

It’s been a few weeks since my colleagues administered the traditional medicine to the chickens and they are all doing very well now.  We started out with a hundred chickens and fourteen have died.  Still, for the school this round is almost a hundred percent profit since we didn’t put any money in.  Though things were not going well with this project for some time my colleagues are excited by this income generating project and the ways they can develop the school using the funds generated from this project.  So all in all I think the project will have a happy ending.